A New Outlet: The Christian Review

This is my third piece for The Christian Review: on the reputation of Mary I:

In spite of the efforts of several biographers over the past seven years, the rehabilitation of Mary I’s reputation seems impossible. The burning bodies of 280 English men and women haunt her legacy — and the memory of Catholicism in England.

Historians such Linda Porter, Anna Whitelock, Judith Richards, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, and John Edwards have pointed out that Mary, Henry VIII, and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter forged the path that her half-sister, Elizabeth, would follow. Mary I was the first queen regnant of England; her anointing and crowning broke the taboo of those semi-sacraments being reserved for men; she and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, revived and renewed the practice of Catholicism in England; and she possessed the Tudor charisma while being a hard-working and thoughtful monarch.

But for all of Mary I’s historic attainments, the smoke from the pyres of Smithfield still gets in our eyes.

When Anna Whitelock, author of Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen (Random House: 2010) stated in the BBC History Magazine (Christmas 2014) that the campaign to extirpate heresy in England was working, one reader’s response in January 2015 was immediately negative—the heresy campaign was evil, even if it was effective. Eamon Duffy made the same statement in his study The Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor in 2010, arguing that the negative campaign of heresy trials and executions was matched by a positive campaign of preaching, publishing, and rebuilding—and he met with the same response from reviewers like Hilary Mantel and Richard Wilkinson.

The 2lst century biographers follow the lead of H.F.M. Prescott’s 1953 Mary Tudor: The Spanish Tudor to present Mary’s great qualities of generosity, love of children, faithfulness to her religion, dedication to her mother, and adoration of her father, and how horrible her adolescence and early adulthood were; not allowed to see her dying mother, forced by her adored father to swear to her own bastardy, prevented from the normal course of marriage and childbearing.

Read the rest there. Here are my other two pieces: one on William Byrd; the other another review of Jessie Child's God's Traitors. 

St. John Ogilvie on the Son Rise Morning Show

Matt Swaim and I will discuss the execution of St. John Ogilvie, SJ on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 6:35 a.m. Central/7:35 a.m. Eastern--right after the bottom of the hour news broadcast by Annie Mitchell. Listen online at ewtn.com/radio/

St. John Ogilvie, SJ was executed 400 years ago today in Scotland because he was a Catholic priest and would not accept James VI/I as the supreme governor of the church in Scotland. He demonstrated tremendous fortitude during his imprisonment and a wonderfully peaceful attitude when condemned to death. And the tortures inflicted upon him would have made Richard Topcliffe of Elizabeth I's time in England embarrassed at his own lack of creativity.

More about St. John Ogilvie here--I hope to post a follow up report on the special celebrations in Glasgow of his martyrdom. A prayer in honor of St. John Ogilvie:

God our Father, fountain of all blessing, We thank you for the countless graces that come to us in answer to the prayers of your saints. With great confidence we ask you in the name of your Son and through the prayers of St John Ogilvie to help us in all our needs.

Lord Jesus, you chose your servant St John Ogilvie to be your faithful witness to the spiritual authority of the chief shepherd of your flock. Keep your people always one in mind and heart, In communion with Francis our Pope, and all the bishops of your Church.

Holy Spirit, you gave St John Ogilvie light to know your truth, wisdom to defend it, and courage to die for it. Through his prayers and example bring our country into the unity and peace of Christ’s kingdom. Amen.

Next Monday, we'll continue our Church History Apologetics series by discussing the "Inquisition", Spanish or otherwise.

Next month in our apologetics series on the third Monday of April--St. Thomas More and Wolf Hall!

David Rizzio's Murder

Today is the anniversary of the murder of David Rizzio, Mary of Scotland's Court musician and secretary for diplomatic relations with France, in 1566. The report is that he was stabbed 56 times by followers of Lord Darnley, after a scene of great violence to the pregnant Mary, in Holyroodhouse.

