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!

All the Feasts of Sts. Fisher and More

My brother and sister and I bought this book together, chipping in equally, so we could celebrate certain feast days together. Today we'll gather for a Benedictine feast to honor Saint Benedict of Nursia, making a couple of Bénédictine (the herbal liqueur) cocktails. Drinking with the Saints: The Sinners Guide to a Holy Happy Hour often includes both the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite (EFLR) dates of saints' feast days and the Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite (OFLR) dates, as it does in the case of St. Benedict: today is the OFLR date; March 21 is the EFLR date.

Earlier this week the author, Michael P. Foley posted on his official Facebook page a note about the different dates upon which Saint Thomas More is honored on the Catholic calendar of saints (with an appropriate "for all seasons" cocktail):

Whether or not you celebrated the Feast of St. Thomas More on June 22 (in the new calendar), there are two more opportunities to toast to this great saint, scholar, and martyr. Today, July 6, is the 485th anniversary of More's martyrdom at the behest of King Henry VIII, and July 9 is his feast day in the traditional calendar. Why July 9, you ask? It was the first free day on the calendar. Fittingly, More died on the old octave day of the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul (it was his loyalty to the See of St. Peter that led to his martyrdom), July 7 was the Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, and July 8 was also already taken (St. Elizabeth of Portugal).

Foley even suggested a toast:

Last Call: You can toast to the merry More with an adaptation of his very last words: “To being God’s good servant first and the king’s second: may the prayers and example of St. Thomas More help us always keep our priorities straight.”

Remember that the Church of England celebrates these Reformation Martyrs on July 6, Thomas More's date of execution.

On July 9, indeed, Father John Zuhlsdorf offered Mass to celebrate the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More on the calendar of the 1962 Roman Missal, including the texts for the Propers of the Mass on his blog.

I was struck by the appropriateness of the readings and prayers, for example the Epistle from the Second Book of Maccabees about the old scribe Eleazar, who refused to even seem to eat pork to save his life. But the Alleluia and the Tract were even more appropriate, one for each of these great men:

St John Fisher read these works on the way to the scaffold outside the Tower of London:

Allelúia, allelúia. V. Hæc est vita ætérna, ut cognóscant te solum Deum verum, et, quem misísti, Jesum Christum. Allelúia

Alleluia, alleluia. V. This is eternal life: That they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent. Alleluia. (John 17:3)

Stating after he had read the verse: "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end."

And the Tract seemed perfect for the merry Thomas More, emphasizing joy:

Qui séminant in lácrimis, in gáudio metent. V. Eúntes ibant et flebant, mitténtes sémina sua. V. Veniéntes autem vénient cum exsultatióne, portántes manípulos suos.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. V. Going, they went and wept, casting their seeds. V. But coming, they shall come with joyfulness, carrying their sheaves. (Psalm 125:5-6)

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More pray for us!

Saint Benedict of Nursia, pray for us!

One more comment about Thomas More: please read Professor Richard Rex's review of Hilary Mantel's The Mirror and the Light in First Things! It echoes some comments Rex made in a June 2019 presentation in Dublin.

The Beginning of the End: St. John Fisher and the Carthusians

Image Credit: Martyrs of the London Charterhouse, Vicente Carducho

On June 17, 1535, St. John Fisher was tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Those who had opposed Henry VIII's Supremacy and his putting Katherine of Aragon aside and marrying Anne Boleyn were facing their trials and executions. Bishop Fisher spoke to the Court after being found guilty:

My lords, I am here condemned before you of high treason for denial of the King’s supremacy over the Church of England, but by what order of justice I leave to God, Who is the searcher both of the king his Majesty’s conscience and yours; nevertheless, being found guilty, as it is termed, I am and must be contented with all that God shall send, to whose will I wholly refer and submit myself. And now to tell you plainly my mind, touching this matter of the king’s supremacy, I think indeed, and always have thought, and do now lastly affirm, that His Grace cannot justly claim any such supremacy over the Church of God as he now taketh upon him; neither hath (it) been seen or heard of that any temporal prince before his days hath presumed to that dignity; wherefore, if the king will now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange and unwonted case, so no doubt but he shall deeply incur the grievous displeasure of the Almighty, to the great damage of his own soul, and of many others, and to the utter ruin of this realm committed to his charge, wherefore, I pray God his Grace may remember himself in good time, and harken to good counsel for the preservation of himself and his realm and the quietness of all Christendom.

Two days later, on June 19, 1535, the second group of Carthusians were executed: Blesses Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate. Arrested on May 25, they had been imprisoned in Marshalea for about a fortnight before their trial at Westminster on June 11. The three were taken before the Privy Council before their trial, refused again to swear Henry's oaths and were condemned to death. While in prison, they were chained at the neck and hand and foot against pillars, unable to move. 

Newdigate had been a member of Henry's Privy Chamber and had sworn the Oath of Succession, acknowledging Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn and their heirs--but he could not accept Henry's supremacy over the Church in England. Henry visited him while he was the in the Tower of London after being brought before the Privy Council. Newdigate refused Henry's offers and was brought to trial with the two other priors.

Thomas Bedyll, one of Henry's chaplains and another member of his Privy Chamber had harassed the Carthusians after the execution of their first leaders on May 4, pressing them to take the Oath of Supremacy. He reported them to Thomas Cromwell, noting their obstinacy.

The outcome of the trial on June 11 was certain, of course, and they were found guilty of treason and sentenced to being hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. Reports indicate that they went to their deaths as to a feast, with eagerness and joy!

These three Carthusians were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on December 9, 1886, along with Thomas More, John Fisher, the other Carthusians, etc, totaling 54. The decree was issued on December 29, 1886 to coincide with the Feast of St. Thomas a Becket, "whose faith and constancy these Blessed Martyrs so strenuously imitated".

The painting featured above is from an extensive series of works by Vicente Carducho in honor of Carthusian saints and martyrs in the Chartreuse Monasterio de Santa María de El Paular, now a Benedictine monastery. It was confiscated by the Spanish government in 1835 during the reign of Queen Isabella II of Spain, three hundred years after the martyrdoms of the Carthusians of Charterhouse of London. According to the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art:

Florentine by birth, Vicente Carducho arrived in Spain in 1585 with his brother Bartolomé, who participated in decorating King Philip II's Escorial palace. As apprentice to his brother, Carducho was steeped in the classical Italian tradition: his paintings featured careful drawing, smooth surfaces, and classicizing compositions. In 1609 Vicente succeeded his brother as royal painter, a position he kept for life. After Diego Velázquez arrived in 1623, however, Carducho and other court painters often found themselves overshadowed by the young genius.

