Leonel Power's Ave, Regina Caelorum

In my most recent blog post for The National Catholic Register I continued my series on the Marian Antiphons, the prayers sung at the end of Compline (Night Prayer) in The Liturgy of the Hours. The Ave, Regina Caelorum is chanted or prayed from the Feast of the Presentation (February 2) through the Wednesday evening of Holy Week. I always feature an English composer in my examples of settings for these antiphons, and this time I chose Leonel Power:

The fifteenth century English composer Leonel Power’s Ave, Regina Caelorum is one of only 40 of his works that have survived.

The BBC Music website has more examples of Leonel Power's works here.

According to ArchivMusic:

Power lived and worked in a time of great cross-fertilization and change in European music. While the late fourteenth century had been a period in which French music crossed the channel to Britain, in the first few decades of the fifteenth, English music and musicians were influential on the Continent. Many English musicians are known to have been present among the international convention of the Council of Constance, as well as traveling with their English patrons on campaigns such as Harfleur and Agincourt (or in occupied France afterwards). And Leonel Power was one of the most prominent among them. The important manuscript known as "Old Hall" was probably compiled for the chapel of the Duke of Clarence, but was later associated with the royal chapels of both Henry V and Henry VI (Henry V composed a piece of music within it). Power wrote possibly three times as much music as any other known composer in Old Hall, and his theoretical treatise "on the gamme [gamut, or musical scale]" was also well-known.

More about the Old Hall Manuscript at the British Library here.

EWTN's Register Radio Today

The National Catholic Register asked me to write an article about how Christmas was banned in England and in the English American Colonies, and so I did:

The English Victorian Christmas is an ideal: the glowing Christmas tree, the carols, figgy pudding, Christmas goose or turkey, special charity for the poor, and the holly and the ivy. Then there’s the more extended English medieval Christmas: wassail, the Yule log and the festive Twelve Days of Christmas until the feast of the Epiphany. There’s a mixture of English, Welsh, German and French traditions in these images.

Even if we have to face the ghosts of Christmases past (or present and future), we want that perfect celebration of family and faith. Between the medieval era and the Victorian, however, the very idea of celebrating the birth of Our Savior with feasting and revelry was banned in 17th-century England. Every December was like Narnia because, although it was winter and it might be cold and snowy, there was no Christmas.

I manage to work in Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Ulysses S. Grant, and all the trappings of Christmas--it should be in the next print edition.

Then they asked me to appear on a segment of EWTN's Register Radio, and so I did. It will be broadcast this evening at 6:00 Central and repeated on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Central. The broadcast will be archived here.

Professor Brad Gregory on Luther as a "Rebel in the Ranks"

The National Catholic Register asked me to interview Professor Brad S. Gregory for their "Reformation" issue, published on October 29 in print and on October 31, the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Please see the interview here on-line. The first question I asked is:

What are we really celebrating or commemorating this year? The beginning of the Protestant Reformation or Martin Luther’s posting of the “95 Theses”?

And his answer was:

By convention — and not without reason — Luther’s “95 Theses” are also considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. They initiated an unexpected series of events that led to Luther’s defiance of and condemnation by Pope Leo X in early 1521.

The really important “posting” of the “95 Theses,” incidentally, wasn’t Luther’s affixing them to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, an event not mentioned until decades later, and that didn’t attain iconic-moment status until the 19th century, and which might not even have happened. The important posting was that, after writing his theses, Luther sent them to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, the most powerful Churchman in Germany, who sent them on, in turn, to Rome. That started things in motion at the highest levels of the Church, and the multiple printings of the “95 Theses” by the end of 1517 were the beginning of Luther’s emergence as a public figure.

I highly recommend his book on the Catholic, Protestant, and Anabaptist martyrs of the Reformation Era, Salvation at Stake, and his controversial and intriguing The Unintended Reformation. He continues to examine the issues discussed in that book in his most recent publication: Rebel in the Ranks: Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Conflicts That Continue to Shape Our World.

Lenten Posts: Saints and the Rosary

I haven't kept you up to date on my posts at the National Catholic Register (unless you've been clicking on the Other Publications tab and finding them yourself). Last Monday (March 6), they posted my reflection on the liturgical calendar, especially how the saints's feast days are effected during Lent:

Except for St. Joseph’s, all of the feasts of the saints during the 40 days of Lent are demoted to Commemorations—even St. Patrick’s (outside of Ireland, where it is a Holyday of Obligation). St. Joseph is so special that his feast is a Solemnity, and since March 19 is the Third Sunday of Lent in 2017, his feast has been moved to Monday, March 20. Otherwise, the penitential season of Lent takes precedence over the feasts of the saints. We often refer to a saint’s “feast” day even though the Church has a hierarchy to honor the saints, Our Lady, and especially Our Lord, in different ways. We might be tempted to think that it doesn’t matter, but the Church has reasons for these distinctions. . . .

