Book Review: "The Fame of Blessed Thomas More" (1929)

Almost six years after the speeches in this book were delivered, Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More were canonized in Rome on May 19, 1935. The occasion of the speeches and the publication of them was the presentation of an exhibit of paintings, manuscripts, relics, and other materials related to Thomas More in Chelsea, where he had lived. It's also important to note that the year 1929 marked the 100th anniversary of the Catholic Emancipation Act, which was commemorated in this collection, Catholic Emancipation, 1829 to 1929: Essays by Various Writers with an Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, which I reviewed in 2021.

Just to give you some context: Lillie Langtry, who might have been Edward VII then the Prince of Wales's mistress, died in 1929; Jean Simmons and Audrey Hepburn were born in 1929. George V, Edward VII's second son (1865-1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India; Ramsey MacDonald led a Labor government starting in June; and on October 18, the London Stock Exchange experienced a "sharp fall" after Black Friday in the USA. On December 15, Pope Pius XI beatified 136 Martyrs of England and Wales (29 of which were canonized in 1970; Chesterton attended that 1929 beatification and wrote about in The Resurrection of Rome).

Reading this book requires an adjustment on the part of the reader because "Blessed" Thomas More's fame seemed more secure in 1929. Now we're still dealing with the images (on screen especially) of Saint Thomas More from Hilary Mantel's trilogy, based on what Travis Curtright contends are G.R. Elton's outdated and disproved views of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More:

Because the plot of Wolf Hall relies on Elton’s characterizations of Cromwell and More, Mantel writes as if the last thirty years of research in the Tudor period never happened. Though many prominent historians of the period—such as John Guy, Brendan Bradshaw, and Eamon Duffy—have refuted Elton’s claims about More already, George Logan most recently assembled a team of international scholars to reassess More’s life, writings, and political actions in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More (2011). These scholars put to rest the most inflammatory claims of Elton and his school. Instead, Logan’s team finds More to be a superlative humanist scholar and, as the chapter on statesmanship claims, the historical record reveals “a statesman of conscience” and one of “extraordinary insight and foresight.”

When reading, for example, R.W. Chamber's essay on "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen", we're made aware of how much has been accomplished since 1929 in the publication of Thomas More's works: the translations of his Latin works, the Yale University editions, the work of the Amici Thomae Mori societies, etc.  A new edition of More's works was forthcoming at the time from Eyre and Spottiswoode: The English Works of Thomas More, editors W.E. Campbell*, A.W. Reed, R. W. Chambers, and W.A.G. Doyle-Davidson, 2 volumes (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Limited, 1931)

Contents and comments:

Introductory Essay: "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen" by R.W. Chambers (not part of the presentations made at the exhibition)

Chambers (1874-1942), was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and wrote Man's Unconquerable Mind, The Place of Thomas More in English Literature and History, and Thomas More.

"The Charge of Religious Intolerance" by Ronald Knox

In dealing with this accusation, Knox contrasts Cranmer with More: when Cranmer questioned Joan Bocher during the reign of Edward VI, they were comparing their private judgment as Joan was an Anabaptist. Cranmer brought her to the stake and even John Rogers thought burning at the stake appropriate for one found guilty of heresy. Knox argues that More was questioning--never with torture--those accused of violating heresy laws for the sake of the Common Good and the Church's "continuous tradition" (p. 52) He notes that Bocher, who pointed out that in 1546 Anne Askew had been found guilty of heresy for denying Transubstantiation, which by that time (1550) Cranmer also denied, saw "that complete toleration was the logical corollary of private judgment, and Cranmer did not." (p. 54)

"The Witness to Abstract Truth" by Hilaire Belloc

I think Belloc misses the mark slightly by not acknowledging that by upholding Papal Primacy More was upholding the Unity of the Church: that More knew once the Church in England was schismatic, the doctrines and Sacraments of the Catholic Church would fall away.

"A Turning Point in History" by G.K. Chesterton

The briefest and and best. Contains the famous line that Thomas More was "important today, but he is not as important now as he will be in 100 years from today.”

"A Great Lord Chancellor" by Lord Justice Russell

Russell (1867-1946), Frank Russell, Baron Russell of Killown, was Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Justice of Appeal, and Justice of the High Court (overlapping positions): he was a Catholic and argued for lifting the restriction on Catholics from including Masses for their Souls in their Wills in Parliament. That restriction was lifted in 1926.

He testifies that More was great Lord Chancellor because he heard and decided cases impartially and expeditiously; that he did not, unlike Wolsey before him, become wealthy through his office; not even his sons-in-law received any special treatment!

"A Catholic of the Renaissance" by Henry Browne, SJ

Browne (1853-1941) was a classical scholar; much interested in the Cause of the English Martyrs of England and Wales, he worked for the growth of Catholicism in England.

His essay contrasts the relative corruption of the hierarchy in England before the Reformation with the enduring devotion and practice of the Catholic Faith after Henry's break from the Church and the subsequent changes in doctrine and practice. There must have been, he avers, great devotion, in spite of bad examples, to the Church's practice in England for so many priests and laity to have remained true through decades and decades of persecution and prosecution. Thomas More is an example of that devotion.

"The Glory of Chelsea" by Reginald Blunt

Blunt, CBE, was the founder of the Chelsea Society (1927). 

He comments that he is not a Catholic, so does not concern himself with religious issues, but that he admires Thomas More as a good farmer, neighbor, and family man. He cites, in particular, when there was a fire on his farm and More was very concerned that the fire had harmed his neighbors. He wrote to Alice from Court, where he was detained on the King's business, to make sure they were taken care of, with supplies from his farm's store as needed.

"A National Bulwark against Tyranny" by Bede Jarrett, OP

Jarrett (1881-1934) was a historian and author; founder of Blackfriars Priory in Oxford (1921) and author of S. Antonino and Medieval Economics, Life of St. Dominic, and The English Dominicans, among many other works.

Why was it so necessary for Henry VIII to pursue the compliance of Thomas More and John Fisher? Why was Henry VIII afraid of More's silence? Jarrett suggests it was not because of political reasons; it was because of the national and international standing of More and Fisher as good, holy, and learned men, known far and wide as scholars. They were among the leaders of the Renaissance in England and like Colet, Linacre, Grocyn, and Lilly, they were devout Catholics. "He really was the head of the whole cultural society then existing in England" (p. 129). Remember that More had upheld the study of Greek and Latin pagan classics: he "shared to the full the Renaissance spirit" (ibid). Not to have More on his side--Henry could not abide that and had to get him out of the way--thus the particularly aimed Act of Attainder against him. It's Jarrett's judgment that More was "forced into prominence" (p. 131) even more through Henry's efforts, and that "his greatness came from the moment really that he went to prison" (p. 134), because before More had not sought such prominence and greatness, even as he worked to support his king and his Church and be the King's servant and God's first.

Both Jarrett and Knox present cogent arguments and impressed me the most.