Carducho primarily painted religious subjects. In 1632 he completed Europe's most extended cycle of monastic paintings: fifty-six influential canvases illustrating the lives of Saint Bruno and other Carthusians for a Carthusian monastery near Segovia. Carducho may be most recognized for his contributions to Spanish art theory. His Diálogos de la Pintura of 1633 championed Michelangelo and the Italian classical tradition while defending painting as a noble pursuit. The artist, wrote Carducho, is a learned humanist, not just a craftsman; painters should uplift people morally. In attacking Caravaggio's new dramatic realism and its "external copying of nature," Carducho called him a "monster of genius and talent," "Anti-Michelangelo" and "Anti-Christ."

More on Carducho here from the Museo del Prado.

Also in the Tower in April 1534: Doctor Nicholas Wilson

After remembering the 485th anniversary of the beginning of St. Thomas More's imprisonment in the Tower of London last week, I noted this article from the Cambridge Independent that cited new evidence for the dating of a portrait of Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's paternal grandmother. She was the patron of John Fisher, who was the Bishop of Rochester, and her confessor. According to the article:

The portrait was commissioned shortly after Lady Margaret’s death, around 1510, by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Lady Margaret’s advisor.

In 1534 he fell out of favour with King Henry VIII, Lady Margaret’s grandson, and his home was raided by the king’s henchmen, who stole or destroyed many of his possessions, including books he had promised to St John’s College Library.

But the portrait of Lady Margaret was safe at the Bishop of Rochester’s palace in Lambeth Marsh and was transported to St John’s shortly afterwards to ensure it would not be destroyed.

By "he fell out of favour" the writer means that John Fisher was stripped of his title as bishop by the new Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Thomas More wrote two letters in English to another occupant of the Tower who had refused the Oath as well: Dr. Nicholas Wilson. He had been in the Tower for ten days before More arrived. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Wilson was a:

Roman catholic (sic) divine, born near Beverley, was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1508–9, and commencing D.D. in 1533. He was related to John Wilson, prior of Mount Grace in Yorkshire (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xiv. ii. 748). Before 1527 he was appointed chaplain and confessor to Henry VIII (ib. iv. 2641). On 7 Oct. 1528 he was collated archdeacon of Oxford, and in the same year received from the king the vicarage of Thaxted in Essex (ib. iv. 4476, 4521, 4546). Wilson was a friend of Sir Thomas More and of John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and was a zealous Roman catholic (sic), frequently acting as an examiner of heretics (Foxe, Actes and Monuments, ed. Townsend, iv. 680, 703, 704). On 28 March 1531 he was presented by the king to the church of St. Thomas the Apostle in London (Letters and Papers, v. 166), and in 1533 he was elected master of Michaelhouse at Cambridge. In the latter year, however, when the divorce of Catherine of Aragon was debated in convocation, he joined the minority in asserting that the pope had power to grant a dispensation in case of marriage with a deceased brother's widow. About that time he was employed by the papal party as an itinerant preacher in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cheshire. He also visited Bristol, where he encountered Latimer, and threatened him with burning unless he mended his ways (Strype, Eccles. Mem. 1822, I. i. 245; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vi. 247, 411, 433, xii. ii. 952). His opposition to the king soon involved him in peril, and on 10 April 1534, a week before the arrest of Fisher and More, he was committed to the Tower for refusing to take the oath relative to the succession to the crown (ib. vii. 483, 502, 575, viii. 666, 1001; Foxe, v. 68). He was attainted of misprision of treason by act of parliament, deprived of all his preferments, and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Confinement soon caused his resolution to falter. Before his own execution More wrote him two kindly letters, telling him that he heard that he was going to take the oath, and that he for his own part should never counsel any man to do otherwise (More, English Works, i. 443). Wilson, however, hesitated for many months longer, and on 17 Feb. 1535–6 Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, wrote to Granvelle that it was reported that Henry intended putting him to death (Letters and Papers, x. 308). In 1537 he took the oath, and on 29 May he received a pardon (ib. xii. i. 1315, 1330, ii. 181). 

So he remained in the Tower for almost two years after Fisher and More were tried, condemned, and executed! He probably wasn't considered as important as Fisher and More for prosecution and execution.

In the letters (numbers 13 and 14 in this book) More sent Wilson (I don't know if the letters Wilson sent More survived), Wilson seems to have expressed first his decision to take the Oath and then some uncertainty about whether or not he should, perhaps in response to More's reply to his first letter. More's letters are "kindly" because he does not condemn Wilson's decision or even try to dissuade him; he refuses to disclose why he won't take the Oath, yet he recounts some of the background to his decision: how King Henry VIII knew his position on the king's marital matters for a long time; how More had studied the Fathers and Councils of the Church, and how Wilson knew much of this, etc. 

If you read the rest of Wilson's biography, you'll see that he just stayed out of trouble until his death in 1548. He was suspected of communicating with recusants and with Rome; he submitted to the authority of the King and Parliament in religious matters but he ended up in the Tower again in 1540 but was released again in 1541. I suppose we could say he survived, but he still endured questioning, arrest, and royal disfavor until he died.

The Passion of St. John the Baptist

From the Prado:

The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and Herod’s Banquet
1630 - 1633. Oil on canvas

This work depicts the martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist due to the perfidy of Salome, who asked for his head after seducing King Herod with her dancing. Strobel, a painter of Polish origin, tells the story on an enormous stage that represents to moment of the martyrdom on the far right, where we can see the saint´s decapitated body. On the other side of the large column, the figure of Salome shows a platter with John´s head to Herod, who is terrified. The rest of the painting to the left shows the banquet, which the painter depicts with innumerable figures, in the manner of a court celebration. The left end of the painting includes various portraits of contemporaneous figures, including Emperor Fernando II and Imperial General Wallenstein. The figures´ strong expressionism and the singularity of this highly horizontal composition are this work´s salient characteristics. As is a taste for precisely rendered details, sumptuousness, and a use of light that was customary in the works of this artist. In 1746, this work was in Queen Isabel Farnesio´s collection at La Granja Palace.

Image source/public domain

You will have to click on one of those links to see the detail, especially the Prado's site. The way the artist updated Herod's banquet to show all the contemporary detail of luxury and worldly splendor made the viewer at that time part of the story. The Emperor Fernando II and General Wallenstein were among those Herod could not disappoint, having sworn to do whatever Herodias' daughter asked in exchange for her dancing for him and his guests. The contrast between St. John the Baptist's exsanguinated, half-naked body (and his executioner's) and the sumptuous clothing of the guests is most effective.

