"The Lord's Prayer" and Henry the Eighth

There has been quite a lot of confusion about changes to the translation of the Pater Noster in the Roman Rite for the dioceses of Italy. The headlines for the stories usually indicate that Pope Francis has changed the wording of the Lord's Prayer and indignation ensues: "He can't make me change the way I say the Our Father! How dare he? Who does he think he is?".

What's even more confusing is that even excellent clarifications of the matter use English to explain how the Italian bishops have revised the Latin of the Roman Missal into Italian! or how the French bishops did so for their vernacular edition of the Roman Missal!

This past weekend I attended four sessions of the Eighth Day Institute (EDI) Florovsky-Newman Week. Each began with the EDI Convocation including the Nicene Creed (without the filioque), a morning or evening prayer, and the Lord's Prayer. Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox pray together, but not really, because Catholics don't add the Doxology and Protestants and Orthodox don't say exactly the same Doxology!

But as this blog explains, Protestants have different versions of the Lord's Prayer among them too:

Have you ever been a little confused when it comes to saying the Lord’s Prayer in a church service?

I remember when I first visited an evangelical church, that did not have a fixed, liturgical tradition. When it came to reciting the Lord’s Prayer, one group was still saying, “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us….,” while the other group had finished their, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…,” several seconds earlier. The “debtors” waited patiently until “trespassers,” like me, had finished, before continuing together.

Clarke Morledge goes on to explain why these variations in English Protestant translation exist. Blame it first on Henry VIII:

King Henry VIII, the boisterous regent of England, had broken away from the Pope, regarding the dispute over what Henry considered to be his unlawful marriage. The Catholic leader refused to grant Henry an annulment, so Henry declared himself to be the supreme head of the Church of England. But what would this breakaway church from Rome look like?

What Henry wanted to do was to standardize on a form of Christian instruction and congregational worship in the language of the people, English, and not in Latin, that formed the backbone of the Roman Mass. A standardized form of the Lord’s Prayer in English was part of Henry’s plans, and he enlisted Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to execute those plans.

Even Henry changes his mind about which version to use, as he adopts some parts of William Tyndale's translation. Henry did not like Tyndale since he opposed Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon, but he did consider Tyndale's version of Lord's Prayer had some merit. But Cranmer encouraged him to stick with the first version they'd decided on, according to the blog.

Then King James I creates some more confusion with the Authorized Version:

The story takes an interesting turn from there, during the early 17th century reign of King James. King James agreed upon having a formal revision of the English Bible, what became the so-called “Authorized” King James Version (KJV), in 1611. Here is Matthew 6:9-13 in the KJV:

Our Father which art in heaven, 

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come, 

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Notice the subtle change that the King James translators did by substituting “debts” for “trespasses,” etc. . . .

So, why did the King James translators change Tyndale’s “trespasses” in Matthew to “debts,” and leave us all befuddled in reciting the Lord’s Prayer for centuries? The King James translators chose the word “debts,” because it was a more literal reading of the original Greek.

We Catholics actually use Henry VIII's translation at Mass today with changes as described in this article from the EWTN Library:

Later, the Catholic Church made slight modifications in the English: "who art" replaced "which art," and "on earth" replaced "in earth." 

At Mass, we add the Doxology after the Priest prays this after we've recited the Our Father:

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

And the congregation replies:

For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and for ever.  

AMEN.

(Except that we don't say Amen until after another prayer! This leads some Catholics when praying the Our Father outside of Mass--during public recitation of the Rosary, for example--to leave the Amen off at the end of the prayer. Usually when they pray the Our Father out loud--at Mass--they don't end the prayer with Amen.)

Authority in the Church

Image Credit: Christ Pantocrator in the church of Santa Pudenziana in Rome, 

Roman mosaic, c. 410 AD

Today is the last day of the Second Annual EDI Florovsky-Newman Week, held today at St. George's Orthodox Christian Cathedral. We have been meeting since Wednesday evening on the campus of Newman University and have been discussing this theme:

The Patristic View of Authority: Bible, Pope, or Conciliarity?

Co-sponsored by Eighth Day Institute and the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies, the Florovsky-Newman Week promotes a “return to the sources for Christian unity.” Heeding Fr. Florovsky's advice, rather than simply overlooking differences, this conference seeks to overcome the different views of church authority. And we do so by returning to the common Tradition, by learning to read the Fathers as living masters, rather than as historical documents. Our hope is for you to deepen your understanding of the authority by which the Church grounds her faith and morals, examining authority from our respective traditions as Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians. Join us for this unique event as we dive into the Church Fathers in order to explore, challenge, and encourage one another to better love God and neighbor.

On Thursday and Friday mornings, we had academic papers on various topics about authority in East and West. I presented one on Newman and Papal Infallibility At least two students at Newman who are also in seminary training for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita gave papers, and we heard from Lutheran and Orthodox presenters--even a Mormon (the discussion of the Great Apostasy, though necessarily brief, was fascinating and disconcerting)! In the evenings, the plenary speakers, Lutheran and Catholic, presented their papers, and their counterparts responded to them--today the Orthodox speaker will make his presentation.

It has been a great short week or long weekend of presentations, conversations, lunch, fellowship and shopping at Eighth Day Books! More on this event again.

