Newman and the Immaculate Conception

Blessed Pope Pius IX's proclamation of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, issued on December 8, 1864, would, like his re-establishment of the hierarchy in England and the First Vatican Council's declaration of Papal Infallibility, provoked reactions in England, politically and theologically.

Two years after the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which Catholics celebrate today by going to Mass--and easing the usual Friday penitence!--Reverend Doctor E.B. Pusey wrote a public letter to the other great survivor of Newman's "defection", John Keble: An Eirenicon, responding to then Archdeacon Henry Manning's public letter to Pusey, The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England", in which Manning denied that the Church of England was protected from error the way the Catholic Church is. Pusey mentions the recently proclaimed doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (declared by Pope Pius IX in 1854: "We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the first instant of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind, was preserved immaculate from all stain of original sin, has been revealed by God, and therefore should firmly and constantly be believed by all the faithful.") and examines it in a historical context.

Father John Henry Newman then answered Pusey with A Letter Addressed to the Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D. on Occasion of his Eirenicon, in which he defended the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, starting with the commonly held doctrine that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were without Original Sin, filled with supernatural grace. Mary, the Mother of God is the Second Eve: her obedience and cooperation with God undoes Eve's disobedience:

She holds, as the Fathers teach us, that office in our restoration which Eve held in our fall:—now, in the first place, what were Eve's endowments to enable her to enter upon her trial? She could not have stood against the wiles of the devil, though she was innocent and sinless, without the grant of a large grace. And this she had;—a heavenly gift, which was over and above and additional to that nature of hers, which she received from Adam, a gift which had been given to Adam also before her, at the very time (as it is commonly held) of his original formation. This is Anglican doctrine, as well as Catholic; it is the doctrine of Bishop Bull. He has written a dissertation on the point. He speaks of the doctrine which "many of the Schoolmen affirm, that Adam was created in grace, that is, received a principle of grace and divine life from his very creation, or in the moment of the infusion of his soul; of which," he says, "for my own part I have little doubt." Again, he says, "It is abundantly manifest from the many testimonies alleged, that the ancient doctors of the Church did, with a general consent, acknowledge, that our first parents in the state of integrity, had in them something more than nature, that is, were endowed with the divine principle of the Spirit, in order to a supernatural felicity."

Now, taking this for granted, because I know that you and those who agree with you maintain it as well as we do, I ask you, have you any intention to deny that Mary was as fully endowed as Eve? is it any violent inference, that she, who was to co-operate in the redemption of the world, at least was not less endowed with power from on high, than she who, given as a help-mate to her husband, did in the event but cooperate with him for its ruin? If Eve was raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that Mary had even a greater grace? And this consideration gives significance to the Angel's salutation of her as "full of grace,"—an interpretation of the original word which is undoubtedly the right one, as soon as we resist the common Protestant assumption that grace is a mere external approbation or acceptance, answering to the word "favour," whereas it is, as the Fathers teach, a real inward condition or superadded quality of soul. And if Eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the first moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that Mary too had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? I do not know how to resist this inference:—well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I say the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace); and it really does seem to me bound up in the doctrine of the Fathers, that Mary is the second Eve.

It is indeed to me a most strange phenomenon that so many learned and devout men stumble at this doctrine; and I can only account for it by supposing that in matter of fact they do not know what we mean by the Immaculate Conception; and your Volume (may I say it?) bears out my suspicion. It is a great consolation to have reason for thinking so,—reason for believing that in some sort the persons in question are in the position of those great Saints in former times, who are said to have hesitated about the doctrine, when they would not have hesitated at all, if the word "Conception" had been clearly explained in that sense in which now it is universally received. I do not see how any one who holds with Bull the Catholic doctrine of the supernatural endowments of our first parents, has fair reason for doubting our doctrine about the Blessed Virgin. It has no reference whatever to her parents, but simply to her own person; it does but affirm that, together with the nature which she inherited from her parents, that is, her own nature, she had a superadded fulness of grace, and that from the first moment of her existence. Suppose Eve had stood the trial, and not lost her first grace; and suppose she had eventually had children, those children from the first moment of their existence would, through divine bounty, have received the same privilege that she had ever had; that is, as she was taken from Adam's side, in a garment, so to say, of grace, so they in turn would have received what may be called an immaculate conception. They would have then been conceived in grace, as in fact they are conceived in sin. What is there difficult in this doctrine? What is there unnatural? Mary may be called, as it were, a daughter of Eve unfallen. You believe with us that St. John Baptist had grace given to him three months before his birth, at the time that the Blessed Virgin visited his mother. He accordingly was not immaculately conceived, because he was alive before grace came to him; but our Lady's case only differs from his in this respect, that to her the grace of God came, not three months merely before her birth, but from the first moment of her being, as it had been given to Eve.