Appendix I: Catalogue of the More Memorial Exhibition

Appendix II: A Short Bibliography of Books Relating to the Martyr (Compiled by *W.E. Campbell)

One of the reasons the book was published was to support the building fund for the Beaufort Street Convent, where the Sisters of the Adoration Reparatrice at that time maintained "ceaseless adoration by day and by night in reparation for the national crime of the Blessed Martyr's execution." The convent was founded in 1898, but the Sisters left the convent in 1975 and now it's the site of Allen Hall.

It's good of Cluny to make this rarity available again, just four years before we see how Chesterton's prediction comes true in 2029. Please note that I purchased the book.

Book Review: "Flannery O'Connor's 'Why Do the Heathen Rage?'"

Last Friday I watched the repeat of The World Over on EWTN (the 1/26/2024 episode; about the 41:26 mark) and saw Raymond Arroyo interview Jessica Hooten Wilson discussing this book and her efforts to understand what Flannery O'Connor was trying to write about in what would have been her third novel, Why Do the Heathen Rage?

So after attending Adoration and Mass at the Newman Center (St. Paul's University Parish) at Wichita State University, I went to Eighth Day Books to purchase one of the copies stacked on the table on the first floor. The book is published by Brazos Press of the Baker Publishing Group and the full title is: Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress. The publisher provides the Table of Contents on their website: 

Introduction

Why Do the Heathen Rage? The Porch Scene
Koinonia
Sequel to "The Enduring Chill"
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Walter's Last Will and Testament
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Baptism
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Walter/Asbury's Childhood
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Walter Recites the Ten Commandments
Epistolary Blackface
Why Do the Heathen Rage? The Black Double
Maryat Lee and Oona Gibbs
Documenting "Real" Life
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Photo Journal
The Revolting Conversion
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Do Not Come, Oona Gibbs!
Introducing the Girl
Why Do the Heathen Rage? The Girl
Who Is Oona Gibbs? Mother, Daughter, Aunt, Cousin, or Lover
Why Do the Heathen Rage? Walter's Aunt
Burning Crosses
The Violent Bear It Away: The Burnt Cross

Why Do the Heathen Rage? 
One Potential Ending

The Other Half of the Story
Afterword by Steve Prince

So when the content follows the bold type Why Do the Heathen Rage?, that's from the drafts of O'Connor's work, scenes and fragments of the novel she wanted to write. Then Jessica Hooten Wilson (JHW) provides background and offers analysis. In "Why Do the Heathen Rage? One Potential Ending", JHW provides her own version of the main character's conversion, based on a scene from O'Connor's The Violent Bear it Away.

Just a reminder that I have read another of JHW's books, Giving the Devil His Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky, which I reviewed here. She has visited Wichita twice to speak at Eighth Day Institute events, once at the Inklings Festival and once at a Symposium. She is now the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair at Pepperdine University.

This is a very personal book: there's quite a bit of JHW in the book: her first interest in Flannery O'Connor because she was encouraged to take her as a model for writing fiction as a Christian; her participation in the 2009 International Flannery O'Connor Conference in Rome; her visits to Milledgeville and the Georgia College & State University Special Collections; her familiarity with O'Connor's short stories; her efforts to understand O'Connor's last years and struggle to create this third novel. This is what she works to communicate to the reader. This book might be read as a follow-up to her defense of Flannery O'Connor after Paul Elie not only accused O'Connor of Racism, but even asked “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” in a 2020 New Yorker essay. JHW even repeats her analysis of the short story "Revelation" in that First Things article on pages 172 through 174 in this book. 

The book is sympathetic to O'Connor's struggles and takes care to place her in her historical and cultural context: the post-Gone With the Wind South at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. I use that historical marker because Margaret Mitchell's sentimental novel and David O. Selznick's even more sentimental movie of the novel (JHW highlights the movie's opening titles: "land of Cavalier and Cotton Fields" . . . "pretty world [where] Gallantry took its last bow" . . . "a Civilization gone with the wind") repulsed O'Connor: she did not want to write another book like that! See pages 157 through 161. Her oeuvre, which I think we should always grant to the writer, is to explore the eternal spiritual truths that infuse temporal, human, and fallen issues and actions.

I think this book succeeds in its purpose: to explore an artist's efforts to try something new (JHW emphasizes that O'Connor wanted to depict a different kind of revelation, of conversion and the change that comes over a person's life because of that conversion, in Why Do the Heathen Rage?) and even the issues of her own milieu and life (including a fatal illness) that hampered those efforts. As I read the book I thought of Arthur Hugh Clough's poem, usually titled "The Struggle":

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

     The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

     And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

     It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

     And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

     Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

     Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

     When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

     But westward, look, the land is bright.

Book Review: "Dog Songs", Poems by Mary Oliver

On the last Saturday of November, I went to Eighth Day Books to buy a certain book (Thoughts Matter by Mary Margaret Funk) and find some Christmas gifts or buy some gift certificates. I ended up buying another book for myself (how shocking!): Dog Songs: Poems by Mary Oliver.

The book had been placed on one of the benches in the poetry section: it was there waiting for me because I guess I needed it.

For the first time in 30 (thirty) years, I am without a dog. Our Norwich Terrier, Brandy (Mark bought her for me 2010) died early Wednesday morning (11/24) at the Emergency Veterinary Hospital: she had held out against a cancerous growth in her right nostril for 17 months. Late Tuesday night, however, she began to hemorrhage from that nostril. It was a bloody mess and I was a mess as I had to drive her across town to that hospital.

Mary Oliver obviously loved dogs, took care of many of them, and recognized how unique each one was, and in these poems, she recalls their idiosyncrasies, their similarities, and how they became part of her life as companions. 

I read through the poems over the weekend and recognized the dogs my late husband Mark and I (and then just me since January 2019) lived with from 1991 to 2021: Ruffis, Pallie, Amanda, Joey, and Brandy: how we talked to them and pretended they talked back, how we played with them and were silly with them, how we took care of them when they got sick or injured, how we got frustrated with them when they didn't behave, and how we praised them when they were good, and how we were with them at the end of their lives, and how we remembered and yes, mourned them.

As the publisher, Penguin, describes the book:

Mary Oliver's Dog Songs is a celebration of the special bond between human and dog, as understood through the poet's relationships to the canines that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. Oliver's poems begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers, but through her extraordinary vision, these observations become higher meditations on the world and our place in it.

Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's beloved Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver's life merge as fellow travelers and as guides, uniquely able to open our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.

Here's a sequence of Brandy in the leaves in November of 2015:

I'm going to wait until spring time of 2022 to get a new (rescue) dog.

Book Review: Memory, Martyrs, and Mission

This is the book from the Venerable English College, offered through January 29, 2021 as a free ebook.

