This Morning: New Series on the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to begin our new series on the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, leading up to the 50th anniversary of their canonization on October 25, 1970.

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

It's interesting to note that on the Vatican website, the homily Pope Paul VI preached at the Mass and Canonization is mostly in Italian, with an introduction in English welcoming Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, other Catholic bishops and priest, and laity from England. He also welcomed the official representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reverend Doctor Harry Smythe and other Anglicans. But when he discusses the reasons for the canonization and presents some of the martyrs individually, that portion of the homily is only in Italian. There is a translation into Portuguese, if that's helpful to you.

He concluded with another portion in English:

May the blood of these Martyrs be able to heal the great wound inflicted upon God’s Church by reason of the separation of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church. Is it not one--these Martyrs say to us--the Church founded by Christ? Is not this their witness? Their devotion to their nation gives us the assurance that on the day when--God willing--the unity of the faith and of Christian life is restored, no offence will be inflicted on the honour and sovereignty of a great country such as England. There will be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and the worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican Church when the Roman Catholic Church--this humble “Servant of the Servants of God”--is able to embrace her ever beloved Sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ: a communion of origin and of faith, a communion of priesthood and of rule, a communion of the Saints in the freedom and love of the Spirit of Jesus.

Perhaps We shall have to go on, waiting and watching in prayer, in order to deserve that blessed day. But already We are strengthened in this hope by the heavenly friendship of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales who are canonized today. Amen.

The New York Times covered the event and noted the emphasis on ecumenism and inter-faith harmony, but also noting that some Catholics unhappy with the changes in the liturgy protested the event.

On Friday this week, I'll offer you a preview of the first three martyrs we'll discuss, three of the protomartyrs of the English Reformation under Henry VIII:

John Houghton, Carthusian Prior, London Charterhouse
Augustine Webster, Carthusian Prior, Epworth Charterhouse (Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire)
Robert Lawrence, Carthusian Prior, Beauvale Charterhouse, Nottinghamshire

Ratification of the Lateran Treaty

The Parliament of Italy ratified the Lateran Treaty, which had been signed on February 11 at the Lateran Palace, on June 7, 1929. This Treaty created the Vatican City-State, the sovereignty of the Holy See, recognized buildings belonging to the Vatican outside the small territory pictured on the map at left, including the Lateran Basilica (the Cathedral of the Pope as the Bishop of Rome), other major basilicas, educational institutions, headquarters of several congregations, and the Bambino Gesu hospital. All these properties are in Rome; certain properties outside Rome, like Castel Gandolfo, were also included in the Treaty. The Pope was recognized as the head of the Vatican City-State.

D.D. Emmons explains the background to this treaty in an Our Sunday Visitor article from July last year:

Beginning in 1850, King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont-Sardinia started his quest to consolidate all of Italy under one government and become the king of a unified Italy. The largest of the many independent Italian states were those controlled by the pope, who at the time was Pius IX (r. 1846-78), a serious stumbling block to Italian unification. The king, either through negotiations or threat of force, began annexing areas of Italy under a new national government. Pope Pius refused to relinquish any of his holdings, but the king occupied one Papal State after another, until by 1860 he had seized all the papal holdings except for the city of Rome. The new central government wanted Rome as the nation’s capital city, but the pope would have none of it. Protected by a French garrison, Pius refused to recognize Victor Emmanuel’s government and decried what he considered to be the robbery of the Papal States: the seizure of Church property belonging to all Catholics. . . .

On September 20, 1870, after the French garrison protecting the pope departed to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, King Victor’s army forcibly occupied Rome. The papal domain, once over 16,000 square miles, was reduced to the Vatican’s one-sixth of a square mile. Victor, by now king of all of Italy, offered considerable concessions to Pope Pius IX if he would acknowledge the new government and the annexation of the Papal States. These concessions, called the Law of Guarantees, recognized the pope as the head of the Catholic Church in Italy, accorded the pope all the rights of a sovereign monarch and provided compensation to the Church for the Papal States. The pope adamantly declined, believing that such agreement would be tantamount to placing the papacy under the rule of and subject to the king of Italy. . . .

From 1870 to 1929, Popes Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, and Pius XI had considered themselves "Prisoners of the Vatican" until Pope Pius XI agreed to negotiations with the Italian Government, led by Benito Mussolini, Victor-Emmanuel's prime minister. Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, represented the Pope. 

Negotiations took a few years, starting in 1926.

D.D. Emmons outlines other matters agreed to in the Treaty:

Among the treaty agreements, the Holy See acknowledged the legitimacy of the Italian government and its right to the Papal States; the Vatican was, in turn, financially compensated; and Vatican City was created and designated a sovereign nation, independent of Italy, with the pope as head of state. Catholicism became the religion of Italy; marriage laws were placed under the rule of the Church, and Catholic religious training was included in every school. The Italian government provided Vatican City with a train station, a telephone and telegraph office, a post office and a radio station. The pope was once again ruler of a sovereign nation and in no way subject to an earthly potentate. . . .

Please read the rest there. 

When my late husband and I went to Rome in November 2002 with our former chaplain at the WSU Newman Center, Father Carr, we noted each time we left Italy and entered Vatican City, and vice versa, crossing the border with ease!

Image credit (public domain): Boundary map of Vatican City, taken from the annex of the Lateran Treaty

New Series on the SRMS: 50 years of the 40 Martyrs

Before Matt Swaim, Anna Mitchell and I began the series on Lenten and Easter reflections based on St. John Henry Newman's sermons, we had been doing a series on the great anniversaries this year: events, births, deaths, etc, from the Battle of Thermopylae to the birth of Karol Wojtyla (Pope St. John Paul II).

One of the anniversaries to mark this year is October 25, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope St. Paul VI. So we are starting a new series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, June 8 (at the usual time, 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern). Each Monday morning, we will highlight two (or three) martyrs, concluding on Monday, October 26 the day after the anniversary.

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

To start us off, on Monday, June 8, I'll talk to Anna about the time and the context of the canonizations in 1970, 35 years after St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More were canonized by Pope Pius XI--eleven of these 40 martyrs had been beatified with Fisher and More by Pope Pope Leo XIII in 1886 (84 years before); 29 more of these 40 martyrs had been beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929 (41 years before).