Newman and Education: The Idea of a University

Newman and Education is the theme of our discussion this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show (7:50 a.m Eastern.6:50 a.m. Central). Anna Mitchell and I will continue our Santo Subito! series leading up to Blessed John Henry Newman's canonization later this year (perhaps in October?). Please listen live here.

These introductory paragraphs from a Cardinal Newman Society post summarize Newman's educational career very well, since they are written by Father Ian Ker, who wrote a great biography of Newman:

In 1863, sixty-two-year-old John Henry Newman wrote, “from first to last, education … has been my line.” His career at Oxford had begun with his election in 1822 to a fellowship at Oriel College, “at that time the object of ambition of all rising men in Oxford.” After that he “never wished any thing better or higher than … ‘to live and die a fellow of Oriel.’”[1] In fact, the Oxford or Tractarian Movement might never have begun but for Newman’s dispute with the Provost of Oriel over the role of a college tutor, Newman wanting, as a pioneer of the Oxford tutorial system that was to develop later, a more direct, personal teaching relationship with undergraduates. As a result of being deprived of his tutorship, his teaching career at Oxford—in which his “heart was wrapped up”—came to an end, and he turned to research into the Church Fathers and the history of the early Church. After becoming a Catholic, he was opposed to the restoration of the English hierarchy on the ground that “we want seminaries far more than sees. We want education.”[2]

So when the chance came of helping to found the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin, he jumped at it, since he had “from the very first month of my Catholic existence … wished for a Catholic University.” Later, he was naturally attracted by the idea of founding the Oratory School in Birmingham; as an educational work, it fell “under those objects, to which I have especially given my time and thought.” And as an old man of sixty-three, he so enjoyed filling in for an absent teacher that he declared that, “if I could believe it to be God’s will, [I] would turn away my thoughts from ever writing any thing, and should see, in the superintendence of these boys, the nearest return to my Oxford life.” He was proud to claim that the school had “led the way in a system of educational improvement on a large scale through the Catholic community.”[3]

Newman's foundation of the Catholic University of Ireland and the discourses he presented in Dublin to describe the kind of educational experience he wanted to develop there resulted in The Idea of a University, one of his greatest works. He envisions--because he had experienced it at Oxford--a university as a place of universal knowledge. 

He believed it was a community of scholars and students: the idea of community was important to him and the image some present of Newman as a reclusive scholar in an ivory tower is false. He thought that students helped each other learn, understand concepts, apply their knowledge, etc. He thought the tutors and teachers in the university community benefited from living in community too.

He believed a university taught more than knowledge as points of data: it taught students how to think, how to learn about something, how to apply the skills of research and understanding to any subject they encountered. He called this a cultivation of mind that gave the students a connected view of all things, a philosophical method for understanding and progressing in knowledge.

He believed a university had to teach Theology: Theology is a body of knowledge that must be included in the curriculum of a university--not comparative religion, not religious studies, not the Bible as literature, not the culture of religion, etc--as a subject with a body of knowledge. Newman argued that even Natural Theology is based upon knowledge: once you admit that God exists, you must study what that means for humanity. Once you admit that God has revealed Himself, and has revealed that He has become Incarnate among us in time as a Man, you must study what this fact means to human history, to morality, and to society.

If a university leaves Theology out of its curriculum another subject will take its place: science, or literature, or economics, or aesthetics will serve as the organizing basis of all the knowledge presented at the university. Once God and what we know of Him from Creation and Revelation is eliminated, something man made will take its place.

This is a great challenge to all the secular universities here in the USA: they do not teach Theology as a body of knowledge. Even Catholic colleges and universities struggle with teaching Theology as Newman envisioned it, being part of all the other sciences and subjects, influencing how ethics and morality are taught, how the natural and social sciences are researched and developed, how the students learn to think and see the world. A Catholic college or university can have an excellent and faithful Theology department but what it teaches may not be integrated into the rest of the subjects at all. They could be taught as if the truths of God's Creation and Revelation mean nothing to them or the students. I think that Newman would say that neither a secular university nor such a compartmentalized Catholic university was teaching its students true knowledge or the true philosophical method of thinking and learning.

Newman also offered a great warning: even a complete university education with Theology in its proper place has its limits. It can produce what he called a gentleman, it may or may not produce a saint.

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with silken thread; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man. 

That's why the first thing he built at the Catholic University of Ireland in Dublin was the university chapel: Mary, Seat of Wisdom. Only the Grace of God can "contend against those giants, the passion and the pride of man."

Preview: Newman and Education

On Monday, June 3, Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim and I will continue our Santo Subito! Newman series on the Son Rise Morning Show with a discussion of Newman and Education (about 7:50 a.m. Eastern DST/6:50 a.m. Central DST).

In the first half of his life, the Anglican half, Newman participated as a student, tutor, and fellow in England's great educational institutions. He lived and studied at Great Ealing School in London and then at Trinity College at the University of Oxford. Famously, he barely passed his final exams, having overworked and crammed too much in preparation, nevertheless, he was selected as tutor and fellow at Oriel College.

At the same time he had been preparing for ordination in the Church of England. As a minister and a tutor, Newman felt he had a pastoral and clerical obligation to his students, not merely academic. When conflict arose about this idea, he resigned as tutor and remained as fellow.