As the publisher (Gangemi Editore) describes the book:

Essays to Commemorate the 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket (c. 1118-1170) | Foreword by Mgr Philip Whitmore Rector of the Venerable English College, Rome. Essays by Judith Champ, Peter Davidson, Eamon Duffy, Peter Leech, Peter Phillips, Carol M. Richardson, Nicholas Schofield. Edited by Maurice Whitehead 

The murder on 29 December 1170 of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, sent shockwaves across the Christian world. The combination of his martyrdom, his canonization in 1173, and the creation of a shrine to him at Canterbury in 1220 increased the importance of the Via Francigena – the ancient pilgrim route from Canterbury to Rome: indeed the English Hospice, founded in Rome in 1362 for pilgrims from England and Wales, was dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity and St Thomas of Canterbury. The transformation in 1579 of the English Hospice into a new English College in Rome, preparing future priests to serve on the dangerous post-Reformation mission to England and Wales, engendered further martyrdoms: between 1581 and 1679, forty-four members of the Venerable English College, Rome, were executed for serving as priests on the mission to England and Wales. Exploring three major themes – Memory, Martyrs, and Mission – this volume analyses, on the 850th anniversary of his death, the enduring legacy of St Thomas of Canterbury, expressed in English seminaries in continental Europe through their distinctive spiritual, artistic and literary activities; the resilience of those institutions to radical change over the centuries, in the face of revolution, war and social upheaval; and the challenges and opportunities for the effective formation of priests ready to meet the changing demands of mission in the twenty-first century. The volume concludes by demonstrating how music associated with St Thomas of Canterbury has resonated across the centuries, from soon after his martyrdom down to the present day.

My first comment is that I do not like ebooks and this one compounds my dislike by not having a table of contents with links to the chapters; I also don't like the illustrations being at the back of the book, making it hard to move between them and the chapters they pertain to. Each chapter is well documented with end notes; in those with sections, the end notes appear at the end of each section. Well-illustrated. 

I definitely prefer printed, tangible books.

Contents:

Foreword by Mgr Philip Whitmore, Rector of the Venerable English College, Rome

List of contributors (bios)

List of illustrations

Chapter 1. St. Thomas a Becket (c. 1118-1170): Patron of the Venerable English College Church, Rome and of the English Clergy. --Nicholas Schofield

(each chapter begins with an abstract)

• 'The Holy, Blissful Martyr'
• St. Thomas and the English Catholic diaspora
• 'Thomas Points the Way': The Cult at the Venerable English College
• 'Martyr for the Liberty of the Church': Becket and the Victorians
• A Patron for Modern Times

Chapter 2. The English Colleges of Douai and Rheims, the Venerable English College, Rome, and the Tridentine Seminary. --Eamon Duffy

Chapter 3. The Cultural Life of the English Colleges in Continental Europe: An Overview. --Peter Davidson

Chapter 4. 'No other of Christianity except that which we preach to them': the Venerable Bede and the 1580s Martyrs' Frescoes of the Venerable English College, Rome. --Carol M. Richardson

• The fresco context
• Three conversions
• Peter
• Eleutherius
• Alban and Amphibalus
• Constantine and Helena
• Ursula
• Gregory and Augustine
• Brightness and Englishness

Chapter 5. The Restoration of the English and Welsh Seminaries in the Aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. --Peter Phillips

• The final days of the English College, Douai
• The Venerable English College, Rome

Chapter 6. New Wine in Old Wineskins? Harnessing the Power of History to Renew Priestly Formation. -- Judith Champ

• 'Not drowning, but waving' (sic)
• Understanding the past
• Changes of culture: priestly or clerical?
• What kind of Church: what kind of priest?
• The changing nature of vocations to the priesthood
• What kind of formation?
• The role of the parish in formation
• The art of accompaniment
• Seminary and beyond

Chapter 7. Gaudeamus omnes: Catholic Liturgical Music for St. Thomas Becket in the British Isles, Continental Europe, and the Venerable English College, Rome, c. 1170-2020. --Peter Leech

• Liturgical Music for St. Thomas of Canterbury in the British Isles, 1170-c. 1538
• Liturgical Music for St. Thomas of Canterbury outside the British Isles to c. 1570
• Becket Music in Britain, 1533-c. 1800
• Liturgical Music for Becket in Continental Europe, c. 1550-. 1850

The only chapter I found lacking was Chapter 6; the author did not seem to live up to the title of the paper and only tangentially referred to the past or specifically the past formation and mission of priests from the Venerable College and their mission in England during the recusant period. It also raised more issues that it really addressed--although it certainly pertains to the VEC's current mission of training priests from various dioceses of England. Eamon Duffy's paper contained material from Chapter 5 "Founding Father, William, Cardinal Allen" from his 2017 Reformation Divided: Catholics, Protestants, and the Conversion of England.

Father Nicholas Schofield provides an excellent overview of St. Thomas of Canterbury's reputation through the centuries, while Chapters 3 through 5 explore aspects of the art and architecture of the VEC and the internal and external struggles of the English Colleges before, during, and after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The last chapter, which includes musical examples in an appendix, provides an excellent survey of the celebration of the feast of St. Thomas a Becket in liturgical music.

By the way, Father Schofield posts on the blog for the Archives of the Venerable English College, Rome, and I've included a link to Tales from the Archives on my blog roll on the right side of this blog.

If you haven't downloaded this free ebook yet, I recommend you do so soon--before January 29!!

Book Review: The Catholic Church, Modernity, and Modern History

From Basic Books:

A powerful new interpretation of Catholicism’s dramatic encounter with modernity, by one of America’s leading intellectuals

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, both secular and Catholic leaders assumed that the Church and the modern world were locked in a battle to the death. The triumph of modernity would not only finish the Church as a consequential player in world history; it would also lead to the death of religious conviction. But today, the Catholic Church is far more vital and consequential than it was 150 years ago. Ironically, in confronting modernity, the Catholic Church rediscovered its evangelical essence. In the process, Catholicism developed intellectual tools capable of rescuing the imperiled modern project.

A richly rendered, deeply learned, and powerfully argued account of two centuries of profound change in the church and the world, The Irony of Modern Catholic History reveals how Catholicism offers twenty-first century essential truths for our survival and flourishing.

This is a fascinating but ultimately frustrating overview of the history of the Catholic Church from 1789 to 2018. It's fascinating because Weigel interprets Church History from the French Revolution to the McCarrick Scandal to help his readers understand how the Catholic Church has been reacting to the loss of Christian faith in modern society since the late eighteenth century, largely through the projects and efforts of our Popes. From Popes Pius VI and VII's wranglings with the French Revolution and Napoleon, Weigel takes us through the pontificates of Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius XII; then to Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI and the confusion after the Council, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and the project to revive the implementation of the Second Vatican Council in transition to the New Evangelization and the pontificate of  Pope Francis. Its frustrating because of how it seems the Church may be stalled in our efforts to help the modern world--our world--love Jesus and love each other.

Weigel organizes this history as a drama with five Acts and four Entr'Actes. The Acts drive the narrative history forward on stage while the Entr'Actes consider important events and personalities off stage. He provides both narrative drive and cogent analysis with attention to biographical detail.

Act One describes the pontificates of Gregory XVI and Pius IX, including a discussion of the First Vatican Council and Papal Infallibility, as these popes were opposed to many of the hallmarks of modernity and its rejection of Catholic teaching authority, while the first Entr'Acte highlights the contributions of Mohler, Rosmini, Scheeben, Ketteler, and Newman to different responses to the revolutions of the nineteenth century--and the distinctive position of the Catholic Church in the United States of America.