Violet and White

The USCCB issues a liturgical calendar each year with notes about the adjustments made because of the date of Easter or just how dates fall on the Gregorian calendar vis-à-vis the Liturgical and Sanctoral calendars. When you look at the months of March and April this year until Palm Sunday, the liturgical color designated is Violet nearly every day, except for White on March 20 and March 25 (and the option of Rose on the Fourth Sunday of Lent). Looking at the calendar page in the March issue of Magnificat, you see the words Lenten Weekday predominating with the commemoration of the saints relegated to italics in the righthand column. During Mass for those Lenten Weekdays when there is a saint to be commemorated only the Collect for the saint will be used and the prayers and readings will be for the season.

Please read the rest there--and share if you like!

Just in time for the Second Sunday of Lent with the Transfiguration of Christ as the Gospel, the Register has published my post on praying the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary during Lent:

When Pope St. John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in 2002, there’s no indication that he saw them as Lenten devotions. He proposed them in an Apostolic Letter on Oct. 10 that year “to bring out fully the Christological depth of the Rosary” by including “the mysteries of Christ's public ministry between his Baptism and his Passion”. In the almost 15 years since their introduction, the Luminous Mysteries have been included in most Rosary devotionals and meditation aids.

Some have resisted the option to use these mysteries for various reasons, some of which Pope John Paul anticipated in his letter: Mary, the Mother of God, is absent in all but one of the mysteries (the second); the addition of five more mysteries breaks the linkage between the 150 Aves and the 150 Psalms, and one of the mysteries is termed hard to meditate upon (the third). The five Luminous Mysteries are: 1) The Baptism of Jesus; 2) The Marriage Feast of Cana; 3) The Proclamation of the Kingdom; 4) The Transfiguration; 5) The Institution of the Eucharist. Pope St. John Paul II provided some guidance for meditation on each of these mysteries in his Apostolic Letter, noting that “we contemplate important aspects of the person of Christ as the definitive revelation of God” because “each of these mysteries is a revelation of the Kingdom now present in the very person of Jesus”.

A Luminous Lent

For Lent this year, I decided to alternate between the Luminous Mysteries and the Sorrowful Mysteries, starting on Ash Wednesday with the Sorrowful. Each of the Luminous Mysteries lends itself to a Lenten interpretation.

Please read the rest there--and Happy Transfiguration Sunday! The illustration is Carl Heinrich Bloch's (1834-1890), “The Transfiguration of Christ” from the Register post.

Just A Week Before Lent

Just a week before Lent and The National Catholic Register has posted my latest blog, in which I discuss Muriel Spark's Memento Mori and St. Thomas More in the Tower:

Muriel Spark was a convert to Catholicism from Scottish Presbyterianism and started writing novels after joining the Church. Her most famous novel is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, made into an award-winning movie in 1969. (Remember “Jean” sung by Rod McKuen?) Memento Mori, however, was Spark’s first great success as a novelist.

The characters in the novel, all in their seventies, begin to receive phone calls with the brief message: “Remember you must die”. Memento Mori. They each respond to this statement differently: with fear, anger, resignation, even acceptance. The plot of the novel is the investigation into who is making the calls; the theme of the novel is old age and death. Dame Lettie Colston reacts with increasing paranoia, disconnecting her phone and secluding herself in her home. She rejects the advice of a Catholic convert, Jean Taylor, who is confined to her bed in a nursing home: "It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die," she says. "It is best to form the habit while young." Through the depiction of several characters in her novel, Sparks makes clear that the virtues and vices of youth stay with us as we age. We don’t become angels just because we get older; we have to work at becoming saints through God’s grace at every age.

And St. Thomas More in the Tower:

Just a few years ago, I began to study St. Thomas More’s “Tower Works”, especially the spiritual treatises and meditations he wrote about Our Lord’s Agony in the Garden (The Sadness of Christ) and His Passion and Death. Thomas More had been forced into his retirement home: the Tower of London. He knew that he would never leave the Tower alive. He had always prepared for a happy and holy death by trying to live a happy and holy life.

As Thomas Cromwell and others tried to convince him to take the Oath that Henry VIII demanded after he broke away from the universal Catholic Church and the Vicar of Christ, they also tried to get him to say why he would not take the oath. He protested that he was beyond that now: “I had fully determined with myself, neither to study nor to meddle with any matter of this world, but that my whole study should be upon the passion of Christ and mine own passage out of this world.” When they reminded him that his monarch had the power of life and death over him, More replied: “And I am dying already, and have since I came here, been divers times in the case that I thought to die within one hour, and I thank our Lord I was never sorry for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang passed. And therefore my poor body is at the King’s pleasure, would God my death might do him good.”