The National Galleries of Scotland have "The Murder of David Rizzio" by Sir William Allan on display. This site has the following details about this horrendous event:

On the evening of Saturday 9 March, while the Queen, Rizzio and some others were at supper in the privy chamber off the Queen´s bedroom in Holyrood Palace, Darnley and Ruthven entered, followed by the other conspirators. On the 9th of March 1566 Mary, Rizzio and a small group of friends were enjoying a late supper in the small room by the Queen’s bedchamber. Darnley suddenly appeared, speaking to Mary as a group of armed nobles made their way to the Queen’s chambers. Mary immediately realised that David’s life was in danger and confronted the plotters - ‘Leave our presence under pain of treason.’ When Ruthven told Darnley to seize his wife a fight broke out. Rizzio hid behind the Queen’s dress as her friends and servants struggled with Ruthven.

David Rizzio was dragged screaming from the supper room and murdered in the stairway outside the Queen’s chambers. He was stabbed over 50 times before his body was dumped down the stairs. Darnley refused to stab Rizzio but his dagger was left in the body to show his complicity.

It's amazing but true to note that there is no public statue honoring Mary, Queen of Scots in Scotland! As this BBC story from last month notes:

Her life has inspired many film scripts and novels but no public monuments.

She became queen of Scotland when she was six days old but spent most of her childhood in France.

On her return her brief reign resulted only in disastrous marriages, murder and war.

She gave up the throne at the age of 24 and was a prisoner in England for most of the next 20 years until she executed on the orders of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.

Now, more than 400 years after her death, the monarch, whose son, James, became king of Scotland and England, is finally to have a monument to her erected in Scotland.

The statue will be unveiled later this spring but work is under way at Powderhall foundry in Edinburgh on a queen who has been notable by her absence.

The manquette of the sculpture is pictured above, used by the kind permission of The Marie Stuart Society, which has raised the funds for this long overdue tribute. 

Mary, Queen of Scots did not demand that everyone in Scotland practice the Catholic faith--no cuius regio, eius religio for her. She didn't replace the Protestants at Court who had been ruling in her absence after her mother, Marie of Guise died, but did have Catholics, including David Rizzio at Court in her household and practiced her Catholic faith by attending Mass even though the Scottish Parliament had "abolished" the Mass in Scotland. Fear of Catholicism in Scotland, however, fomented by John Knox, led to Rizzio's murder and the violence perpetrated against the reigning monarch. Mary had compromised, in consultation with her half-brother James Stewart, the first Earl of Moray, John Knox and his supporters refused to compromise and Knox consistently attacked Mary because she practiced her Catholic faith.

Hating "The Sound of Music" All the Way to the Bank

The movie version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. Lady Gaga sang a medley of songs at the Academy Awards and Julie Andrews hugged her on stage. New DVDs, books, and other celebrations, including cast reunions are taking place. But as this review of one of the books about The Sound of Music notes, there's an element of hatred behind the hoopla--people hate The Sound of Music, even while they rake in the dough:

From the beginning, nobody loved “The Sound of Music” but the audience. When it was announced that Ernest Lehman would write a script based on the Broadway hit, Burt Lancaster told him: “Jesus, you must need the money.” When asked to direct, Stanley Donen refused to have anything to do with it. When Lehman sounded out Gene Kelly about directing, he led his questioner to the door of his home and said, “Go find someone else to direct this piece of s---!”

On Broadway, by contrast, the show had come together easily. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II began writing the score early in 1959, rehearsals began in August and the show opened in November, after which it ran for three years. Bing, bang, boom.

But there was a sense among some critics and many show-business professionals that “The Sound of Music” was a step back from previous Rodgers and Hammerstein shows: A theme of racial tolerance had formed the dramatic spine of “South Pacific” (1949), while domestic violence was the core of “Carousel” (1945). By comparison, the journey of an Austrian naif from postulant nun to governess to Lady of the Manor seemed behind its time, particularly next to the emotionally violent “Gypsy,” which opened the same year. Walter Kerr wrote in the New York Herald-Tribune that “The Sound of Music” was “not only too sweet for words, but almost too sweet for music.” When Mary Martin, who originated the role of Maria, beat out Ethel Merman for the Tony Award for best actress in a musical, Merman spoke for many when she snarled, “How you gonna buck a nun?” [other references call it a quip].

