Some Recent Newman Blog Posts from Father Velez

In the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's death on December 31, 2022, Father Juan Velez has been posting some interesting commentary on connections between the late Pope Emeritus and Saint John Henry Newman. The first I'd like to highlight also includes Pope Saint John Paul II, all on Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio):

Since the sixteenth century there has often been a mistaken understanding and confrontation between faith and reason. John Henry Newman, Carol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger are among the outstanding modern Christian thinkers who have best explained the correct relationship between faith and reason. These authors dealt with the problem of skepticism and moral relativism in culture, philosophy and religion.

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Henry Newman, delivered a series of sermons on the subject of faith and reason.These are known as his Oxford University Sermons. In these sermons Newman defends the rational nature of faith. For him the act of faith involves an act of reason. In other words, the faith is something which does not contradict reason but which reaches beyond the limits of reason. In one of the sermons, Newman explains: “(Thus) Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind, or of what Scripture calls a right or renewed heart, which acts upon presumptions rather than evidence, which speculates and ventures on the future when it cannot make sure of it.” The certainty of human faith is based on the confluence of many associations, perceptions and antecedent beliefs. But religious faith is based on God’s revelation of himself rather than human evidences obtained from the material sciences. . . .

Please read the rest there.

The second is about Pope Benedict XVI and Saint John Henry Newman on the Roman Rite of the Catholic Mass, which includes a discussion of Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum:

It is clear then that Newman found beauty and solace in the Mass. It is because of this very understanding that Pope Benedict sought to clarify his position regarding this venerable Mass of Newman’s time and the post-Conciliar Mass of Paul VI. He made it one of his priorities to introduce the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ to show that the pre-conciliar liturgy of the 1962 Missal is the same liturgy as the Roman Missal of Pope Paul VI. For this reason, he termed the, Traditional Latin Mass “The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite” and the post conciliar Mass of Paul VI he termed “The Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite.” As Bishop Conley of Nebraska wrote, “Pope Benedict desired the traditions to harmonize … so the cross-pollination could take place; the very best of the reforms of the post-conciliar liturgy could be enhanced and influenced, by an open, unbiased acceptance of the Mass that preceded it.” Pope Benedict described his goal of a slow and gradual process that was meant to begin with Summorum Pontificum and could eventually result in a “mutual enrichment” of the two forms.

Newman’s love for Mass is evident, writes Fr. Michael Lang, of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London. He notes that Newman’s love for the Mass is evident in his novel Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert, published anonymously in 1848. In this novel, there are descriptions of Mass and Benediction by the Catholic converts Willis and Reding, which are autobiographical. Fr. Lang writes that we know of Newman’s love of the Roman Breviary before his conversion, since he prayed the Divine Office daily at Littlemore. This prayer of the Church was very influential in his subsequent conversion. (quoted from “St. John Henry Newman and the Liturgy“ in Adoremus Bulletin).

At the end of that article, Father Velez directs readers to a chapter in a new book about Newman, edited by Father Velez and published by Catholic University of America Press: A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life and Thought (I'll certainly have to wait for the paperback!)

One of my most treasured memories is the day Mark and I watched the Mass on September 19, 2010, when Pope Benedict XVI beatified John Henry Newman. We had watched as many of the events on EWTN as we could, and I obtained the official record of the State Visit (cover pictured above)! After the Mass and the commentary on EWTN concluded, my recorded episode with Doug Keck aired on EWTN's Bookmark!

More Kaufman on Augustine and More

As a quick follow-up to my review of Peter Iver Kaufman's Incorrectly Political: Augustine and Thomas More, I wanted to let you know that there's more.

The University of Richmond Scholarship Repository provides links to many articles by the same author, including several on Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas More.

There's an essay on "Augustine's Dystopia", for example, from Augustine's City of God: A Critical Guide, 55-74. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012 and one on "Augustine and Corruption".

In addition to several articles on Thomas More, including one on Margaret Roper and the famous Alington Letter on conscience and "Good Company" and a response to Wolf Hall ("Dis-Manteling More"), Kaufman has also written articles on various issues in Elizabethan England and on Shakespeare's plays.

Enjoy browsing. I have not explored beyond Kaufman's works yet, but according to the website:

The University of Richmond's Scholarship Repository brings together and provides open access to the intellectual content of its faculty, students and many centers and programs. The repository includes a broad spectrum of materials and formats, including written scholarship by faculty and students.

