Get it while the getting is good

Or possible.

According to the counter on my book at Scepter Publishers, there are only twenty--20--copies of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation left.

Scepter will be reprinting soon, but the first printing has nearly sold out!

Thank you.

News on the Ordinariates in England

From the Telegraph:

Church of England in crisis as five bishops defect to Rome

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, is expected to announce the resignations as parishes across the country meet to discuss the Pope’s offer to accommodate disaffected Anglicans within the Roman Catholic Church.
Senior Catholics are finalising plans for a new group for Anglican converts who cannot accept women bishops and a detailed timetable for its formation could be announced as early as next week.

The defections have been triggered by a vote at the General Synod of the Church of England in July to support divisive plans for women to be ordained as bishops in England for the first time.
A compromise plan, backed by Dr Williams, was rejected, leaving many opponents of women’s ordination with no option but to consider leaving the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI announced last year that he would create a new body, known as the English Ordinariate, for Church of England traditionalists who wish to switch allegiance to Rome while retaining some of their Anglican traditions. . . .

Concluding with:

Church wardens are arranging meetings to discuss the move in parishes across England. St Peter’s in Folkestone, in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s own diocese, became the first parish to declare publicly that it intended to join the Ordinariate last month.
Holy Trinity church in Reading is expected to make a decision on whether to follow in the next few weeks. Meetings are also planned at St John the Baptist church in Sevenoaks, Kent, and Holy Trinity, Winchmore Hill, in north London.
Fr David Elliott, parish priest at Holy Trinity in Reading, said many traditional Anglo-Catholics felt “squeezed” by liberal reforms in the Church of England.
“For congregations like this it is a big moment in their history,” he said. “These decisions aren’t made lightly. I haven’t resigned but I don’t see that there can be a future for Catholics within the Church of England.
“My own future I think does lie in the Roman Catholic Church but I can’t say when that will be. Obviously I have got to weigh up my responsibilities to the congregation.”

Commentary from:

Once I Was a Clever Boy.
Father Dwight Longenecker.

Notice that quote: " . . . I don't see that there can be a future for Catholics within the Church of England"--that's the difficulty that Blessed John Henry Newman wrestled with in the early 1840's until his conversion in 1845. Between the Broad church on one side and the Low church on the other, the "catholic" via media as he tried to frame could not last.

And the National Catholic Register agrees: as James Kelly notes,

Just weeks after the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, the death knell may have been struck for his original idea of the Church of England as a middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism. This notion, which he subsequently disowned, became the basis of the Anglo-Catholic wing within the Church of England.

Newman himself realized that this experiment was impossible, hence his reception into the Catholic Church. And it now appears to be at an end. The announcement that five Church of England bishops are resigning to take advantage of Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, indicates that fence-sitting is no longer an option.

Follow up to The Good Fight

EWTN has posted the audio from my appearance on "The Good Fight" November 6, with Richard "Doc" Geraghty and I discusssing lay response to the English Reformation with Barbara McGuigan. We focused on the martyrs Blessed Margaret Pole and Saint Margaret Clitherow, although our conversation was wide-ranging.

You may listen or download here.

Preparing for an Interview

Thinking about an interview I'll do next week on the Son Rise Morning Show about the deaths of Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole on the same day, I recalled this novel by Lucy Beckett: The Time Before You Die: A Novel of the Reformation, published by Ignatius Press in 1999. It was a fairly effective novel charting the effects of the Dissolution of the Monasteries on one man's life, a former Carthusian monk. The novel also reflects on the efforts of Reginald Pole to re-establish Catholicism in England during Mary's reign.

The novel lacked the tone of apologetic certainty in Robert Hugh Benson's novel The King's Achievement, and it lacks the poignancy and range of H.F.M. Prescott's great chronicle, A Man on a Donkey. Robert Fletcher, the monk who converts to Lutheranism and marries, finds much to criticise in the Church. Reginald Pole saves him from the burning he would have surely faced and even communicates his feelings of guilt for the death of his mother, Margaret Pole and his brother, while his surviving brother Geoffrey blames himself for succumbing to threats of torture. Pole knows, however, that it was his letter to Henry VIII that caused the fall of his family--the letter in which he told Henry that what he was doing was wrong.

Lucy Beckett has also written a novel about Germany between the two world wars of the twentieth century, A Postcard from the Volcano, a study of Western literature, In the Light of Christ, and several studies of Richard Wagner operas and Wallace Stephen's poetry.