Please read the rest there and share if you like! It's gratifying to a writer to see the number of shares one of the blog posts get!

And if you missed the Register Radio episode during which I talked about "Septuagesima, Shrovetide, and Pancakes", it's available here.

EWTN's Register Radio

I recorded an interview with Jeanette DeMelo and Matthew Bunson for EWTN's Register Radio yesterday which will air this weekend on EWTN Radio (Saturday at 6:00 p.m. Central and Sunday at 10:00 a.m. Central)--and will also be linked on the National Catholic Register home page.

We discussed my latest blog post for the Register: "Septuagesima, Shrovetide, and Pancakes":

The Super Bowl is over and the next great commercial social event is St. Valentine’s Day, but Easter candy is already sharing shelf space with Valentine’s candy in our stories. We are in a transitional time in our liturgical year too. Last Christmas seems a long time ago.

Before the reform of the liturgical calendar in late 1960’s, there was a name for this transitional time: Septuagesima. For three Sundays, the Church adopted a pre-Lenten period and in parishes where the Extraordinary Form is celebrated today, those Sundays are observed. The priest wears violet vestments, the Gloria is omitted, and the Tract replaces the Alleluia before the Gospel. The loss of the Alleluia, as the liturgical scholar Dom Gueranger explains, reminds us of our situation: “During the rest of the year [the Church] loves to hear us chant the song of heaven, the sweet Alleluia; but now, she bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon . . . We are sinners, and have but too often held fellowship with the world of God's enemies; let us become purified by repentance . . .”

I like the image the Register chose for the post: Pieter Aertsen's "The Pancake Bakery" which depicts a family preparing Shrovetide pancakes for sale. According to the Rijkmuseum:

Although Pieter Aertsen (1508-1575), known as ‘Lange Pier’, came from Amsterdam, he lived in Antwerp for many years. After he returned in 1556, various Amsterdam churches, his principal patrons, commissioned Aertsen to make large altarpieces. Soon, however, he abandoned religious art and started to paint scenes from peasant life. He was known above all for his paintings of market scenes and kitchen tableaux, which contained an abundance of fruit, fish, poultry, cheese, bread and much besides. His younger cousin and pupil Joachim Bueckelaer also painted in the same genre and developed it further.

The Wikipedia article on this artist, however, provides greater context to his career:

Later in life, he also painted more conventional treatments of religious subjects, now mostly lost as during the iconoclasm of the beeldenstorm several paintings that had been commissioned for Catholic churches were destroyed. Several of his best works, including altarpieces in various churches in Amsterdam, were also destroyed during the days surrounding the event known as the Alteratie, or "Changeover", when Amsterdam formally reverted to Protestantism from Catholicism on 26 May 1578 at the start of the Eighty Years' War. One surviving religious work is the Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp.

Aertsen was a member of Antwerp's equivalent of the Accademia di San Luca. In the official books of the Academy he is known as "Langhe Peter, schilder" (Tall Peter, painter). His sons Pieter, Aert, and Dirk became acclaimed painters, and other notable pupils trained in his workshop included Stradanus and Aertsen's nephew, Joachim Beuckelaer, who continued to develop Aertsen's formula.

Aersten's exact formula of still life and genre figures in the foreground, with small scenes from history painting in the background only persisted for the next generation (or two, as Joachim Wtewael painted some similar works), but history paintings with very prominent and profuse still life elements in the foreground were produced by Rubens and his generation, and in the 17th century both Flemish Baroque painting and Dutch Golden Age painting developed important genres of independent still life subjects, which were just occasionally produced in Aertsen's day.

Candlemas and St. Anne Line

Please see my blog post for The National Catholic Register in which I first discuss the greatness of the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple and how that is partially obscured by the liturgical calendar using the term "Ordinary Time" for this period between Christmas and Lent.

Then I tell the story of St. Anne Line's arrest on February 2, 1601, just before Father Francis Page, SJ was beginning the celebration of the Feast with the blessing of candles and Mass. He was able to escape capture while she was held in Newgate Prison until her trial and execution later that month.

Now it's time to put away the creches and take down the greenery: the 40 days of Christmas are over and Lent is just a short month away. As Robert Herrick wrote:

DOWN with rosemary and bayes,
Down with the mistleto,
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;	5
Let box now domineere,
Until the dancing Easter-day,
Or Easter’s eve appeare.
Then youthful box, which now hath grace
Your houses to renew,	10
Grown old, surrender must his place
Unto the crisped yew.
When yew is out, then birch comes in,
And many flowers beside,
Both of a fresh and fragrant kinne	15
To honor Whitsontide.
Green rushes then, and sweetest bents,
With color oken boughs,
Come in for comely ornaments,
To re-adorn the house.	20
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold;
New things succeed as former things grow old.