UR Scholarship Repository is an open-access compliant institutional repository, with content freely accessible to the world and searchable via Google Scholar and other search engines.

All current and emeritus faculty and staff can deposit their work in this repository into their communities (their home departments) by contacting their respective library. Published and unpublished works of current and emeritus faculty and staff may be uploaded into the repository. Images, video and audio may be uploaded as well.

Some Recent News on Newman

Just a couple of brief blurbs on Saint John Henry Newman:

The Catholic World Report has posted Edward Short's article on Newman's Apologia pro Vita Sua:

What makes the Apology such an extraordinary book is that it furnishes the “key” to the author’s “whole life” not by mining the usual autobiographical quarries of family, childhood, and education but by focusing on his evolving religious convictions, which, far from being deceitful or rote, were of the most guileless probity. With no confessional exhibitionism or unseemly volubility, Newman wrote the history of how his avid and exacting faith took shape in a book that merits comparison with perhaps the greatest of all Christian autobiographies, St. Augustine’s Confessions.

Indeed, he wrote his account, partly, as he said, for “religious and sincere minds, who are simply perplexed… by the utter confusion into which late discoveries or speculations have thrown their most elementary ideas of religion.” And it was on their behalf that he invoked those “beautiful words,” as he called them, of the Bishop of Hippo, who knew from bitter personal experience “the difficulty with which error is discriminated from truth, and the way of life is found amid the illusions of the world.”

Some literary genius only comes of religious genius, and, Newman, like St. Paul, possessed it in excelsis. His Apologia captures this genius in all of its depth and incandescence. Indeed, in some of the greatest prose in all of English literature, prose which influenced G.K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Graham Greene, and Muriel Spark, Newman succeeded in showing his readers that it was not imposture that animated his conversion, but love.

Please read the rest there.

At Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Dr. Bud Marr, Director of the National Institute of Newman Studies and Associate Editor of the Newman Studies Journal, reviews three recent books about Newman:

Cimorelli, Christopher. John Henry Newman’s Theology of History: Historical Consciousness, Theological ‘Imaginaries’, and the Development of Tradition. Leuven: Peeters, 2017. xii + 356 pages. Softcover: $98.00. ISBN: 978-90-429-3438-2.
Hütter, Reinhard. John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020. xiii + 267 pages. Softcover: $24.95. ISBN: 978-08-132-3232-4.
Duffy, Eamon. John Henry Newman: A Very Brief History. London: SPCK, 2019. xxi + 145 pages. Hardcover: $16.00. ISBN: 978-02-810-7849-3.

I've read Reinhard Hütter's book and have Eamon Duffy's brief book in hand to read soon. The Cimorelli book from Louvain, Belgium is out of my price range! I'll drink a Stella Artois, brewed in that university town, instead.

Of John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A Guide for Our Times, Marr opines:

. . . Hütter’s monograph also deserves praise for bringing Newman’s work into conversation with that of Thomas Aquinas. Many of the recent publications in Newman studies have been, in effect, commentaries on Newman’s writings. While this type of scholarship certainly has its place, a great deal can be learned, as Hütter shows, by setting Newman’s theology alongside the contributions of other great theologians. This methodology, of course, has to be employed with due caution. Newman and Aquinas, for instance, were writing in noticeably different historical contexts, and a scholar who treats them together must remain sensitive to nuances in their language and conceptualization of doctrines. In the prologue, Hütter signals his awareness of the complexities involved in this type of study: “I do not mean to establish any historical connection between Aquinas’s and Newman’s thought; nor do I intend to claim Newman as a crypto-Thomist or anything else along those lines” (15). Hütter remains true to on his word, and what follows in the rest of the book is a necessarily cautious, but deeply insightful study of key themes that have been treated by Newmanists, for sure, though not in the Thomistic key that Hütter employs. The end result is an impressive achievement indeed, and one that this reviewer hopes other scholars in the field will imitate. Here’s to hoping, as well, that Hütter maintains a foot in Newman studies for years to come.

I agree with that last statement completely!

