Bishop Challoner on Fasting

As I have mentioned before on this blog, Bishop Challoner was a very important figure for Catholics in the long eighteenth century. As a minority, they were at their lowest ebb since the Elizabethan settlement: the exiled Stuarts, planning invasions of Scotland, drew many of their nobles and other leaders to France; the Enlightenment Church of England did not care enough about upholding doctrine to urge persecution, and they were generally ignored and weak. Bishop Challoner wrote books of devotion and lives of the saints, including English saints and martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to inspire them.

This site features a great resource of meditations by Bishop Challoner, including this one for the Friday after Ash Wedneday, on Fasting:

Consider first, that fasting, according to the present discipline of the Church, implies three things. First, we are to abstain from flesh meat on fasting days; secondly, we are to eat but one meal in the day; and thirdly, we are not to take that meal till about noon. The ancient discipline of the Church was more rigorous, both in point of the abstinence, and in not allowing the meal in Lent till the evening. These regulations are calculated to mortify the sensual appetite by penance and self-denial. If you find some difficulty in the observance of them, offer it up to God for your sins. Fasting is not designed to please, but to punish. Your diligent compliance on this occasion with the laws of your mother the Church will also give an additional value to your mortifications, from the virtue of obedience.

Consider 2ndly, that we must not content ourselves with the outward observance of these regulations that relate to our diet on fasting days, but we must principally have regard to the inward spirit, and what we may call the very soul of the fast, which is a penitential spirit; without this the outward observance is but like a carcass without life. This penitential spirit implies a deep sense of the guilt of our sins; a horror and a hearty sorrow for them; a sincere desire to return to God, and to renounce our sinful ways for the future; and particularly a readiness of mind to make the best satisfaction we are capable of to divine justice by penancing ourselves for our sins. Fasting, performed in this spirit, cannot fail of moving God to mercy. O my soul, let thy fasting be always animated with this spirit

Consider 3rdly, that fervent prayer and alms-deeds also, according to each one’s ability, ought to be the inseparable companions of our fasting. These three sisters should go hand-in-hand, Tob. xii. 8, to help us in our warfare against our three mortal enemies, the flesh, the world, and the devil. The practice of these three eminent good works we must oppose to that triple concupiscence which reigns in the world, and by means of which Satan maintains his unhappy reign. By fasting we overcome the lusts of the flesh by alms-deeds we subdue the lusts of the eyes, by which we are apt to covet the mammon of the world, and its empty toys; and by fervent and humble prayer we conquer the pride of life, and put to flight the devil, the king of pride. O let us never forget to call in these powerful auxiliaries to help us in our warfare. Let alms-deeds and prayer ever accompany our fasts.

Conclude to follow these rules, if you desire your fast should be acceptable; if you fail in them, it will not be such a fast as God hath chosen.

Read more here.

Richard Challoner, RIP

Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic for the London District in England, died on January 12, 1781. The Vicar Apostolic structure provided support for Catholic priests and laity in Engand in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries until the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850.

Born on September 29, 1691, he was raised a Presbyterian until after his father died when his mother became a servant in a Catholic household. Then he was raised Catholic and was baptized when he was thirteen. He entered the English College in Douai in 1705 and remained there until he returned to England in 1730. Challoner was ordained a priest in 1716 and served as an adminstrator at Douai for many years until becoming a missionary priest in London among the poor; although the recusancy laws were not as strictly enforced at that time, Father Challoner was still disguised as a layman and was careful not to attract official attention the the Masses and other Sacraments he celebrated in all kinds of locations.

In 1728 he had published his first work, Think Well on It. William Hyland discusses his many other published works in this Touchstone article.

Among his works, including a revision of the Douai-Rheims Bible and several devotional books, I think his most interesting were the historical and hagiographical efforts--books on the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval saints and especially on the Catholics martyrs who suffered in England from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Charles II. Those works provided the tiny minority of Catholics in England a vision of their past and indeed of its glories. In their own age they were nearly forgotten and quite ignored--not even worth persecuting!