St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. John Stone

Over at the National Catholic Register, please find my post on St. Thomas of Canterbury today, on his feast. I also tell the story of St. John Stone, a martyr during another Henry's reign:

St. Thomas of Canterbury’s memorial is on December 29 within the Octave of Christmas, and his story may be familiar to many Catholics because we’ve read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in school or have seen the movie Becket with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. There is another Canterbury martyr we should remember during this Christmastide, however, that most have probably never heard of: St. John Stone.

After describing the questioning, arrest, and execution of St. John Stone, I return to the subject of St. Thomas of Canterbury's great shrine and what Henry VIII did to it:

Therefore, in April of 1538 Henry VIII set about eradicating the legacy of St. Thomas of Canterbury in England. His shrine at the Cathedral and images of him throughout the land were to be destroyed. According to Henry, St. Thomas of Canterbury was neither a saint nor a martyr and his feasts (December 29, the date of his martyrdom and July 7, the date his relics were placed in the shrine at Canterbury in 1220) were to be removed from the liturgical calendar.

This attack on a saint proclaimed by the Church was the final blow for Pope Paul III, who issued a decree of excommunication against Henry on December 17, 1538. With these actions against St. Thomas of Canterbury, and against other saints’ shrines, including the Marian shrines throughout England, it was clear that, as far as Henry VIII was concerned, the Church had reached the point of no return.

The hanging, drawing, and quartering of St. John Stone on December 27, 1539, a year after Henry VIII’s excommunication, demonstrated that sadly, Pope Paul III was right. Friar John Stone was canonized among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

St. Thomas of Canterbury is celebrated on the liturgical calendar of the Church of the England, honored as a martyr, on either July 7 or December 29, and people still go on pilgrimage (or as tourists) to Canterbury. What would Henry VIII think about that?

Since the first of September I've had the great opportunity to write these blog posts for the National Catholic Register. It's been a good platform for telling the story of the English Reformation and other historical or liturgical themes that are important to me. I particularly enjoy highlighting the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite through these posts. Looking forward to many more posts in 2017! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Holy Cards and the English Reformation

I am almost never surprised now that I'll find some connection to the English Reformation almost everywhere I look--for example, this story by Thomas Craughwell in the National Catholic Register about the history of Holy Cards:

The first holy cards were sold during the Middle Ages to pilgrims as keepsakes of their visit to a shrine. The oldest surviving holy card is a black-and-white woodcut image of St. Christopher dating from 1423. These cards were not really cards; they were pictures printed on inexpensive paper. Since they were easily lost, or torn, or destroyed, very few medieval holy cards have survived. But in 2005 one turned up unexpectedly at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the art history faculty was mounting an exhibit of artifacts and relics from the period of anti-Catholic persecution in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the treasures on display was a Book of Hours that had belonged to an English family who remained faithful Catholics after Henry VIII broke with Rome. As the curators examined the prayerbook they found, pasted on the last page, a holy card from the early 1500s, hand-colored, from the shrine of the Holy Rood in Bromholm, Norfolk. Only one other Bromholm holy card has survived the iconoclasm of the English Reformation, so this discovery created a sensation among the curators and among art historians and historians of the Church during the age of the Tudors.

Although I could not find anything on-line about this particular holy card found in Worcester, Massachusetts, British History Online has these details about the other example Craughwell mentions:

There is a peculiarly interesting memorial of the subject of the Bromholm pilgrimage in a fourteenth-century 'Hours of Our Lady' in Lambeth Library. (fn. 30) To one of the pages an illuminated leaf has been attached; upon it is painted a heart, containing within it a crucifix having the two transverse beams of the patriarchal shape. Above the heart is written ' Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judeorum,' and on each side one of the two lines forming this couplet:—

This cross yat here peyntyd is
Signe of ye cros of bromholm is.

Beneath the heart in a later hand, the concluding line being partly erased:—

Thys ys the holy cros that yt so sped
Be me ... in my need.

Within the outline of the heart and round the cross is written, in minute and much contracted characters, the following hymn, which is also given in full on an adjacent page:—

Oracio Devota de Cruce,

O crux salve preciosa,
O crux salve gloriosa,
Me per verba curiosa
Te laudare, crux Formosa
Fac presenti carmine
Sicut tu de carne Christi
Sancta sacrata fuisti
Ejus Corpus suscepisti,
Et sudore maduisti,
Lota sacro sanguine
Corpus, sensus, mentem meam,
Necnon vitam salves ream
Ut commissa mea fleam,
Ne signare per te queam
Contra fraudes hostium.
Me defendas de peccato,
Et de facto desperato,
Hoste truso machinato
Reconsignas Dei nato
Tuum presiduum.