November 8 in 1603, 1620, and 1745

Three dates of importance:

• Robert Catesby, Gunpowder Plot organizer, died on November 8, 1603, shot during a fight with the Sheriff of Worcester at Holbeche House on the border of Staffordshire. His head was displayed outside Parliament.
• The Battle of the White Mountain was fought and won by Catholic forces against Frederick, the Protestant King of Bohemia on November 8, 1620--in about two hours.
• Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, invaded England on November 8, 1745 after defeating the government's army at Prestonpans. While heading back to Scotland in April 1746, his army was met by the Duke of Cumberland's at the Battle of Culloden and the Young Pretender lost that fight.

Sit transit gloria mundi.

Blessed George Napier

Via Once I Was a Clever Boy.

Just a Sample . . .

Scepter Publishers have given Google books permission to publish a sample of Supremacy and Survival on line. You will be able to read the introduction, view some of the tables and glossaries I've prepared, pages in some chapters, a few illustrations, and the first page of the list of recommended reading and of the index. Just enough to whet your appetite, I hope.

Reminds me a little of a scene in Show Boat, the Kern and Hammerstein musical: Cap'n Andy tells Frank and Ellie to give the audience "jest a sample of the dance" (Cap'n Andy's Ballyhoo). Parthy Ann, his wife and Magnolia's mother, complains that he'll give the show away for free! He knows it's a way to tantalize the audience and get them to buy a ticket to see the show on the Show Boat!

The sample pages in Google books give you an idea of the contents and style of Supremacy and Survival, but as it's still held in copyright, doesn't give you the whole book for free. Tantalizing.

Remember you can also get a sample of what Supremacy and Survival is all about today at 1:00 p.m. Central time on EWTN Radio as I appear on "The Good Fight" with Barbara McGuigan and Richard "Doc" Geraghty.

Two Couples: Meeting and Marrying

On this day, November 4, in 1501, Arthur, the Prince of Wales, and Katherine of Aragon, daughter of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, met for the first time. They would marry ten days later, on November 14 at Old St. Paul's in London. Arthur died in Wales nearly five months later, on April 2, 1502 and Katherine of Aragon remained in England while decisions about her dowry and marital future worked themselves out. Her father-in-law Henry VII obtained a papal dispensation so she could marry his second son, Henry, who had been intended for a life in the Church. When the first Tudor king died, his young son married Katherine of Aragon--quite happily and enthusiastically, too.

176 years later, Mary, eldest daughter of James, the Duke of York married William III, Prince of Orange on November 4, 1677. They married on William's mother's birthday. His mother was Mary, the Princess Royal, eldest daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, born in 1631. Henrietta Maria left England at the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642 to deliver her daughter to William II of Orange (they had been married in 1641 but she Mary of Orange was too young--10 years old--to begin married life!). The marriage of William III and Mary in 1677 indicated a shift in Charles II's policy against France and towards Holland. Ten days after Mary and William III married, he celebrated his birthday, as he was born November 14, 1650.

Thomas, Thomas, Thomas

As I recently posted on both Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, I thought I'd pause to consider how many Thomases we know at Henry VIII's Court.

• Thomas Wolsey, Chancellor and Archbishop of York--died on the way to probable execution; accused of treason
  
• Thomas More, Chancellor--executed by Henry VIII's orders


• Thomas Cromwell, Chancellor and Earl of Essex--executed by Henry VIII's orders
  
• Thomas Cramner, Archbishop of Canterbury--executed by will of Mary I for heresy (could have been executed for treason too)
  
• Thomas Wriothesley, Lord Privy Seal, Chancellor--died during reign of Edward VI (pictured)
  
• Thomas Seymour--executed during Edward VI's reign; last husband of Catherine Parr (they had been contemplating marriage before Henry VIII got interested in the oft-married Catherine Parr)
  
• Thomas Howard--survived Henry VIII; he was in the Tower awaiting execution when Henry died
  
• Thomas Boleyn--father of Anne Boleyn; in disgrace after his daughter's fall
  
• Thomas Culpepper--lover of Catherine Howard; executed
  
• Thomas Wyatt--poet, held in the Tower of London, witnessing the executions of Anne Boleyn and her lovers while facing the same accusations

Of these ten men, half were executed, and three of the five who died of natural causes faced execution. Of course, no one was going to get out of there alive; but it was an achievement to die with one's head attached to one's body in the Tudor era.

Another Round on The Good Fight

This Saturday, November 6, I'll be on Barbara McGuigan's The Good Fight live call in show with one of her frequent guests, Richard 'Doc' Geraghty. Barbara will highlight two women martyrs: Blessed Margaret Pole and Saint Margaret Clitherow! Then we will discuss the role of the laity in reacting to the religious changes that took place throughout the English Reformation. You can listen live here and call in at 1-877-573-7825.