Of Eamon Duffy's book, Marr states:

The strength of Duffy’s treatment is rooted in the way that he navigates a via media between biographers who are overly hagiographical in their approach to Newman’s life and those scholars who are hypercritical and, in some cases, even hostile to Newman as a historical figure. Duffy strikes a nice balance. On the one hand, he’s more than happy to acknowledge Newman’s enduring legacy as one of the great Catholic thinkers of the modern era. On the other hand, Duffy refuses to paper over some of Newman’s rougher edges for the sake of preserving a supposedly pristine understanding of the English convert’s saintliness. As Duffy writes near the end of his book, “The canonization of Newman is no conventional accolade to a very pious man. Newman strove all his life after holiness, but he had more than his share of human frailties. He could be tyrannical in friendship, he was thin-skinned and easily offended, slow to forgive, even at times implacable” (118). For this reviewer, it was refreshing to read an author who affirms Newman’s saintliness yet is willing to shine a light on the less exemplary facets of his personality. Books like Duffy’s are helpful reminders that the canonized saints were not otherworldly figures free from all imperfections, but ordinary human beings whom God used to accomplish extraordinary ends.

I think it would have been appropriate, however, to highlight some of Newman's strengths, which would like mirror those faults: he was a loyal friend and one who drew friends to himself, so he can't have always been a tyrant; he often reached out to those who had offended him and sometimes they had really treated him unfairly (Manning's actions over Newman becoming a Cardinal for example)--saying that Newman "had more than his share of human frailties"! What does that mean? That he was weaker than other men? Didn't he have some moral strengths? I'll have to read Duffy to find out more, but Marr's praise of that commentary seems another unfair judgment. It does not seem as balanced as Marr thinks it is!

I'll let you know what I find.

Who Was Newman? and What to Read?

My Newman friend (we've never met but we've talked on the phone a few times and corresponded) Edward Short answers the first question with an article on the BBC History Magazine website:

When news of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman’s canonisation was first announced earlier this year, some might have recalled what the liberal UK prime minister Lord Rosebery, Gladstone’s protégé, thought of the great convert. When Rosebery met the 79-year-old cardinal in 1880, he was impressed by his “deliciously soft voice” and “courtly” address. Indeed, Newman was surprised and pleased when Rosebery told him that he always kept Newman’s autobiography by his bedside.

Ten years later, when Newman was laid out on the high altar of the Oratory Church in Birmingham, Rosebery wrote in his journal: “This was the end of the young Calvinist, the Oxford don, the austere vicar of St Mary’s. It seemed as if a whole cycle of human thought and life were concentrated in that august repose. That was my overwhelming thought. Kindly light had led and guided Newman to this strange, brilliant end.”

Of course, Rosebery was referring not only to Newman’s lovely poem The Pillar of the Cloud (now a beloved hymn titled Lead Kindly Light), but to the fact that in 1845 he walked away from everything he had known and loved as an Anglican don at Oriel to embrace the Church of Rome. Gladstone, if anything, was even more laudatory about the man with whom he had crossed swords over the First Vatican Council (1869­–70), especially its adoption of papal infallibility:

“When the history of Oxford during that time comes to be written, the historian will have to record the extraordinary, the unexampled career of [Newman]… He will have to tell, as I believe, that Dr. Newman exercised for a period of about ten years after 1833 an amount of influence, of absorbing influence, over the highest intellects — over nearly the whole intellect, but certainly over the highest intellect of this University, for which perhaps, there is no parallel in the academical history of Europe, unless you go back to the twelfth century or to the University of Paris.”

What, then, was it about Newman that made him so extraordinary?

Notice how Short pays his readers such a high compliment to their knowledge of Lord Rosebery! Please read the rest there.

I offered my answer to the question what should a beginner read to learn more and more about Newman for The Catholic Herald magazine:

So, which among his many works would help someone who has never read anything written by Newman understand why so many have been devoted to this saint?

Here are my suggestions.

Start with the Meditations and Devotions, a collection of prayers and reflections for students at the Oratory School in Birmingham. It was compiled and published by Fr William Neville in 1893, three years after Newman’s death. The saint’s simple, confident and humble faith is evident on the pages of this work, including his devotion to Our Lady, to his patron saint Philip Neri and to the Stations of the Cross, meditation before the Blessed Sacrament and the holy rosary.

In the “Meditations on Christian Doctrine” the reader will find one of his most famous quotations:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission – I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his – if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life, He may shorten it; He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers, He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me – still He knows what He is about.

Other meditation highlights include his “Short Road to Perfection” and the “Prayer for the Light of Truth”.