Act Two places Pope Leo XIII at center stage with his efforts to "gingerly" reach out to the modern world, reviving Catholic philosophy and theology through his emphasis on St. Thomas Aquinas and biblical interpretation and proposing some Catholic wisdom for the industrial age and the treatment of workers with dignity (Rerum Novarum); then Pius X comes on stage with his efforts at sacramental renewal and battles with Catholic modernists; World War I and Benedict XV follow, reviving Pope Leo XIII's projects; then Pope Pius XI; and finally Pope Pius XII. Weigel shows great appreciation of three of the latter's encyclicals, Mystici Corporus Christi, Divino Afflante Spiritu, and Mediator Dei, but deprecates Humani Generis.

The second Entr'Acte includes a large cast of theological renewal characters including Guardini, various Thomists (Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, Gilson,), the ressourcement school (Congar, de Lubac), the Catholic personalists (von Hildebrand, Scheler, Mounier), Hans Urs von Balthasar, and John Courtney Murray.

Act Three brings us to Pope John XXIII and what he hoped to achieve with the Second Vatican Council to "embrace modernity", examining Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, and then various documents of the Council, including Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and Dignitatis Humanae. Weigel offers a substantial critique of Gaudium et Spes, pointing out particularly how dated some of its optimism of how well modern democracy and the Catholic Church would be able to get along seems now. So the Entr'Acte, not surprisingly, examines the aftermath of the Council: Pope Paul VI's efforts to implement it, highlighting Evangelii Nuntiandi; Karol Wojtyla's vade mecum Sources of Renewal and his curial retreat Signs of Contradiction; and the theological rivalry between Communio and Concilium.

With Act Four Weigel brings two of his favorite dramatis personae to the stage: the protagonist Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), and in the supporting role, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). If you are familiar with Weigel's great biography of Pope John Paul II you'll find much that you've read about before with a overview of his papacy and his encyclicals. Weigel also offers an analysis of Pope Benedict XVI's four "September Lectures": Regensberg (9/12/2006); Bernardins (9/12/2008); Westminster (9/17/2010); Bundestag (9/22/2011)--all Weigel's commentary is focused on how these two "distinctively modern men" offered modernism some critiques of unresolved issues of reason, freedom, conscience, morality, economy, and society.

The Entr'Acte reviews the problem of implementing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council since it was "the Council without Keys" and the solution to this problem: the Extraordinary Synod of 1985. Weigel sets the stage for the last Act with the Great Millennium of 2000 and New Evangelization. 

So in Act Five, after explaining John Paul II's vision in Novo Millennio Ineunte, Weigel inserts a flashback to Redemptoris Missio, his 1990 encyclical on the Church's permanent missionary mandate. Weigel also examines John Paul's efforts to influence the EU Constitution, which was poised to skip all of its history from 180 to 1596 by avoiding any mention of Christianity. His 2003 General Audiences and the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Europa attempted to remind Europeans of the work of the Church to proclaim the Gospel of Hope in Jesus Christ.

Then Weigel comes to the unsatisfactory denouement: "The Franciscan Stall". He has to end his review of Pope Francis' pontificate with the McCarrick revelations of 2018, but he starts with Evangelli Gaudium, the 2013 apostolic exhortation setting out the Franciscan program of evangelization and the continued spread of the Joy of the Gospel. Then Weigel describes the confusion of the 2014/2015 Synods on the Family and the 2018 Synod on Young People, which both resulted in contradictions of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Dei Verbum) on the deposit of faith; Jesus Christ on marriage, and St. Paul on the worthy reception of the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion with implications of historicism (Church moral and sacramental teaching can change with and adapt to the mores and trends of the world) and a new Gallicanism (what's true in Poland about Catholic teaching might not be true in Germany). Weigel asks how this helps fulfill the efforts of the New Evangelization to spread the Joy of the Gospel to everyone, those who believe, those who've fallen away, and those who've never heard of Jesus.

Then the McCarrick Crisis, with the Vatican displaying the same old modes of "institutional-maintenance and status-quo thinking" with slow responses (not to mention Pope Francis' intransigence regarding the Chilean bishop) demonstrated that Pope Francis, blaming a culture of clericalism, still didn't want to take action in certain cases or be transparent: we've been promised a report for almost two years on how a serial abuser of boys and seminarians became a Cardinal and continued to have influence even after he was supposed to retire from official duties and it hasn't been issued yet. 

So we have to wait for the continuation of Act Five or for Act Six.

In the meantime, Weigel summarizes his argument that the Church has rediscovered itself through contending with the issues of modernism and can offer the modern world some guidelines for reform of its own issues: doubt, the naked will to power, emptiness. Jesus Christ is the answer to every human question, he concludes, and the Catholic Church has, from the Apostles, through the Popes, Bishops, clerics and laity, been offering that answer throughout the ages. We may be stalled as Weigel believes, but we still have a message to share and solutions to propose: "liberating truths about salvation and the ultimate destiny of human beings" through the Person of Jesus Christ.

Except for some glimpses in the Entr'Actes, Weigel's spotlight is on the top of the Church's hierarchy: the Popes, but that makes sense since he is describing the Church's official responses to modernity. He provides a good list of sources. Fascinating but frustrating.

O'Connor and Dostoevsky "Giving the Devil His Due"

Warren Farha at Eighth Day Books recommended this book, so I bought and read it. From the publisher, Wipf and Stock, whom Warren told me has been recently become more accommodating to bookstores (allowing returns, lowering prices, etc):

Flannery O'Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky shared a deep faith in Christ, which compelled them to tell stories that force readers to choose between eternal life and demonic possession. Their either-or extremism has not become more popular in the last fifty to a hundred years since these stories were first published, but it has become more relevant to a twenty-first-century culture in which the lukewarm middle ground seems the most comfortable place to dwell. Giving the Devil His Due walks through all of O'Connor's stories and looks closely at Dostoevsky's magnum opus The Brothers Karamazov to show that when the devil rules, all hell breaks loose. Instead of this kingdom of violence, O'Connor and Dostoevsky propose a kingdom of love, one that is only possible when the Lord again is king.

I wish Wilson would have expanded her survey of Dostoevsky's oeuvre to include The Possessed and The Idiot: sometimes her examples from The Brothers Karamazov became repetitive, and I thought her discussions of evil and the devil and God and grace just cried out for Prince Myshkin, especially as she used Rene Girard's scapegoat theory. When there's a section heading like "Imitating Christ: Like a Child or Like An Idiot" late in the book (p. 129), I thought again, where's Prince Myshkin, beyond the mention of Romano Guardini's essay on The Idiot? As the blurb above notes, she surveys all of O'Connor's stories and even unfinished works and the lack of balance showed. Her analysis of Dostoevsky's and O'Connor's authorial intentions and understanding of their work was excellent throughout the book. Her theological insights are also valid, but I think she demonstrates more sympathy with O'Connor's Catholic faith than with Dostoevsky's Orthodox Christianity.

I kept thinking that there would be some reference to St. Thomas More, given the title. When I looked in the index, there were three pages listed, but two of them never contained anything about St. Thomas More, in fact, no more than the word "More" capitalized. The other page was in the bibliography, listing More's Utopia! Utopia is not in the index, and I don't remember any citation of it, either. The publisher must have used some search algorithm that did not distinguish between "More" and St. Thomas More! Minor irritant, to be sure.