But it may be said, How does this enable us to say that she was conceived without original sin? If Anglicans knew what we mean by original sin, they would not ask the question. Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; and they fancy that we ascribe a different nature from ours to the Blessed Virgin, different from that of her parents, and from that of fallen Adam. We hold nothing of the kind; we consider that in Adam she died, as others; that she was included, together with the whole race, in Adam's sentence; that she incurred his debt, as we do; but that, for the sake of Him who was to redeem her and us upon the Cross, to her the debt was remitted by anticipation, on her the sentence was not carried out, except indeed as regards her natural death, for she died when her time came, as others [Note 5]. All this we teach, but we deny that she had original sin; for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. Mary could not merit, any more than they, the restoration of that grace; but it was restored to her by God's free bounty, from the very first moment of her existence, and thereby, in fact, she never came under the original curse, which consisted in the loss of it. And she had this special privilege, in order to fit her to become the Mother of her and our Redeemer, to fit her mentally, spiritually for it; so that, by the aid of the first grace, she might so grow in grace, that, when the Angel came and her Lord was at hand, she might be "full of grace," prepared as far as a creature could be prepared, to receive Him into her bosom.

Dominica Prima Adventus at the Cathedral in Wichita

Bishop Carl Kemme offered the 10:00 a.m. Mass for the First Sunday of Advent at our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, the Novus Ordo in Latin and Ad Orientem. In fact, the Cathedral will offer most of the Masses during Advent Ad Orientem and provided a pamphlet to explain why. The rector of the Cathedral also made some comments before the dismissal on the use of Latin and Ad Orientem throughout this shortest of Advents: three weeks and day.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent is December 24, so Christmas Eve Masses will be held that night! I guess it's really three weeks and half a day!

We still had the four hymn structure--no Introit or Offertory verses, but we sang Veni, Veni Emmanuel during the Processional and Creator Alme Siderum for the Recessional. The choir sang Jesu Dulcis Memoria during the Offertory and invited us to sing along with O Esca Viatorum at Communion.

O Esca Viatorum has been attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, but since no publication of it is known before the mid to late seventeenth century in Germany, it was more likely composed by anonymous "German Jesuit" as this source notes. It has been translated often, but one translation that pops up is by Athelstan Riley.

Riley (full name John Athelstan Laurie Riley) was born on August 10, 1858 in Bayswater, London and died on November 17, 1945, in Jersey on the Channel Islands:

Riley graduated from Eton and from Pembroke College, Oxford (BA 1881, MA 1883). He helped edit The English Hymnal in 1906, and the revision of the Prayer Book in 1911. For much of his life he was a member of the House of Laity for the Province of Canterbury. At some point he acquired the Manoir de la Trinité in Jersey, and thus became Seigneur of the Island of Jersey. He was on the island when the Germans invaded in World War II, and spent the rest of his life there. Riley’s works include:

• Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks, 1887
• The Religious Question in Public Education, 1911
• Concerning Hymn Tunes and Sequences (London: A. R. Mowbray & Company, Ltd., 1915)

The most common tune for the translation is Innsbruck by Heinrich Isaac with harmonization by J.S. Bach. I don't know what tune the choir sang on Sunday.

Note that when I went to the evening Mass at Blessed Sacrament with my husband, that Mass was offered Ad Orientem as is the custom and one of our Parochial Vicars reviewed the use of Latin for the Ordinary before Mass began. One of the sopranos in the Schola sang the Alma Redemptoris Mater antiphon after Holy Communion. Driving home we had a beautiful view of the Super Moon!

Deo Gratias!

Nicholas Ferrar and Little Gidding

Nicholas Ferrar, friend and publisher of George Herbert and founder of the Little Gidding community, died on December 2, 1637, but his death is remembered in the Church of England today. The Anglican church of St. John in Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, describes his life and his family's retreat to Little Gidding, a community of prayer:

Nicholas Ferrar was the son of a London merchant who was an early member of the Virginia Company, the group which established the American colony in 1607. In 1622 Nicholas succeeded his elder brother John as the company’s Deputy, becoming responsible for its day-to-day administration. In 1624 twin disasters struck; the company was dissolved and John faced a threat of bankruptcy. This turn of events convinced Nicholas and the family that they should renounce worldliness by leaving London and devoting themselves to a life of godliness. Nicholas and John’s widowed mother, Mary, purchased the manor of Little Gidding as part of a deal to rescue John from debt. An outbreak of plague in London in 1625 caused the family to move to Little Gidding more promptly than they had intended. On arrival they found the church used as a barn and the house, uninhabited for 60 years, in need of extensive repair. . . .