So why did Pope Paul VI canonize these 40 martyrs in 1970? Why were there some who thought the timing inopportune?

For answers, we turn to this article from the weekly English edition of L'Osservatore Romano on October 29, 1970, preserved for us in the EWTN library.

To examine the second question first: Pope Paul VI and Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had met in Rome and issued The Common Declaration by Pope Paul VI and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Michael Ramsey on March 24, 1966. They agreed to enter into a dialogue, seeking unity:

In willing obedience to the command of Christ who bade His disciples love one another, they declare that, with His help, they wish to leave in the hands of the God of mercy all that in the past has been opposed to this precept of charity, and that they make their own the mind of the Apostle which he expressed in these words: ‘Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 3:13-14).

They affirm their desire that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect, esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the Gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed.

The dialogue should include not only theological matters such as Scripture, Tradition and Liturgy, but also matters of practical difficulty felt on either side. His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury are, indeed, aware that serious obstacles stand in the way of a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life; nevertheless, they are of one mind in their determination to promote responsible contacts between their Communions in all those spheres of Church life where collaboration is likely to lead to a greater understanding and a deeper charity, and to strive in common to find solutions for all the great problems that face those who believe in Christ in the world of today. . . .

As the L'Observatore Romano article notes, the canonization of these 40 Martyrs seemed to contradict the quotation from Saint Paul's Letter to the Philippians ("Forgetting those things which are behind"), and Dr. Ramsey opined that it was not timely, ecumenically speaking:

In more recent times—November 1969—the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, had expressed his apprehension that this Canonization might rekindle animosity and polemics detriment to the ecumenical spirit that has characterized the efforts of the Churches recently. But the reaction of the press, lay, Anglican and Catholic, showed clearly that this concern—though shared by some Anglicans and Catholics—did not correspond to the view of the vast majority. Many people, in fact, both Anglicans and Catholics, were aware of the fact that, right from the beginning of the re-opening of the Cause, the policy of its Promoters had been characterized by an extremely serene and ecumenical note; what is more, they realized the positive repercussions it offers just in this field if it is presented in this very spirit.

In fact, public opinion seemed to accord with the postulator's view:

The vast majority of people understood all this. The most authoritative voice in this sense was that of the British Council of Churches, which made a public declaration on the matter on December 17th, 1969. Not only does it recognize the importance for the Catholic Church to venerate its Martyrs, to whom the survival of the Catholic Church in England and Wales is essentially due, but it also expressed satisfaction that the various Christian denominations are united today in recognizing the tradition of the Martyrs as a common element from which we must all draw strength disregarding denominational frontiers.

As to why the cause of the English martyrs was revived so many years after the previous beatifications and canonizations Fr. Paolo Molinari, SJ the postulator of the cause explained:

In still more recent times, the Hierarchy of England and Wales, conscious of the deep devotion to the martyrs who on different occasions had been declared blessed by the apostolic See, and aware that this devotion was addressed especially to some of the most popular of them was induced by the requests of the faithful and the multiplicity of favours obtained, to promote the canonization not of the whole host of these martyrs, but of a limited group of them. Right from the beginning of the negotiations, the Canonization Cause of these Martyrs was entrusted by the Hierarchy of England and Wales to Fr. Paolo Molinari, Postulator General of the Society of Jesus and President of the College of Postulators. He in turn nominated as Assistant Postulators Father Philip Caraman and James Walsh of the English Province of the Society.

Furthermore, there were miracles attributed to the intercession of the martyrs:

Even before the rehearing of the Cause, many reports of favours and apparently miraculous cures attributed to the intercession of our Blessed Martyrs, had come to the knowledge of the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales, which hastened to inform the competent Roman Authorities.

Catholics in England had been encouraged to honor the martyrs and to seek their prayers:

As a result of the intensification of the devotion of the faithful and their prayers, a good many events took place which looked like miracles. Sufficient data were collected about them to induce the Archbishop of Westminster, then Cardinal William Godfrey, to send a description of 24 seemingly miraculous cases to the Sacred Congregation.

The most striking of these and of the others that continued to be notified to the Postulation were first examined with special care by doctors of high repute. On the basis of their answers, two cases were chosen and the usual Apostolic Proceedings were instituted, and the acts were sent to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in Rome.

So on May 18, 1970, Pope Paul VI announced the canonization of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales:

"We greatly rejoice that unanimously you have asked that these blessed Martyrs of England and Wales be canonized; this is also our desire. It is our intention to enroll them among the saints and to declare them worthy of the honours that the Church attributes to those holy persons who have obtained their heavenly reward. With God's help, we will do this on the twenty-fifth day of October of this year in the Vatican Basilica".

The 40 Martyrs are, in the chronological order in which we'll discuss them on the Son Rise Morning Show (unless otherwise noted, they are priests; unless otherwise noted, they are seminary, non-order priests):

From the reign of Henry VIII:

John Houghton, Carthusian Prior, London Charterhouse
Augustine Webster, Carthusian Prior, Epworth Charterhouse (Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire)
Robert Lawrence, Carthusian Prior, Beauvale Charterhouse, Nottinghamshire
Richard Reynolds, Briggitine Priest of Syon Abbey
John Stone, Augustinian Canon of Canterbury Abbey

From the reign of Elizabeth I:

Cuthbert Mayne
Ralph Sherwin
Edmund Campion, SJ
Alexander Briant, SJ
John Payne
Luke Kirby
Richard Gwyn, layman*
Margaret Clitherow
Margaret Ward
Swithun Wells, layman
Eustace White
Polydore Plasden
Edmund Gennings
John Boste
Philip Howard, layman
Robert Southwell, SJ
Henry Walpole, SJ
John Jones (Griffith), Franciscan*
John Rigby, layman
Anne Line

During the reign of James I:

Nicholas Owen, Jesuit lay-brother
Thomas Garnet, SJ
John Roberts, OSB*
John Almond

During the reign of Charles I and/or the Civil War/Interregnum period:

Edmund Arrowsmith, SJ
Ambrose Barlow, OSB
Alban Roe, OSB
Henry Morse, SJ

During the reign of Charles II:

John Southworth

The Popish Plot Martyrs during the reign of Charles II:

Philip Evans, SJ*
David Lewis, SJ*
John Wall, Franciscan
John Kemble
John Lloyd*
John Plessington

*The six Welsh martyrs are:

Richard Gwyn, layman
John Jones (Griffith), Franciscan
John Roberts, OSB
Philip Evans, SJ
Davis Lewis, SJ
John Lloyd

Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

Saint Petroc of Cornwall

Having just read about "Katholic Kernow" (Catholic Cornwall) in Lest We Be Damned, I was happy to see that St. Petroc of Cornwall's feast is today. He is venerated in the Catholic Church, the Church of England, and the Orthodox Church.

