The 2024 Religious Freedom Week Begins

Once again, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have issued prayers for Religious Freedom Week, starting today, on the Optional Memorial--their choice--of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, as the patrons of the week. June 22 is the anniversary of Saint John Fisher's execution; July 6 of Saint Thomas More's: both in 1535.

The theme for today is the "Respect for Sacred Spaces", and the reflection upon that theme mentions that "In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. There have been over 320 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow."

Although Saints Fisher and More did not live to see it, we know that throughout the English Reformation period, during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth religious objects, vessels, art, and other devotional representations of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints were vandalized and destroyed. 

Just three years and a few months after their executions, both mercifully commuted to beheadings rather being hanged, drawn, and quartered, the destruction began, as this excerpt from "Chapter 1: 1538 and after: the Virgin Mary in the century of iconoclasm" in The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture by Gary Waller (Cambridge University Press, 2022):

In 1538, in the late summer or autumn, in Chelsea or Smithfield or Tyburn, we can surmise – from both casual remarks recorded at the time and various histories and memoirs some years later – that one or more fires was lit and in it (or them) were burned statues, “images,” of the Virgin Mary, most probably those that had been brought from shrines dedicated to her at Doncaster, Ipswich, Penrhys, and Walsingham. Local records suggest that similar images from Caversham, along with roods from Bermondsey, Boxley, Islington, and others were added to this, or similar, fires elsewhere. In 1537, the reformist bishop Hugh Latimer had announced that in his own diocese there reigned “idolatry, and many kinds of superstition,” and during what Helen Parish terms 1538’s “long summer of iconoclasm,” he also named the statue of the Virgin at Worcester a “devil’s instrument.” . . . There are conflicting accounts on the date or dates on which such a “jolly muster” took place, and exactly when and what “idols” were destroyed, whether publicly or privately, but, Latimer pronounced, they were destroyed because they had “been the instrument to bring many (I fear) to eternal fire.” 

Here's a rather ironic line from Latimer's comments: these statues of the Mother of God, "unlike flesh-and-blood heretics, would not “be all day in burning.”" (Since Latimer was present at Blessed John Forest's execution by being burned alive, and he himself would suffer the same fate, those are eerie words to read). Notice that both men were burned alive as heretics!

And, of course, as the Dissolution of the Monasteries proceeded, more religious art and artefacts, books, and buildings were destroyed.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Seal of the Abbey of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Fisher and More Religious Freedom Week Thoughts

As Anna Mitchell pointed out during our discussion of Henry VIII's prison visit to Blessed Sebastian Newdigate Monday morning on the Son Rise Morning Show, the USCCB's Religious Freedom Week begins today, June 22, the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The portraits above laud them as "England's Most Glorious Martyrs" (note that the clipping dates from before their canonization in 1935, 400 years after their executions).

On the day of their feast, the USCCB asks us to reflect on "Respect for Sacred Spaces":

In a pluralistic society such as ours, respect for sacred spaces is especially vital for the sake of civil peace, which is part of the common good. In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. That wave rose following the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, and it crested after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to regulate abortion. June and July of 2022 saw a huge spike in anti-Christian and anti-life attacks on churches. There have been over 250 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow. [well, it certainly can't diminish!]

Before Fisher and More were executed in 1535, sacred spaces in England seemed to be safe: chantry chapels, parish churches, abbey churches, cathedrals, pilgrimage sites, friaries, priories, convents, and monasteries. All their shrines, stained glass, statues, altars, libraries, chalices, patens, pixes, and reliquaries also seemed safe. But with the Dissolution of the Monasteries during Henry VIII's reign, and the greater destruction of the religious fabric of sacred spaces during Edward VI's reign and the Elizabethan iconoclasm after the brief restoration of Catholic worship under Mary I, the pattern of destruction began. We could say that it started, however, in 1536, with the first wave of dissolutions or suppressions, and continued with the larger houses and the campaign against monastic life in general with the Visitations of the larger monasteries and the establishment of the Court of Augmentations to dispose of the sacred spaces of the monasteries with the conversion of some abbey churches into parish churches or cathedrals.

Of course, sixteenth century England did not have any idea of religious freedom: this meme from the beginning of the USCCB's attention to matters of religious freedom in the USA with the "Fortnight for Freedom" in reaction to the HHS/ACA contraception mandates and the Little Sisters of the Poor battles against them reminds us of that!

I'd previously shared this article from The Historical Journal (2022) by Martin Heale, "Thomas More and the Defense of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England", and draw your attention to it again with a couple of excerpts. In the course of the article, Heale comments more than once about St. Thomas More's admiration for the Observant Friars at Greenwich, the Carthusians at the London Charterhouse, and the Bridgettines of the House of Syon. On page 936 of the journal, he begins to explore More's defense of monasticism in general:

Alongside his unfettered praise for strictly observant religious orders, More’s polemical writings echoed his ‘Letter to a monk’ by repeatedly emphasizing the inherent value of the monastic way of life. In his ‘Letter to Bugenhagen’, More expressed a very high estimation of the monastic calling: ‘Religious orders have produced a great many men of extraordinary sanctity…[while] the purest segment of the Christian people have always been found in religious orders.’ Their way of life was also certified by the great holiness of their original founders. Monastic living, More added, with its austerities and self-denial, followed Christ’s teaching and example far more faithfully than the pampered and indulgent lives of its evangelical critics.75 The supplication of souls set out a robust defence of the friars’ practice of begging and the endowments held by monastic houses.76 And in the Apology, More denied that the professed religious life was in any way inferior to the calling of secular priests, and asserted that Christian people were bound to show honour towards religious persons on account of their ‘holy profession of their godly state of living’. 77 

You'll need to access the article for the end note links.

Nevertheless, Heale emphasizes that More, the Christian humanist and Catholic apologist, balanced that "very high estimation of the monastic calling" with an acknowledgement of problems among the monastic houses in England, and a rather tepid defense of those houses. While he regretted the dissolution of monasteries in Lutheran Germany (p. 940) More did not mount a defense of the monastic orders or houses. Heale concludes:

It is improbable that Thomas More himself, through his polemical writings, could have impeded the Henrician regime’s plans to embark upon a significant programme of monastic suppression in the mid-1530s. After all, More . . .  had issued stark warnings about the likely negative social and economic consequences of dissolving religious houses: a viewpoint that came to be quite widely shared within a few years of the suppressions. 113 He was, moreover, by no means unique among English humanists in his predilection for strictly observant forms of monastic life, and a concomitant lack of enthusiasm for ‘unreformed’ religious houses.

Tomorrow I'll post my preview for on Monday, June 26 discussion of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's mementoes of Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!