Catholicism in the Thirteen Colonies

EWTN, the late Mother Angelica's Catholic media empire, has now conquered book publishing--along with social media outreach, a tremendous website, a cable television station in the US and around the world, broadcast radio, and newspaper publishing--and in this case, EWTN has published a book by one of the priests who has presented many programs on EWTN on Church History. I presume this book could be adapted for a series of programs for EWTN television. Father Charles Connor celebrated his silver jubilee of ordination in the Diocese of Scranton in 2015.

Sophia Institute Press publishes and distributes the book, which I purchased at Eighth Day Books here in Wichita, Kansas. The publisher's book description:

In this comprehensive history, Fr. Charles Connor details the life of Catholics in the American Colonies. It’s a tale that begins with the flight of English Catholics to religious freedom in Maryland in 1634, and continues through the post-Revolutionary period, by which time the constitutions of all but four of the first 13 states contained harsh anti-Catholic provisions.

Catholic readers will be proud to learn from that despite almost two centuries of ever-more-intense religious persecutions and even harsher legal prohibitions, American Catholics in the colonies simply refused to abandon the Catholic Faith.

This is an indispensable reading for souls interested in the deep roots of Catholicism in America, and in the holy courage of scores of Catholics who kept remorseless forces from driving Catholicism out of America. Among other things, you’ll learn:

• The tale of The Ark and The Dove that carried the first settlers to Maryland
• The surprisingly harsh anti-Catholic sentiments of most of the Founding Fathers
• The Quaker/Catholic alliance that promoted both religions
• The role of persecuted Catholics in the Revolutionary War
• Why, in that War, many Catholics favored the anti-Catholic British
• The French Jesuits who evangelized New York and its frontier areas, and the saints who were martyred there
• The years in which, throughout the colonies, Catholics became an endangered species

Father Connor's survey emphasizes Maryland. After three chapters offering background on the Protestant Reformation on the Continent of Europe, the Tudor Reformation in England, and the status of Catholics in England during Elizabeth's I reign and the Stuart Dynasty, four chapters of six dedicated to Catholics in the colonial era are devoted to describing Lord Baltimore's colonial enterprise, his vision for it, his sons' implementation of that vision, and its vicissitudes. His narrative style is smooth and detailed, using substantial quotations from other secondary sources. 

Unfortunately, there's no index, which does reduce the usefulness of the book as a resource. From the table of contents in the book, you would not know that he covers Rhode Island, Connecticut, etc., however briefly, as is their due. To reach its potential as a historical resource, the book should also have a map and perhaps a few portraits. The bibliography is comprehensive and up-to-date. Good, solid and insightful historical writing. 

The Blessed Lion of Munster

This is the biography of a blessed saint of the Catholic Church: as I read it, I did not know that Clemens August Cardinal von Galens of Munster had been beatified! Father Daniel Utrecht of the Oratory (Toronto) did not write the book as hagiography but as the biography of a bishop who served his diocese during World War II, fighting for religious freedom in the midst of Nazi oppression:

“The dear God placed me in a position in which I had a duty to call black 'black' and white 'white'.” These words were spoken by Cardinal Clemens August von Galen, the bishop of the diocese of Münster in Germany from 1933 to 1946. In so doing, he risked death at the hands of the Nazis, one Gestapo leader even urging that he be publicly hanged. Joseph Goebbels and others in the Nazi leadership, knowing the bishop’s popularity, advised waiting, subscribing to the adage that “revenge is a dish best served cold.”

In this, the definitive English language biography of the great Lion of Münster, readers will encounter the young von Galen as he learns the Catholic faith and love of the fatherland from his family, members of the German aristocracy. A nobleman, a “prince” of his people and of his Church, the boy grew into a man, a six-and-a-half-foot tall giant of a man, who, though he loved his homeland, loved God, His Church and His law even more; for he knew that calling his homeland back to the ways of God is the one way in which a bishop can best demonstrate that love for the people under his spiritual care. And so, in three magnificent sermons and countless other speeches, communiques and gestures, the Lion roared.

This story of his life and his stirring words provides readers with an indispensable glimpse into the confrontation between Church and State in Hitler’s Germany and will serve as a reminder to all men and women of good will of the duty to call black ‘black’ and white ‘white.’

Other than some unnecessary repetition--at the end of the book, describing Cardinal von Galen's funeral, his episcopal motto ["Nec laudibus, nec timore" (Neither praise nor threats will distance me from God)] is cited three times on three pages--the surprising announcement that Cardinal von Galen was beatified may be the most serious flaw in this book. Surely a paragraph describing the institution and progress of his cause would have been helpful. How did the devotion to Cardinal von Galen develop? how was it manifested? what's the status of his cause now?

Most of the book recounts Bishop von Galen's efforts to thwart Nazi oppression of Catholics in their schools, churches, and hospitals. Bishop von Galen did not speak out as openly about the oppression and extermination of the Jewish community in Germany, although he did argue forcefully against the Nazi views on race. While he opposed many of the Nazi's actions during the rule of the Third Reich, Bishop von Galen always did so on the grounds that the Nazi government was violating the promises it had made to protect and uphold religious freedom. He wanted the German bishops to be more united in opposing the Nazi regime's abuses of religious freedom but he never advised anything but passive resistance. He worked to make sure that Pope Pius XI's Mit brennender Sorge was well distributed and he successfully led the campaign to highlight the Nazi scheme to euthanize the handicapped and mentally ill, halting it at least temporarily. 

Father Utrecht describes the three great sermons Bishop von Galen preached in 1941 and includes long excerpts from each (you may read them all here): he opposed the actions of the Gestapo, the Nazi efforts to take over education and programs for the young (forcing everyone into the Nazi Youth groups), and the euthanasia programs to eradicate "life not worth living". After he preached those three sermons, some in the Nazi regime wanted to arrest and try von Galen for treason, but the Nazis feared unrest in his community and so as the blurb notes decided to wait until Germany and the Axis had won the war. The sermons inspired resistance, as the White Rose group attested, and Jewish readers were impressed by someone speaking out against the regime.

Father Utrecht also does not neglect the Bishop's opposition to what he saw as injustices committed by the occupying British and American forces after Germany's defeat. He was a proud German and he did not accept the notion that all Germans were guilty of the crimes against humanity committed by Hitler's Nazi Party. 

The last chapters of the book are remarkable: von Galen is named a Cardinal by Pope Pius XII and embarks on an incredibly difficult journey from Germany to Rome in postwar Europe, driving through floods, enduring car breakdowns, etc. He is welcomed a hero of resistance in Rome and praised by Pope Pius XII. Von Galen begins to feel a little ill on the way home, is welcomed rapturously by the people of Munster--and then becomes dangerously ill from an infection, has emergency surgery, and dies of peritonitis. He goes from the height of triumph to delirium and death in mere weeks!

The book is well-written, well-illustrated, and well-documented. Except for the gap of explaining how von Galen's cause for canonization began and proceeded, it's an excellent, sympathetic, and comprehensive biography.

Pugin, and Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, and Tolkien . . .

