St. Thomas More's Poor Souls on the Son Rise Morning Show

Annie Mitchell asked me to talk about St. Thomas More and the Poor Souls in Purgatory tomorrow (Monday, November 19) on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on at the end of their 7:00 a.m. Eastern time hour, at about 7:50 (6:50 a.m. Central time). Listen live on the Sacred Heart Radio website.

St. Thomas More is honored as a saint because he was martyred for the Faith in 1535, but he had been working to defending the Catholic faith and Church teaching for several years before he was imprisoned in 1534. He wrote dialogues, point-by-point refutations of certain publications, and other works of apologetics against errors about the Catholic faith.

The most creative of these works, in my opinion, is his 1529 work on purgatory, The Supplication of Souls.

I wrote about More's efforts to defend the Church's teaching on Purgatory and the practice of praying for the Poor Souls in Purgatory for the National Catholic Register, and that's why Annie wanted to discuss this with me tomorrow:

As the Protestant Reformation was developing on the Continent and coming to England through books and certain followers of Lutheran ideas, Thomas More saw the danger in the attacks on Purgatory. In his book “The Supplication of Souls” More was answering a pamphlet, “A Supplication for the Beggars” by Simon Fish.

Fish charged that Masses and prayers for the dead diverted alms from the poor and he urged Henry VIII to destroy the priesthood, force priests to get married and get jobs, and thus eradicate Masses for the dead, for which priests received stipends.

More knew how dangerous this suggestion was: not only would prayer for the dead, the great bond between the living and the dead, be destroyed, but also the ministerial priesthood, and the Sacrifice of the Mass. The whole economy of salvation and the communion of saints were at stake, so he answered Fish’s pamphlet as creatively and persuasively as he could. More hoped, through his apologetics, to preserve Hope in Heavenly happiness in England before it could be destroyed by false teaching.

While the commercial world is already celebrating Christmas, we Catholics are still praying for the Poor Souls in Purgatory during the month of November, dedicated to their memory and their purification.

Halloween and Grave Thoughts

On Tuesday, October 10, 2017, I started this reflection:

By the end of the first week in October the graveyards were popping up in lawns in our neighborhood—complete with “humerous” rhyming epitaphs and skeletons escaping the sod, while ghosts waved from the trees and jack-o-lanterns smiled on the porches—25 days before Halloween.

That's as far as I got.

That afternoon, my sister visited our mother in the nursing home and reported to my brother and me later that Mother was still very anxious and uncomfortable. She had some outpatient surgery a few weeks before with some anesthetic and although the surgery had been successful, she had not been doing well.

The next morning (Wednesday), the nursing home called me and said they were transporting Mother to the emergency room. By Friday evening, she was back at the nursing home and under hospice care. My brother, sister, niece, and I visited her several times, especially when called by the hospice nurse on Sunday and Monday. At the same time my husband was ill and I had to take him to the emergency room for admission to the hospital, so I wasn’t with her when she died on Monday, October 16.

Planning her funeral, cleaning out her room at the nursing home, and getting my husband home from the hospital took all my attention for the next couple of weeks, so I never returned to this theme.

By the end of the first week of October this year the faux graveyards were displayed in front yards, grocery stores were selling Halloween candy and statues of skeletal cats and dogs—death seems to be all around us.

As the co-owner of two very lively dogs (terriers) I really don't like statues of skeletal dogs, especially the ones depicting a dog with a ball in his mouth!

I know that every year there is a debate in the Catholic media about whether Catholics should celebrate Halloween. I think it’s clear that Catholics should not celebrate Halloween the way the secular world wants us to celebrate it—all month long—or with an occult or spiritualistic view.

We should not separate Halloween from its true purpose as the vigil of All Saints Day, the month of November, and prayer for all the Poor Souls in Purgatory, but, as usual, that can be difficult when these Holy Days have been so corrupted by commerce.

The front yards full of graveyards are meant to create a creepy and eerie atmosphere with appropriate lighting and sound effects especially on Halloween night when the trick or treaters come around.

But the image of the skeletons half in and half out of their graves has a Christian significance the creators may not recognize. We do think often of the dead and we often think of them overcoming death in some way. Christians believe that those who die in grace do overcome death.

In the Catholic Church, we dedicate a month to remembering the dead and praying for them. As we remember the dead, we think of what they have faced--and what we will face: the Four Last Things.

From All Hallows Eve, through All Saints Day, and then on All Souls Day, the Catholic Church is focused on the Four Last Things on these three days.

October 31, All Hallows Eve, is the vigil of All Saints Day and the reminder of Death, the first Four Last Thing. The ghosts and ghouls and phantoms of Halloween also remind us of Hell, which we fear, or should fear, even more than we fear Death.