In fact, I will cite the post from the Orthodox Christianity website for Saint Petroc:

Cornwall, the peninsula in the south-west of England and now one of 48 ceremonial English counties, was in ancient times a part of the kingdom of Dumnonia, which comprised territories of the present-day counties of Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset and Dorset. The Gospel was brought to Cornwall in the fifth century or even earlier, and monastic life began there in 475. At that time Cornwall became known as “the land of saints” or “the Thebaid of saints”. Indeed, between the fifth and seventh centuries Cornwall produced so many saints, ascetics, hermits, abbots, missionaries, holy bishops and kings, that nearly each town and village in the region has its own patron-saint.

Christian life and the monastic tradition of Cornwall were similar to those of Wales and Brittany and many ascetic customs were indeed derived from the desert fathers of Egypt, the “Thebaid”, and Syria. Unfortunately, the lives of many ancient Cornish saints were lost at the Norman Conquest or else after the Reformation. And today, though veneration for them continues and many churches and holy wells are dedicated to them, we can say very little about most of these saints. The most venerated saint in Cornwall, who is considered to be one of the main enlighteners of Dumnonia, is St. Petroc (Petrock/Peter), who together with the Archangel Michael and St. Piran, has for many years been the patron-saint of Cornwall. Though two later medieval versions of his life are not very reliable, they are mainly based on ancient traditions, so we can outline the major events and activities of his life.

Please read the rest there, as the post includes many excellent pictures of the Church of St. Petroc in Bodmin. The stained glass window pictured above--public domain--is from St. Petroc in Bodmin, now an Anglican church. Of course, it was a Catholic church before the English Reformation, and was the abbey church of an Augustinian Priory of the Canons Regular of the Lateran (the Priory of Saint Mary). That priory was suppressed in 1538 and all the buildings except the church destroyed. Thomas Sternhold, Groom of the Robes to Henry VIII and translator of 51 of the Psalms into metrical English, received the land. The ruins of a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas Becket still stand precariously on the grounds of the Anglican parish.

The Canons Regular of the Lateran left England after the suppression and did not return until 1884 to establish a new Priory in Bodmin, also named Saint Mary's, granted that status in 1953. Evidently, however, the canons left Bodmin for Birmingham and St. Michael's Church at the request of Archbishop Longley in 2013. The site for the parish church of St. Mary's in Bodmin is here.

I cannot let the feast of St. Petroc of Cornwall pass without mentioning the historical fantasy Brother Petroc's Return about a survivor of the Prayer Book Rebellion in Cornwall, written by S.M.C., a Cornwall native!

Saint Petroc of Cornwall, pray for us!

Book Review: Lisa McClain's "Lest We Be Damned"

Clearly, I did not buy this book based on its cover!

From Routledge, Lest We Be Damned: Practical Innovation & Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559–1642 was written by Lisa McClain. She is an "Assistant Professor of History and Director of Women's Studies at Boise State University. She studies popular religion during the Reformation era, and has authored articles in journals such as the Sixteenth Century Journal and the Journal of Religious History", according to Routledge. As the publisher blurbs the book:

Through compelling personal stories and in rich detail, McClain reveals the give-and-take interaction between the institutional church in Rome and the needs of believers and the hands-on clergy who provided their pastoral care within England. In doing so, she illuminates larger issues of how believers and low-level clergy push[ed] the limits of official orthodoxy in order to meet devotional needs.

Table of Contents (from my notes and including the subheads in the chapters):

Introduction

Chapter 1. "Knitting the Remnants": Catholic Challenges and Priorities in Protestant England

--A Changing Religious Environment: Penal Laws against the Practice of Catholicism

--How Many Catholics Were There?

--Who Was a Catholic?

--Catholic Priorities

   --Immanence

   --Saints, Priests, and Sacraments

   --Salvation

--Meeting Catholic Priorities

   --Evolving Goals

--Book Trade

Chapter 2. A "Church" Without a Church: English Catholics' Search for Religious Space

--Three Degrees of Separation

--Prisons

--Examinations, Trials, and Executions

Chapter 3. Using What's at Hand: English Catholic Reinterpretations of the Rosary

--Praying the Beads

--Sacraments Versus Sacramentals

--Obtaining the Beads

--Society of the Rosary

--Changing Role of the Rosary and Mary

--One of Many Emerging Views of Mary

   --Pre-Reform Use and Interpretation of the Rosary in England

   --In Contrast to Post-Tridentine Continental Portrayals of Mary

Chapter 4. Reclaiming the Body: Receiving the Benefits of the Mass in the Absence of Priests

--Functions of Catholic Sacraments

--Filling the Need

--Spiritual Reception of the Body of Christ

--Finding the Body

--Reclaiming the Body: Christ's and One's Own

Chapter 5. Lawyers, Jailbirds, Grocers, and Diplomats: Catholic Options for Piety and Community in London

--Inns of Court

--Prisons

--Catholic Geography of London

--Executions

--Relic Takers

--Merchants and Tradespeople

--Foreign Aid

Chapter 6. Katholic Kernow: Catholics of Cornwall

--Cornish Independence

--Cornwall's Celtic Past: "An Ancient Song, Lilting Before You Came"