Today is the Feast of the Passion of St. John the Baptist (which I remember being called the Beheading of St. John the Baptist). As the great forerunner of Our Savior, St. John suffered martyrdom for the sake of the holiness of marriage, denying that Herod could commit adultery with impunity.

In 1529, John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, started making comparisons between his own stand in the Convocation of Bishops, at the Legatine Court, and as one of Queen Katherine of Aragon's counselors, to uphold the validity of her marriage to Henry VIII--and of the pope's authority to declare a sacramental marriage valid--to St. John the Baptist's.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia: "When the question of Henry's divorce from Queen Catherine arose, Fisher became the Queen's chief supporter and most trusted counsellor. In this capacity he appeared on the Queen's behalf in the legates' court, where he startled his hearers by the directness of his language and most of all by declaring that, like St. John the Baptist, he was ready to die on behalf of the indissolubility of marriage. This statement was reported to Henry VIII, who was so enraged by it that he himself composed a long Latin address to the legates in answer to the bishop's speech. Fisher's copy of this still exists, with his manuscript annotations in the margin which show how little he feared the royal anger."

Also today: Blessed Richard Hurst.

St. John the Baptist, pray for us!

St. John Fisher, pray for us!

Blessed Richard Hurst, pray for us!

England's Nero and the Sacred Heart of Jesus

From First Things, a review of a biography of Henry VIII, focusing on the author's knowledge and understanding of medieval Catholic piety and devotion:

Matusiak is neither Catholic nor especially anti-Catholic. He acknowledges the recent attacks by historians on St. Thomas More, but isn’t persuaded by them. He is a little bewildered by sixteenth-century Catholic piety, but paints a vivid picture of it. And he is perceptive on the king’s relationship to Catholic orthodoxy: “Henry sought throughout the 1540s to impose his own idiosyncratic, hybrid version of doctrine which contained elements both to satisfy and at the same time to frustrate all sides.”

But while I was enjoying this book, I was conscious of an absence, which became obvious only when we got to St. John Fisher’s martyrdom. It is not just that Matusiak characterises Fisher’s stance as an “overreaction”; that is understandable. A non-Catholic is unlikely to sympathize with Fisher’s view that to reject a single doctrine is to abandon the Faith. No, what really rings false is Matusiak’s portrait of the saint as “a hair-shirted, hard-praying, uncompromising flagellant … a scholar and ascetic worthy of beatification.” That’s not inaccurate, but Fisher was so much else besides.

He was, before his dramatic end, a bishop who traveled his diocese visiting the sick of every parish, sitting by the bedside of some suffering invalid for three or four hours at a time; who gave cash and a meal to the beggars crowding at his door each day, while denying himself not just comforts but normal amounts of food and sleep; whose near-contemporary biographer wrote, “To poor sick persons he was a physician, to the lame he was a staff, to poor widows an advocate, to orphans a tutor, and to poor travellers a host.” What Matusiak misses is the deepest thing in St. John Fisher—his love for God and for his neighbor.

Likewise, Matusiak draws an affectionate sketch of the strong-willed Catherine of Aragon, who defied “an assemblage of England’s great and mighty with consummate ease.” But we do not glimpse the Catherine who yearned, as she wrote in a late letter, for “the calm life of the blessed,” when she would see the God she adored.

Matusiak gives us a sense of sixteenth-century English Catholicism, in its awareness of the supernatural—“At this time when funerals were among the most frequent of church services, hell itself was never more than a failed heartbeat or horse’s stumble away”—and its variety of devotions. But he cannot explain to the reader why the removal of the traditional religion so enraged Northern England that around 40,000 people took up arms. The Northerners were, he says in an unusually flat passage, “conservative.”

A better clue to their motives would be found in the banners they were carrying. The army—or as they called themselves, pilgrims—marched behind huge images of the Five Wounds of Christ, including His wounded heart: an image that was a precursor of the later devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Ignatius Press has published an updated edition of Timothy O'Donnell's excellent Heart of the Redeemer, in which the author traces the history of this perennial devotion. Here at the end of the month of June, dedicated to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it's appropriate to remember how Catholics throughout the ages have loved the Lord in His Sacred Heart.

St. John Fisher and His Biographer, Father Vincent McNabb

Father Vincent McNabb, OP, the Irish-born Dominican who championed the Distributist cause, died on June 17, 1943. CatholicAuthors.com offers this biography:

Father McNabb was born in 1868 in Portaferry, County Down, Ireland, within a few miles of the rock that covers the bones of St. Patrick. "My father," wrote Father McNabb, "was a master 'Mariner' (to give him his noble title) and my mother, a dressmaker." Vincent, who was proud he was the seventh son and the tenth of eleven children, spent his schooldays at the diocesan seminary of St. Malachy's College, Belfast. When asked by the editor of The Catholic Times to lend assistance to Ireland during one of the last crises, Father McNabb wrote in his scalpel-like way that both peoples alike, the people of England and the people of Ireland have been martyred by the same imperious few. He said that he loved Ireland like a mother and England like a wife.

Except for a period of study at the University of Louvain, Father McNabb's Dominican life had been identified with the English province for which he was ordained in 1891. On November 10, 1885, he had joined the novitiate of the English Dominicans at Woodchester in Gloucestershire. He walked about London in habit and army boots. A born controversialist, he often spoke in Hyde Park for the Catholic Evidence Guild. He had a fine sense of humor and a soaring eloquence. A zealous priest, he did a lot of work among the poor. In St. Pancras, London slum, he actually lived the extreme poverty enjoined by the gospel. An admirer wrote, while Father Vincent was still alive: "It is wonderful to see that happy lace with its look of smiling quizzical inquiry come from among a swirl of anxious self-absorbed London faces, the habit billowing from the lean, alert old figure like the drapes of winged victory.' He practiced a rigid asceticism. While he had a chair and a bed in his room he never used them. He either stood or knelt. There were just about four books in his room, a Bible, a Breviary, the Dominican constitutions, and the Summa of St. Thomas.

Father McNabb was a prolific writer:

He is the author of about thirty books. Among them are: Infallibility; The New Testament Witness to St. Peter; Oxford Conferences on Prayer; Oxford Conferences on Faith; Our Reasonable Service; Frontiers of Faith and Reason (thirty scholarly papers on Scripture); The Catholic Church and Philosophy; Thoughts Twice Dyed. Father McNabb's The Church and Reunion, shows a long interest in the subject. On this topic he wrote numerous articles between 1902 and 1936. An authority on economics, he had long been an advocate of the "Back-to-the-Land" movement and treats of it in his book, The Church and the Land. The city, he said, is the graveyard of religion and the machine age is the doom of mankind. His book Old Principles and the New Order has for its main theme the principle that true economics must rest on true faiths and morals. During the first World War, he learned practical farming in his leisure, as a recreation. He had been, also, a shining light in the Distributist Movement.