From the original edition's entry on the Yale University Press website:

The style of the medieval period, which flows through the bloodstream of western culture, was vigorously re-established in post-Enlightenment England. This one-volume history of the Medieval Revival is the first coherent account of it, especially those aspects that are expressed and reflected in literature. The book focuses on the period 1760 to 1971, with an Epilogue on the reverberations of medievalism in the present day.

The rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after its destruction by fire in 1834, re-established Gothic as the national style. But medieval imitation manifests itself wherever one cares to look: in literature, architecture, the applied arts, religion, politics, and even Hollywood. In this skilled dissection of the components of this pervasive cultural movement, Michael Alexander rejects the idea that medievalism was confined to the Victorian period, and overturns the suspicion that it is by its nature escapist.

The style of the medieval period, which flows through the bloodstream of western culture, was vigorously re-established in post-Enlightenment England. This one-volume history of the Medieval Revival is the first coherent account of it, especially those aspects that are expressed and reflected in literature. The book focuses on the period 1760 to 1971, with an Epilogue on the reverberations of medievalism in the present day. The rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after its destruction by fire in 1834, re-established Gothic as the national style. But medieval imitation manifests itself wherever one cares to look: in literature, architecture, the applied arts, religion, politics, and even Hollywood. In this skilled dissection of the components of this pervasive cultural movement, Michael Alexander rejects the idea that medievalism was confined to the Victorian period, and overturns the suspicion that it is by its nature escapist.

From the new paperback edition's entry on the Yale University Press website (I read it on my Kindle Fire):

Now reissued in an updated paperback edition, this groundbreaking account of the Medieval Revival movement examines the ways in which the style of the medieval period was re-established in post-Enlightenment England—from Walpole and Scott, Pugin, Ruskin, and Tennyson to Pound, Tolkien, and Rowling.

“Medievalism . . . takes a panoramic view of the ‘recovery’ of the Medieval in English literature, visual arts and culture. . . . Ambitious, sweeping, sometimes idiosyncratic, but always interesting.”—Rosemary Ashton, Times Literary Supplement

 “Deeply researched and stylishly written, Medievalism is an unalloyed delight that will instruct and amuse a wide readership.”—Edward Short, Books & Culture

The Table of Contents, with the last names and titles of works listed in each chapter, demonstrates the range of Alexander's survey:

Introduction

1. The Advent of the Goths: The Medieval in the 1760s 

2. Chivalry, Romances and Revival: Chaucer into Scott: The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Ivanhoe 

3. Dim Religious Lights: The Lay, Christabel and 'The Eve of St Agnes'
4. Residences for the Poor: The Pugin of Contrasts 

5. Back to the Future in the 1840s: Carlyle, Ruskin, Sybil, Newman 

6. 'The Death of Arthur was the Favourite Volume': Malory into Tennyson

7. History, the Revival, and the PRB: Westminster, Ivanhoe, visions and revisions

8. History and Legend: The subjects of poetry and painting

9. The Working Man and the Common Good: Madox Brown, Maurice, Morris, Hopkins

10. Among the Lilies and the Weeds: Hopkins, Whistler, Burne-Jones, Beardsley 

11. I Have Seen . . . A White Horse: Chesterton, Yeats, Ford, Pound 

12. Modernist Medievalism: Eliot, Pound, Jones 

13. Twentieth-century Christendom: Waugh, Auden, Inklings, Hill 

Epilogue: 'Riding through the glen' 

Bibliography 

Notes 

Index

Acceptance and interest in the Middle Ages--the period between the Fall of Rome and the Renaissance--meant an encounter with Catholicism in Protestant, anti-Catholic England. Michael Alexander acknowledges this fact throughout his study of "The Middle Ages in Modern England". Reformation and Enlightenment Scotland and England had regarded those centuries as the Dark Ages of Faith--the Catholic Faith--and had derided them for superstition and error. As Alexander notes, however, the English parliamentary system had developed in the Middle Ages, so they were wrong to jettison that period. When the Houses of Parliament in Westminster were rebuilt after a devastating fire, the English style of architecture was ordered, and that style was Gothic. The designer of new buildings was A.W. Pugin, but he did not receive the credit for his contribution because he was a convert to Catholicism.

Alexander goes back often to Sir Walter Scott's poetry and historical novels as great inspirations to the revival of interest in the Middle Ages. He notes that John Henry Newman commented on how Scott created interest in the Catholic Middle Ages, even though Scott was not that sympathetic to Catholicism. I think that Alexander misses out on Newman's research into the Middle Ages--because he rightly notes that Newman was most interested in the early centuries of the Church--and neglects his "Second Spring" sermon and his study of the history of the university, which certainly addresses Medieval issues. Alexander does not list Newman's The Rise and Progress of Universities in his bibliography, nor does he cite Newman's eloquent praises of Catholicism in England before Henry VIII and its horrific destruction in the "Second Spring":

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, that great creation of God's power, stood in this land in pride of place. It had the honours of near a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned on some twenty sees up and down the broad country; it was based in the will of a faithful people; it energized through ten thousand instruments of power and influence; and it was ennobled by a host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of glorified intercessors, who were the respective objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of Chichester. And then, too, its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its universities, its wide relations all over Europe, its high prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its dependencies, its popular honours,—where was there in the whole of Christendom a more glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with kings and nobles, with the people, found in every village and in every town,—it seemed destined to stand, so long as England stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers—you know it well. I need not go through it. The vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time, and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed,—its grace disowned,—its power despised,—its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown. It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away, and there was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace;—and such was about the state of things when we were born into this weary world.

Newman is not a medievalist, I concede, but there's more there than Alexander may be aware. I think Alexander misses out on exploring the Oxford Movement and High-Church Anglicanism after Newman's conversion even more. See this essay, for example. Alexander mentions how the High-Church Ritualists "sought true beauty in holiness," but does not describe how they combined great concern for beautiful churches and liturgies with care for the poor in other practical ways; the poor deserved beauty too: in art, architecture, and music in their churches and chapels.

I was also surprised that Alexander spent so little time on William Cobbett, whose extensive interest in the social history of the Middle Ages in England is prominently displayed in his History of the Protestant Reformation. Cobbett's defense of the monasteries in England before and during the English Reformation should be mentioned in those passages when Alexander discusses modern views of medieval monasticism. He mentions Lingard in passing too, but Father Lingard was no defender of the monasteries, especially just before their dissolution.

Alexander likes G.K. Chesterton and even comments that his students actually enjoyed reading The Ballad of the White Horse. He hints at the medievalism of some of Chesterton's followers like Christopher Hollis, Christopher Dawson, and others, but does not follow up on them, except for Eric Gill and David Jones. I'd like to read some of Hollis's works. I was surprised at his inclusion of Ezra Pound because I did not know that Pound was "an academic medievalist" with "two degrees specializing in early romance languages"!