--Lives of the Celtic Saints

--Celtic-Cornish Immanence: Places, People, and Things

   --Places

   --People

   --Things

--Cornish Catholic Participation in a Larger Catholic Community

Chapter 7. "Border of Wickedness?": Catholics in the Northern Shires

--A Convenient Partnership

--New Experiences in the North

--Protecting What was Theirs: Distinctive Attempts to Thwart Protestant Authority

--The Importance of the Borders

   --Border Instability
--Why and How Catholics Flowed Back and Forth Across the Border
   --Why Was This Possible?
   --How Was This Possible?
--Northern Catholic Identity and Community
--Conclusion

Chapter 8. From the Old Comes the New: Catholic Identities and Alternative Forms of Community
--English Catholic Identity: How English Catholics Perceived Themselves
--Identifying with Persecution and Martyrdom
--Building New Catholic Communities
--Communities of Prayer
--Communities of the Book
--Communities of the Living and the Dead
--Conjunctions of Identity and Community: How English Catholics Perceived their Relationship to Rome
--Increasing Frustration with Rome
--Oath of Allegiance Controversy

Conclusion

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

McClain does present many compelling stories and much rich detail--sometimes repetitiously--in delineating the response of English Catholics to the loss of their churches, their parishes, their public devotional life, their communities, and most crucially, their Church's Sacraments. She carefully traces the changing circumstances of Catholics in England from the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign until the end of Charles I's reign, not strictly chronologically, but topically. For example, McClain notes that during the first years of Elizabeth's reign enforcement of the Acts of Uniformity (worship) and Supremacy (authority) was rather lax. She continues her examination of the development and variations in that enforcement during Elizabeth's reign by looking at the prisons in London, the distance and independence in Cornwall, and the distinctive issues of distance, the border with Scotland, and nobles' authority in the northern counties.

In another example of this topical treatment of changing circumstances during the period (1559 to 1642), she examines the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance during James I's reign but does not continue that theme into the reign of Charles I. So a reader should not expect a strictly chronological description of Catholic issues in England during this recusant period.

Because of my great devotion and interest in St. Robert Southwell, I was fascinated by her citation of his advice to Catholics during his time as a missionary priest to use their imaginations in their homes and in their environments. He encouraged them to dedicate rooms or areas in their houses to Jesus, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, to angels and saints; to use walking in fields or forests as pilgrimages to holy sites, to consecrate time and space to God in prayer and unity. These passages, cited from his Short Rule to a Good Life, accorded very well with what Anne R. Sweeney had written of St. Robert Southwell in Snow in Arcadia as images and imagination--inspired in him by the art and architecture of Counter-Reformation Rome--were so essential to his Ignatian poetic.

On the other hand, I was confused by her final statement about Blessed John Hambley, whose life and career she traces in two chapters (5 and 6): offering Mass at the Inns of Court in London and being born in Cornwall and leaving to become a missionary priest. She indicates that he died in prison in 1587 (p. 198) but he was hanged, drawn, and quartered on March 29 that year, according to martyrology.

McClain also alludes often to the trial and questioning of St. Margaret Clitherow, especially on the question, "What is the Church?" to which Clitherow had a good answer:

"It is that wherein the true word of god (sic) is preached which Christ langhs [launched] and left to his Apostles and they to their successors: ministering the seven sacraments which the same church has always observed, doctors preached, and martyrs and confessors witnessed. This is the church which I believe to be true."

McClain emphasizes the continuity recusant Catholics sought while they had to adapt to a great disruption: they could not practice their faith as they had done before (or as their parents and grandparents had done before Henry VIII's break from Rome) and yet they wanted to maintain the connection with the past because it was still alive and well in the world, just over the English Channel. At the same time that she emphasizes how they sought continuity, McClain explores how they had to change: praying the Rosary privately; reading their breviaries or Little Offices of the Blessed Virgin Mary in secret; if they did attend Anglican services to avoid paying the financially crippling fines, praying Catholic prayers; holding their rosaries in their pockets, etc.

Sometimes she stresses how far English Catholics were deviating from standard Catholic practice, but they were only doing so because it was the only thing they could do to maintain some continuity with the faith. When they couldn't attend Mass, confess their sins, receive Holy Communion, or even join their fellow citizens in the parish church their ancestors may have built and contributed to, they had to make Spiritual Communions, confess their sins to God and make a perfect act of contrition (declaring they never wanted to sin again!), join their intentions to Masses said on the Continent, etc. McClain notes that many of these devotions were based on late-medieval mystical piety, once considered rather dangerous because it bypassed the mediation of the ordained priesthood--but it was all that Catholics had, absent the regular ministrations of a priest, unless they were able to shelter their own chaplain, afford the fines, or benefit from friendly laxity in the enforcement of recusant laws. I think she might press this view of deviation too far, especially since it was Catholic priests recommending these practices to devout Catholics. They were not dissenting from Catholic teaching.

She does adopt what could be considered a controversial view of who was Catholic, accepting that Church Papists, those who outwardly conformed to the Church of England by attending services (not receiving Communion) but inwardly remained semi-faithful (?) to the Catholic Church were indeed still Catholic. In this, she could be following William Cardinal Allen's advice to the missionary priests he sent to England: if the laity confess attending an Anglican service as a sin, grant them absolution mercifully and gently, even if it's a sin they confess again and again (as most penitents do confess the same sins again and again).

Again, this study provides a great deal of detail: stories of arrests, imprisonments, conversations; data about books, martyrs, executions, prisons, embassy chapels; individual examples, etc, to develop a view of English Catholics' experience and life as a persecuted/prosecuted religious minority in a country that had once believed, prayed, and worshipped exactly as they did.

In her Conclusion, however, McClain tries to make more global claims of this history's significance in current situations of dissent within churches on doctrinal matters--something that never really occurs during this period among these Catholics--and the struggle to live in pluralistic societies, accommodating one another's beliefs and religious practices, bringing up book burnings, religiously inspired terrorism, all in the passive voice! ("Books are burned, martyrs are made, holy wars are declared, acts of religiously motivated terrorism proliferate"). Who burns the books, who executes the martyrs, who declares holy wars, who proliferates acts of religiously motivated terrorism? The passive voice avoids naming the actors. That's a lot of significance to cram into four paragraphs at the end of the book, especially when the purpose of the book was to help us understand the past, not necessarily help us understand the present, and especially when the situation, at least in the democratic West, is not that comparable.