Newman loved Oxford; he hoped to spend his whole life there. In his novel Loss and Gain, Charles Reading reflects Newman's affection:

There lay old Oxford before him, with its hills as gentle and its meadows as green as ever. At the first view of that beloved place he stood still with folded arms, unable to proceed. Each college, each church—he counted them by their pinnacles and turrets. The silver Isis, the grey willows, the far-stretching plains, the dark groves, the distant range of Shotover, the pleasant village where he had lived with Carlton and Sheffield—wood, water, stone, all so calm, so bright, they might have been his, but his they were not. Whatever he was to gain by becoming a Catholic, this he had lost; whatever he was to gain higher and better, at least this and such as this he never could have again. He could not have another Oxford, he could not have the friends of his boyhood and youth in the choice of his manhood. He mounted the well-known gate on the left, and proceeded down into the plain. There was no one to greet him, to sympathise with him; there was no one to believe he needed sympathy; no one to believe he had given up anything; no one to take interest in him, to feel tender towards him, to defend him. He had suffered much, but there was no one to believe that he had suffered. He would be thought to be inflicting merely, not undergoing, suffering. He might indeed say that he had suffered; but he would be rudely told that every one follows his own will, and that if he had given up Oxford, it was for a whim which he liked better than it. But rather, there was no one to know him; he had been virtually three years away; three years is a generation; Oxford had been his place once, but his place knew him no more. He recollected with what awe and transport he had at first come to the University, as to some sacred shrine; and how from time to time hopes had come over him that some day or other he should have gained a title to residence on one of its ancient foundations. One night in particular came across his memory, how a friend and he had ascended to the top of one of its many towers with the purpose of making observations on the stars; and how, while his friend was busily engaged with the pointers, he, earthly-minded youth, had been looking down into the deep, gas-lit, dark-shadowed quadrangles, and wondering if he should ever be Fellow of this or that College, which he singled out from the mass of academical buildings. All had passed as a dream, and he was a stranger where he had hoped to have had a home.

As Newman wrote in the Apologia pro Vita Sua:

I left Oxford for good on Monday, February 23, 1846. On the Saturday and Sunday before, I was in my House at Littlemore simply by myself, as I had been for the first day or two when I had originally taken possession of it. I slept on Sunday night at my dear friend's, Mr. Johnson's, at the Observatory. Various friends came to see the last of me; Mr. Copeland, Mr. Church, Mr. Buckle, Mr. Pattison, and Mr. Lewis. Dr. Pusey too came up to take leave of me; and I called on Dr. Ogle, one of my very oldest friends, for he was my private Tutor, when I was an Undergraduate. In him I took leave of my first College, Trinity, which was so dear to me, and which held on its foundation so many who have [Note 123] been kind to me both when I was a boy, and all through my Oxford life. Trinity had never been unkind to me. There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.

On the morning of the 23rd I left the Observatory. I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen from the railway. [Note 124]

Newman did return to Oxford in 1878 when Trinity College offered him its first honorary fellowship: he met with his old tutor, Thomas Short, who was 90; visited Pusey and Keble College. He returned again in May of 1880 after being named a Cardinal.

One of Wolsey's Predecessors: Thomas Rotherham

Image Credit

Yesterday, we celebrated Blessed Margaret Pole, survivor of the Wars of the Roses and martyr during Henry VIII's English Reformation. Today, some biographical information about a Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of York at the end of those Wars and the beginning of the Tudor Dynasty, Thomas Rotherham, from the Dictionary of National Biography. He was Keeper of the Privy Seal and Lord Chancellor for King Edward IV and concelebrated his Funeral Mass, and then he sided with Edward's widow and heirs:

Rotherham's fidelity to Elizabeth led to the forfeiture of the chancellorship. At the death of Edward IV (9 April 1483) the vantage of power seemed in the queen and her kindred. Before the month closed the boy king was in Gloucester's hands, the queen's brother, Lord Rivers, and her son, Lord Grey, were imprisoned, and the queen herself was seeking sanctuary. Lord Hastings assured Rotherham that there was no danger to the young king, and that all would be well. ‘Be it as well as it will,’ was Rotherham's reply, ‘it will never be as well as we have seen it.’ He hastened with his retinue of servants in the middle of the night to the queen, and found her sitting on the rushes among the trunks and household stuff for her use in sanctuary. Rotherham assured her of his loyalty, declared that if anything should happen to the young king he would crown the next brother, the Duke of York, who was still with the queen, and, as the greatest proof of faithfulness he could give, put the great seal into her hands. This surrender was of course indefensible, and after a few hours' reflection he sent for the seal again. But for his action that night he was deprived of office before the end of May, and on 13 June, concurrently with the hurried and brutal execution of Hastings, he was thrown into prison. In some editions of the ‘History of Richard III’ assigned to Sir Thomas More, and in Holinshed's and Stowe's ‘Chronicles,’ Rotherham appears as a consenting party to the next move of the Duke of Gloucester, by which he gained the delivery of the little Duke of York out of his mother's hands in sanctuary through Bourchier the archbishop of Canterbury; but the actual date of that transaction (16 June) given by the Croyland continuator proves that Rotherham was then in prison. After the coronation of Richard at the beginning of July he was released. But he took no share in the splendid reception of the king and queen shortly afterwards at York. According to the York register, although Richard lodged at the archbishop's palace, Rotherham himself was not present, the bishop of Durham being the officiating prelate (, Hist. of the Metropolitan Church of York, pp. 260–1). He did not wholly withdraw from public affairs. He appears as one of the commissioners at Nottingham for managing a marriage ‘between the Prince of Scottes and one of the Kinge's blood’ (1484), and was among the triers of petitions in the parliaments of Richard and Henry VII until 1496. He attended, although ‘not in pontificals,’ the creation of Henry (afterwards Henry VIII) as Duke of York, and at the three days' jousts which followed (1494) (Gairdner, Letters … illustrative of the Reigns of Richard and Henry VII, pp. 64, 393, 403).