November 1, All Hallows or All Saints, honors all the saints, known and unknown, those beatified and canonized and those who haven't been vetted and honored explicitly by the Church. That day is focused on Heaven.

November 2, All Souls Day, is focused on Judgment AND Heaven. Souls who have faced God's Judgment and are in need of purification prepare for Heaven in Purgatory. They have achieved salvation, but are not perfect or completely ready for Heaven. We pray for them and hope that others will pray for us when we are dead.

Prayer for the dead was a crucial issue in the religious debate before the English Reformation. As Eamon Duffy and other historians of the religious practices of the late Middle Ages in England have shown, it was an integral part of English life. They prayed for their dead and hoped their families would pray for them after they died. St. Thomas More saw this connection between the living and the dead under attack and responded in its defense, hoping that Henry VIII would defend and protect this Catholic practice as he had the Seven Sacraments.

In the The Supplication of Souls, St. Thomas More answered Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars, in which Fish told Henry VIII that he was not in control of his country which is filled with poor beggars because of the priests whose demand for alms to pray and say Masses for the dead--a classic zero-sum view of salvation economy. According to Fish, if people are giving alms for prayers they aren't giving alms for the poor. More writes his answer representing the Poor Souls in Purgatory, who beg for prayers and penance from the living as they suffer for the effects of their sins on earth after death. 

Neither More nor Fish can prove their statistical points (I have not read Fish's Supplication)--Fish thinks that there have been more poor in England since people started praying for the dead while More contends that "the poor you will always have with you" and that the poor on earth as well as the poor in purgatory benefit from the alms given to the Church as well as to the poor, arguing that the economy, both temporal and spiritual, is more complex and interconnected than Fish thinks.

More notes that Fish is using subterfuge, attacking the doctrine of Purgatory and prayer for the dead as a way to attack the entire sacramental system. He cites Fish's complaint about Henry VIII's one error--The Defense of the Seven Sacraments--and Fish's hatred of the priesthood as the real reasons for this attack on the Poor Souls in Purgatory. 

Fish wants all the priests in England to be tied to carts, dragged through the streets, beaten, forced to marry, and get jobs. More asks, on behalf of the Poor Souls, how is this to be enforced, even if Henry would issue such commands. Are women to be forced to marry former priests? What jobs will they do? How will Fish prevent this sudden influx of unemployed priests from increasing the number of the poor? Has Fish really figured out the financial situation? What about all the poor the clergy and the Church assist everyday? What about the people the clergy employ--the builders, carpenters, laborers, etc? Where will they find employment?

Fish promises that the lame, the leprous, and the deaf, dumb, and blind will be healed, that Henry VIII's power and authority will be strengthened, and that the true gospel will at last be preached. Aha! say the Poor Souls: the supplicant for beggars must be as great as God in Genesis for he speaks and it IS. 

More takes each point of Fish's argument and counters it, several times revealing More's experience of legislation and his knowledge of the courts and the law to expose Fish's errors. There is none of the personal invective so often highlighted in discussions of More's apologetic or polemic works. More does employ exaggeration, mockery of Fish's ignorance, irony, and sarcasm. He offers scriptural examples and arguments from the Fathers, appealing to the authority of the Church through the centuries against these new views of Christian doctrine from Luther and Tyndale.

He ends the Supplication with pleas from the Poor Souls for prayers. They also advise the living on how to prepare for death by recounting their own regrets. They warn against preparing more for the funeral arrangements and less for death and judgment. They regret that they relied so much on comforts and luxuries in this life and did not do penance for their sins to expiate the temporal punishments that remained even after they repented and confessed their sins. They beg for our prayers and promise theirs for us once they are in heaven.

The Poor Souls regret that they forgot to pray for so many of their loved ones when they were living:

Know well, dear friends, that among the many great and grievous pains that one suffers here—of which God send you the grace to suffer either none or few—the uneasiness of one’s conscience in the consideration of one’s uncharitable forgetfulness is not the least of them all.

Therefore, dear friends, let our folly teach you wisdom. Send here your prayer, send here your alms before you. . . .

We wish to God we ourselves had done as we now counsel you to do.

More's Poor Souls beg all on earth to remember them:

And in all your almsgiving, somewhat remember us. Our wives there, remember your husbands here. Our children there, remember your parents here. Our parents there, remember your children here. Our husbands there, remember your wives here. 

On their part, the Poor Souls promise to greet the living someday in heaven:

So may God keep you out of here, or not long here, and bring you shortly to that bliss to which, for the love of Our Lord, you help bring us. And we will set hand to help you join us there. 

Image at the top: Hans Memling, The Last Judgement.

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.