I wish the book could have more illustrations and especially maps. And have a pretty cover!--but it's print on demand like so many scholarly books are now. It's an excellent resource, based on analysis of both primary and secondary sources, as McClain demonstrates familiarity with current scholarship.

"Spanish Elizabethans" in Exile and Their Books

Since I'm reading a book right now about how Catholics in England adapted to their changed lives of worship and community (Lest We be Damned: Practical Innovation & Lived Experience Among Catholics in Protestant England, 1559-1642. Routledge: 2005, by Lisa McClain) seeing this book, Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II by Freddy Cristobal Dominguez from Penn State University Press, among some new releases intrigues me.

In discussing the devotional literature written by English Catholics in exile for the recusant Catholics who remained home, McClain makes the point that the exiles often urged the recusants to observe Catholic worship just as they had before the Elizabethan Acts of Settlement and Uniformity. They should still go to Confession frequently, attend Mass on Sunday, etc., even though it was really impossible for them to do so: without priests, churches, parishes, etc. She comments that many of these exiles writing these guides were under the patronage of Tridentine communities and rulers: they were benefiting from the great Counter-Reformation revival in Rome and throughout Catholic Europe: they didn't know or acknowledge that what they were telling the "folks back home" was impossible. She further notes that, beholden to their mentors in exile, it behooved them to support papal or royal opinion on how English Recusant Catholics should be behave. Later Catholic writers, especially Jesuit missionary priests like St. Robert Southwell in A Short Rule to a Good Life, would provide more reasonable and feasible alternatives to the Catholic devotional and Sacramental life that the recusants of England had lost through personal, private, and imaginative means when no priest was available for the Sacraments.

Radicals in Exile explores another aspect of the lives and work of exiled English Catholics, particularly in Spain:

Facing persecution in early modern England, some Catholics chose exile over conformity. Some even cast their lot with foreign monarchs rather than wait for their own rulers to have a change of heart. This book studies the relationship forged by English exiles and Philip II of Spain. It shows how these expatriates, known as the “Spanish Elizabethans,” used the most powerful tools at their disposal—paper, pens, and presses—to incite war against England during the “messianic” phase of Philip’s reign, from the years leading up to the Grand Armada until the king’s death in 1598.

Freddy Cristóbal Domínguez looks at English Catholic propaganda within its international and transnational contexts. He examines a range of long-neglected polemical texts, demonstrating their prominence during an important moment of early modern politico-religious strife and exploring the transnational dynamic of early modern polemics and the flexible rhetorical approaches required by exile. He concludes that while these exiles may have lived on the margins, their books were central to early modern Spanish politics and are key to understanding the broader narrative of the Counter-Reformation.

Deeply researched and highly original, Radicals in Exile makes an important contribution to the study of religious exile in early modern Europe. It will be welcomed by historians of early modern Iberian and English politics and religion as well as scholars of book history.

"Book History" is a still-developing historical research discipline, according to this article in Perspectives on History, the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association:

"Book history" is a long-contested and ever-developing concept. It emerged from two schools of thought, both of which focused on the book in Western culture: 19th-century Anglo-American analytical bibliography, which examined the physical features of books to draw conclusions about their production, and the French scholars of histoire du livre, who in the 1960s began using a socioeconomic lens to study broad trends in publishing, writing, and reading. In 1982, Robert Darnton argued in his influential essay "What Is the History of Books?" that book history is research having to do with any of the stages of a work's life, from author to publisher to printer to bookseller to reader. Since then, scholars have debated how much to focus on the physical characteristics of books versus trends in book markets, authorship, and reading. How large a role content should play in book history has also been contested.

Johns Hopkins University Press publishes a journal titled Book History:

Book History is devoted to every aspect of the history of the book, broadly defined as the history of the creation, dissemination, and reception of script and print. It publishes research on the social, economic, and cultural history of authorship, editing, printing, the book arts, publishing, the book trade, periodicals, newspapers, ephemera, copyright, censorship, literary agents, libraries, literary criticism, canon formation, literacy, literary education, reading habits, and reader response. Book History is the official publication of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, Inc. (SHARP).

Mary C. Ehrer of Fordham University, for example, has written a couple of books about reading and writing in pre-Reformation England and has inspired other historians to use "bibliography in the service of biography" or of history, political and religious, as demonstrated by a festschrift published by Boydell & Brewer:

Reading, writing, sharing texts, and book ownership in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and how they fostered social and intellectual links and networks between individuals, particularly among women: these are subjects which the pioneering work of Mary C. Erler has done so much to illuminate. The essays here, in this volume in her honour, build on her scholarship, engaging with Professor Erler's characteristic use of bibliography in the service of biography by investigating how the physical object of the book can enlighten our understanding of medieval readers and writers. They analyze, for example, what "reading" means in terms of the act itself (and the accessories, such as bookmarks, that helped to set the stage for reading), whether done aloud or silently, in such different venues as an aristocratic court, bourgeois household, village community, and monastic cloister. They also consider the culture of medieval reading practices, especially those of women, across social classes, and in terms of the transition between the pre- and post-Reformation periods; the fluidity of genre boundaries; and changes in devotional reading and writing in this liminal period. A wide variety of genres are covered, including secular romance, devotional texts, schoolbooks, and the illustrated Old Testament preface to the famous Queen Mary Psalter, which recasts the story and image of ancient Israelites to suit elite readerly taste.

Image Credit (public domain): King Philip II in old age, by Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, 1590–98

Book Review: Simon Tolkien's "No Man's Land"

I went to Eighth Day Books (no longer a "bookeasy" with secret knocks at the back door or curbside service) on Thursday this week to browse. I stopped inside the front door to glance at the growing collection of books by and about Flannery O'Connor. Just to the right of them I saw two copies of the paperback edition of Simon Tolkien's World War I/Mining novel, No Man's Land, one of which I purchased (along with an edition of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical introduced by Etienne Gilson, an Image paperback (The Church Speaks to the Modern World: The Social Encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII). I have been wanting to own and read both of these books for quite some time. Eighth Day Books had just received them recently so my timing was good.