The community's devotions were extensive:

In 1626 William Laud, then Bishop of St. David’s but later Archbishop of Canterbury, ordained Nicholas a deacon though Nicholas made clear that he would not proceed to the priesthood. He and the family soon established on weekdays a regular round of prayer based on Archbishop Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. The family processed to the church for these services of matins, the litany, and evensong, which were led by Nicholas. On Sundays Nicholas led the customary matins to which the local children came and afterwards recited the psalms they had learned, for each of which they received a penny. After the recitations were completed, all returned to the church where the Vicar of Great Gidding (Little Gidding’s rector being an absentee) led another service that included a sermon and, once a month, Holy Communion. The psalm children then went back with the family to the house where the family, including old Mrs. Ferrar herself, helped to serve them lunch. When the family had in turn finished their lunch, they walked over the fields to Steeple Gidding for evensong.

Nicholas also began a round of hourly devotions in the house that combined recitation of psalms and readings from the gospels led by members of the family. These were later augmented by nightly vigils in which participants again repeated the psalms.

Little Gidding inspired T.S. Eliot and he meditates upon its spirit in one of his The Four Quartets poems. It seems even more appropriate today to read George Herbert's "Prayer (1)":

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

Mourning Mourne Abbey and Father O'Shea

Our diocese of Wichita, Kansas was blessed by the emigration of several Irish priests to serve in our parishes in the 1950's. As the young parochial vicar mentioned at the Noon Mass on Friday at our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, they came here straight out of seminary in Ireland after their ordination to serve in a new world, without knowing anybody here (except for each other), and dedicated their lives to us.

The oldest priest of the diocese, retired of course, died this week: Father John O'Shea, who was 93 years old when he died and had been a priest of our diocese for 67 years. He visited Ireland often while he could but was devoted to the Catholics of southeast Kansas. He came to Kansas in 1950 and retired as a pastor in 1999.

Scanning his obituary I noticed that he was born in Mourneabbey Parish, County Cork.

Mourneabbey? Mourne Abbey!

Mourne Abbey was a monastery of the Knights Hospitallers of St. John founded in the late 13th century. This website, describing some archaeological work done at the site, offers these details:

The medieval Hospitallers’ preceptory of Mourneabbey is located c. 6KM south of the town of Mallow in North Cork, in the sheltered valley of the Clyda River, a tributary of the Blackwater. Substantial remains of a large church survive, along with overgrown ruins of claustral buildings, all within a walled enclosure, portions of which survive, incorporating two towers. The preceptory appears to be an early thirteenth century foundation; with documentary sources suggesting it existed by at least 1212.

The surviving remains of the church comprise the nave (28m x 8m) and chancel (20m x 6m). Evidence noted during conservation work on the walls indicates that the chancel roof was at a higher level than that of the nave, and there may well have been a crossing tower at the junction of the two. Transept arches survive in the north and south walls of the nave but the transepts themselves have collapsed. Recent limited excavations have suggested that the south transept had an apsidal end. Other small-scale excavations carried out by the present author recovered numerous fragments of medieval decorated floor tiles within the church. A decorated grave-slab located immediately east of the chancel has been identified as a Hospitaller tombstone dating to the early 16th century.

So why is Mourne Abbey in ruins? Because of Henry VIII!

While he was not king of all of Ireland, he did have control over some territory, and where he did, he ordered the monasteries and friaries suppressed. Cambridge University Press has published a book by Father Brendan Bradshaw, a Marist priest, telling the story of this suppression:

Father Bradshaw examines the dissolution of the religious orders in Ireland as an episode of Irish ecclesiastical and political history, and of the English Reformation. He also analyses its relationship to Henry VIII's Irish policy as a whole and to the beginnings of English colonialism. He discusses in detail the state of the religious orders on the eve of suppression, the extent of opposition to the implementation of the suppression policy in all its stages, the secularisation of monastic lands and the results of dissolution for Irish society and for subsequent Irish history. Despite the sensitive issues involved, Catholic, Protestant and academic historians have shown remarkable unanimity in the interpretation of the episode of the dissolution in Ireland. A thorough knowledge of both primary and secondary sources enables Father Bradshaw to challenge many of the conventional assumptions.

Cambridge University Press shares several pages from the book online, including two maps showing Henry VIII's jurisdiction in Ireland and the incredible number of monasteries, convents, and friaries throughout Ireland.