Shakespeare and At Least One Poor Soul: King Hamlet

You might recall the Ghost's speeches from Shakespeare's Hamlet, in which Hamlet's father, King Hamlet, describes his soul's suffering in Purgatory:

I am thy father's spirit,
Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!
If thou didst ever thy dear father love--

You may watch the scene from Olivier's film of Hamlet. The Ghost ends his message with the plea: Remember me!

Stephen Greenblatt (author of the unfortunate The Swerve) wrote about Shakespeare's references to the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory in England after the Reformation:

In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory. It yields an extraordinary account of the rise and fall of Purgatory as both a belief and a lucrative institution--as well as a capacious new reading of the power of Hamlet.

In the mid-sixteenth century, English authorities abruptly changed the relationship between the living and dead. Declaring that Purgatory was a false "poem," they abolished the institutions and banned the practices that Christians relied on to ease the passage to Heaven for themselves and their dead loved ones. Greenblatt explores the fantastic adventure narratives, ghost stories, pilgrimages, and imagery by which a belief in a grisly "prison house of souls" had been shaped and reinforced in the Middle Ages. He probes the psychological benefits as well as the high costs of this belief and of its demolition.

With the doctrine of Purgatory and the elaborate practices that grew up around it, the church had provided a powerful method of negotiating with the dead. The Protestant attack on Purgatory destroyed this method for most people in England, but it did not eradicate the longings and fears that Catholic doctrine had for centuries focused and exploited. In his strikingly original interpretation, Greenblatt argues that the human desires to commune with, assist, and be rid of the dead were transformed by Shakespeare--consummate conjurer that he was--into the substance of several of his plays, above all the weirdly powerful Hamlet. Thus, the space of Purgatory became the stage haunted by literature's most famous ghost.

This book constitutes an extraordinary feat that could have been accomplished by only Stephen Greenblatt. It is at once a deeply satisfying reading of medieval religion, an innovative interpretation of the apparitions that trouble Shakespeare's tragic heroes, and an exploration of how a culture can be inhabited by its own spectral leftovers.

Greenblatt references St. Thomas More's The Supplication of Souls, More's answer to Simon Fish's A Supplication for Beggars, often throughout Hamlet in Purgatory. Greenblatt must also address the possibility that William Shakespeare was at least secretly or culturally a Catholic, because the playwright brings up Purgatory and prayer for the dead throughout Hamlet after Purgatory and prayer for the dead had long been expunged from English life. Shakespeare remembered the dead; he recalled to his audience the practices of years and years ago--not just in Hamlet. Henry V has prayers said for the soul of Richard II and prays before the battle of Agincourt that his father's fault not interfere with the success of the battle:

O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard's body have interred anew;
And on it have bestow'd more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither'd hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard's soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.

Remember me, King Hamlet's Ghost implores. Remember us, St. Thomas More's poor souls called out during Henry VIII's reign as attacks on prayer for the Poor Souls in Purgatory began. More reminded his readers that forgetting the Poor Souls was forgetting ourselves: we may one day be such. TCM recently broadcast Young Bess again: it contains Henry VIII's death bed scene in which he asked for prayers for his soul. Edward "Ned" Seymour protests that Henry has abolished Purgatory in England! Henry knows he needs prayers, Masses, and suffrages all the same. Of course, he did not get them.

Book Review: A Trio of Works by St. Thomas More

Scepter Publishers combines three works by Thomas More in this volume (which I purchased for my study of More's works). From the publisher:

In The Four Last Things, More prescribes frequent meditation on Death, Judgment, Pain and Joy in order to combat the spiritual diseases of pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth.

The Supplication of Souls is More's vigorous, humorous, and artful defense of one of the flashpoints of the Reformation: the Catholic dogma of Purgatory. It is his devastating response to a defamatory political tract that claimed that the greed and corruption of English clergymen stemmed from their insistence on being paid to pray for the dead.

A Dialogue on Conscience sets forth More's reasons for refusing to abjure his Catholic faith by taking the oath of allegiance to King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England. It illustrates why More has a deserved place among the Church's greatest saints and martyrs.

The first work is unfinished: what is signifies is another nail in the Wolf Hall "Thomas More is a misogynist and mean to women" coffin. Thomas More and Margaret More Roper worked together on a set of meditations on the Four Last Things. All we have is More's section on Death, but the fact that he wanted to collaborate with his daughter on such a classical philosophical and theological subject indicates how much he valued and admired her education and wisdom (she was 17 at the time, per the introduction). He examines how thinking of Death, which each of us will encounter, can keep us away from the Seven Deadly Sins. This excerpt demonstrates the range of More's learning and his appreciation of human vices and virtues. 