Rotherham ranks among the great benefactors of the two English universities. Oxford lay within his diocese of Lincoln, and he was visitor of Lincoln College. At the time of his first visitation (1474) the college was in great distress. Through the carelessness of a scribe the charter it had received from Edward IV about twelve years before had been so drawn that the crown claimed to resume its grants to it. In the course of a sermon before the bishop, the rector, or one of the fellows, described the desolate condition of the college, and appealed to him for help. Rotherham's response was immediate and thorough. For the present needs of the college he made it an annual grant of 5l. for his life. He afterwards built the southern side of the quadrangle. He impropriated the benefices of Long Combe and Twyford to the endowment; obtained from Edward IV a larger charter, which confirmed the college perpetually in its old rights of property, and in 1480 gave the college a new body of statutes. For these great services he was styled the second founder of Lincoln; his portrait, now removed, was placed in the Bodleian among the benefactors of Oxford and another portrait, in cope and mitre, with a crosier in his hand—the gift, according to tradition, of Bishop Saunderson—hangs in the college hall at Lincoln (Clark, The Colleges of Oxford, pp. 171–6). Cambridge, Rotherham's own university, chose him several times her chancellor (1469, 1473, 1475, 1478, 1483), and petitioned Gloucester to release him from captivity in 1483. The completion of the schools, which had been proceeding slowly for several years, was due to his munificence. The eastern front, with its noble gateway, and the library on its first floor, enriched by him with two hundred volumes, were his special work. His arms also are still visible on the tower of St. Mary's, which he helped to repair (Guest, Rotherham, p. 94; Robert Willis, Architectural Hist. of Cambridge, ed. Clark, iii. 13–15). He was elected also master of Pembroke Hall (1480), and held the office for six years, and perhaps longer (Wrenn MS.)

He died on the 29th of May in 1500. He appears in Shakespeare's Richard III, Act 2, Scene 4. His speech ends the scene:

My gracious lady, go;
And thither bear your treasure and your goods.
For my part, I'll resign unto your grace
The seal I keep: and so betide to me
As well I tender you and all of yours!
Come, I'll conduct you to the sanctuary.

Blessed Margaret Pole, Pray for Us!

Blessed Margaret Pole's early life was greatly affected by the dynastic battles of the Wars of the Roses; her adult life by the English Reformation, and she would die because of her clear loyalty to the universal Catholic faith. She was martyred on May 27, 1541, but her feast day is May 28 since St. Augustine of Canterbury is honored on May 27.

She was born Margaret Plantagenet, the niece of Edward IV and Richard III; her father was George, the Duke of Clarence and her mother Lady Isabel Neville, the Duchess of Clarence. Since her father was attainted a traitor during the reign of Edward IV, so the family lost their lands; she and her surviving sibling, Edward, were also removed from the line of succession by Richard III. Her mother had died when she was three; her father when she was five.

With the fall of Richard III and the House of York, she was in greater danger. Her brother Edward Plantagenet was imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1485 to 1499, when he was executed. Henry VII arranged her marriage to Sir Reginald Pole about 1491 and she bore four sons, including the future Reginald Cardinal Pole, and one daughter. Margaret was widowed in 1504 and had to live with the nuns of Syon Abbey for a time because of the loss of her husband's income. When Henry VIII succeeded he named her the Countess of Salisbury, restored her family's lands, and appointed her governess to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon. 

In loyalty to Catherine, she opposed Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, and the king exiled her from court, although he had called her “the holiest woman in England.” When her son, Reginald Pole, denied Henry’s Act of Supremacy, she remonstrated with him and tried to assure the king that she repudiated his treason completely.

In 1538, her son Henry Pole, Lord Montague was executed for treason and her other surviving son, Geoffrey was also arrested and found guilty of treason and was pardoned, but the king imprisoned Margaret in the Tower of London for two years and then had her beheaded on May 27, 1541. She was never given a legal trial, but included in an Act of Attainder that accused many of treason on quite flimsy grounds, mostly on the suspicion of opposing the King's religious supremacy. Margaret Pole was devoted to the Five Wounds of Jesus; the Pilgrimage of Grace proceeded under banners emblazoned with the Five Wounds of Jesus; therefore, the flawed logic was that her devotion proved her support of  rebellion. Never mind that devotion to the Five Wounds of Jesus was popular throughout England in the 16th century. Her sons' opposition to Henry's marital and ecclesial efforts was enough. She rightly protested against the lack of due process and there are various reports about how horrible her execution was: certainly the headsman was incompetent.