Father John O'Shea, rest in peace!

Blessed Richard Langley, Executed in York

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ writes about today's martyr in his Acts of the English Martyrs:

Richard Longley [Langley], Esq., was taken about the 21st of September in his own house by officers and a large band of soldiers, who had invested it. Among them was a certain Archdeacon (after the manner of the heretics) named Ramesdell, with some magistrates, Gayes, Vaughan, and Bethel, and there were taken with him two priests, who afterwards escaped out of prison. Mr. Longley was of such pleasant manners that he won the friendship of the gaoler, who in spite of his being a malicious heretic could scarcely refrain from tears when he was led out to execution. He was moreover of good family and fortune, yet he despised all these things, and declared before the Judges, that if he had greater riches and a hundred lives, he would willingly spend them all in that cause. 

The accusation against him was that he had relieved the enemies of the Queen (for so they styled God’s priests), whereupon he was urged to beg pardon for his crime of God and of the Queen. He answered with constancy that he had received them as messengers sent by God, and that therefore while he considered he had done an action pleasing to God, he could not admit that he had thereby done any injury to the Queen. This answer so irritated the Judges that they thought him unworthy of any grace, not even was the favour of an honourable burial allowed him, however much his friends begged for it. Permission was even refused for his corpse to be wrapped in the linen shroud he had prepared, and after his body had been thrown into the pit, the bodies of ten thieves were cast in over him. He died by hanging. 

During the whole time of his imprisonment, he was so merry that many wondered at him, for he had always been shy at home, yet when brought out for execution he showed such alacrity of mind as to go to the scaffold even before the Sheriff, as if he were a bridegroom going to his nuptials. He suffered on December the 1st, 1586.

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ was also known as John Hungerford Pollen, Jr. because he was the son of John Hungerford Pollen, Sr.! Pollen, Sr. was a Catholic convert and associate of Blessed John Henry Newman. Pollen, Sr. worked on the church for the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin and on the Birmingham Oratory. Father Pollen was one of ten children and was ordained in 1891; he wrote several books about the English martyrs, including A Jesuit Challenge: Edmund Campion's Debates at the Tower of London in 1581 and The English Catholics in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and died in 1925. He also wrote for the Catholic Encyclopedia, including this substantial article on the Counter-Reformation. More about Father Pollen here from the Jesuits in Britain.

Pope Pius XI beatified Richard Langley among many others in 1929.

The Protomartyr: St. Cuthbert Mayne

St. Cuthbert Mayne is the protomartyr of the seminary priests trained on the Continent who returned to England as missionaries. He was executed--hanged, drawn, and quartered--on November 30, 1577 on rather flimsy evidence, there being no laws yet against Catholic priests entering the country (that is that they weren't automatically traitors by being present in the country having been ordained abroad). According to the Catholic Encyclopedia entry, written before he was canonized among the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI:

Martyr, b. at Yorkston, near Barnstaple, Devonshire (baptized 20 March, 1543-4); d. at Launceston, Cornwall, 29 Nov., 1577. He was the son of William Mayne; his uncle was a schismatical priest, who had him educated at Barnstaple Grammar School, and he was ordained a Protestant minister at the age of eighteen or nineteen. He then went to Oxford, first to St. Alban's Hall, then to St. John's College, where he took the degree of M.A. in 1570. He there made the acquaintance of Blessed Edmund Campion, Gregory Martin, the controversialist, Humphrey Ely, Henry Shaw, Thomas Bramston, O.S.B., Henry Holland, Jonas Meredith, Roland Russell, and William Wiggs. The above list shows how strong a Catholic leaven was still working at Oxford. Late in 1570 a letter from Gregory Martin to Blessed Cuthbert fell into the Bishop of London's hands. He at once sent a pursuivant to arrest Blessed Cuthbert and others mentioned in the letter.

He was ordained in 1575 and came to England with St. John Payne (Payne and Mayne!) in 1576. When Father Cuthbert Mayne was arrested in June, 1577, authorities had some trouble in gathering evidence that corresponded with charges punishable by death:

He was brought to trial in September; meanwhile his imprisonment was of the harshest order. His indictment under statutes of 1 and 13 Elizabeth was under five counts: first, that he had obtained from the Roman See a "faculty", containing absolution of the queen's subjects; second, that he had published the same at Golden; third, that he had taught the ecclesiastical authority of the pope in Launceston Gaol; fourth, that he had brought into the kingdom an Agnus Dei and had delivered the same to Mr. Tregian; fifth, that he had said Mass.