Alexander expresses various concerns about how literature and history are taught, studied, written, and read. For all the advances in knowledge made in various academic fields since the eighteenth century, he recognizes that the Middle Ages have lost ground again. A unified, cohesive view of English history and literature is thwarted by specialization and uncertainty. No professional historian would present a Whig interpretation of history anymore, but without it, what creates the narrative? Belief in progress means the story goes somewhere. Modern secularists will not accept religion, that is Christianity, as the unifying vision of English history and literature, so we are left with a great and widening divide between academic study and popular history. Alexander notes that the BBC presents surveys of English history by Simon Schama, for example, and they are popular with audiences. He makes a derisive comment: "In popular legend, the only golden age which is reliable at the box office is the age of Elizabeth I, unspotted by the blood shed in enforcing religious uniformity and in colonising Ireland"; of course, the only martyrs in England were Protestant!

The author acknowledges that he could have explored other themes: the Jacobites, liturgical studies, cathedrals, public ceremonials like coronations and funerals, the Arts and Crafts movement, etc. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining and thought-provoking survey of Medievalism in England after the Reformation and the Enlightnment and through the 20th century. Excellent illustrations, too.

Golden Years: English Saints by English Greats

Cluny Media sent me a copy of this book for my opinion. As the blurb states:

The English Way, edited by one of the most important Christian humanists and publishers of the twentieth century, Maisie Ward, looks at the lives, ideas, and deaths of the great Roman Catholic Anglo-Saxons. All the men and women in this book served the Church faithfully and with great zeal. Contributors to The English Way include Bede Jarrett and Christopher Dawson, Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, as well as E. I. Watkin and Maisie Ward herself.

It's a collection of essays about the great English saints of the medieval and recusant era written by the English greats of the early twentieth century. It includes not just the great Anglo-Saxon saints, but the holy men and women of the post-Reformation era. As with all of these compilations, there is a variety of writing styles and voices, academic and popular.

G.K. Chesterton, for example, writes about Alfred the Great, whom he had portrayed in The Ballad of the White Horse, and St. Thomas More. Other great Catholics profiled include St. Bede the Venerable, Julian Norwich, St. Bonaventure, St. Aelred of Rievaulx, St. Thomas of Canterbury, Julian of Norwich,St. John Fisher, St. Edmund Campion, Richard Crashaw, Venerable Mary Ward, Bishop Richard Challoner, and Blessed John Henry Newman. The writers include Bede Jarrett, C.C. Martindale, E.I. Watkin, Hilaire Belloc, David Knowles, Douglas Woodruff, Gervase Mathew and David Mathew, Maisie Ward, and Martin D'Arcy. The collection was originally published by Sheed & Ward.

The passion the writers felt for their subjects often comes through strongly, as when Christopher Dawson laments that the greatest religious poem in English history, The Vision of Pier Plowman by William Langland, was not available to the public in an affordable and complete edition:

Here is the Catholic Englishman par excellence, at once the most English of Catholic poets and the most Catholic of English poets; a man in whom Catholic faith and national feeling are fused in a single flame. He saw Christ walking in English fields in the dress of an English laborer, and to understand his work is to know English religion in its most autochthonous and yet most Catholic form.

[autochthonous means indigenous; I had to look it up!]

Dawson goes on to tell us that Langland tells us much about the fourteenth century, that "age of profound social and spiritual change", "an age of poets and mystics and saints." He notes that England came into its own as English in that century, and compares and contrasts the two great poets of the era in England, Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. Dawson's essay is a masterpiece of literary exposition and historical explanation. He sees Langland as a great prophet and poet, and has inspired me to search out a readable edition.

Cluny Media has done a great service to readers to bring this book back into print. I have some caveats, however, about their edition. I think we need brief biographies of the contributors, who would have been well known--and some still will be of course-when the book was published. Many of the names were familiar to me, but who was Fr. Aelfric Manson, O. P., who writes about St. Boniface? 

In an otherwise sympathetic and helpful introduction, Bradley Birzer commits a strange error, dating the beatification of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More to 1935, "only two years after the appearance of The English Way." Fisher and More were beatified in 1886--they were canonized in 1935! 

There are some formatting errors too--the wrong author is cited on page 50, for example. The heading for the essay on St. Edmund Campion indicates the essay is about St. Thomas More. In a book dedicated to "Studies in English Sanctity" these are minor things of course. The English Way is great book to read through to see the variety of English saints and Catholic heroes and heroines, and also great just to pick up and read about a certain saint. Highly recommended.

Book Review: "Hanging Mary"

I spent several hours Saturday and Sunday reading this book, enjoying it, and then thinking about it and discussing it with my husband. Hanging Mary: A Novel is by Susan Higginbotham, the author of several novels set in the Plantagenet (especially Wars of the Roses) and Tudor eras. This novel, however, is set in Washington, DC during 1864 and 1865 as a group of conspirators plan to kidnap President Abraham Lincoln to force an end to the Civil War that favors the losing Confederacy. The conspirators keep dropping by Mary Surratt's boarding house, especially John Wilkes Booth, because Mary's son John, Jr. is involved in the plot. Mary is a widow whose husband left her with great debts but two properties, so as the story begins, she decides to lease the tavern in Surrattville and move to the house in Washington with her daughter Anna and son John (son Isaac is fighting for the Confederacy), take in boarders, and make money to pay off those debts. One of her boarders is a young woman, Nora Fitzpatrick: she and Mary are the narrators of this story, alternating chapters with their different viewpoints.

If you know American history, you know what is going to happen; nevertheless, partly because of the narrative structure, Higginbotham keeps the reader in suspense. The plot is forming before Mary's and Nora's eyes, and each of them sees strands of the web that Booth is weaving, but neither knows the whole story.

The dilemma raised is common to all plots and conspiracies, during the American Civil War or in Tudor England: when do observers on the fringes of a conspiracy become part of the conspiracy? and when do they have an obligation to report the conspiracy?

For example, yesterday I posted on the execution of Thomas Wyatt the Younger. One of keys to the failure of the Wyatt Rebellion was that Edward Courtenay warned his erstwhile fellow prisoner in the Tower of London, Bishop Stephen Gardiner, now Mary I's Chancellor, that there was a plot against the Queen. He did not have all the details, but he could at least provide the information he had.

Mary Surratt resolves that dilemma for herself, believing that Booth--without her son whom she believes is in Canada (and he is)--is going to kidnap the President. She chooses personal loyalty over national considerations. As Nora later notes, she thus removes the one person who might have offered her clemency: Abraham Lincoln. It's also important to note that the star witness for the prosecution of Mary and the other conspirators, Louis Weichmann, a classmate of John Surratt, saw many of the same things and had some concerns, but even though he was a government employee, he never reported them to the appropriate authorities.

As absorbing as this plot and these questions are, the most touching sub-plot to me was Nora Fitzpatrick's budding romance with one of the soldiers she visits at the hospital, Private Flanagan. He has "lost his right arm", although he jokes that he knows "perfectly well where he had last had it"! and has been ill while in hospital. Private Flanagan loves Nora and wants to prepare himself to wed her, that's clear. Nora may not be in love with him, but he is her favorite patient; she helps him learn how to read and write; she encourages him to hope that he might make himself worthy (be able to support her), while she also knows he will always need her help if they marry. When Nora receives bad news about Private Flanagan, Mary Surratt's motherly care of Nora does much to increase Nora's affection and loyalty to her landlady. This sub-plot, per an interview with Higginbotham included in the Kindle edition I read, is fictional, but does much to demonstrate the characteristic compassion and loyalty of the two narrators.