V. Adoremus Te Xpe. Quia per crucem, etc.

Oratio. Adesto nobis, Domine Deus noster, et quos sancte crucis letari facis honore ejus quoque perpetuis defende subsidiis. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit, sicut Domino placuit ita factum est. Sit nomen Domini benedictum.

Of course, you know what happened to the priory and to the Holy Cross: they were both seized by the agents of Henry VIII. You'll note a familiar name in the report, from the same source:

The so-called visitation of Legh and Leyton, undertaken early in 1536, noted a cross called ' The Holy Cross of Bromholm,' the girdle and milk of the Virgin, and pieces of the crosses of SS. Peter and Andrew. They also alleged that Prior Lakenham and three of his monks had confessed to them their incontinency.

The county Commissioners for Suppression, later in the same year, described Bromholm as a head house of the Cluniac order, of the clear yearly value of £109 0s. 8d. They found four religious persons, all priests and requiring dispensations, adding that ' they bene of very good name and fame.' There were thirty-three other persons having a living there,' namely, four waiting servants, twenty-six labourers and hinds, and three almoners. The house was in good repair, and the bells and lead valued at £200. The movable goods, cattle, and corn were valued at £49, and a hundred acres of wood at £66 13s. 4d. (fn. 31)

On 2 February, 1537, Richard Southwell wrote to Cromwell that he had in his charge the cross of Bromholm, which he would bring up after the suppression was finished, or sooner if Cromwell wished it. On 26 February he wrote again to Cromwell, saying that he had delivered the cross of Bromholm to the late prior of Pentney, the bearer of both letter and relic. (fn. 32)

On 20 February Robert Southwell, solicitor to the Court of Augmentation, had a grant made to him by royal warrant of Bromholm Priory with all its manors, lands, advowsons, and pensions. (fn. 33)

Prior Lakenham obtained a pension of twenty marks. (fn. 34)

Bromholm Priory Ruins image from Wikipedia Commons: Image credit.

Queen Mary I and Reginald Pole, RIP

Hopes for the Catholic revival in England ended on November 17, 1558, when Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury both died. The National Catholic Register has posted my comments on how Catholics should respond to the history of her reign--particularly the burning of Protestants and heretics at the stake:

On November 17 in 1558, the first and only Catholic Queen Regnant of England died. She was Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon. She is better known as “Bloody Mary” because of the almost 300 men and women burned alive at the stake after being found guilty of heresy during her reign. These men and women included bishops and ministers of the Church of England, many Protestant laity, and some who denied basic Christian doctrines, such as the divinity of Jesus or of the Holy Spirit. Those men and women, particularly celebrated by John Foxe in his “Book of Martyrs”, have haunted Catholicism in England and in the modern world for centuries.

How should Catholics respond to these haunting echoes of the past? Very carefully and precisely.

Please read the rest there.

We must also remember that Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury died the same day. The Catholic Encyclopedia has this comment on his character:

Throughout his life Pole's moral conduct was above reproach, his sincere piety and ascetical habits were the admiration of all. "Seldom", writes Dr. James Gairdner, than whom no one is more competent to pronounce judgment, "has any life been animated by a more single-minded purpose". As compared with the majority of his contemporaries, Pole was conspicuously gentle, both in his opinions and in his language. He had the gift ofinspiring warm friendships and he was most generous and charitable in the administration of his revenues.

Dr. James Gairdner was a British historian specializing in the Tudor era.

Today, on my "National Catholic Register" Blog

Back to English Reformation subject matter! Today, my National Catholic Register blog features a discussion of the theological virtue Hope, the Poor Souls in Purgatory, and St. Thomas More! In the article I cite The Supplication of Souls:

St. Thomas More wrote his 1529 “The Supplication of Souls” to defend the doctrine of Purgatory and the devotion of prayer for the dead against attacks in pre-Reformation England. Anticipating Pope Benedict XVI—who said that if Purgatory did not exist, we would have to invent it— by five centuries, More comments that Reason, not to mention God’s mercy and justice, demands that Purgatory exist:

“For since God in His righteousness will not leave sin unpunished and in His goodness will not perpetually punish the sin after the person’s repentance, it follows there must be temporal punishment. And now since the person often dies before undergoing such punishment . . . a very child, almost, can see the conclusion: that the punishment remaining due and undone at death is to be endured and sustained afterward.” (p. 135 in Scepter Publishers’ edition, rendered in Modern English by Mary Gottschalk)

The Souls in Purgatory accept that they should undergo this purification in accord with God’s mercy and justice, noting that neither they nor the living should presume on God’s mercy, but submit to His justice. While they suffer in Purgatory, the Souls fear that they will be forgotten if the attacks against prayers and Masses for them influence their families—as we are too really to presume that our beloved dead are in Heaven and neglect to pray for them.