As to the first and second counts, the martyr showed that the supposed "faculty" was merely a copy printed at Douai of an announcement of the Jubilee of 1575, and that its application having expired with the end of the jubilee, he certainly had not published it either at Golden or elsewhere. As to the third count, he maintained that he had said nothing definite on the subject to the three illiterate witnesses who asserted the contrary. As to the fourth count, he urged that the fact that he was wearing an Agnus Dei at the time of his arrest was no evidence that he had brought it into the kingdom or delivered it to Mr. Tregian. As to the fifth count, he contended that the finding of a Missal, a chalice, and vestments in his room did not prove that he had said Mass.

Nevertheless the jury found him guilty of high treason on all counts, and he was sentenced accordingly. His execution was delayed because one of the judges, Jeffries, altered his mind after sentence and sent a report to the Privy Council. They submitted the case to the whole Bench of Judges, which was inclined to Jeffries's view. Nevertheless, for motives of policy, the Council ordered the execution to proceed. On the night of 27 November his cell was seen by the other prisoners to be full of a strange bright light. The details of his martyrdom must be sought in the works hereinafter cited. It is enough to say that all agree that he was insensible, or almost so, when he was disembowelled.

Since he was arrested at Francis Tregian's house, that gentleman was punished:

Tregian was indicted under the Statute of Praemunire prohibiting dissemination of papal bulls. Mayne had a souvenir copy of a proclamation regarding the 1575 Holy Year dispensation, and it was supposed that he intended to give it to Tregian. Tregian was held in the Marshalsea for ten months before being returned to Cornwall for trial. At first the jury would return no verdict, but after threats from the judges a conviction was obtained.

Tregian's death sentence was remitted to imprisonment and his property confiscated. He was incarcerated at Windsor and then in various London prisons for twenty-eight years, eventually winding up at Fleet Prison, where his wife joined him. On the petition of his friends, he was released by King James I. . . .

After his pardon by King James, Tregian retired to Madrid, where he enjoyed a pension from King Philip III of Spain. He died at the Jesuit hospice at St Roque, Lisbon, where he was buried upright under the west pulpit, symbolic of his stand against Queen Elizabeth.

God bless Francis Tregian! St. Cuthbert Mayne, pray for us!

Belloc Sums Up Clement and Cranmer

Anna Mitchell and I will be talking about Hilaire Belloc's chapters on Pope Clement VII and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in Characters of the Reformation on the Son Rise Morning show after 7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central. Please listen live here.

Belloc notes something supernatural about Pope Clement VII's ultimate decision not to grant Henry VIII the annulment/divorce he requested:

We may sum up the situation by saying that if a stronger and more direct mind had been at work in the successor of St. Peter the English schism would have arrived with less loss of honour and moral authority to Rome. But we must add that much as Clement's weakness and shuffling must be regretted, he never passed the boundary beyond which there is abdication or denial of authority. He never compromised the fundamentals of the Papal power and of its awful claim to moral supremacy among men. There is something supernatural in all this. 

We always have to be careful in history not to exaggerate evidence of the supernatural, nor to ascribe to supernatural causes what may legitimately be ascribed to natural ones, but here there seems to be evidence of supernatural guidance. Just one step too far at one moment in Papal history would have compromised the Papacy in the eyes of posterity and have given solid argument against its claims. That moment fell in the reign .of Clement VII. And in that moment the Papacy did not fail, even though the Pope had sailed so very near the wind. Clement just might, at the most critical moment when he was being hardest pressed, bullied, not knowing what to do between the great contending forces of which he was the victim, he just might, I say, have overstepped the limit. He might, for instance, have issued a Bull in which he declared the original Papal power of dispensation for marriage with a sister-in-law to be void. He might have got out of his difficulties by allowing the verdict of the universities to be, not advisory to the Holy See, but upon an equality with it. He might have taken any one of half a dozen steps, each of which would have been, for the first time, an admission by a Pope that the Papacy was not what it was. And, by a sufficient margin, Clement happily was preserved from so fatal an excess of weakness. 

He was preserved from it by that Divine safeguarding of the Church which never fails; but he was also preserved from it by that element in him which, for all his faults, remained strong: a recognition of what was essential to his office.

On Cranmer's ultimate decision--his recantation of other recantations--Belloc is not so sympathetic:

Then, when he had been degraded from his episcopal office and function and condemned, he saw too late that they might really intend to put him to death, though hitherto to execute an Archbishop for heresy was a thing unheard of. He therefore made one recantation after another in the hope of saving his life. These recantations became stronger and stronger as he went along, until at last he wrote out and published one of great length, in which he stretched to the utmost his professions of remorse and penitence. He threw himself upon the Divine Mercy, declared he was not worthy to live, said he deserved his fate, especially as he had led so many into error; and compared himself to the penitent thief on the cross, declaring that he could rely upon nothing but the infinite charity of Christ for such a case as his. 