She was seventy when she was martyred in 1541. Margaret was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. She is buried in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Margaret Pole had planned a resting place for herself in what is now Christchurch Priory in what was, before 1539, an Augustinian Priory, in the Salisbury Chantry, where Masses would be said for the repose of her soul. More on her life and times here. Her daughter Ursula had married Henry Stafford, who was the eldest son of Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham executed on May 17, 1521 for treason. Ursula and Henry survived the double blows of two parents beheaded for treason against Henry VIII, and Stafford was named Baron Stafford during the reign of Edward VI. One of their sons, Thomas, would also lose his head after participating in the Wyatt Rebellion against Mary I.

Blessed Margaret Pole's other son, Reginald Cardinal Pole, returned to England in 1554 to reconcile the English church and nation to the Catholic Church and the Papacy, becoming the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. He died two years later and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral. You may read my review of her standard biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce here. I also reviewed a more recent biography by Susan Higginbotham here.

One of my favorite passages from a book about Blessed Margaret Pole comes from Dom David Knowles' Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits. In the chapter on William More, the Prior of Worcester, he describes a visit of Princess Mary, Margaret Pole, and her sons, except for Reginald:

The imagination rests for a moment on the guest-hall at Worcester that year. England in 1526 must still have been a settled country with the future predictable, when Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell were still in private places, and the sword that was to divide kinsmen so sharply lay still sheathed. Yet the four visitors who sat there with the prior were all to know sorrow, and were all in their fashion to suffer, or to cause suffering, for their faith. The Countess and her elder son were to perish at the hands of the executioner, while the younger son was to die in exile haunted by the disaster that he had helped to cause. They must often have spoken of the absent brother, Reginald, also in part to be the cause of their fate, who was himself to die, a prince of the Church, on the same day as the little girl, his cousin, each of them alone in the new, harsh world which they had hoped to sweeten, but had only the more embittered.

I do not think that Blessed Margaret Pole had really done anything to embitter the world. It had been harsh when she was born and she had tried to sweeten it through her faith, her devotion to the Princess Mary, and her efforts to remain loyal to both Henry VIII and the Catholic Church.

Blessed Margaret Pole, pray for us!

St. Augustine of Canterbury and Ecumenical Gifts

St. Augustine of Canterbury's Grave in the 

Ruins of the Abbey Church of his Monastery

Image Credit

Since today is the feast of St. Augustine of Canterbury, it seems appropriate to post some comments on the gifts given to the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury by Pope Paul VI and Pope Francis, noted in this article in The Catholic Herald. When Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in 1966, Pope Paul gave him a gift of a ring from his own finger:

Many Anglo-Catholics inferred that the ring was the Pope’s way of tacitly repudiating Pope Leo XIII’s papal bull Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void”. Whatever Paul VI meant by it, it was a dramatic gesture of the kind of recognition of Christian brotherhood that was described by Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, from 1964. The two men issued a common declaration, and an official Anglican-Catholic dialogue was born. At a celebration in Rome in 2016 to mark the 50th anniversary of the event, Pope Francis gave Archbishop Justin Welby a replica of the crozier of St Gregory the Great, who commissioned Augustine, later the first Archbishop of Canterbury, to re-Christianise Britain in 595.

Gift-giving has become expected. But ecumenism between Catholics and Anglicans has not succeeded in the way Ramsey and his generation originally imagined.

According to this article, Ramsey was quite moved by the gesture and wore the ring for the rest of his life. Subsequent Archbishops of Canterbury have worn the ring when meeting with the Pope. The article includes a picture of the ring.

The author of The Catholic Herald article is a former Episcopalian priest, Andrew Petiprin. He cites a comment that Ramsey made about Newman that surprised me:

For those still committed to the success of dialogue in bringing about corporate reconciliation, however, individual defections from the Anglican Communion to the Catholic Church are deemed unfortunate. By the end of his life, Ramsey went so far as to tell American seminarians about the “final tragedy” of John Henry Newman’s conversion in 1845. He regarded Newman as having made a selfish, pre-ecumenical mistake in leaving behind the English Church of his baptism and ordination. Strangely, Ramsey imagined the way for Newman to solve the dilemma of not feeling Catholic enough was to double down on being more Anglican. “He had not quite got historic Anglicanism into his bones,” he said, “and he came to it rather as one who is fulfilling deep personal needs of his own.”

As I've been preparing for my Newman presentation at the Eighth Day Institute's Florovsky-Newman week the first week of June, I'd reread Henry Cardinal Manning's opinion of Newman, which flatly contradicts Ramsey:

"I see much danger of an English Catholicism of which Newman is the highest type. It is the old Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone transplanted into the Church." (Ian Ker, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 609).

Newman became a Catholic, not for some selfish reason, but because he believed the Catholic Church was the one, true fold of Christ, the Church Jesus had established. Like St. Augustine of Canterbury, he was a Catholic because, as Andrew Petiprin's book title says, Truth Matters.

St. Augustine of Canterbury, pray for us!