Father McNabb was, however, not only a polemic writer, but an informal essayist of undeniable charm, as shown particularly in: Francis Thompson and Other Essays; The Wayside, and the lovely Path of Prayer. Many people not of the Catholic faith read Blackfriars, the Dominican literary monthly published in Oxford, for which he was a regular contributor. His words are racy [?] of the soil. Writing with his capuche on, he used the back of old letters and envelopes for his manuscript. His motto was, "produce as much as you can, consume as little as you need." He urged the scrapping of all machinery and wanted people living as members of family-owned subsistence farms. The reader is never permitted to forget that here is a son of St. Dominic, a follower of St. Thomas. His vocabulary smacked of pre-Norman times, even in such a title as The Craft of Prayer. More recent books have been in the field of hagiography-on St. John Fisher or on St. Elizabeth of Portugal, the patroness of peace, who rode upon her little mule between embattled armies. In A Life of Jesus Christ Our Lord, hitherto shadowed places in the divine chronicle are illumined by a penetrating flash.

So Father McNabb died on the 408th anniversary of St. John Fisher's trial for treason in Westminster Hall. As Mediatrix Press, who reissued his 1935 biography of the Cardinal martyr describes it:

Fr. Vincent McNabb, O.P., a prolific Dominican known for his humility and preaching, takes advantage of the historical research of his contemporaries to weave the drama of St. John Fisher’s amazing life.

This is a short work, rather than a detailed historical analysis, that is both endlessly enjoyable as literature-even a work of art, yet at the same time pious and inspiring to faith. McNabb’s life of Fisher traces the saint’s early days from his childhood to his enrollment in Cambridge, his becoming a priest, a chaplain to Lady Margaret Beaufort, and at last, being appointed Bishop of Rochester, in which office he would be cruelly put to death by Henry VIII, the exemplar of tyrants.

Fisher is an important study for us today, not only because he died for the Catholic Faith, but also because he died for not believing as the monarch would have him believe. Henry VIII, in his quest to divorce his wife to marry his mistress, created the model of the Totalitarian state. Fisher is for us, a witness both of solid adherence to faith, as well as the courage to speak out when most others are content to get along. The perfect antidote to Wolf Hall!

The original Sheed & Ward edition is online here.

On June 17, 1535, John Fisher was tried for treason, with Sir Richard Rich as the main witness against him, and have been found guilty, was sentenced to death by being hanged, drawn, and quartered. He spoke to the court:

My lords, I am here condemned before you of high treason for denial of the King’s supremacy over the Church of England, but by what order of justice I leave to God, Who is the searcher both of the king his Majesty’s conscience and yours; nevertheless, being found guilty, as it is termed, I am and must be contented with all that God shall send, to whose will I wholly refer and submit myself. And now to tell you plainly my mind, touching this matter of the king’s supremacy, I think indeed, and always have thought, and do now lastly affirm, that His Grace cannot justly claim any such supremacy over the Church of God as he now taketh upon him; neither hath (it) been seen or heard of that any temporal prince before his days hath presumed to that dignity; wherefore, if the king will now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange and unwonted case, so no doubt but he shall deeply incur the grievous displeasure of the Almighty, to the great damage of his own soul, and of many others, and to the utter ruin of this realm committed to his charge, wherefore, I pray God his Grace may remember himself in good time, and harken to good counsel for the preservation of himself and his realm and the quietness of all Christendom.

St. John Fisher, pray for us!

Triumphant Martyred Bishops and Militant Bishops

The Communion of Saints is one of the most beautiful doctrines of the Catholic Church: the Church is a community that spreads across time and space. One way of describing it is that there is the Church Militant on earth now, actively working and fighting to spread the Gospel; there is also the Church Suffering, the poor souls in Purgatory who are being prepared to enter Heaven; finally, there is the Church Triumphant, those happy souls in Heaven who pray and intercede for us. And that's the method of communication we have in this communion: prayer. We the living pray for the poor souls in Purgatory, asking God to speed their union with Him; the poor souls can pray for us, but they can't pray for themselves; we also pray, asking the saints in Heaven to intercede for us--and they can pray for the poor souls in Purgatory too. It's the network of prayer to and worship of the Holy Trinity, to the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Sometimes we use certain forms of prayer to ask for intercession. One of our Wichita diocesan priests has composed and published--**for private use only**--a litany of Martyred Catholic Bishops to intercede for living Catholic bishops. He's titled it "Litany to the Bishop Martyrs for the Bishops of the Church Militant." You may find it on Father Thomas Hoisington's website, Reflections on the Sacred Liturgy, here. The prayer at the end of the Litany is:

O God our Providential Father, look upon the Bishops of your Church on earth in union with the Supreme Pontiff, and increase in them the virtue of fortitude. Through the intercession of those Holy Shepherds who have already spilt their blood in witness of the Gospel, grant, if your shepherds be struck or struck down, that the sheep may not scatter, but that they may be one, in faith and in the Truth, Who is Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

You might notice that two of the bishops were martyred in England: St. John Fisher and St. Thomas a Becket. St. Boniface was from England (his birth name was Winfred) but he was martyred in Germany.

The Last Days of St. John Fisher

Please watch this space for my blog post at the National Catholic Register on St John Fisher--and St. Thomas More--on the anniversary of the great Cardinal martyr's execution, June 22, 1535:

John Cardinal Fisher, the former Bishop of Rochester—Henry VIII had stripped him of that title—was sentenced to death on June 17, 1535. The sentence pronounced against him brought a flush of color to his sunken cheeks, eyewitnesses remarked. As a traitor, he would be drawn to the place of execution on a hurdle, hanged, cut down still alive and then endure vivisection. Finally his head would be cut off and his body would be divided into four parts: Henry VIII would decide where his head and his quarters would be displayed. In other words, he would be hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Like Sir Thomas More, with whom he shares a feast day today in both the Catholic Church and the Church of England, Fisher had been held in the Tower of London for more than a year, since April 26, 1534. He had been interviewed several times to induce him to take the Oath of Succession; authorities had told him that Thomas More had taken the Oath (when he hadn’t) just as they told More that Fisher had, trying to break their resolve. Thomas More had seen the Carthusian Priors and companions taken from the Tower to Tyburn on May 4, 1535 to be executed; Fisher had been told a few days after. Also in May that year, Pope Paul III had honored Fisher with a Cardinalate, hoping to influence Henry VIII to show leniency and release him, especially since he was so ill. That gesture did not work, however, as Henry stated that Fisher would soon have no head on which to wear his Cardinal’s hat. It had been feared that he might die in the Tower before ever coming to trial, so Henry VIII sent his physicians to strengthen the prisoner.