Another aspect of the novel piqued my interest: the Catholicism of the Surratts, Fitzpatricks, the Holohans, and of Louis Weichmann, who is discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Although Protestant Christians in 19th century America did not practice orthodox Lutheranism or Calvinism (neither Martin nor John would recognize their theology, per Mark A. Noll), they did practice orthodox anti-Catholicism. That aspect of their religion never seems to come up in Hanging Mary, but Catholic priests, services, and prayers are often mentioned. While it's part of the record, I was surprised to see mention of Good Friday evening services; I thought that from the Middle Ages and until 1955, when Pope Pius XII reformed the Holy Week liturgy, all the services were held in the morning? Perhaps the service mentioned was Stations of the Cross? One other little liturgical question: why did Mary Surratt touch the "wafer" (I think she, as a Catholic, would have referred to what she receive in Holy Communion as the "Host") while receiving the Eucharist in prison? From the Middle Ages until the late twentieth century, nearly all Catholics received Holy Communion on the tongue, not in the hand (please see chapter 47). But those are little things--but little things a Catholic like me would notice!

I highly recommend this novel: it provides true literary enjoyment, and tension; is thought-provoking, moving, and in every way, excellent! The author encourages purchase from an independent bookseller but Hanging Mary is readily available in several formats from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble too.

Note: I purchased my copy of this book. I look forward to participating in a blog tour for Susan Higginbotham's next book, Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower, coming out this August from Amberley Press.

Belloc's Strengths and Weaknesses

There is much that Belloc gets wrong in his Characters of the Reformation--details like Henry VIII having syphilis and Anne Boleyn having an extra finger--but his analysis of politics and personalities is often correct. It is his thesis that the Reformation was more a political event than theological and that England's break from Rome thwarted the political reunion of Christendom after Luther and Calvin divided the Continent.

That thesis drives his selection of characters: neither Martin Luther nor John Calvin have a chapter to themselves. Belloc selects instead, on the Continent for example, Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, Gustavus Adolphus, and Cardinal Richelieu. The first tried to reunite Germany under Catholicism and failed; the second was the brilliant general who thwarted that attempt; the third was the éminence grise who aided the second to prevent German unity at the expense of French hegemony, and thus continued the break up of Christendom.

Because of the second part of his thesis, Belloc profiles almost all the important figures of the English Reformation era: Henry VIII, More, Cranmer, Cromwell, Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Mary Stuart, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth, etc. He also includes figures from the early Stuart era, two philosophers (Descartes and Pascal) and two more combatants: William of Orange and Louis XIV.

In each chapter, Belloc examines the personality of the individual he is profiling. His analysis of Henry VIII's character, for example, explains more than the usual attempt to trace a change in his personality. He identifies Henry's main characteristic as "an inability to withstand impulse; he was passionate for having his own way." Belloc notes that all those who helped Henry get his way (Wolsey, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn) flattered and led him until he grew tired of their control over him and destroyed them. Belloc thinks that only Catherine of Aragon loved and respected Henry but even she did not attempt to influence him in matters of self-control. As Belloc notes, she was so simple, direct, and straightforward that she did not understand intrigue: "She neither made scenes, nor intrigued to recover her position," Belloc states. She remained adamant that she would never respond to any other title than Queen of England, but she did not know how to manipulate others to achieve her goals.

Belloc's interpretation stresses power and authority above theology and reform. While I agree with him that many political leaders took advantage of the religious divisions and debates for their own purposes, I think he goes too far in not considering the need for reform. The absence of any consideration of reform is a weakness in his study as it means he leaves out the great reformers like St. Ignatius of Loyola, Pope St. Pius V, and Reginald Cardinal Pole. Over-emphasizing the political aspects of the Reformation era leads Belloc's selection of characters to be unbalanced and incomplete. The latter should have been part of the survey of English Reformation characters.

One extraordinary aspect of his view of the Reformation is that he places more blame on the Catholic rulers who failed to uphold Christendom because they wanted power and to prevent others from having power. Thus, Belloc blames Richelieu and Louis XIV for interfering with the efforts of Ferdinand II and later rulers to bring religious unity to Germany, fearing German unity meant French weakness. He also laments Louis XIV revocation of the Edict of Nantes because it thwarted the progress being made in France toward peace and unity.

A Quick Read: Jean Plaidy's "The Murder in the Tower"

Plaidy (aka Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Eleanor Hibbert, etc) tells the story of the Overbury murder in this quick-paced and complex novel. The villainess Frances Howard, later the Countess of Essex and then the Countess of Suffolk, is a selfish and manipulative woman who makes Scarlett O'Hara seem like, well, Melanie Hamilton. Scarlett O'Hara never plotted to poison her first husband or murder one of her second husband's friends/opponents!

Plaidy's Frances is always in search of what will make her happy--at first marriage to the Earl of Essex seems a good idea since it will bring her to Court, but by the time he returns from the Continent, she had already fallen in and out of love with Henry, the Prince of Wales. Tiring of Henry she wants to become first the Earl of Somerset's mistress and then his wife, but she is married so has to get rid of that obstacle. Frances has no depth and no real attraction, at least in this reader's view--living for pleasure she is doomed to fail.

This is no great masterpiece of historical fiction; Plaidy skims along the surface of the confusing parties and issues of Jacobean England. At first she depicts the domestic life of James I of England, his wife Anne, their daughter Elizabeth and sons Henry and Charles. Prince Henry seems to threaten his father because of his popularity, but he dies young and then Elizabeth marries the Palatine and is off to Bohemia. Anne and Charles fade to the background while Plaidy explores the world of James's favorites and the underground world of poisons and witchcraft Frances discovers to make the Earl of Somerset love her and kill her husband. Plaidy does not identify James I as a homosexual or these favorites as lovers.

Frances gets off too easy in fiction as she did in life. Though she plotted to murder her first husband and succeeded in murdering Thomas Overbury, James I commutes her death sentence to imprisonment in the Tower and then exile from Court for the sake of his favorite, Robert Carr. Carr's influence with King James, which was supported by Sir Thomas Overbury's skill and intelligence, fades right before his fall as George Villiers's influence rises because of his youth and beauty.

The parties and plotting about the Spanish Match between Charles, the Prince of Wales and the Infanta of Spain are in the background, as are James I's constant fear of assassination and overthrow, and his fascination with witches. One of the minor characters is Henry Howard, the Earl of Northampton, the crypto-Catholic son of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey (Henry VIII's last victim). He dies before his role in the murder is fully discovered and just as his great niece Francis needs his help dealing with all the blackmail from those she plotted with to murder Thomas Overbury in the Tower of London.

Entertaining and effective historical fiction. The dialogue reads like real people talking to each other.

I'm no expert in historical attire, but is the gown depicted on the cover--at least the sleeves and the belt make me wonder--historically accurate for the Court of St. James during the rule of James I?

Anne Somerset wrote a nonfiction account of Overbury's murder: Unnatural Murder: Poison at the Court of James I.