Up to the last moment he did not know whether these protestations of his had been effectual or not in deceiving the authorities. On the day fixed for the execution he was taken to St. Mary's Church in Oxford for his recantation to be made as public as possible and for a sermon to be preached upon it. The rule was, of course, that on such public recantation the prisoner for heresy was pardoned, and Cranmer had his recantation all ready to read. But while he sat there listening to the sermon preached about him, there came a phrase in that sermon which suddenly destroyed his hopes. The preacher had been told by the Government to announce their decision that they could not pardon Cranmer after all. 

He then did a dramatic thing. He went up to read his recantation, but at the most critical point in it suddenly declared that all he had said in favour of the Church and against his former errors was insincere, and had merely been said in order to save his life! Now that he had to die anyhow he would confess that he was utterly opposed to the Catholic system and the Papacy and all the rest of it.

Of course, Cranmer had already been condemned to death as a traitor for supporting the succession of Lady Jane Grey to the throne. Mary I had delayed the executions of the usurper, her husband, and Cranmer. Belloc is clear that Cranmer would have renounced his Evangelical beliefs if it would have saved his life; only because he realized that renunciation would not save his life would he stand up for them.

Image Credit: Stained glass window depicting the Oxford Martyrs.

Belloc on Pope Clement and Archbishop Cranmer

It's time again to prepare for my every-other week discussion of Hilaire Belloc's Characters of the Reformation with Anna Mitchell on the Son Rise Morning Show. Tomorrow morning after the 7:45 a.m.Eastern time traffic check (6:45 a.m. Central) we will talk about Belloc's views of Pope Clement VII and Thomas Cranmer.

Of Pope Clement VII, Belloc notes:

Clement VII was the Pope of King Henry VIII's divorce. He was reigning over the whole space of that affair, being appointed before the King of England had any intention of getting rid of his wife, and dying after the English schism had been virtually completed and within a very short time of its final and formal completion by the Act of Supremacy. For Henry's idea of getting rid of his legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon (which idea as we have seen was probably more Anne Boleyn's than his own), cannot have arisen, at the very earliest, before 1525. The first (not absolutely certain) documentary allusion to it is in 1526, and overt action only begins in 1527. Now Clement VII was elected to the Papal throne in 1523. . . . He is therefore the man in supreme authority during all the period of the divorce and of the schism.

Very quickly, Belloc comes to the main issue:

Now the prime historical question which his reign arouses is this. Could the position have been saved? Could the Pope, by the exercise of certain virtues or certain intellectual qualities in a fashion different from that which he actually showed, have prevented the loss of England to the unity of the Faith? It is a question of the very first importance to the whole history of Europe for, as I am never tired of repeating, if England had not gone Christendom would still be united and all Europe would be Catholic to-day. 

The answer to this question is not, I think, doubtful. Though Clement was guilty of great weakness and of tortuous policy, though he often sacrificed the spiritual to the temporal, yet he cannot be made responsible for the disaster. Nothing could have prevented the schism save the Pope's pronouncement in favour of a divorce, and that the Pope could not do without flying in the face of Christian law, of which he was the supreme guardian by the nature of his office.

Belloc's analysis of Pope Clement VII's character includes the fact that he was a Medici:

Julius de Medici was made Cardinal and was the right-hand man of his cousin Leo X during the reign. After the brief interval of that very fine reforming character Adrian VI (who, if he had lived, might well have reversed the current and re- united Europe), Julius de Medici was elected at the age of forty-five under the title of Clement VII. 

 He was a man of excellent morals, very great erudition, good manners, perfect refinement, if anything rather too much delicacy of mind and of taste, a splendid patron of the arts and a sure judge of excellence in them. He was also a remarkably hard worker, taking the tremendous duties of his office most seriously. Moreover he was as intelligent as any man in Europe. What he lacked was simplicity, also strength of initiative and power of direction. He lacked both those qualities which make for strong command through what may be called the "squareness" of a character, and those which make for successful command through the moral simplicity of a character. In the face of a difficult and involved position his policy became a tangle of secret and involved intrigues, and he had that fatal symptom of weakness which takes the form of always playing for time. There are, obviously, occasions when playing for time is wise, but Clement VII was one of those men who always play for time, and when they find a decision difficult, say to themselves that with sufficient delay anything may turn up in their favour, and who therefore create delay for its own sake. All his method, from the first mention of the desire for divorce expressed by the English Court up to the very last still hesitating and half tentative declarations against the actions of the English government, consisted in dependence on delay. For seven years he played delay as his only card.