The neophyte should continue on the road to understanding Newman as a pastor of souls – that quality of his life that Benedict XVI highlighted at the beatification Mass in September 2010 – with a sampling of his Parochial and Plain Sermons. Newman was preaching in the 19th century to many nominal Christians in the Church of England: they hardly knew what they believed and barely acted on what they thought they believed.

In sermons such as “The Religion of the Day”, “Unreal Words”, “Doing Glory to God in Pursuits of the World” and “Christ’s Privations a Meditation for Christians”, he asked his congregation at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford why they did not – for example, in that last sermon – “have some little gratitude, some little sympathy, some little love, some little awe, some little self-reproach, some little self-abasement, some little repentance, some little desire of amendment” when hearing week after week what God has done for them. He told them exactly why:

But why is this? why do you so little understand the Gospel of your salvation? why are your eyes so dim, and your ears so hard of hearing? why have you so little faith? so little of heaven in your hearts? For this one reason, my brethren, if I must express my meaning in one word, because you so little meditate. You do not meditate, and therefore you are not impressed.

Then the offers the solution:

What is meditating on Christ? it is simply this, thinking habitually and constantly of Him and of His deeds and sufferings. It is to have Him before our minds as One whom we may contemplate, worship, and address when we rise up, when we lie down, when we eat and drink, when we are at home and abroad, when we are working, or walking, or at rest, when we are alone, and again when we are in company; this is meditating. And by this, and nothing short of this, will our hearts come to feel as they ought.

After the reader has sampled some of Newman’s works, an introductory biography would be helpful, such as Joyce Sugg’s John Henry Newman: Snapdragon in the Wall (Gracewing) or Fr Juan Velez’s Holiness in a Secular Age: The Witness of Cardinal Newman (Scepter Publishers).

Please read the rest there.

The Martyrs of Gorkum

Several years ago, when Matthew Bunson was the editor of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine, he published my article on the Martyrs of Gorkum (July/August 2016). OSV has ceased print publication of that magazine, but that article--and some others I written around that time--is on-line in a publication called Simply Catholic. I had to write a rather long historical exposition to explain the circumstances of these martyrdoms, describing the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years War, including the role of "The Sea Beggars", pirates that Elizabeth I supported by allowing them to dock at English ports:

In Gorkum, the Calvinist Sea Beggars caught and imprisoned eleven Franciscan friars and lay brothers, four parish priests, two Norbertine canons, an Augustinian canon regular and a Dominican friar . . .:

• Godfried of Mervel, Vicar of Melveren, Sint-Truiden, Franciscan priest, vicar of the friary in Gorkum
• Theodore of der Eem, Franciscan friar and priest, chaplain to a community of Franciscan Tertiary Sisters in Gorkum
• Nicholas Pieck, Franciscan friar, priest and theologian, guardian of the friary in Gorkum
• Nicasius of Heeze, Franciscan friar, theologian and priest
• Jerome of Weert, Franciscan friar, priest, pastor in Gorkum
• Anthony of Hoornaar, Franciscan friar and priest
• Willehad of Denmark, Franciscan friar and priest
• Francis of Roye, Franciscan friar and priest
• Anthony of Weert, Franciscan friar and priest
• Peter of Assche, Franciscan lay brother
• Cornelius of Wijk bij Duurstede, Franciscan lay brother
• Leonard van Veghel, secular priest and pastor of Gorkum
• Andrew Wouters, secular priest, pastor of Heinenoord in the Hoeksche Waard
• Godfried van Duynen, secular priest, former pastor in northern France
• Nicholas Poppel, secular priest, chaplain in Gorkum
• Adrian van Hilvarenbeek, Norbertine canon and pastor in Monster, South Holland
• James Lacobs, Norbertine canon
• Jan of Oisterwijk, canon regular, a chaplain for the Beguinage in Gorkum

John of Cologne, a Dominican pastor, came to Gorkum after hearing of the others’ arrest to offer spiritual consolation and thus was arrested.

These 19 were held in prison from June 26 until July 6 and then taken in two separate groups to Brielle to appear before the leader of the Sea Beggars, William de la Marck.

They were given the chance to renounce their allegiance to the pope and to deny the Real Presence in the Eucharist. They refused.

Throughout their imprisonment and interrogations, the 19 were brutalized, offered for public display and held in spite of orders from the leader of the Dutch rebellion, William the Silent (the Prince of Orange).