The First Vatican Council and Infallibility

From Harvard University Press:

The enduring influence of the Catholic Church has many sources—its spiritual and intellectual appeal, missionary achievements, wealth, diplomatic effectiveness, and stable hierarchy. But in the first half of the nineteenth century, the foundations upon which the church had rested for centuries were shaken. In the eyes of many thoughtful people, liberalism in the guise of liberty, equality, and fraternity was the quintessence of the evils that shook those foundations. At the Vatican Council of 1869–1870, the church made a dramatic effort to set things right by defining the doctrine of papal infallibility.

In Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, John W. O’Malley draws us into the bitter controversies over papal infallibility that at one point seemed destined to rend the church in two. Archbishop Henry Manning was the principal driving force for the definition, and Lord Acton was his brilliant counterpart on the other side. But they shrink in significance alongside Pope Pius IX, whose zeal for the definition was so notable that it raised questions about the very legitimacy of the council. Entering the fray were politicians such as Gladstone and Bismarck. The growing tension in the council played out within the larger drama of the seizure of the Papal States by Italian forces and its seemingly inevitable consequence, the conquest of Rome itself.

Largely as a result of the council and its aftermath, the Catholic Church became more pope-centered than ever before. In the terminology of the period, it became ultramontane.

The Contents:

Introduction
1. Catholicism and the Century of Lights
2. The Ultramontane Movement
3. The Eve of the Council
4. Under Way and Moving toward Dei Filius
5. Infallibility
Conclusion
Appendix: English Translation of Pastor Aeternus
Basic Chronology
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

I've read Father O'Malley's book on Trent and really look forward to another book that's forthcoming, When Bishops Meet about Trent, Vatican I and II.

Why I read this book now: the Eighth Day Institute's second annual theological conference, this year called the "Florovsky-Newman Week", takes up the subject of authority in the Christian Church. The title and description:

The Patristic View of Authority: Bible, Pope, or Conciliarity?

Co-sponsored by Eighth Day Institute and the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies, the Florovsky-Newman Week promotes a “return to the sources for Christian unity.” Heeding Fr. Florovsky's advice, rather than simply overlooking differences, this conference seeks to overcome the different views of church authority. And we do so by returning to the common Tradition, by learning to read the Fathers as living masters, rather than as historical documents. Our hope is for you to deepen your understanding of the authority by which the Church grounds her faith and morals, examining authority from our respective traditions as Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians. Join us for this unique event as we dive into the Church Fathers in order to explore, challenge, and encourage one another to better love God and neighbor.

Note the addition of Blessed John Henry Newman to the title (last year it was just "Florovsky Week"!):

Soon to be St. John Henry Newman, this 19th century educator, poet, pastor, and theologian is considered by many to be the most important (and controversial) figure in the history of England. As a leader in the Oxford Movement, his immersion in the early Tradition of the Church, especially the Church Fathers, led to his conversion from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Cited frequently by Fr. Georges Florovsky, a case can be made that Newman's emphasis on the Fathers was key to the development of Florovsky's ecumenical proposal for a neopatristic synthesis.

As at last year's event, three speakers, one Catholic, one Protestant, and one Orthodox, will make presentations in the evening and weekend plenary sessions. The other speakers will respond: the Catholic and the Orthodox to the Protestant speaker, etc. During the day there are academic paper sessions, time for prayer, meetings at Eighth Day Books, etc. The banquet and presentations on Wednesday through Friday are at Newman University; on Saturday, we move to St. George Orthodox Cathedral.

So anyway, this book is part of my preparation--I've submitted a proposal for a paper, but I haven't received notice officially that it's been accepted--for the conference.

Father O'Malley devotes three of the five chapters to the background of the First Vatican Council, the first Church Council since Trent in the 16th century. He reviews the political and culture situation in Europe, especially in Italy, where the Pope's temporal authority over the Papal States and Rome was in danger in the drive for Italian unity and nationhood. He examines the relationship between Church and the nations in Europe, especially trends like Gallicanism,  Febronianism, and Josephinism through which the state or the ruler controlled education, formation of priests, selection of bishops, monastic and religious foundations, etc. O'Malley's survey in those three chapters thus begins in the eighteenth century, explores the grassroots origins of the Ultramontane movement--meaning grassroots from the laity, to the priesthood, to the academic world, and to the episcopacy--and the pontificate of Pope Pius IX (including the history of the treatment of the popes personally during the revolutionary movements of France and Italy).

As Deal Hudson points out in his interview with Father O'Malley from April 2018, Pope Pius IX (Pio Nino) does not come off very well in the narration of the events at the First Vatican Council. He and Archbishop Manning and others in the majority Ultramontane party do things that range from the manipulative to the vindictive. They were already in the majority; there was going to be some statement on Papal Infallibility from the Council; they did not need to treat certain bishops so abusively. The two chapters on the events of the Council also point out how much the press, Catholic and secular, especially Louis Veuillot's Univers, not only covered, but influenced the Council. At the same time, Lord Acton, William Gladstone, and Johann Dollinger were gathered (as shown in the picture above) to talk about the Council and its activities, trying to lobby against a decree on Papal Infallibility.