Next up on my personal reading list is More's The Life of Pico, also from Scepter Publishers in an updated translation:

Presented to modern readers in English for the first time in 500 years, The Life of Pico is a biography of one of the Renaissance’s most famous figures: Giovanni Pico de la Mirandola (1463-94). Given More’s demanding personal spiritual life, one would assume that More wishes to praise a famous and virtuous man. But what emerges from this book is quite different. Pico turns out to be an extraordinarily virtuous, talented, and wealthy man, but a man nonetheless, who is missing something essential. And so More calls Pico “a very spectacle” of virtue.

More sees Pico as very much like himself, as the two turn out to have very similar life experiences. Both carry some scars from difficult or missing relationships with their fathers, both are extremely talented and powerful in their time, and both had been steered toward a religious vocation which they did not embrace.

The book is as much a riddle about More as it is an explanation of Pico. More’s great-grandson and biographer, Cresacre More, claims that Thomas More as a young man sought to emulate Pico once he decided that his path in life was marriage and not the cloth. The book’s first half contains the abridged account of Pico’s life. The second half is More’s rhymed verse on the 12 rules of spiritual battle, the 12 weapons of spiritual battle, and the 12 properties of a lover, followed by Pico’s prayer to God. In the last analysis, this biography of Pico becomes an exercise in the discernment of true virtue, in the contradictions and difficulties one encounters in the immersion into the world, and at the same time, in the life of God.

Christ the King

Next Sunday, the last Sunday of October, on the Calendar for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, will be the Feast of The Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  I wrote about that Feast and the celebration of the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe in the Ordinary Form--which falls on Sunday, November 20 this year, for the National Catholic Register:

My husband and I attend Sunday Mass in both forms of the Roman Rite: the Ordinary Form in the vernacular and the Extraordinary Form in Latin. Because we have this opportunity, at least partially because of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 Summorum Pontificum, and mostly because of the generosity of several priests, we will celebrate the feast of Christ the King twice this fall—once before Election Day and once after. Thus, no matter who is elected President, Christ will be King.

1925: Pope Pius XI

On the Extraordinary Form calendar the Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ is celebrated on the last Sunday of October. Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical “Quas Primas” on December 11, 1925 to establish the feast and provided this reason for its scheduling:

The last Sunday of October seemed the most convenient of all for this purpose, because it is at the end of the liturgical year, and thus the feast of the Kingship of Christ sets the crowning glory upon the mysteries of the life of Christ already commemorated during the year, and, before celebrating the triumph of all the Saints, we proclaim and extol the glory of him who triumphs in all the Saints and in all the Elect.

The propers of the Mass (Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Alleluia, Gospel, Offertory, Secret, Communion Verse, and Post Communion prayer) all emphasize what Pope Pius XI stated as truths about Jesus Christ’s Kingship. He reigns as the maker and enforcer of Law; His Kingdom, as he told Pilate, is not of this world: it is “spiritual and concerned with spiritual things”; nevertheless, He is King of all the nations on earth, whether their citizens are Catholic or not, baptized or not, and He reigns as the King of peace.

Please read the rest there.

Image credit. (Christ Pantocrator (“ruler over all”) from the Hagia Sophia in Instanbul)

Tomorrow, On the Son Rise Morning Show

Anna Mitchell and I will discuss the martyrdom in chains of St. Philip Howard tomorrow morning on the Son Rise Morning Show a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live or find the podcast in due time here.

It's so appropriate that we call St. Philip a martyr in chains, meaning that he died in prison, held there for his Catholic faith, because he was part of a chain--a link in a chain of martyrs. It was because of the example of St. Edmund Campion, the great Jesuit martyr that St. Philip became a Catholic; it was through the solace of St. Robert Southwell, the great Jesuit poet and martyr, that he was able to endure his imprisonment, as I explain in this post on my blog at the National Catholic Register:

The story of St. Philip Howard’s sanctification and martyrdom is inextricably linked with the mission and death of two Jesuit martyrs of the English Reformation era: St. Edmund Campion and St. Robert Southwell. . . .

Philip Howard, Edmund Campion, and Robert Southwell were all canonized together in 1970 by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. After enduring affliction in this life, they are experiencing glory with Christ in Heaven.

Read the rest there, please.

St. Philip Howard, pray for us.
St. Edmund Campion, pray for us.
St. Henry Walpole, pray for us.
St. Robert Southwell, pray for us.