Those are pretty violent reactions--with a hint of anti-Catholicism. The original stage play contained a consistent anti-Nazi message with the Captain standing up against the supporters of the party. "There's No Way to Stop It" teaches him something about his fiancee's character as she and Max Detweiler try to convince him just to go along with the political changes that are coming for the sake of self-preservation. It is too bad they did not include it in the movie. The basis of much of the story is the Captain's true patriotism and defiance of fascism--and that still comes out in the movie without that song. That's why Edelweiss and the Landler are such important numbers.

The Catholic Herald highlights another critic, who really twists the story:

For instance in 2008 Bishop Richard Williamson, then a member of the traditionalist Society of St Pius X, described the movie as “soul-rotting slush”. The eccentric prelate asked: “Can you imagine this Julie Andrews staying with the Captain if the romance went out of their marriage? Would she not divorce him and grab his children from him to be her toys? Such romance is not actually pornographic but it is virtually so, in other words, all the elements of pornography are there, just waiting to break out.”

That makes no sense at all. It takes a special imagination to find virtual pornography in the romance of The Sound of Music. Especially when we know that the real-life Maria and Captain were faithfully married until his death!

So at the same time that we are celebrating the anniversary of the film, there's an undercurrent of mockery--the theme of how saccharine the story is and how Christopher Plummer and Robert Wise saved it from being completely sentimental is constant in the interviews and stories. With the new packaging of the movie in an ultimate (for now) five disc collectors edition, including a sing-along, the studio is making lots of money and Hollywood is hating The Sound of Music all the way to the bank. While some critics hate it, the audiences love it, and they always have. At least Julie Andrews has said that she would never knock the film since it was part of her successful career--displaying some integrity and honesty!

Friday Chant from The Dominicans

St. Catherine Ricci compiled this canticle of the Lord's Passion. According to this site, she received it during her experiences of the Passion:

Saint Catherine’s experience of the Passion of Our Lord occurred for twelve years, until she and the community prayed for it to stop. The attention and the visitors the convent was gaining due to her ecstasy had become disruptive to the Rules of the Order. During her weekly experience, Catherine’s body was tortured, allowing her sisters to follow the Passion step by step. Catherine would bleed as if being scourged, her forehead would run with blood as if she were being crowned with thorns, a large indentation on her shoulder appeared where Jesus had carried the cross. She further experienced the stigmata and bled from a wound in her side where the lance had been thrust. During these moments, and other moments of deeply penitential prayer, a coral ring would appear on Catherine’s finger, a sign of her marriage to the suffering of Christ. During her first ecstatic experience, she was presented with The Canticle of the Passion (text found below) by Our Blessed Mother—a prayer which Mary urged her to share with others, so that they, too, may contemplate the sufferings of the Lord.

THE CANTICLE OF THE PASSION

My friends and My neighbors
have drawn near and stood against Me.
I was delivered up and came not forth;

My eyes languished through poverty.
And my sweat became as drops of blood,
trickling down and upon the ground.

For many dogs have encompassed Me
the council of the malignant hath besieged Me.

I have given My body to the strikers
and My cheeks to them that plucked them.

I have not turned away My face from them that rebuked Me
and spit upon Me.

For I am ready for scourges,
and My sorrow is continually before Me.
The soldiers, plaiting a crown of thorns, placed it upon My head.

They have dug My hands and feet;
they have numbered all My bones.

And they gave Me gall for My food;
and in My thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.

All they that saw Me laughed Me to scorn;
they have spoken with lips and wagged their heads.
They have looked and stared upon Me;
they parted My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots.

Into Thy hands I commend My spirit;
Thou has redeemed me, O God of truth.
Be mindful, O Lord, of Thy servants,
when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom.

And Jesus having cried out with a loud voice
gave up the ghost.

The mercies of the Lord
I will sing for all eternity.

Surely He hath borne our infirmities
and carried our sorrows.
He was bruised for our sins.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray;
every one hath turned aside into his own way.

For the Lord hath placed upon him
the iniquities of us all.

Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord?
Arise and cast us not off to the end.