In his Conclusion Father O'Malley discusses the aftermath of the First Vatican Council, including, all too briefly I think, Newman's response to Gladstone's overreaction to Pastor Aeternus. In his interview with Deal Hudson, O'Malley opines that since the decree on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there has been no exercise of Papal Infallibility in matters of faith and morals. But the Church has been more centered on the role of the Pope in the everyday lives of Catholics, with Papal documents, speeches, travels, audiences, etc. One could also argue that the greatest event of the twentieth century for Catholics was the Second Vatican Council, which changed many aspects of daily Catholic life on the local, not Papal, level. Father O'Malley doesn't discuss this, but the long papacy of Pope Saint John Paul II also changed Catholics' view of the pope's role in our lives: his travels, his theological and philosophical influence, the saints he canonized, the reforms he instituted (Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, World Youth Day, the Synods of Bishops, etc), his great project of the celebration of the Third Millennium of Christianity, have formed our image of what a pope should be and do.

Father O'Malley is great historian and writer. He uses the sources well; writes succinctly and clearly; analyses cogently.

Highly recommended: except that I think he should have dedicated a few paragraphs to show how Newman's response to Gladstone formed the mainline interpretation of Papal Infallibility and authority.

Note that I purchased my copy of this book.

Et In Arcadia Ego: Sweeney's Southwell

As Gary Bouchard comments in his recently published study of St. Robert Southwell, SJ, it is sad that Anne R. Sweeney died too soon (of cancer) to continue her work on Southwell's life and poetry. She alludes to her illness in the Introduction of this book, Robert Southwell: Snow in Arcadia: redrawing the English lyric landscape, 1586-1595, published by Manchester University Press but distributed by Oxford University Press, which describes Sweeney's achievement in this book thus:

It has traditionally been held that Robert Southwell's poetry offers a curious view of Elizabethan England, one that is from the restricted perspective of a priest-hole. This book dismantles that idea by examining the poetry, word by word, discovering layers of new meanings, hidden emblems, and sharp critiques of Elizabeth's courtiers, and even of the ageing queen herself.

Using both the most recent edition of Southwell's poetry and manuscript materials, it addresses both poetry and private writings including letters and diary material to give dramatic context to the radicalisation of a generation of Southwell's countrymen and women, showing how the young Jesuit harnessed both drama and literature to give new poetic poignancy to their experience.

Bringing a rigorously forensic approach to Southwell's 'lighter' pieces, Sweeney can now show to what extent Southwell engaged exclusively through them in direct artistic debate with Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare, placing the poetry firmly in the English landscape familiar to Southwell's generation. Those interested in early modern and Elizabethan culture will find much of interest, including new insights into the function of the arts in the private Catholic milieu touched by Southwell in so many ways and places.

The contents of the book:

Preface and acknowledgements

Introduction: Ben Jonson's admiration for Southwell's 'Burning Babe'
1. Rome: the discernment of angels
2. The 'Spiritual Exercises': the 'inward eie'
3. Hidden ways and secret veins: into England
4. The flight of angels: England's altered confidence
5. Snow in Arcadia: rewriting the English lyric landscape
6. Southwell's war of words
7. The 'performing Word': Southwell's sacralised poetic
8. Conclusion

Bibliography 

Index

Sweeney comments in her preface on her limitations and those who helped her overcome them:

Stonyhurst College kindly made its Library available to my studies, its late librarian, Father Turner, S.J., and the late Bishop Foley, contributing much at the outset to a project that I was so very less qualified than they to embark upon. I am also very grateful that Father Thomas McCoog, S.J., of Mount Street, took the time to look over and comment on aspects of the work, which has, in any case, called much upon his expertise in this area. If I have committed any solecisms against the belief systems of the bodies represented by these gentlemen, it is unintentional, and regretted. I have been acutely aware from the outset that, in discussing a saint from outside the boundaries of religious studies, I was on the thinnest of ice. I hope it is evident that I am addressing discoursal and literary issues only: St. Robert Southwell is beyond all comment spiritually, but as a poet and an Englishman he earned his garlands, I believe. 'Muse not,' as he said, 'to see some mud in cleerest brooke / They once were brittle mould, that now are Saintes.'

Notwithstanding her statement, as I read her study of Southwell I appreciated his religious faith and spirituality more and more. His great efforts to comfort Catholics, reach out to those who had fallen away, confront the state authorities, and challenge other poets to greater things, as Sweeney explicates them, made his love for Jesus and His Church so clear. Because she consults and references his journals and letters as well as his poetry, the reader can see Southwell's struggles in his formation in Rome and his frustrations during his mission in England, sometimes with his Jesuit authorities on the Continent and their decisions. Although this may have been beyond her intent, Sweeney's study made him real to me, not just his poetry, his martyrdom, or his garlands.

Sweeney chose an appropriate motto for the book:

"To live at peace among . . . those who oppose us, is a great grace, and a most commendable and manly achievement." (from Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, translated and introduction by Leo Sherley-Price (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1952, repr. 1979), p. 71)

Southwell's formation as a Jesuit, his experience living in Counter-Reformation Rome, his vocation as priest and avocation as poet, graced him with that peace even in the midst of torture and imprisonment, as reports of his trial and execution attest.

One of the parts of the book that impressed me the most was Sweeney's exploration of the effects of art in Rome on Southwell while he was studying there in combination with his formation with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola--referencing Between Renaissance and Baroque: Jesuit Art in Rome, 1565-1610 by Gauvin Alexander Bailey (University of Toronto Press, 2003). She elucidates how Southwell's formation influenced the brilliant imagery of his poetry, translating ideas into pictures, describing images to symbolize concepts, expressing the transcendent through earthly things in the imagination.