On July 9, 1572, these witnesses to Christ were hanged. Their bodies were mutilated during their executions and after, before they were dumped in a ditch.

Catholics in the Netherlands immediately started visiting the site of their execution and venerating them as martyrs and intercessors. Their relics were taken to a Franciscan friary in Brussels.

Pope Benedict XIV beatified the Franciscans and their companions in 1675.

Brad S. Gregory recounts in “Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe” (Harvard University Press, 1999) that on Dec. 9, 1688, the archbishop of Mechelen honored the Gorkum martyrs with a Mass and procession in Brussels that began at the friary and continued to the Cathedral of St. Gudule (now dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel) and back to the friary.

Gregory notes that “virtually every [person in Brussels] must have known about the Gorkum martyrs and the local repose of their relics” (pp. 300-301) after this great event.

When the friary was suppressed in 1796 during the French Revolution’s campaign of de-Christianization (Brussels was in French territory then), the relics were moved to the Church of St. Nicholas just off the Grand Place.

Pope Pius IX canonized the Gorkum martyrs in 1865 and, in 1870, a gilded bronze reliquary was created for the relics, decorated with their images on the sides of the rectangular case and events from their arrest and martyrdom on the lid. . . .

Please read the rest there. More about the painting of their martyrdom here.

Surprise! Hemingway, Greene--and Mann?

I was surprised when I got in the mail the other day because there was a copy of the St. Austin Review in the mailbox. Then my surprise turned to delight because my name was on the cover.

In a collection of essays about Catholicism, conversion, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene, Joseph Pearce had included my analysis of the 1955 film adaptation of The End of the Affair, starring (no pun intended) Deborah Kerr, Van Johnson, and Peter Cushing (in a non vampire hunting role). It's titled "Shabby Second Best": Conversion in 1955's The End of the Affair".

I wrote and submitted this piece years ago and I don't even have a saved .doc anymore!

Follow the StAR in January!

On my birthday, I'm pleased to announce that I'll have two pieces published in the January/February 2018 issues of the Saint Austin Review!

There's an article on the movie Green Dolphin Street, offering a Chestertonian interpretation of the vocations of marriage and religious life: “The Pattern of the Cross”. Lana Turner and Donna Reed are two sisters who learn about God's plans for their happiness. I wrote it a few years ago, so I'm eager to see it in print!

This is one of those cases--as a hint for writers or anyone who submits material for publication--of being able to make real, live contact with the publishers or editors who've judged and accepted your material. Joseph Pearce visited Wichita twice this fall: once in October and once in November. I was able to discuss articles that Mr. Pearce had previously accepted and where they'd fit into the themes of his publication.

Voila! There it is--or there it will be! (looking forward to my comp copy).

The second piece is a book review of Philip Campbell's Heroes & Heretics of the Reformation, which I just submitted in November.

More about the issue here and how to subscribe (including on-line access) 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.

For Members Only

You have to be a member of The Tudor Society to access the material and every issue Tudor Life on-line, although there is a small sample the public may see, and a monthly issue option. In the October issue, editor Gareth Russell kindly featured my explanation of the name and main symbol of The Pilgrimage of Grace on the cover! More information about The Tudor Society here. One of the aspects I like about Tudor Life is that it is multidisciplinary, offering articles beyond historical narration and biography, including information about music, diet, clothing, etc--all those other aspects of life during the Tudor era.

My Latest for OSV's "The Catholic Answer Magazine"

Although Matthew Bunson has left TCA as editor (now he's with National Catholic Register), I hope to maintain a good relationship with the new editor. Doctor Bunson had accepted this article for publication last year: "What Is a Papal Bull? Understanding differences in papal decrees and documents" and so it appears as a feature in the September/October issue. As usual with these articles, I do betray my interest in the English Reformation as in this list of papal bulls through the centuries:

Because these documents have been issued since the sixth century, there are hundreds of papal bulls in the archives of the Vatican Library. Many of the papal bulls from the medieval era, for example, proclaim that the Jewish people are not to be blamed for the death of Jesus and that they must be protected by civil authorities. Other epoch-making papal bulls include:

• Pope Clement VI’s 1342 bull declaring the Franciscan order as the custodian of the Holy Land sites in the name of the Catholic Church (which it still is today).