My late husband Mark had in fact discovered the Tolkien novel among the new/future releases advertised by our local public library on his Kindle. He'd reserved the Ebook and the paperback in 2017 but it had never come through. He wanted me to read it out loud to him: we enjoyed sharing books that way.

So I started reading it immediately when I arrived home before going to Mass for Ascension Thursday (Extraordinary Form), continued it when I came home after Mass, and finished it yesterday morning. It was hard to put down. According to the publisher, Penguin Random House:

London, 1910: young Adam Raine’s impoverished childhood becomes even darker when his mother is killed in a workers’ protest march. His grieving father, Daniel, seeks a second chance for them in a coal mining town, where he begins working for the miners’ union. But tensions escalate between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, and finally explode with tragic consequences.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

As I read the novel, however, I thought less of Dickens and more of A.J. Cronin. I see the Dickensian aspects of the story in the descriptions of poverty and horrific living conditions in London and in the labor issues in the mining community of Scarsdale, but the spirit is more like A.J. Cronin's novels of young men fighting against the odds, encountering great loss and suffering, and finding their way to happiness and success, personally, not socially defined. I've read several of A.J. Cronin's novels: The Citadel, The Keys of the Kingdom, The Green Years, Shannon's Way, The Stars Look Down, and his autobiography, Adventures in Two Worlds (he was a doctor before he became a very successful novelist). Several of his books were made into movies or television mini-series.

Adam Raine is a Cronin-style protagonist: orphaned, always feeling separate from the people he lives with whether in London, Scarsdale, Oxford, or No Man's Land, encountering and overcoming many dangers--especially from conniving and morally-blunted people--absorbing loss and grief, and by the end of the novel he wants to be a writer because he wants the dead soldiers of World War I to speak beyond the grave. He wants the people of England to know what it was like to fight in the trenches. The novel ends with Adam on the way to the publisher with his manuscript!

Tolkien's omniscient narrator describes Adam's thoughts and recounts the events of his life vividly. Perhaps the best twist in the novel is that the term No Man's Land applies not only to aspects of his wartime experience at the Somme and even on leave during the war but also to his antagonist's situation, as Brice Scarsdale, the son of his mentor Sir John Scarsdale who is described above as "subject[ing] Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station" has both succeeded in obtaining everything he wanted but also has failed to enjoy or benefit from it because of one horrific action, or rather his actions after that action (not giving away much the plot, I hope!).

Simon Tolkien dedicated this novel to J.R.R. Tolkien: "This book honours the memory of my grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien, who fought on the Somme between July and October 1916." The novel certainly does honour Tolkien, and I highly recommend it. I think that Mark would have liked the book, and it's so appropriate that I read it before the Memorial Day weekend. If you want a copy, there's still one on the shelf at Eighth Day Books!

The only thing that I wished for was for Adam to find faith in Jesus Christ, which the elder Tolkien so devoutly lived.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

London, 1910: young Adam Raine’s impoverished childhood becomes even darker when his mother is killed in a workers’ protest march. His grieving father, Daniel, seeks a second chance for them in a coal mining town, where he begins working for the miners’ union. But tensions escalate between the miners and their employer, Sir John Scarsdale, and finally explode with tragic consequences.

In the aftermath, Adam is brought into the opulent Scarsdale family home where Sir John’s son subjects Adam to a succession of petty cruelties for daring to step above his station. When, despite everything, Adam finds love with the beautiful parson’s daughter and wins a scholarship to Oxford, he starts to feel that his life is finally coming together—until the outbreak of war threatens to tear everything apart. Inspired by the real-life war experiences of the author’s grandfather J.R.R. Tolkien, No Man’s Land delivers a Dickensian, page-turning novel of Edwardian England and World War I.

May 22, 1377: Pope Gregory XI's Bulls to England

On May 22, 1377, Pope Gregory XI, an Avignon-era pope who would finally return to Rome later that year (November 7) at Saint Catherine of Siena's insistence, sent a series of Papal Bulls to England condemning the teachings of John Wycliffe, an ordained priest of the Catholic Church. As Christian History magazine summarized the pope's efforts in a 1983 issue:

ON MAY 22, 1377, Pope Gregory XI issued five bulls condemning the work of John Wycliffe. Three of the bulls were sent jointly to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who held the ecclesiastical power in England, and to the Bishop of London, William Courtenay, who was eager to carry out the Pope’s wishes. Needing political support, the Pope issued a similar bull to King Edward III, who died before he received it. Wishing to put pressure on Oxford, Gregory sent the final bull to the university’s chancellor.

Since Father John Wycliffe's doctrines are usually thought to be precursors of the sixteenth century Reformers' thoughts and a legacy of dissent from Papal authority before the English Reformation, it seems appropriate to remember this date. According to Fordham University's Medieval Sourcebook, these are Wycliffe's teachings that Pope Gregory XI condemned as not conforming to the teaching of the Catholic Church (there were 24 in total; these are the first 12):

1. That the material substance of bread and of wine remains, after the consecration, in the sacrament of the altar.
2. That the accidents do not remain without the subject, after the consecration, in the same sacrament.
3. That Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar identically, truly and really in his proper corporeal presence.
4. That if a bishop or priest lives in mortal sin he does not ordain, or consecrate, or baptize.
5. That if a man has been truly repentant, all external confession is superfluous to him or useless.
6. That it is not founded in the gospel that Christ instituted the mass.
7. That God ought to be obedient to the devil.
8. That if the pope is fore-ordained to destruction and a wicked man, and therefore a member of the devil, no power has been given to him over the faithful of Christ by any one, unless perhaps by the Emperor.
9. That since Urban VI, no one is to be acknowledged as pope; but all are to live, in the way of the Greeks, under their own laws.
10. To assert that it is against sacred scripture that men of the Church should have temporal possessions.
11. That no prelate ought to excommunicate any one unless he first knows that the man is excommunicated by God.
12. That a prelate thus excommunicating is thereby a heretic or excommunicate. . . .