Behold, God is my Savior,
I will deal confidently, and will not fear.

We beseech Thee, O Lord, help Thy servants
whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Precious Blood.

Have mercy on us, O benign Jesus.
Who in Thy clemency didst suffer for us.

Look down, we beseech Thee, O Lord, on this Thy family for which Our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands of the wicked, and suffer the torments of the Cross.

This YouTube video is from the Dominicans in Ireland. It is often sung at Friday night devotions during Lent in Dominican houses. I have found it a great devotional addition to attending Stations and Benediction this Lent. The pauses between the stanzas provide moments for reflection and meditation.

John Donne's Grandfather Survives the Prebendaries Plot

Blessed Germain or Jermyn or German Gardiner was executed at Tyburn on March 7, 1544. He was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. As Bishop of Winchester Stephen Gardiner's nephew and secretary, he became involved in the Prebendaries' Plot of 1543 and was hung, drawn, and quartered for the denial of Henry VIII's Supremacy over the Church of England.

The Prebendaries' Plot was named after the five prebendary canons of Canterbury Cathedral (including William Hadleigh, a monk at Christchurch Canterbury prior to the monastery's dissolution) who formed its core. Others involved were two holders of the new cathedral office of "six preacher" (created in 1541), along with various local non-cathedral priests and Kentish gentlemen (eg Thomas Moyle, Edward Thwaites and Cyriac Pettit). Simultaneous agitation at the court in Windsor, and the conspiracy in general, was led covertly by Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester.

Henry VIII's chaplain Richard Cox was charged with investigating and suppressing it, and his success (240 priests and 60 laypeople of both sexes were accused of involvement) led to his being made Cranmer's chancellor (and later, under Elizabeth, bishop of Ely). Gardiner survived, though his relation Germain Gardiner, who had acted as his secretary and intermediary to the plotters in Kent, was executed in 1544 for questioning the Royal Supremacy.

So Blessed Germain Gardiner was left as the scapegoat to suffer for the plot, while Henry VIII, still valuing Bishop Stephen Gardiner's efforts in supporting both Henry's "Great Matter" and his more "conservative" reformation of the Church, spared his uncle.

Along with Gardiner, Blessed John Larke, friend of St. Thomas More and former rector of Chelsea (More's parish) and Blessed John Ireland, also connected with St. Thomas More and Chelsea, were executed for denying Henry VIII's Supremacy. Robert Singleton, a parish priest, was also executed under a charge of treason, but he has not been beatified.

John Heywood, the playwright and grandfather of John Donne was also on the scaffold at Tyburn sentenced to death, but he recanted and was spared. He also had connections to St. Thomas More and survived the ups and downs of the Tudor succession until Elizabeth I's reign. Then he went into exile in Mechelen, Belgium where he died around 1580. You may have used one of John Heywood epigrams and not realized the source: wikipedia lists many of the most famous:

What you have, hold.
Haste maketh waste. (1546)
Out of sight out of mind. (1542)
When the sun shineth, make hay. (1546)
Look ere ye leap. (1546)
Two heads are better than one. (1546)
Love me, love my dog. (1546)
Beggars should be no choosers. (1546)
All is well that ends well. (1546)
The fat is in the fire. (1546)
I know on which side my bread is buttered. (1546)
One good turn asketh another. (1546)
A penny for your thought. (1546)
Rome was not built in one day. (1546)
Better late than never. (1546)
An ill wind that bloweth no man to good. (1546)
The more the merrier. (1546)
You cannot see the wood for the trees. (1546)
This hitteth the nail on the head. (1546)
No man ought to look a given horse in the mouth. (1546)
Tread a woorme on the tayle and it must turne agayne. (1546)
Many hands make light work. (1546)
Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue your cake? (1562)
When he should get aught, each finger is a thumb. (1546)

His son Jasper Heywood, SJ was briefly in charge of the English mission, arrested and exiled. He is best known for his translations of Seneca.