• Pope Pius IV’s Benedictus Deus, which ratified all the decrees of the Council of Trent in 1564.

• Pope St. Pius V’s Regnans in Excelsis (“Reigning on High”) in 1570, declaring Elizabeth I of England a heretic and releasing her subjects from loyalty to her reign.

• Pope Gregory XIII’s reform of the Julian calendar in 1582, establishing the Gregorian calendar, which many Protestant countries in Europe did not adopt since it was proclaimed by the pope.

• Several bulls concerning the Society of Jesus, approving it (Pope Paul III in 1540), suppressing it (Pope Clement XIV in 1773), re-establishing it (Pope Pius VII in 1814) and reaffirming its papal privileges (Pope Leo XIII in 1880).

• Pope Pius IX’s Universalis Ecclesiae, re-establishing the Catholic hierarchy in England (1850).

Read the rest there.

Updates and Deadlines

I apologize for the lack of blogging: I'm working on a project with a fast approaching deadline! I'm writing an article for the Tudor Life magazine about The Pilgrimage of Grace, exploring the meaning of that title and the banner of that pilgrimage depicting the Five Wounds of Jesus.

In the meantime, I've updated my "Presentations and Interviews" and by "Other Publications" tabs. The former includes a teaser from the Spiritual Life Center of my presentation on Blessed John Henry Newman on Faith, Family, and Friends, which I think went well. The latter includes the announcement that my article on Papal Bulls and other official documents will be in the September/October issue of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

The Narrow Gate and the Cause of Martyrdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Presentation and An Article

I wrote an article for the October issue of Tudor Life: The Tudor Society Magazine (membership/ prescription required) on "The Choices Catholics Faced in Tudor England", tracing religious change through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I and what those changes meant for a Catholic who just wanted to attend Mass, receive the Sacraments, and live as his or her English ancestors had for years. Editor Gareth Russell specifically asked me to write an article from the Catholic perspective for this special Reformation issue.

On Tuesday, September 29, my sister and I will drive to Hutchinson, Kansas, where I'll make a presentation to the Hutchinson Theology on Tap group on "The Continuing Relevance of the English Reformation". I'll cover some highlights of English Reformation history but mostly discuss how that history is so relevant today, with examples of current events like changes in the Royal succession, the burial of Richard III (Anglican or Catholic service?), Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland and England five years ago, the Anglican Ordinariate, religious freedom issues, etc. More information here on the facebook page for TOT in Hutchinson.

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 May/June Issue of the St. Austin Review

There's my name on the cover of the May/June issue of the St. Austin Review, reversed out of one of Monet's studies of the Cathedral in Rouen. I contributed an article about the role of Marian apparitions in France in renewing devotion and faith after the French Revolution: “Revolution and Private Revelation: Some Notes on Marian Apparitions in France”. As always, I'm looking forward to receiving my comp copy and reading the rest of the articles!

St. Thomas More in the Tower

On April 13, 1534, Thomas More was presented with the Act of Succession and the oath it required at Lambeth Palace in the presence of three other Thomases and one William: Audley, Cranmer, Cromwell, and Benson (The last Abbot and first Dean of Westminster Abbey). Then More was held in the custody of Benson for a few days. By April 17 he was in the Tower of London and wrote to his daughter Meg about his questioning earlier that week. He left the Tower again for trial on July 1, 1535 and then for the last time on July 6, 1535 for his beheading.

The Latin Mass magazine published an article I wrote titled "The Long Lent of St. Thomas More" in its Winter/Spring 2015 issue (print or on-line subscription only). In it I demonstrated that More was preparing either for death from natural causes or by execution throughout those long months in the Tower of London:

From April 17, 1534, through the trial and execution of the three Carthusian priors (John Houghton, Augustine Webster, and Robert Lawrence) with Father John Haile and the Angel of Syon, Father Richard Reynolds on May 4, 1535; the trial and execution of John Cardinal Fisher in June of that year, and his own trial on July 1, 1535, Thomas More prepared for his death in the Tower of London. For more than 14 months in the Tower, More observed a Long Lent of repentance and devotion. He meditated on the Passion of Christ, particularly on His Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prayed to repent of all past sins and to wean himself away from all worldly concerns and seems to have marked his progress toward preparing to die. The purpose of this article is to examine those methods of preparation and thereby trace signs of More’s progress and final acceptance of death.