Newman's Day: October 9, 1845

The Weekly Reflection on the website of the Birmingham Oratory is about Blessed John Henry Newman today, of course:

John Henry Newman referred to the day on which he became a Catholic, 9th October 1845, as simply, “my day”. . . .

By October 1845 the effects of grace upon his mind and heart had resolved all previous doubts and he asked Fr.Dominic Barberi to receive him into the Church Christ founded, the one true fold of the Redeemer.

Blessed John Henry Newman’s long pilgrimage exemplifies to a heroic degree both spiritual persistence and spiritual docility. He actively quested, and he also let himself be led.

It was the tenacity and sobriety of his unremitting quest for God’s truth that made him great and which underpinned the heroicity of all his other virtues.

Please pray with us that our belovèd Cardinal may soon be raised to the altars. Then he will truly belong to everyone throughout the universal Church, and his holiness and wisdom will shine forth even more brightly, for the good of all.

He did struggle with his previous prejudices against Catholic doctrine, his lack of contact of any Catholics and experience with Catholic worship, and his comfortable positions as Vicar and Fellow in Oxford. He knew all that he stood to lose and was still exploring what he stood to gain. (Loss and Gain!) Soon after his conversion on October 9, 1845, sustained by the Sacraments, he began to see what he had gained in the same way that St. Paul had, and did not repine for what he'd lost: 

Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ. (PHILIPPIANS 3:8)

Once in the "one, true fold of Christ" he was happy and never looked back.

Please check my blog on the National Catholic Register website for a reflection on how my knowledge of Blessed John Henry Newman as an academic subject has changed instead to devotion and prayer. Also today, please check Aleteia for my discussion of what Blessed John Henry Newman and St. Teresa of Calcutta have in common. I'll update this post later today when the stories are published online.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us!

UPDATED: Here's the link to the National Catholic Register post; here's the link to the Aleteia post!

Blogging about Blogging: The Quebec Act @ NCReg

So this is a meta blog post, posting about another blog post at the National Catholic Register: a follow-up with background to explain why Fanny Allen's mother and stepfather were so worried about her going to Catholic Canada:

This fear of Catholics and of Canadian Catholics in particular had deep colonial roots in the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years’ War fought between France and England in several colonial territories) and the 1774 Quebec Act. Great Britain, with help from their British colonists in North America, won the war in 1763 and had obtained the French territory of Quebec in Canada. The colonists were pleased with the defeat of Catholic France.

Eleven years later, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, integrating the former French colony into British Canada. American colonists were not pleased with many of the decisions reached by Parliament. Although the issue of religious liberty among Protestants was tremendously important in the revolutionary period, as Thomas S. Kidd recounts in God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2012), American Protestants did not think that Catholics should be free to practice their faith.

The Quebec Act allowed Catholics in Canada, unlike Catholics in England or other British colonies, not only to practice their faith freely, but to serve in government offices without taking an oath that denied their faith. Catholics in England, Scotland and Ireland could not serve in political office because they would have had to deny the Real Presence in the Eucharist (which the government called Transubstantiation), the invocation of saints, and the authority of the pope. Catholics in Canada could simply swear loyalty to King George III.

In the background for all the British American colonists, even those in Pennsylvania, like Benjamin Franklin (picture in the fur hat that he procured in Canada and that became such a fashion statement in Paris), the specter of James II--and the more remote horrors of the Gunpowder Plot, the Spanish Armada and even the fires of Smithfield--dominated their view of Catholics and the Papacy. Franklin, with his career in Pennsylvania, should have known a little about William Penn's support of James II's efforts to bring religious toleration to England. His speaking and campaigning for the Act of Toleration got Penn in trouble: he was imprisoned and accused of being a Papist!

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!

Eucharistic Procession in London on October 9

Joanna Bogle writes in The National Catholic Register about the Eucharistic Procession from Westminster to St. George cathedrals in London held in honor of Blessed John Henry Newman. She uses it as a way to assess the changes in response to Catholicism that have taken place since Newman's day--or even a century ago:

It is a sign of the present religious state of Britain that the procession aroused no animosity, and indeed produced only mild gawking and some selfie-taking from passers-by and tourists as it made its way through the London streets.

A century ago, such a procession was planned as the culmination of a great Eucharistic Congress held in London but it was banned by the public authorities on the grounds that it would be too controversial and would create public disorder. No such problems seemed to emerge on this day, the memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman’s beatification. While the Church’s moral teachings are much challenged and derided — anyone in public life who openly opposes same-sex “marriages” or dares to suggest that homosexual activity might be wrong is likely to be hounded out of office, or forced to make a public recantation — the Church’s sacraments and life of prayer are virtually unknown to millions.