The day after his sentencing, three more leaders of the Carthusian order were drawn on hurdles from Marshalsea prison to Tyburn Tree: Fathers Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate. In the meantime, Fisher was waiting to find out the date of his execution and was making his final spiritual preparations. . . .

There's a YouTube video excerpting the scene of Cardinal Fisher's beheading as depicted in The Tudors miniseries. It depicts the Cardinal appealing to the people to pray for him, which reports note that he did:

"Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's holy catholic church; and, I thank God, hitherto my stomach hath served me very well thereunto, so that yet I have not feared death; wherefore I desire you all to help and assist with your prayers, that, at the very point and instant of death's stroke, I may in that very moment stand steadfast without fainting in any one point of the catholic faith, free from any fear. And I beseech Almighty God of his infinite goodness to save the king and this realm, and that it may please him to hold his holy hand over it, and send the king a good council."

I wonder, however, if someone at that time would be so bold as to cry out, "God bless you, Cardinal Fisher!" That would seem to indicate acknowledgement that Pope Paul III had the authority to name the former Bishop as a prince of the Church. Since Henry VIII had so firmly and angrily rejected that honor for his grandmother's confessor and his father's eulogist, it seems to me that such a blessing would be dangerous, even in a crowd of spectators. The scene does not include the detail of St. John Fisher removing his outer cloak and the spectators being so aghast at his emaciation and gauntness. Fisher was 77 years old.

Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, pray for us!!

A Cardinal's Hat and Sainthood for Bishop John Fisher

Pope Paul III passed over the notion that Henry VIII had stripped Bishop John Fisher of his episcopal status and declared the imprisoned Bishop of Rochester a cardinal on May 20, 1535, a little more than a month before the good Cardinal's execution on June 22 that year. Of course, Fisher never received his Cardinal's hat, and the usual report is that Henry VIII threatened to send the Cardinal's head to Rome instead! Pope Paul III had named Fisher the Cardinal Priest of San Vitale, the altar of which is seen above. The full name of the church is the Basilica of Sts. Vitalis, Valeris, Gervase and Protase, honoring a family of martyrs!

Four hundred years later, Pope Pius XI canonized John Cardinal Fisher and Sir Thomas More on the anniversary of this creation. Pope Pius XI praised the new saint during his homily:

John Fisher, gifted by nature with a most gentle disposition, thoroughly versed in both sacred and profane lore, so distinguished himself among his contemporaries by his wisdom and his virtue that under the patronage of the King of England himself, he was elected Bishop of Rochester. In the fulfilment of this high office so ardent was he in his piety towards God, and in charity towards his neighbour, and so zealous in defending the integrity of Catholic doctrine, that his episcopal residence seemed rather a Church and a University for studies than a private dwelling.

He was wont to afflict his delicate body with fastings, scourges, and hair cloth; nothing was dearer to him than to be able to visit the poor, in order to comfort them in their miseries and to succour them in their needs. When he found someone frightened at the thought of his faults and terrified by chastisements to come, he brought comfort to the erring soul by restoring confidence in God’s mercy. Often when celebrating the Eucharistic Sacrifice, he was seen shedding abundant tears, while his eyes were raised to heaven in an ecstatic expression of love. When he preached to the multitudes of the faithful that crowded round to hear him, he seemed neither a man nor a herald of men, but an angel of God clothed in human flesh.

Nevertheless, whilst he was meek and affable towards the afflicted and the suffering, whenever there was question of defending the integrity of faith and morals, like a second Precursor of the Lord, in whose name he gloried, he was not afraid to proclaim the truth openly, and to defend by every means in his power the divine teachings of the Church. You are well aware, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Sons, of the reason why John Fisher was called in judgment and obliged to undergo the supreme test of martyrdom. It was because of his courageous determination to defend the sacred bond of Christian marriage—a bond indissoluble for all, even for those who wear the royal diadem—and to vindicate the Primacy with which the Roman Pontiffs are invested by divine command. That is why he was imprisoned and afterwards led to death. Serenely he advanced toward the scaffold and with the words of the Te Deum on his lips, he rendered thanks to God for being granted the grace of having his mortal life crowned with the glory of martyrdom, and he raised up to the Divine Throne a fervent prayer of supplication for himself, for his people and for his King. Thus did he give another clear proof that the Catholic Religion does not weaken, but increases the love of one’s country. When finally he mounted the scaffold, whilst a ray of sunlight cast a halo of splendour about his venerable grey hairs, he exclaimed with a smile: “Come ye to Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be confounded.” (Ps. xxxiii, 6.) Most assuredly the heavenly hosts of angels and saints hastened in joy to meet his holy soul, freed at last from the fetters of the body and winging flight toward eternal joys.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

A Tudor Contrafactum

In the May 2016 issue of Early Music, David Skinner presented a new discovery about a collaboration between Henry VIII's last wife, Katherine Parr and Thomas Tallis:

Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei mater is one of the finest large-scale Tudor votive antiphons. It has long been regarded as a celebration of the short-lived return to Catholicism under Queen Mary and as a tribute to the Henrician masterpieces of the pre-Reformation years. All of the sources are Elizabethan, but one: the incomplete fragments of the Contratenor part with a hitherto unidentified English text, discovered in 1978 during building renovations at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The author of that text has now been identified as Henry VIII’s sixth and last queen, Katherine Parr. Less than a year after her marriage to Henry, Katherine produced her first publication, Psalmes or Prayers (1544). These included 15 psalm-collages (or psalm ‘centos’) translated into English from Fisher’s Psalmi seu precationes , originally published in 1525. Katherine’s translations are followed by a prayer for the king, and another ‘for men to saie entryng into battaile’. England was at war with Scotland and France. The Ninth Psalm, ‘Se lorde and behold’, headed ‘against ennemies’ was set to an earlier version of Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa. This discovery sheds light on the circumstances behind the production of this most extraordinary English contrafactum. It is here argued that the adaptation was not only intimately bound with Psalmes or prayers but also with Cranmer’s Exhortation unto prayer and English Litany, and part of a flurry of activity leading to its first use at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday, 23 May. It would have been a unique and short-lived event quite new to the liturgical stage including as its centrepiece an English version with stirring themes of war of the most complex early Tudor votive antiphons. More personally, the exercise seems aptly to demonstrate Katherine’s passion for reform and Henry’s growing conservatism in the final years of his reign: an elaborate meld of a hotly topical vernacular text with an established stylistic idiom. The earlier Henrician origins of Gaude gloriosa are also considered.