Belloc opines that Clement's choice was to grant the annulment (the decree that Henry and Catherine's marriage had never occurred)--which he could not do with betraying his office--or to have stated absolutely and quickly that the marriage was valid and Henry was to remain with Catherine. Belloc notes that the latter choice would have led to the English Reformation just as surely as what Clement did, which was to delay and delay. In Belloc's opinion, Clement did the best he could--and he claims that Clement's final actions were more in support of Catherine of Aragon's standing as a devout Catholic and true wife than in fear of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and Catherine's nephew.

Belloc begins his chapter on Cranmer by comparing Cromwell and Cranmer, concluding:

Cromwell, by the scale of his intelligence, his under- standing of national and international affairs, his strength of will, tenacity of purpose, grasp of detail — all that marks a great statesman — was almost on the level of Bismarck or Richelieu. His extreme vileness and baseness, his brutality and gross cowardice at the end does not affect this judgment as to his capacity, which he put to such abominable uses. 

But Cranmer showed little intelligence or foresight, was devoid of initiative, accepted through fear the various tasks thrust upon him, was always subservient, and by nature hypocritical and wavering. He did not want to be Chaplain to Anne Boleyn in particular, though no doubt he was glad of the income: he did not want to plead for Henry VIII at Rome: he certainly did not want to be made Archbishop; he took but a petty part in the spoiling of the Church and allowed his own diocese to be spoiled unmercifully. 

After being the mere servant of Henry and ready to belie any conviction of his own at Henry's orders he became the servant of the tyrant Somerset after Henry's death, then the servant of the man who supplanted that tyrant, then it was he who pitifully attempted to save his life under Mary by the most abject denials and repudiation of all that he really had at heart. 

Belloc notes one great quality in Thomas Cranmer:

There was one quality indeed about Cranmer which many have mistaken for greatness; and it is the one which we must linger upon, because error in this matter is so common, not only in his case but in a hundred others. Cranmer had great artistic power. He could frame a sentence of rhythmical and exquisitely beautiful English as no man has been able to do before or since. It is to him that the Anglican Church owes those prayers, "The English Prayerbook", the diction and language of which have given it its strong hold upon the national mind. The Litany of the English Church is his — a wonderful document as far as artistry is concerned; presumably most of the Collects, the translation of the Prefaces of the Mass incorporated into the English service, and many other Catholic prayers similarly incorporated. 

His unique talent was not recognized in his lifetime; its effect upon men's minds came much later; the strong affection which the average Englishman feels for the Book of Common Prayer and its fine phrases dates, not from Cranmer's century but from the next. It is often the case with great artists in prose and verse; they need time to manifest their gifts and these are not apparent until long after they are dead.

But Belloc also warns us against thinking this makes Cranmer great:

Cranmer having such supreme talent, in this one line of writing exquisite prose, a modern habit of mind would make us confuse such talent with real greatness. And it is at this point that I beg the reader to pause and consider how false such an attitude is. Great artistic talent in any direction, as of a poet or a prose writer or a painter or a sculptor or anything else, is hardly inherent to the man; it comes and goes; it is often possessed only for a short phase in his life; it hardly ever colours his character as a whole and has nothing to do with  the moral and intellectual stuff of the mind and soul — by which alone men's intrinsic greatness can be measured. Many great artists, perhaps most great artists, have been poor fellows indeed, whom to know was to despise. 

So it was with Cranmer, and it is further to be remarked that he was one of those artists who can only work in a very limited frame. He wrote great masses of stuff both in Latin and English, plenty of letters, disputations, reports and the rest, most of them turgid and none of them remarkable. He only produced this astonishing prose when he sat down to do it with great care, thinking about every word and concentrating upon the narrow task before him. And, as is always the case with this kind of talent, he only excelled in short passages. With all this it must be remembered that Cranmer stands at the origin of great English prose. He was not only the highest master of it but he was also the chief originator of it. By that alone has he any claims to fame. 

Listen live tomorrow here a little after 6:45 a.m. Central/7:45 a.m. Eastern.

How the French Never Quite Colonized Arkansas

Last year I read this author's study of how different legal systems and codes were administrated in Colonial Arkansas under the French, the Spanish, and during the transition to the United States after the Louisiana Purchase. This book is more comprehensive in its coverage of the colonial era in Arkansas. We are staying far from the location of the Arkansas Post which was always near the Mississippi, but it is still fascinating to read about how the French started moving south from their original settlements near the Saint Lawrence River.