Thomas Arne (RIP) and His Sister, Mrs. Cibber

For those who love irony (and who doesn't?) consider that Thomas Arne, composer of the ultimate John Bull, "sun doesn't set on the British empire", patriotic tune, "Rule, Britannia!" AND the British national anthem, "God Save the King/Queen" was a "Roman" Catholic in eighteenth century England. He was born on March 12, 1710 and died on March 5, 1778 (he is buried in St. Paul's Church at Covent Garden, the so-called "Actors' Church"where he was also baptized.) This baptism and burial reflects the restrictions on Catholics dating from the penal laws passed during the reign of James Ist. In 1778, George III signed the first Catholic Relief Act, which removed some restrictions and required a new oath of loyalty.

Because he was a Catholic, Arne could not obtain any royal posts or of course write for the Church of England. Arne was also a Freemason, when Pope Clement XII had forbidden Catholics to be Freemasons in 1738, so that's a conundrum. He became a great contributor to English stage music:

Arne went on to compose such operas as "Rosamund" (1733), "Tom Thumb" (1733), "Comus" (1738), "Judith" (1761), "Artaxerxes the Great" (1763), "The Fairy Queen" (1771), and "Caractacus" (1775), as well as the oratorio "The Death of Abel" (1744), and "Four Symphonies" (1767). Working for the Drury Lane Theatre in the 1740's, he also wrote incidental music for several Shakespeare plays, including "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night", "The Merchant of Venice", "The Tempest", "Love's Labour's Lost", and "Romeo and Juliet". "The Masque of Althred" (1740), featuring "Rule, Brittania!", was first performed at Frederick, the Prince of Wales's summer home, Cliveden. The lyrics for "Rule, Britannia!" are by James Thomson:

When Britain first, at Heaven's command
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

It always closes the annual Proms with quite enthusiastic audience participation. In Music and Monarchy, David Starkey noted that Arne wrote both "Rule, Britannia" and "God Save the King" in the midst of conflict between George II and his estranged son, Frederick the Prince of Wales (who was the father of King George III). Arne wrote "Rule, Britannia" for Frederick as part of a masque honoring King Alfred the Great and supporting the expansion of the British Navy, and then wrote "God Save the King" to support George II.

While noting the anniversary of his death, it's also important to remember that his sister was a very popular singer and actress (and his son would also compose for the theater--seemed to run in the family). Susannah Maria (Arne) Cibber was also involved in some scandal with her husband and a gentleman boarder they had taken in to supplement their income. She continued to perform and was the contralto soloist for the 1742 premiere of Handel's Messiah. The legend is that when the chancellor of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin heard her sing "He was despised" he proclaimed, "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!" Here is Kathleen Ferrier singing the same aria:

When Susannah Cibber died in 1766, the Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres closed their doors for the day--just as Broadway in New York dims its lights when a great stage star dies. 

On a less exalted note, Thomas Arne also wrote the music for "A-Hunting we will go":

A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go
(Heigh-ho, the derry-o, a-hunting we will go
A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go)
We'll catch a fox and put him in a box
And then we'll let him go.

Butterfield's Whig Interpretation of History

This is the book I'd ordered at Eighth Day Books--Butterfield's famous analysis of The Whig Interpretation of History.

It seems that many of the books I've been reading lately--from Chesterton's The Well and the Shallows, to a novel my husband just got me started on (Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah) and even Newman's "The Second Spring" sermon I quoted from on Monday--are talking about progress. What is progress? When or how do we know that we have progressed? What if we doubt that we have progressed at all?

The whig method of writing history, as Butterfield describes it, is all about the historian accepting our current state as progress and then interpreting the past as the prelude to the progress we've achieved. It's reading the past through the lens of the present and using the present to find signs of the progress we've achieved in the past.

This kind of history always assumes that we have achieved greater moral clarity, more civilized forms of government and legislation, a freer society, etc--and therefore we can look back on the past to point out moral failures and crimes. It does not try to understand the past but identify those people or events that aided the progress that has created our morally superior world and also those that tried to hold back progress.

Butterfield uses the example of Reformation History under the whig theory throughout his essay: Protestantism defeated Catholicism and so now we have a better world. If Catholicism had won, we would be stuck in the Middle Ages, because of course the Catholic Church would always have prevented progress! It would have always been against science, freedom, development of peoples, etc. One might almost think that Butterfield was a Catholic from the way he defends the Catholic Church from this view of history, but no, he was a Methodist.