The second is the major work in this volume. It is More's answer to Simon Fish's Supplication of Beggars, in which Fish told Henry VIII that he was not in control of his country which is filled with poor beggars because of the priests whose demand for alms to pray and say Masses for the dead--a classic zero-sum view of salvation economy. According to Fish, if people are giving alms for prayers they aren't giving alms for the poor. More writes his answer representing the Poor Souls in Purgatory, who beg for prayers and penance from the living as they suffer for the effects of their sins on earth after death. 

Neither More nor Fish can prove their statistical points (I have not read Fish's Supplication)--Fish thinks that there have been more poor in England since people started praying for the dead while More contends that "the poor you will always have with you" and that the poor on earth as well as the poor in purgatory benefit from the alms given to the Church as well as to the poor, arguing that the economy, both temporal and spiritual, is more complex and interconnected than Fish thinks.

More notes that Fish is using subterfuge, attacking the doctrine of Purgatory and prayer for the dead as a way to attack the entire sacramental system. He cites Fish's complaint about Henry VIII's one error--The Defense of the Seven Sacraments--and Fish's hatred of the priesthood as the real reasons for this attack on the Poor Souls in Purgatory. 

Fish wants all the priests in England to be tied to carts, dragged through the streets, beaten, forced to marry, and get jobs. More asks, on behalf of the Poor Souls, how is this to be enforced, even if Henry would issue such commands. Are women to be forced to marry former priests? What jobs will they do? How will Fish prevent this sudden influx of unemployed priests from increasing the number of the poor? Has Fish really figured out the financial situation? What about all the poor the clergy and the Church assist everyday? What about the people the clergy employ--the builders, carpenters, laborers, etc? Where will they find employment?

Fish promises that the lame, the leprous, and the deaf, dumb, and blind will be healed, that Henry VIII's power and authority will be strengthened, and that the true gospel will at last be preached. Aha! say the Poor Souls: the supplicant for beggars must be as great as God in Genesis for he speaks and it IS. 

More takes each point of Fish's argument and counters it, several times revealing More's experience of legislation and his knowledge of the courts and the law to expose Fish's errors. There is none of the personal invective so often highlighted in discussions of More's apologetic or polemic works. More does employ exaggeration, mockery of Fish's ignorance, irony, and sarcasm. He offers scriptural examples and arguments from the Fathers, appealing to the authority of the Church through the centuries against these new views of Christian doctrine from Luther and Tyndale.

He ends the Supplication with pleas from the Poor Souls for prayers. They also advise the living on how to prepare for death by recounting their own regrets. They warn against preparing more for the funeral arrangements and less for death and judgment. They regret that they relied so much on comforts and luxuries in this life and did not do penance for their sins to expiate the temporal punishments that remained even after they repented and confessed their sins. They beg for our prayers and promise theirs for us once they are in heaven.

The final work is actually two letters from the end of More's life while he was in the Tower of London. The first is a letter from his step-daughter Alice repeating two of Aesop's fables cited by Sir Thomas Audley to persuade More to take the oath and get out of jail. The second is Margaret Roper's reply to Alice that describes More's responses to Audley's stories and message. In it, More anticipates the plot of the play and movie "Twelve Angry Men" by telling Margaret the story of a man named Company who disagrees with the other jurors and won't just go along because it will violate his conscience. He notes that the other jurors won't bear the punishment for that violation when it comes time for him to face judgment. More reflects some of the advice he wrote about in The Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation: the Four Last Things are more important issues than material comfort and goods; he and his family must take comfort in God's mercy and in the fact that He knows the burdens they bear.

These three works demonstrate how deeply Thomas More had thought about the Christian life and Church doctrine. As a lay defender of the faith he holds fast to Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church and the teachings of the Fathers. His charm and wit often come through these works, as serious as their subjects are. 

Next up on my reading list of Thomas More's works: Dialogue Concerning Heresies, which C.S. Lewis called the one of the greatest Platonic dialogues in the England language:

Considered by C.S. Lewis as perhaps the best dialogue written in English, this friendly, spirited, and often merry exchange takes place at St. Thomas More’s peaceful and cultured home in Chelsea.

Dialogue Concerning Heresies is a conversation between the experienced humanist and statesman More and an intelligent college student who has been influenced by the spirit and ideas of the new men and reformers, especially Martin Luther and William Tyndale. It addresses questions that continue to be discussed today:

Isn’t it idolatry to pray to saints, venerate images, and go on pilgrimages?
Why listen to what the Church teaches? Shouldn’t we go only by Scripture, since it is the word of God?
Why didn’t the Church want laypeople to have their own Bible, and in English?
How do we know which church is the true one?
Why waste time on philosophy and other secular studies if the Bible is God’s revealed word?

This modernized edition of More’s Dialogue brings this masterful work into wide circulation for the first time since its publication in 1529.