Here is a performance of Tallis's Gaude gloriosa dei mater. More about that piece here.

It is extraordinary, however, that Parr would translate the work of a traitor against her husband--a little like having a portrait of his first wife around--except that Parr did use the saintly bishop's works in a definitely reformist way. David Skinner and Alamire will perform the piece on Good Friday as part of the Holy Week Festival at St. John Smith's and Obsidian will release a CD by Alamire and Fretwork later this year.

Margaret Beaufort, RIP

The day after Henry VIII turned 18 and achieved his majority, his grandmother and regent died on June 29, 1509. I think it's safe to say that Margaret Beaufort would have been shocked by the religious changes and violence her grandson would bring to England less than 30 years later, especially the execution of her confessor, Bishop John Fisher, not to mention the suppression of the religious orders she supported. According to History Today:

She was a firm adherent of the established religious forms: spiritual sister and participator in the benefits of prayers and masses at the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Westminster, Crowland and Thorney, and benefactress of the conventual Franciscans and Dominicans. She was also the friend of the Carthusians and Friars Observant who were active in encouraging the growth of personal devotion to Christ among the laity. Margaret was conscious of the need to develop her own spirituality and at the same time to communicate to society around her the richness of the Church's traditional devotion and worship, especially in the sacrament of communion. She translated from French to English the fourth book of the Imitation of Christ, which centres on the need for taking this sacrament frequently and for sincere penitence.  . . . [emphasis added: all these would be destroyed, and of course the Carthusians and Observant Franciscans would suffer greatly]

Michael Jones emphasizes that Beaufort worked with Bishop John Fisher to improve the quality of Catholic preaching and teaching:

Fisher and Margaret both saw clearly the communication problem faced by the Church of their day. They sought the answer not only in a clergy better grounded in theology, but in one familiar with the methods and duties of preaching. At Margaret's behest Wynkyn de Worde printed Fisher's own sermons on the penitential psalms, originally preached by him before her, and shortly before her death she commissioned the publication of his sermon at the funeral of Henry VII. Doubtless with Fisher's advice she embarked on the foundation of a university preachership at Cambridge in 1504. The preacher was obliged to leave Cambridge periodically during the year to preach at named churches, mostly in areas where Margaret had estates. The preachership was also supported by Westminister Abbey, but it was envisaged that the post might be held with a college fellowship, which guaranteed an added source of income.

Bishop John Fisher preached his patron's funeral sermon:

The sermon which Fisher preached at Lady Margaret's month's mind compared her with Martha in the gospel, the epitome of virtuous activity. She seemed to him the ideal representative of God-fearing orderliness for their days, a noble patron tempering her power with a humility which showed itself in respect for individuals. Like Martha she was busy about her household: he notices her astute handling of discord, her care for her almsfolk, servants and strangers fed by her charity, as well as personal qualities like her readiness to learn. All the estates of the realm had reason to mourn her: the students and learned men because she was their mother and patron; the religious with whom she conversed, the clergy whom she protected, the nobility to whom she was an example of honour, and the commons for whom she acted as a mediator.

Her tomb is in Westminster Abbey.

A Little Death: Mary's Confession

A year after the holy Cardinal Bishop of Rochester John Fisher suffered beheading on the block at Tower Hill, the Princess Mary sent a letter to her father that betrayed everything her mother Katherine of Aragon had fought for and the the good bishop had died for:

First I confess and acknowledge the king’s majesty to be my sovereign lord and king, in the imperial crown of this realm of England; and do submit myself to his highness and to each and every law and statute of this realm, as it becomes a true and faithful subject to do; which I shall also obey, keep, observe, advance and maintain according to my bounden duty with all the power, force and qualities with which God had endued me, during my life.

I do recognize, accept, take, repute and acknowledge the king’s highness to be supreme head on earth, under Christ, of the church of England; and do utterly refuse the bishop of Rome’s pretended authority, power and jurisdiction within this realm, formerly usurped, according to the laws and statutes made on that behalf, and by all the king’s true subjects humbly received, admitted, obeyed, kept and observed.

And I do also utterly renounce and forsake all manner of remedy, interest and advantage which I may by any means claim by the bishop of Rome’s laws, processes, jurisdiction or sentence, at this time or in any way hereafter, by any manner of title, colour, means or cause that is, shall or can be devised for that purpose.

I do freely, frankly and for the discharge of my duty towards God, the king’s highness and his laws, without other respect, recognize and acknowledge that the marriage formerly had between his majesty and my mother, the late princess dowager, was by God’s law and man’s law incestuous and unlawful.

From Hunsdon, this Thursday, at eleven of the clock at night.

Your Grace’s most humble and obedient daughter and handmaid, Mary.

Note how late at night she completed this letter.

Thus she accepted the title of bastard for herself, as the subtitle of Anna Whitelock's 2010 biography lists her titles in order: Princess, Bastard, Queen.

She regretted it for the rest of her life.

How a Holy Man Dies: St. John Fisher

The author Michael Davies described the day of Fisher's beheading--he was awakened early and told the time of his execution; he asked to be allowed to sleep longer--and he was too weak to walk from his cell through the Tower to Tower Hill:

When he came out of the Tower, a summer morning's mist hung over the river, wreathing the buildings in a golden haze. Two of the Lieutenant's men carried him in a chair to the gate, and there they set him down, while waiting for the Sheriffs. The cardinal stood up and leaning his shoulder against a wall for support, opened the little New Testament he carried in his hand. "O Lord," he said, so that all could hear him, "this is the last time I shall ever open this book. Let some comforting place now chance to me whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in my last hour"----and looking down at the page, he read:

"Now this is etemal life: that they may know Thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou has sent I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do"(John, 17:3-4).