Strangely enough, that latter condition changed after Parliament passed the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. Lord Gordon, President of the Protestant Assocation enraged the mobs so in 1780 that various No Popery riots took place (as recounted in Charles Dickens' Barnaby Rudge), as well as a march on Parliament, leading to many arrests and executions. The mobs also attacked the Embassy buildings of Bavaria and Sardinia, as well as the homes of wealthy noble Catholics. Bishop Challoner, aged 89, had to hide--just like a 16th century priest of old--until the mobs left his London home. The shock and terror of that near escape was too much for him. Bishop Challoner suffered paralysis two days before his death.

He was succeeded as Vicar Apostolic by his Coadjutor James Talbot; the last to hold that title was Nicholas Wiseman, who became the first Archbishop of Westminster in 1850.

Father George Leo Haydock

George Haydock was born on April 11, 1774 in Cottam, Lancashire. His parents were George and Anne (Cottam) Haydock--he and his father were named for Blessed George Haydock, who was martyred in 1584 on 12 February with four other Catholic priests.

George's eldest brother James (1765-1809) became a priest and died while caring for his congregation during a plague; his older brother Thomas (1772-1859) became a publisher of Catholic books, including the Haydock Bible; and his sister Margaret became an Augustinian nun.

George studied first at Mowbreck Hall, Wesham and then at Douai, escaping from France in 1793 when Great Britain declared war against France. He resumed his seminary studies at Crook Hall in County Durham two years before his ordination in 1798. After remaining at Crook Hall until 1803 as a professor, he was assigned to a poor parish in Ugthorpe in Yorkshire, former home of Blessed Nicholas Postgate, Popish Plot martyr, where he worked on a commentary for a new edition of Catholic English translation of the Holy Bible, the Douai-Rheims Bible. His brother Thomas published it, starting in 1811--the Haydock Bible.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Father Haydock ran into some trouble at his next assignment in July, 1816 to

the mission of Whitby, whence he was removed on 22 September, 1830, to the mission at Westby Hall, Lancashire, owing to a misunderstanding with his superiors. On 19 August, 1831, he was forbidden to say Mass by Bishop Penswick, whereupon he retired for the succeeding eight years to the Tagg, devoting himself to study. In 1832 he twice appealed to the Propaganda, but both his letters were intercepted and sent to the bishop; after his third appeal in 1838, his faculties were restored on 18 November, 1839, and he was appointed to the mission at Penrith where he spent his last ten years. Father Haydock's chief publication was a new edition of the English translation of the Latin Vulgate first published at Reims in 1582, and at Douai in 1609; Bishop Challoner's text of 1750 was the basis of the work, but in the New Testament Dr. Troy's edition of 1794 is largely followed. The notes are partly original, partly selected from other writers, those on the New Testament not having been compiled by Father Haydock. The edition appeared in Manchester, 1812-14; Dublin, 1812-13; Edinburgh and Dublin, 1845-8; New York, 1852-6. The other works published by Father Haydock are: "The Tree of Life; or the One Church of God from Adam until the 19th or 58th century" (Manchester, 1809); "Prayers before and after Mass proper for Country Congregations" (York, 1822); "A Key to the Roman Catholic Office" (Whitby, 1823); "A Collection of Catholic Hymns" (York, 1823); "Method of Sanctifying the Sabbath Days" (York, 1824).

The Haydock Bible was very popular and became a bestseller in England and in its American edition, published by Eugene Cummiskey of Philadelphia in 1823 to 1825. This wikipedia article contains details about different revisions and editions through the years after Haydock's death.

Here's a sample from the Introduction to the Letter of St. James:

The seven following Epistles have been called Catholic or general, not being addressed to any particular Church or person, if we except the Second and Third of St. John. They are called also Canonical, having been received by the Church as part of the canon of the New Testament, and as writings of divine authority. It is a matter of fact allowed by every one, that five of these epistles, to wit, this of St. James, the Second of St. Peter, the Second and Third of St. John, that of St. Jude, as also the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John, were doubted of , and not received always and every where in the three first ages[centuries], till the canon and catalogue of Scripture books was examined by tradition, and determined by the authority of the Catholic Church, the supreme judge of all controversies in matters of faith and religion, according to the appointment of our Saviour, Christ, expressed in many places in the holy Scriptures. But I could never learn upon what grounds they who deny the Catholic Church and General Councils to be of an infallible authority, and who deny Christ's promises to guide his Church in all truth to the end of the world, can be certain which Scriptures or writings are canonical, and which are not. I could never understand what construction to put on the sixth of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England. We there meet with this declaration: In, or by the name of the holy Scripture, we understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. These I have mentioned were certainly for some time doubted of; they are still doubted of by some of the late reformers: Luther, the great doctor of the reformation, is not ashamed to say that this epistle of St. James is no better than straw, and unworthy of an apostle. These writings therefore, according to the said declaration, ought not to be accounted and received as canonical; and yet before the end of the said sixth article, it is again declared, that all the books of the Old and New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive and account canonical. And in all New Testaments of the Church of England, all these are received for canonical in the same manner as the four gospels, without any remark or advertisement to the contrary. --- The first of the seven epistles was written by St. James, surnamed the lesser, and James of Alpheus, (Matthew x. 3.) one of the twelve apostles, called the brother of our Lord, (Galatians i. 19.) who was made bishop of Jerusalem. His mother is thought to have been Mary, sister to the blessed Virgin Mary, and to have been married first to Alpheus, and afterwards to Cleophas; to have had four sons, James, Joseph, Simon, (or Simeon) and Jude, the author of the last of these epistles. All these four being cousins-german, are called brothers of our Lord, Matthew xiii. 55. How great a veneration the Jews themselves had for this apostle and bishop of Jerusalem, see not only Hegisippus apud Eusebius, lib. ii. hist. chap. 23. and St. Jerome de viris illustribus, also the same St. Jerome in Galatians i. 19. (tom. iv, p. 237, lib. 1. contra Jovin. tom. iv, part 2, p. 182.) but even Josephus, (lib. xxviii. Jewish Antiquities, chap. 8.) where he calls him the brother of Jesus, surnamed the Christ. This epistle was written about the year 62.[A.D. 62.] The chief contents are: 1. To shew that faith without good works will not save a man, as St. Augustine observed, lib. de fid. et oper. chap. iv.; 2. He exhorts them to patience, to beg true wisdom, and the divine grace; 3. He condemns the vices of the tongue; 4. He gives admonitions against pride, vanity, ambition, &c.; 5. To resist their disorderly lusts and desires, which are the occasions and causes of sin, and not Almighty God; 6. He publisheth the sacrament of anointing the sick with oil; 7. He recommends prayer, &c.

Here is a link to St. Catherines RC Church in Penrith.

A Future Vicar Apostolic for Great Britain

Richard Challoner was born on September 29, 1691 in Lewes, Sussex (former site of Lewes Abbey) of Protestant (Presbyterian) parents. When his father died, his mother became a servant in a Catholic household and both she and Richard became Catholics--he was baptized when he was thirteen years old. He lived with another Catholic family in Northamptonshire, where the lady of the house was one of Blessed William Howard's daughters, Lady Anastasia Holman. The chaplain of the household, Father John Gother, also influenced young Challoner. He went to the English College at Douai in 1705, where he stayed for 25 years as student and professor and was ordained in 1716.

In 1730 he returned to England as a missionary priest: there he lived and worked in London, disguised as a layman. Challoner wrote several books: Think Well On It, a devotional; Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholicks of both Sexes who suffered Death or Imprisonment in England on account of their Religion, from the year 1577 till the end of the reign of Charles II (2 vols. 1741), the main source for information about the Catholic martyrs of the recusant era; The Garden of the Soul, another devitional; and the revision of the Douai/Rheims translation of the Holy Bible into English!

In 1758 he was named the Vicar Apostolic of the London District. The Vicars Apostolic were ordained Bishops who supervised priests throughout England, in lieu of the usual diocesan structure. Challoner had been the Coadjutor Bishop for Benjamin Petre and succeeded him.

In 1778, Parliament passed The Catholic Relief Act and two years later, Lord George Gordon, head of the Protestant Association, instigated the Gordon Riots, resulting in days of anti-Catholic violence. Bishop Challoner never recovered from the shock and fear of hiding from the mobs searching for him. He was almost 90 years old and died on January 12, 1781. Bishop Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic, was a faithful and true leader of Catholics in the eighteenth century. I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show today at 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central, etc, to discuss the life and legacy of this great Catholic bishop.