Note that the first three condemned Wycliffe's erroneous teachings about the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

In the Papal Bull dispatched to the chancellor of the University of Oxford, Adam de Toneworth, Pope Gregory chastised him for his neglect and inaction:

Gregory, bishop, servus servorum dei, to his beloved sons the Chancellor and University of Oxford, in the diocese of Lincoln, grace and apostolic benediction.

We are compelled to wonder and grieve that you, who, in consideration of the favors and privileges conceded to your University of Oxford by the apostolic see, and on account of your familiarity with the Scriptures, in whose sea you navigate, by the gift of God, with auspicious oar, you, who ought to be, as it were, warriors and champions of the orthodox faith, without which there is no salvation of souls, ---that you through a certain sloth and neglect allow tares to spring up amidst the pure wheat in the fields of your glorious University aforesaid; and what is still more pernicious, even continue to grow to maturity. And you are quite careless, as has been lately reported to us, as to the extirpation of these tares; with no little clouding of a bright name, danger to your souls, contempt of the Roman Church, and injury to the faith above mentioned. And what pains us the more, is that this increase of the tares aforesaid is known in Rome before the remedy of extirpation has been applied in England where they sprang up. By the insinuation of many, if they are indeed worthy of belief, deploring it deeply, it has come to our ears that John de Wycliffe, rector of the church of Lutterworth, in the diocese of Lincoln, Professor of the Sacred Scriptures (would that he were not also Master of Errors), has fallen into such a detestable madness that he does not hesitate to dogmatize and publicly preach, or rather vomit forth from the recesses of his breast, certain propositions and conclusions which are erroneous and false. . . .

Please read the rest there.

Pope Gregory XI may have dispatched these five Papal Bulls on May 22 but, according to the British Library page on John Wycliffe, they took some time to arrive:

These decrees did not arrive in England until Christmas 1377, whereupon Wycliffe was arrested. He was subsequently released and then summoned to a meeting with Archbishop Sudbury and Bishop Courtney. In the spring of 1378 Wycliffe appeared before the authorities in Lambeth, but the investigation was interrupted by Sir Lewis Clifford who was sent by Joan of Kent, the mother of the king.

The king mentioned above was the young Richard II, son of Edward, the Black Prince, who had predeceased his father (Richard's grandfather) King Edward III. The young king was 10 years old ruled with a council of advisors not including his uncle, John of Gaunt, but also without a regent. Nonetheless, his mother, who protected some of Wycliffe's followers, the Lollards, had some influence and power at Court, and thus was able to protect Wycliffe in this case.

As the British Library concludes, however, the association between Wycliffe and the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 led to further trouble for Wycliffe, even though he died in relative obscurity in 1384:

Despite this royal protection, in May 1382 Wycliffe was condemned at the Blackfriars Council. In June of the previous year there had been a rebellion in England, known as the Peasants’ Revolt: a group of rebels had marched on London, where they burnt buildings (including the Savoy Palace, the palace of John of Gaunt) and murdered anyone they encountered who was thought to be associated with the government. It’s unclear what influence Wycliffe’s works had on the rebels, but his ideas became associated with them.

In Henry IV's reign (who had supplanted Richard II), heresy laws were passed against Wycliffe's teachings and his Lollard followers were targeted, as the UK Parliament's website details:

In 1401 Parliament took action against believers known by the abusive term of Lollards or mumblers. The Lollards included some MPs – who from the 1380s began to speak out against important aspects of the Church and its thinking.

Inspired by the writings of the Oxford academic John Wyclif, they objected to the meanings attached to certain rituals used in church worship. They also felt that more attention should be given to God’s own words as revealed in the Bible, than on interpretations made by the Church.

Before the fifteenth century the English Church had been largely free of this kind of heresy or deviation from its teachings. But in 1401 Parliament enacted a law called De Heretico Comburendo - On the burning of heretics - by which Lollard leaders were liable for imprisonment, trial and execution. It is thought that about 100 people were burned for heresy under this Act.

This act and two others of Richard II and Henry V were revived by the 1554 Parliament of Mary I, thus leading to renewed prosecution of heresy during her reign. These laws had been repealed by Henry VIII and Edward VI, but had been in force during Henry VIII's reign for some time (and his father's reign too) while Thomas More was Chancellor, investigating and prosecuting laws against heresy.

Image Credit (public domain): "Louis I, Duke of Anjou leading Pope Gregory XI to the palace at Avignon, while cardinals follow", from Chroniques de France ou de St. Denis (end 14th C) - BL Royal MS 20 C VII by Virgil Master and his atelier

May 19 in the Lives of Four Queens

On May 19, 1499, the 13-year old Princess Catherine of Aragon was married to the 12-year old Prince of Wales, Arthur Tudor by proxy.

On May 19, 1536, former Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery, treason, incest.

On May 19, 1568, Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the house arrest of the former Queen of Scotland, her cousin Mary Stuart Valois Stuart Bothwell.

What a coincidence that three such momentous events occurred on the same date in the month of May!

Arthur and Catherine would not meet in England until November 4, 1501 and were married in person on November 14 in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales set off for Ludlow Castle to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches, residing at the Castle Lodge. They both became ill and Arthur died on April 2, 1502, while Catherine recovered.