Whereupon he shut the book, saying: "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end." His lips were moving in prayer, as they carried him to Tower Hill. And when they reached the scaffold, the rough men of his escort offered to help him up the ladder. But he smiled at them: "Nay, masters, now let me alone, ye shall see me go up to my death well enough myself; without help." And forthwith he began to climb, almost nimbly. As he reached the top the sun appeared from behind the clouds, and its light shone upon his face. He was heard to murmur some words from Psalm 33: Accedite ad eum, etilluminamim, et facies vestræ non confundentur. The masked headsman knelt----as the custom was----to ask his pardon. And again the cardinal's manliness dictated every word of his answer: "I forgive thee with all my heart, and I trust on Our Lord Thou shalt see me die even lustily." Then they stripped him of his gown and furred tippet, and he stood in his doublet and hose before the crowd which had gathered to see his death. A gasp of pity went up at the sight of his "long, lean, slender body, nothing in manner but skin and bones . . . the flesh clean wasted away; and a very image of death, and as one might say, death in a man's shape and using a man's voice." He was offered a final chance to save his life by acknowledging the royal supremacy, but the Saint turned to the crowd, and from the front of the scaffold, he spoke these words:

"Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my courage hath served me well thereto, so that yet hitherto I have not feared death; wherefore I desire you help me and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of my death's stroke, and in the very moment of my death, I then faint not in any point of the Catholic Faith for fear; and I pray God save the king and the realm, and hold His holy hand over it, and send the king a good counsel."

The power and resonance of his voice, the courage of his spirit triumphing over the obvious weakness of his body, amazed them all, and a murmur of admiration was still rustling the crowd when they saw him go down on his knees and begin to pray. They stood in awed silence while he said the Te Deum in praise of God, and the Psalm In Thee O Lord have I put my trust, the humble request for strength beyond his own. Then he signed to the executioner to bind his eyes. For a moment more he prayed, hands and heart raised to Heaven. Then he lay down and put his wasted neck upon the low block. The executioner, who had been standing back, took one quick step forward, raised his ax and with a single blow cut off his head. So copious a stream of blood poured from the neck that those present wondered how it could have come from so thin and wasted a frame. 

O God, who in martyrdom
have brought true faith to its highest expression,
graciously grant
that, strengthened through the intercession
of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More,
we may confirm by the witness of our life
the faith we profess with our lips.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Kicking Off the Annual Fortnight For Freedom

First of all, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show today and tomorrow: today at 7:45 a.m. Eastern during the first Sacred Heart Radio broadcast hour (6:45 a.m. Central) and then tomorrow with a rebroadcast during the EWTN national broadcast hour (from 6 to 7 a.m. Eastern or 5 to 6 a.m. Central). Anna Mitchell and I will discuss St. John Fisher, based upon this article in The National Catholic Register.

Then this evening, I'll be presenting at the The Ladder, the home of EDI's Sisters of Sophia, on Margaret More Roper, St. Thomas More's daughter.

This year, the focus of the Fortnight for Freedom is "Witnesses to Freedom" and the relics of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher are touring the USA--not coming close to us in Wichita, unfortunately--according to this story in America magazine:

This year the USCCB—along with Jesuit-run Stonyhurst College in the Diocese of Lancashire, England—is coordinating a U.S. tour of relics of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher to promote respect for religious liberty. Both were executed by King Henry VIII for their Catholic beliefs.

The relics will go to Miami, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Washington.

In addition, the USCCB is highlighting the Christian witness of 14 women and men—one each day of the fortnight observance, including:

• Blessed Oscar Romero, the slain archbishop of San Salvador.

• The Little Sisters of the Poor, the order at the forefront of the court fight against the contraceptive mandate.

• The Martyrs of Compiegne, France. The 16 Carmelites were guillotined during the French Revolution for defying the government's suppression of their monastery.

• The Coptic Christians who were killed by Islamic State militants last year.

"Reflecting on the lives of these great men and women can show us how we might serve as witnesses to freedom today," said the USCCB statement on the 2016 Fortnight for Freedom.

Last year, I highlighted the English Reformation saints and blessed who were executed during this period. On June 21, 1600, St. John Rigby, a layman, was hung at St. Thomas Waterings because he admitted that he had converted to Catholicism and had not attended Anglican services since that time. More about him here.

St. John Fisher, pray for us!

St. Thomas More, pray for us!

St. John Rigby, pray for us!

From the Birmingham Oratory: Faith of our Fathers

The weekly reflection from Newman's foundation, the Birmingham Oratory, compares and contrasts the challenges Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More faced in the sixteenth century to those Catholics in England face today:

Today in this country, being a faithful Catholic means adhering to a set of beliefs and a way of life which have little meaning in the eyes of most other people. We Catholics believe that Christ Jesus is the Son of God, and there is no other Name that can save us. We believe that there is hell to avoid and heaven to gain. We believe that divine worship, prayer, good works, justice – Gospel justice – are far more necessary than most of the things which the world counts as valuable.

Should we then opt out of the secular world? For the majority of Catholics that is neither possible nor desirable. In a post-Christian country we have a more difficult task. God calls us not to opt out but to opt in. He calls us to engage with an increasingly pagan society, not to condemn it, for it condemns itself, but to convert it to the knowledge and love of Christ. We win others to Christ only by peaceful means; by living that Truth which we preach, and by playing an appropriate part in serving the common good.

St John Fisher and St Thomas More knew how much it mattered to remain Catholic whatever the consequences. Their example helps us to remember that being a good Catholic need not mean sectarianism or party-spirit. But it does mean facing the fact of being different in many ways from much of the rest of modern society. It often means having to swim against the tide, as we make our way to heaven.

The Narrow Gate and the Cause of Martyrdom

John Andra writes about St. Thomas More's martyrdom for Crisis Magazine:

Martyrdom is in practice narrow. When St. Thomas More died on a scaffold in Henry VIII’s kingdom, it was for a narrow matter. Henry said he was the head of the Catholic Church in that realm, and Thomas disagreed. Thomas believed only a bishop could head the Church, specifically the bishop who had succeeded St. Peter on the chair in Rome.

It is a strange thing, though, that Henry would kill for narrowness. It was so important that he, with the backing of Parliament, considered it treason to disagree. Henry and Thomas agreed on nearly everything else in Catholic teaching, and Henry died still an enemy of Protestantism. For his own need to control the Church, however, Henry repeatedly killed.

Few resisted him, perhaps because the matter was so narrow. Would it really matter if Henry were called the head of the Church? It would not change the reality, after all. The sacraments also continued, the bishops and priests still taught, and none but the religious orders, possessors of great wealth, were entirely despoiled. Many probably thought Thomas, and the sole bishop to lose his life resisting, St. John Fisher, were unreasonable.

He makes a connection to Catholics and other Christians resisting State coercion today:

But we should always remember our Lord’s warning to enter by the narrow gate. “For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter that way. How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher with the grace of God found the narrow gate. We must likewise prepare to resist any claim by an earthly power to jurisdiction over a matter of faith and morals. St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, gave us the fundamental rule: “ ‘We must obey God rather than men’ ” (Acts 5:29).