They never quite got the Arkansas Post established and the Jesuits who served there particularly never had the facilities or the time and stability to make any great progress in either serving the settlers or converting the nearby natives, the Quapaw. The Quapaw were good allies of the French, however, because they saw the Chicksaws as common enemies. The settlers at the Arkansas Post were often trappers and hunters; the farmers struggled because of flooding; attacks by the Chickasaws and other tribes caused losses among the military and the settlers, including women and children taken as prisoners.

Arnold is at his best as a writer when discussing law enforcement and administration. He provides fascinating detail, for example, about the differences between notaries public in the U.S.A. today and on the Continent in the colonial era. As a former notary public at a corporation I am familiar with the process of apostille and consulate authentication, often required by foreign governments because they don't recognized the limited authority of the notary public. Arnold points out that notaries in Louisiana have greater legal authority than in the other 49 states.

He does not, however, provide much background on the government representatives mentioned through the years but the book is well illustrated with portraits of them, maps, and other pictures and drawings. Some of the portraits depict men and women of great nobility and personality.

Speaking of the Second Spring

Joseph Pearce highlighted Blessed John Henry Newman's 1852 sermon "The Second Spring" in his first lecture at the the Fall Forum last weekend. He cited this passage:

A great change, an awful contrast, between the time-honoured Church of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, and the poor remnant of their children in the beginning of the nineteenth century! It was a miracle, I might say, to have pulled down that lordly power; but there was a greater and a truer one in store. No one could have prophesied its fall, but still less would any one have ventured to prophesy its rise again. The fall was wonderful; still after all it was in the order of nature;—all things come to nought: its rise again would be a different sort of wonder, for it is in the order of grace,—and who can hope for miracles, and such a miracle as this? Has the whole course of history a like to show? I must speak cautiously and according to my knowledge, but I recollect no parallel to it. Augustine, indeed, came to the same island to which the early missionaries had come already; but they came to Britons, and he to Saxons. The Arian Goths and Lombards, too, cast off their heresy in St. Augustine's age, and joined the Church; but they had never fallen away from her. The inspired word seems to imply the almost impossibility of such a grace as the renovation of those who have crucified to themselves again, and trodden under foot, the Son of God. Who then could have dared to hope that, out of so sacrilegious a nation as this is, a people would have been formed again unto their Saviour? What signs did it show that it was to be singled out from among the nations? Had it been prophesied some fifty years ago, would not the very notion have seemed preposterous and wild?

Pearce noted that Newman's conversion in 1845 brought more converts during his lifetime and then that more converts followed in in the 20th century: some great literary converts: Gerard Manley Hopkins, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Hugh Benson, Siegfried Sassoon, etc.

Henry VIII biographer J.J. Scarisbrick (Dr. James Scarisbrick) proposes that England needs a Third Spring of Catholicism in The Catholic World Report--and not just a literary revival, but a moral, spiritual, and cultural revival to fill the gap of religion in England:

The overall collapse of the Anglican Church and the near-disappearance of Methodism and the other non-Conformists from the national religious scene in recent times have left a huge spiritual vacuum at the heart of English society. Ours is indeed a post-Christian one. An increasingly arrogant neo-paganism is engulfing us.

This is lamentable. But is it not also a God-given opportunity for the English Catholic community to come out of its post-Vatican II diffidence, deference, introversion (call it what you like) and resume what our forefathers began again in 1850: that is, to reclaim our beloved country for the true Church?

Famously, in 1852 John Henry Newman, preaching at a celebration of that restoration of our Hierarchy, spoke of a ‘Second Spring’. This yielded a rich harvest. But now we need a third.

How will this come about?

It will be the apostolate of every Catholic priest, deacon, lay woman and man. We all have to take up this challenge.

Above all it will be the responsibility of our bishops. Hitherto unseen and unheard by the outside world, they have to come out from the sidelines – to become the nation’s spiritual leaders, heirs to the likes of Anselm, Becket, and John Fisher.

They must proclaim the good news that God loves us and longs for us to love him; that his Son has re-opened the gates of Heaven for and we can all pass through them if we want to; that the seven sacraments have been given to us to enable us to do so.

The same is true of the USA and every nation where Catholics live. We have Good News to tell and we should tell it!

Image: bust/shrine of Blessed John Henry Newman in New York City, copyright 2011-2017 Stephanie A. Mann.