I examine two of his Tower works: The Sadness of Christ and his "Godly Meditation" prayer and then look at More's progress toward death and martyrdom through his letters to his daughter Margaret Roper and of course his trial and execution.

On Wolf Hall this coming Sunday night (April 19), the episode in which Thomas More is depicted torturing a suspected heretic on the rack is scheduled to air. This is the biggest lie that Hilary Mantel and the BBC are presenting so dramatically in defiance even of G.R. Elton, who acknowledged that More never tortured anyone during the three (3) heresy investigations he was involved in as Chancellor. I hope to be booked on Kresta in the Afternoon next week to discuss.

I was perusing a book by Louis L. Martz on Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man. Martz was one of the editors of the Yale Edition of The Complete Works of Thomas More and chaired the project between 1963 and 1997 (he died in 2001). Martz demolishes the charges both of torture and of fanatical prosecution of heretics. He was arguing in fact against one of the editors on his project, Richard Marius, whose 1984 biography depicted More as hysterical and savage in his pursuit of heresy. Martz notes that the pursuit of heresy continued after More's death, as Cromwell oversaw the execution of monks, friars, and many others, including an elderly princess (the last of the Plantagenets) and two Knights of the Order of St. John--Cromwell called it treason, not heresy. Blessed John Forest was certainly executed for heresy, burned at the stake. His heresy was exactly what Cromwell called treason: he would not acknowledge Henry's supremacy over the Church in England.

Martz concludes:

It is difficult therefore to argue that Thomas More's prosecution of those he suspected of heresy was any more severe than Thomas Cromwell's prosecution of those he suspected of treason. For both it was a grim matter of quelling what they, for different reasons, saw as sedition. Let us lay aside, then, this ancient and unfounded charge against More.

Martz's book was published in 1992.

Please note that Matt Swaim and I will discuss St. Thomas More and Wolf Hall on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday morning, April 20, during the last segment of the EWTN broadcast, after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central news break.

The Next Issue of The St. Austin Review

Publisher Joseph Pearce announces its topic and its contents. If you are interested in the French Revolution and its effects on the Catholic Church in France, this is the issue for you:

The theme of this issue is “Revolution versus Revelation: France & the Faith”.

Highlights:

Stephanie A. Mann compares “Revolution and Private Revelation”, sketching “Some Notes on Marian Apparitions in France”.

Joseph G. Trabbic writes on “Étienne Gilson on Doing Philosophy in the Light of Revelation”.

Fr. Henri Giroux reveals “What everybody seems to have missed” in Pascal’s Wager.

Matthew Chominksi admires the aesthetic of Chateaubriand and Ratzinger as “A Frenchman and a German Walk the Path of Beauty”.

John Beaumont considers “The Case of Adolf Retté: A Great French Convert and Catholic Apologist”.

Lisa Salinas teaches “A Lesson in Trust at the Feet of Millet”.

Ken Clark offers his impressions of “Monet’s Rouen Cathedrals”.

Susan Treacy scales the heights of the “Requiem Aeternam: Gabriel Fauré’s Vision of Rest”.

James M. Wilson follows Raïssa Maritain into the mystical depths.

Brendan D. King translates Rainer Maria Rilke.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker joins C. S. Lewis in condemning the hideous strength of the “N.I.C.E. New World”.

James Bemis praises the classic movie, The Life and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Kevin O’Brien is aghast as “The Germans Invade St. Louis” and recalls when he was Jung at heart!

Fr. Benedict Kiely discusses “The Real Moral Equivalence” with regard to the Islamist slaughter of Christians.

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.

A Teaser for November/December

I know it's just the first of October, but I noticed the cover for the November/December issue of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine and saw the headline in the lower right corner: "What was the Kulturkampf?" I attempt to answer that question in this forthcoming article on Bismarck's German Culture Wars! I even work in references to Blessed John Henry Newman and Gerard Manley Hopkins! Can't wait to see it in print (but I have to, of course). I'll post it when the issue becomes available on line.

English Recusant Composers in StAR

I mentioned that I would share the cover of the September/October issue of the Saint Austin Review as soon as it was available, and here it is!

But I can do even more, because Joseph Pearce (I presume) chose my article as the one to represent the issue on the StAR website and you may read the article here! What a nice surprise (to me at least).

BTW, please see my updated Other Publications tab.