I've drafted an article for the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More--focusing on the Bishop of Rochester this time--in connection with the annual Fortnight for Freedom, which this year focuses on witnesses/martyrs from the early Church until today (including the Coptic martyrs beheaded on the beach in Libya last year by ISIL/ISIS). And, I'm working on a presentation for the Eighth Day Institute's Sisters of Sophia group on Margaret More Roper, St. Thomas More's daughter, to be given on June 21, the beginning of the Fortnight and the vigil of her father's feast! 

After those two projects are completed, I'll be keeping company with Dorothy L. Sayers, preparing a presentation for the EDI Inklings Festival in July and then with Blessed John Henry Newman, preparing a presentation for the Spiritual Life Center in August!

505 Years Ago Today at Cambridge

St. John's College was established on April 9, 1511 through the efforts of Margaret Beaufort and St. John Fisher. According to the college website:

St John's was founded in 1511. Its foundation charter, dated 9 April that year, was sealed by the executors of the foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort mother of King Henry VII, who had died in 1509. She had begun the process of transforming the ancient hospital of St John the Evangelist, Cambridge (founded c. 1200), into a college for students in the liberal arts and theology. From a small nucleus of fellows and scholars subsisting in First Court (1511-16) on the College's endowments the numbers grew by 1545 to one hundred and fifty-two. Subsequently the admission of more undergraduates paying for their own board and tuition created pressure on existing accommodation. This led eventually to the building of Second Court 1599-1601, the first major expansion of the College. Other landmarks were the endowment of a new Library building by John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln and Keeper of the Great Seal to Charles I, in 1624-8, strikingly enlarged and complemented by a modern technically-enhanced extension in 1990-3; the bridging of the river and building of New Court 1826-31; the great chapel, designed by George Gilbert Scott, in 1863-9; and the provision of extensive undergraduate accommodation in the Cripps Building, straddling Bin Brook, in 1964-7.

Successive codes of statutes for the government of the College made by John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and executor of the Foundress, between 1516 and 1530 were superseded by those given by the Crown in 1545 and 1580, until the nineteenth-century Royal Commissions ushered in a period of frequent reform and reorganization. The College is now governed by statutes made in 1926-7, under powers given to the Universities Commission in 1923, as amended by the Governing Body of the College and approved by the Privy Council, and as recently modified by Order of the University Commissioners in 1995.

Because Margaret Beaufort had just "begun the process of transforming the ancient hospital of St. John the Evangelist", Bishop John Fisher had to complete the process, gaining approvals from Henry VIII (who wanted the money), the Pope, and the Bishop of Ely. Beaufort had died in 1509 after serving briefly as Henry VIII's regent before he turned 18 (the son, Henry VII, predeceased the mother).

In his biography of St. John Fisher, Vincent McNabb OP describes how the bishop deeded his library to the College of St. John, with the proviso he should use them during his lifetime. After his arrest, however, one of Thomas Cromwell's men, Sir Richard Morrison went to Rochester and seized all of the poor bishops goods, including his fine library--so St. John's did not receive the books as promised.

The College of St John's honors its foundress in its grace after meals:

Infunde, quaesumus, Domine Deus, gratiam tuam in mentes nostras, ut his donis datis a Margareta Fundatrice nostra aliisque Benefactoribus ad tuam gloriam utamur; et cum omnibus qui in fide Christi decesserunt ad caelestem vitam resurgamus, per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Deus pro sua infinita clementia Ecclesiae suae pacem et unitatem concedat, augustissimam Reginam nostram Elizabetham conservet, et pacem universo Regno et omnibus Christianis largiatur.

(Pour forth, we beseech thee, Lord God, thy grace into our minds, that we may use these gifts, given by Margaret our Foundress and other Benefactors, to thy glory, and together with all who have died in the faith of Christ rise again to life in heaven, through Jesus Christ our Lord. May God, of his infinite mercy, grant his Church unity and peace, preserve our most august queen, Queen Elizabeth, and grant peace to the whole Realm and to all Christians.)

It's too bad it doesn't mention the great bishop and founder, St. John Fisher! The college does display his portrait next to Lady Margaret's, and unfortunately also displays some errors in the on-line biography. (He was not canonized by Pope Leo XIII; he was executed on June 22, 1535, etc).

The Chapel Royal and The Martyrs' Remains

Early next month, another concert of Tudor church music (through the modern era) in another Chapel Royal, Saint Peter ad Vincula, at the Tower of London, celebrating five hundred of "royal" music:

In this historic and intimate Chapel, nestled in the shadow of the Tower of London’s mighty White Tower, the acclaimed Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London, directed by Colm Carey will perform works from Tudor times through to the modern day, including works by Byrd, Parry and Handel.

The Tower of London is one of the world’s most famous fortresses, and one of Britain’s most visited historic sites. In the shadow of the great White Tower stands a small chapel, constructed on the orders of King Henry VIII around 1515.

Now known as the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula this ecclesiastical gem has been a place of worship for royalty, residents of the Tower and condemned prisoners for the past 500 years. It is the final resting place of three queens of England, as well as Thomas More and John Fisher.

The intimacy and atmosphere of this historic Chapel provides a unique platform on which to experience music making. The Chapel Royal has always been associated with the finest music and finest musicians, and this concert celebrates 500 years of royal composers, from Tudor times through to the 20th century.

"It is the final resting place of three queens of England, as well as Thomas More and John Fisher." That sentence from the announcement gave me pause:

Shouldn't Saint John Fisher be resting in a Catholic church (St. John Fisher in Rochester) or cathedral, like the Cathedral of St. George in the Diocese of Southwark (since the Catholic diocese of Rochester was suppressed after its last ordinary, Maurice Griffith died in 1558)? If his remains were buried there in an appropriate tomb, Catholics would be able to pay homage to him without paying admission to the Tower of London! 

Shouldn't Saint Thomas More be resting in the Catholic church near Chelsea (Our Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More), for the same reason? Catholics shouldn't have to try to visit an Anglican church in Canterbury (his head is entombed with the Roper family at St. Dunstan's  or pay admission to the Tower of London to visit the tomb of this great saint!

Saint Philip Howard's body was reclaimed from the Chapel Royal and reburied in the Cathedral of Arundel in West Sussex, and the Cathedral itself changed dedication from St. Philip Neri to St. Philip Howard (with Our Lady in pride of place).

I think Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More should be reclaimed from the Church of England and the Chapel Royal of the monarch! What do you think?