Then Henry VII decided to keep her (and her dowry) in England, so from 1502 to 1509 protracted marriage negotiations took place between Henry and Ferdinand of Aragon, her father (her mother Isabella of Castile died in 1504). Henry VII's wife and queen, the former Elizabeth, Princess of York died in 1503 and he thought of marrying Catherine himself. It was finally decided that she would marry Henry, the Duke of York, and Henry VII applied for a dispensation from the Pope, Julius II, with Catherine testifying that she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage, so there were no issues of affinity. Nevertheless, she was held almost as a prisoner in Durham House, London, the impoverished guest of the Bishop of Durham. When Henry VII died, Henry VIII married her on June 11, 1509 and she was crowned and anointed with him later that month on the 24th. She remained Queen until May 23, 1533 when Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void. She had been in exile from the Court since 1531 and would die in her final place of residence, Kimbolton Castle, on January 7, 1536 (after being moved six times in four years!) Henry VIII titled her the Dowager Princess of Wales; she accepted no title but Queen and true wife of the king. Although her last letter to Henry VIII is contested, authorities agree that this text expresses Catherine's attitude toward her husband and their daughter Mary and her rightful status as his wife and queen:

My most dear lord, king and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Katharine the Quene

Another former wife and queen of Henry VIII at the time of her death (as Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII agreed), Anne Boleyn of course was the woman who had replaced Catherine of Aragon. She and Henry had been married on November 14, 1532 (secretly) and that marriage declared valid by Cranmer several days after he'd declared Henry's marriage to Catherine null and void, on May 28, 1533. She was crowned on June 1, 1533--and was pregnant at the time with the hoped-for male heir, it was believed--in a sumptuous ceremony and celebration. She delivered a girl, however, on September 7, 1533 (named Elizabeth) and after two miscarriages, had failed to provide Henry VIII with the son for whom he had turned the world upside down (separating the Catholic Christians of England from the universal Catholic Church and the papacy, executing good men and true, making his daughter Mary a bastard, and changing the worship and devotions of Catholics in England, among other actions).

Catherine of Aragon having died on January 7, 1536, Anne and Henry had felt more secure, although there's a lot of debate about their reactions, public and private, to the news. Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London on May 2, 1536; Cranmer declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void on May 14; she was tried and found guilty of adultery, treason, and incest (with her brother George) on May 15 and beheaded with a sword within the Tower precincts on May 19. Her last words:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.

With her head on the block, she repeated these words several times: "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul." One stroke of the sword and she was beheaded and then buried in St. Peter ad Vincula (where two of the good men and true mentioned above, Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been buried a year before).

Mary, Queen of Scots, who had claimed her right to the throne of England as the queen consort of France before returning home to Scotland, had been forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son (James VI) on July 24, 1567 while being held in Loch Leven Castle. She escaped from that castle on May 2, 1568 and after defeat at the Battle of Langside on May 13, fled to England on May 16. Mary was soon under house arrest on May 19, held first at Carlisle Castle and then at Bolton Castle. Inquiry into her role in the death of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley in 1567, led to no conviction or finding of guilt, but she was imprisoned for the rest of her life, held in some comfort and at tremendous, unremunerated cost by her hosts, the Shrewsburys at their various estates, and then moved to Fotheringay Castle under close confinement on September 26, 1586 for trial (complicity with the Babington plot) and subsequent execution on February 7, 1587. Her last words, like Anne Boleyn's, were also repeated several times:  "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum" (Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46) and unlike Anne Boleyn, she was not decollated with one stroke of a fine French sword--the first blow hit the back of her head.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Catherine of Aragon (Juan de Flandres)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Anne Boleyn in the Tower (Edouard Cibot)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Mary, Queen of Scots in Captivity (Nicholas Hilliard)

This Morning: "Mysteries in Religion" and the Ascension

As promised, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show with Anna Mitchell at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to talk about a PPS (Parochial and Plain Sermon) St. John Henry Newman preached on Ascension Thursday, "Mysteries in Religion".

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here.

This will be the last episode in our series of Lenten and Easter encounters with Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons on the Son Rise Morning Show. We began with Lenten reflections from a collection of sermons, mostly from his Anglican years, but a few Catholic sermons, using The Tears of Christ, edited by Christopher O. Blum of the Augustine Institute, and then we continued with selections from The Newman Reader after Easter Sunday. Although most of us won't be celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension on Thursday, 40 days after Easter, at a Mass of Obligation, it's appropriate to conclude with this sermon.

At the end of this sermon, Newman brings up the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, based upon the Book of the Revelation of John (Revelation 6:10, 11:17-18, and 15:3-4). He has commented on the expediency of our friends and family dying and going on to Heaven to pray for us and to do God's will and continues:

Yea, doubtless, they are keeping up the perpetual chant in the shrine above, praying and praising God day and night in His Temple, like Moses upon the Mount, while Joshua and his host fight with Amalek. Can they be allotted greater blessedness, than to have a station after the pattern of that Saviour who has departed hence? Has He no power in the world's movements because He is away? And though He is the Living and exalted Lord of all, and the government is on His shoulder, and they are but His servants, without strength of themselves, laid up moreover apart from the conflict of good and evil in the paradise of God, yet so much light as this is given us by the inspired pages of the Apocalypse, that they are interested in the fortunes of the Church.

And then he concludes by bringing back the theme of mystery, especially the mystery of our cooperation in God's plan for us and our world:

What has been now said about the Ascension of our Lord comes to this; that we are in a world of mystery, with one bright Light before us, sufficient for our proceeding forward through all difficulties. Take away this Light, and we are utterly wretched,—we know not where we are, how we are sustained, what will become of us, and of all that is dear to us, what we are to believe, and why we are in being. But with it we have all and abound. Not to mention the duty and wisdom of implicit faith in the love of Him who made and redeemed us, what is nobler, what is more elevating and transporting, than the generosity of heart which risks everything on God's word, dares the powers of evil to their worst efforts, and repels the illusions of sense and the artifices of reason, by confidence in the Truth of Him who has ascended to the right hand of the Majesty on high? What infinite mercy it is in Him, that He allows sinners such as we are, the privilege of acting the part of heroes rather than of penitents?

With an echo of his sermon we talked about last week, "The Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Church", Newman concludes not by telling this congregation what they should do but what he and they will do:

We will not wish for sight; we will enjoy our privilege; we will triumph in the leave given us to go forward, "not knowing whither we go," knowing that "this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." [1 John v. 4.] It is enough that our Redeemer liveth; that He has been on earth and will come again. On Him we venture our all; we can bear thankfully to put ourselves into His hands, our interests present and eternal, and the interests of all we love. Christ has died, "yea rather is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from His love? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through Him that loved us." [Rom. viii. 34-37.]

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image credit: Ascension (1775) by John Singleton Copley, colonial era portraitist and historical painter.