The militant anti-Catholicism of past years, led by fervent Protestants who believed that Catholicism was a form of paganism or idolatry, has given way to puzzled indifference. Almost the only thing that most British people know about the Catholic Church is its opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage. So the sight of the Blessed Sacrament being carried through the streets beneath a canopy, attended by a great throng of people, induces not opposition but vague bewilderment — and for some immediate clicking of a mobile phone to record the moment and send a picture to a friend.

Before his conversion, Newman wrote a retraction of all his anti-Catholic statements in print.

Jamestown in The National Catholic Register

After posting about the reliquary found in the grave of Captain Gabriel Archer, I wrote an article and posted it off to my contact at The National Catholic Register. My story was posted on-line the next day:

Several articles have appeared recently about the discovery and identification of remains in Jamestown, Va., in The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Atlantic headline on July 28 summed up the issue: “A Skeleton, a Catholic Relic and a Mystery About American Origins.” In the article by Adrienne Lafrance, the researchers at Jamestown and others discuss the ramifications of one of the discoveries in the grave of Capt. Gabriel Archer, a leader of the English colony. His grave and those of three others were found in the sanctuary of the Anglican chapel.

A small silver box found in his grave is “a historical bombshell” because the archaeologists believe it is a reliquary, which leads them to believe that Archer, who had many conflicts with Capt. John Smith of Pocahontas fame, might have been a secret Catholic in Anglican Jamestown.

A reliquary is a receptacle containing a piece of bone or some other object associated with a saint. Relics have always been important to Catholics: Every church altar contains a reliquary, and the priest kisses the altar, usually on top of the reliquary, at the beginning and end of each Mass.

The presence of a Catholic reliquary buried in an Anglican church has provoked quite a few questions. Was Archer secretly a Catholic and just seeming to conform to the Church of England, with King James I as its supreme governor and defender of the faith? Since Jamestown “was fundamentally anti-Catholic” and was “meant to be the beachhead for an English empire in America that will serve as a bulwark against Catholicism,” The Atlantic article states, his crypto-Catholicism brings questions about his leadership in the colony.

Please read the rest there.

The Fortnight for Freedom: Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern time/6:45 a.m. Central time news break. Matt Swaim and I will discuss Saints John Fisher and Thomas More on their shared feast, which is the anniversary of Bishop Fisher's execution.

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. There was certainly Divine irony in the fact that 22 June, the date of the execution, was the Feast of St. Alban, the first Martyr for the Faith in Britain. If the king had realized this he would certainly have arranged for the execution of Cardinal Fisher to take place on another day.

I wrote about the "Importance of St. Thomas More Today" for The National Catholic Register. You may find the article linked here.

Defending St. Thomas More in The National Catholic Register

Just in time for the first episode of Wolf Hall this evening on PBS, my article for The National Catholic Register is on-line:

Catholic bishops and fair-minded historians in England protested against the inaccurate portrayal of Sir Thomas More in the BBC miniseries based on Hilary Mantel’s historical novel Wolf Hall when it made its debut in January this year. Since Thomas Cromwell, one of King Henry VIII’s advisers, is Mantel’s hero, Thomas More must be her villain. Mantel and the BBC portray More as cruel, bigoted, fanatical, misogynistic and sado-masochistical.

Viewers of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, whether the 1963 film or the stage play, won’t recognize the witty, intelligent family man and friend if they watch Wolf Hall during its run on PBS’ Masterpiece starting Easter Sunday, April 5, through the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 10.

Mantel writes historical fiction, so she has the artistic license to interpret historical characters in her novels.

What readers and viewers have to remember is that Mantel’s More is not the real Thomas More; her version of his character does not resemble the description contemporaries like Desiderius Erasmus have left us of a humble, loving, humorous and honest man. Bolt didn’t tell the whole story of Thomas More either, when he made him a hero of individual conscience; Bolt did at least get More’s character and personality right.

If Mantel’s More were the real Thomas More, viewers might be horrified that the Catholic Church has honored More by canonizing him (in 1935 — 80 years ago this year), including him on the universal calendar of saints on June 22 (with St. John Fisher, the great bishop of Rochester, who also opposed Henry VIII’s supremacy and was beheaded) and proclaiming him the patron saint of politicians and statesmen (announced by Pope St. John Paul II in 2000).

St. Thomas More faced charges of treason for opposing Henry VIII’s desire to get a divorce in 1535. In 2015 (480 years later), he now faces charges of being “fussily pious, stiff-necked and unnaturally fond of torturing heretics” (according to Charles McGrath in The New York Times), “with a penchant for self-punishment and a misogynist to boot” (according to Vanessa Thorpe in The Guardian). Since he is not here to defend himself, here are some facts to represent the real Thomas More: . . .

Read the rest at The National Catholic Register.