I highly recommend Snow in Arcadia to anyone interested in the era, Southwell, the English mission, Southwell's poetry, the situation of Catholics in England during Elizabeth I's reign, an understanding of the Jesuits in Rome, etc. 

As Gary M. Bouchard said, it is sad that Anne R. Sweeney died before she could continue developing her insights into St. Robert Southwell's poetry and his place in English literature. May she rest in the peace of Christ.

My review of Bouchard's Southwell's Sphere: The Influence of England's Secret Poet is forthcoming.

UPDATE: note that I purchased my copy of Snow in Arcadia.

Sir Thomas More Resigns

Sir Thomas More resigned as Lord Chancellor of England on May 16, 1532 after the Convocation of Bishops met to discuss and accept Henry VIII's three articles on how they would follow his guidelines for Church governance, the Submission of the Clergy.

British History Online documents his resignation and surrender of the Great Seal in the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, June 1532, 1-15:

1075. Delivery Of The Great Seal.

Memorandum that on the 16th May 24 Hen. VIII. the Great Seal, being in the custody of Sir Thos. More, chancellor of England, enclosed in a white leather bag sealed with his seal, was delivered into the King's hands in the garden of York Place by Westminster, about 3 o'clock p.m., in presence of Thos. duke of Norfolk, when the said Sir Thomas surrendered his office of Chancellor. And on Monday, 20 May, about 4 p.m., the King, at his manor of Plesaunce or Est Grenewych, in a certain inner chamber near his oratory, took the said Seal out of the bag in presence of Thos. duke of Norfolk, treasurer of England, Henry marquis of Exeter, Henry earl of Northumberland, Rob. earl of Sussex, Steph. bp. of Winchester, Sir Will. Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the Household, Brian Tuke, treasurer of the Chamber, Sir Will. Kyngeston, John Sampson, dean of the Chapel, Thos. Crumwell, keeper of the Jewels, and others of the Privy Chamber; and after inspecting the same, delivered it to Thos. Audeley, whom he ordered to be called keeper of the Great Seal, and to exercise all the functions of the Chancellor in the Chancery, Star Chamber, and Council. And the said Thomas received it, and therewith, in presence of the King, caused to be sealed certain letters patent of the stewardship of the manors of Lewsham and Est Grenewych in Kent granted to Henry Norres, and afterwards replaced it in the bag, and sealed it with his own seal, and retained it in his custody. The King also then made him a knight.

And on Wednesday, 5 June, the first day of Trinity term, the said Sir Thomas Audeley in the Court of Chancery at Westminster took his oath of office as keeper of the Privy Seal. (Form of the oath subjoined.)

About a month later, More wrote to Desiderius Erasmus an explanation for his resignation that emphasized his health:

The thing which I have wished for from a boy, dear Desiderius, which I rejoice in your having ever enjoyed, and myself occasionally,—namely, that being free from public business, I might have some time to devote to God and myself,—that, by the grace of a great and good God, and by the favour of an indulgent prince, I have at last obtained.

I have not, however, obtained it as I wished. For I wished to reach that last stage of my life in a state, which, though suitable to my age, might yet enable me to enjoy my remaining years healthy and unbroken, free from disease and pain. But it remaineth in the hand of God, whether this wish, perhaps unreasonable, shall be accomplished. Meantime a disorder of I know not what nature hath attacked my breast, by which I suffer less in present pain than in fear of the consequence. For when it had plagued me without abatement some months, the physicians whom I consulted gave their opinion, that the long continuance of it was dangerous, and the speedy cure impossible; but that it must be cured by the gradual alterative effects of time, proper diet and medicine. Neither could they fix the period of my recovery, or ensure me a complete cure at last.

Considering this, I saw that I must either lay down my office, or discharge my duty in it incompletely. And since I could not discharge that duty without the hazard of my life, and by so doing should lose both life and office, I determined to lose one of them rather than both. Wherefore, that I might consult the public good as well as my own welfare, I entreated of the kindness of my good and great prince, that from the high office with which (as you know) he honoured me by his incredible favour, far above my pretensions, above my hopes, above my wishes, he should now release me, sinking as I was under the weight of it.

That letter is documented in Henry VIII's State Papers:

1094. More to Erasmus.
Gives an account of his resignation of the chancellorship. Complains of the rapid progress of heretical doctrines, notwithstanding the efforts that have hitherto been made to repress them. Incorrect versions of the Scriptures, and heretical books of all kinds, make their way from Flanders into England. Has replied to several, and does not fear what the result will be with impartial judges. Chelsea, 14 June 1532.
Lat.

2. Erasmus to John Faber, Bishop of Vienne.
Enclosing the above letter, and speaking very highly in praise of More. States that cardinal Wolsey, who was a man of no small ability, said, when he saw no prospect of being restored to favor, that More was the only person who was fitted to succeed him, though he was not partial to More when he was alive. Gives an account of his house at Chelsea, and his family, and their mode of education. Encloses a copy of the epitaph composed by More for himself.
Lat.