What Butterfield proposes for the historian to do is find out and tell--like a travel guide for people who will never travel to the places she describes--what life was like in the past. He wants the historian to describe the past, not judge it for its influence on the present.

According to this article from First Things, Lord John Acton was Butterfield's target:

In this respect, Butterfield found particular fault in the writings of Lord Acton, a historian whom he otherwise greatly admired, but against whom much of the argumentative force of Whig Interpretation was directed. That Acton was himself a notable member of that shrinking band of believing Christian historians, and a Catholic to boot, and that Butterfield himself was a Whig by default, only adds further ironies to the mix.

The tendencies Butterfield resisted were illustrated in Acton’s 1895 inaugural address on assuming the Regius chair. In that address, Acton issued a rebuke to one of the chief characteristics of historicism: its insistence on confining the historian’s moral judgment to the specific historical contexts in which the actions under review took place. Acton embraced historicism as a method but drew a line against its tendency toward relativism. Instead, he offered a ringing defense of the historian as moral arbiter, urging his audience “never to debase the moral currency or lower the standard of rectitude, but try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.”

In other words, as we might say today, the historian should not hesitate to impose his values on the past. And Acton was in no doubt about the general direction of history’s movement: “I hope . . . this will aid you to see that the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but increases; that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world; and that achieved liberty is the one ethical result that rests on the converging and combined conditions of advancing civilization. Then you will understand what a famous philosopher said, that History is the true demonstration of Religion.”

While Butterfield was thinking of Acton when he wrote this, I was thinking of Thomas Cahill as I read it. He seems to be our time's great Whig historian. As he writes his "Hinges of History" series, he is, as one reviewer said of the latest volume, on the Renaissance and the Reformation, writing about the past to find traces of the present. The book is

essentially a search through history for characters presenting features that appear “modern” to the searcher. He then provides lively biographical vignettes that emphasize these features, and (as it were) announces—“Voila, modernity in the Renaissance (or Reformation).” . . . In the end, Heretics and Heroes is not an attempt to understand, or explain, the past from the perspective of the people of the past. It is a history of progress towards us, or, rather, towards those of us who are truly modern, in the right way. It is a peculiar kind of hagiographical enterprise—the scouring of history to find the people that are most like us. 

The First Things article points out some of the weaknesses of Butterfield's study, but with books like Heretics and Heroes still around, it's clear that we need to be reminded of its lessons.

Newman the Model of Rhetoric and Style

On the last day of February, 2015 it was snowing in Wichita. We shoveled the snow off our driveway (partially), filling the truck bed and drove off in a more roadworthy vehicle to Eighth Day Books. A book I'd ordered had arrived. The wily proprietor at EDB, our friend Warren told me about some used books recently obtained, Longmans' editions of Newman. We took our free coffee upstairs and I found the volumes Warren mentioned--I already had two of them.

One of them, however, was intriguing, so I bought it. It is The Second Spring by Cardinal Newman, Edited by Francis P. Donnelly, SJ, a 1921 printing of the book originally published by Longmans, Green, and Co. on Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York (also with offices in London, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras) in 1911. It had been a library book at the St. Joseph Convent of the Sisters of Divine Providence in Perry, Oklahoma. The Sisters of Divine Providence were founded by St. Mother Therese Guerin in St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana. She was a French Sister of Providence of Ruillé sur-Loir who came to the United States in the 19th century. There was a Catholic school in Perry, Oklahoma named St. Joseph, but it must have closed (see this facebook page). Evidently when the Perry convent closed it must have come to Wichita because there are stamps for the Mount St. Mary's Convent Library, which is the motherhouse of the Congregation of St. Joseph, fka the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Father Francis P. Donnelly, SJ wrote several books, including some meditations for the Holy Hour. From what I can determine from an online search, he taught and administered at Jesuit colleges in the U.S.A.: Gonzaga and Holy Cross College. His edition of Newman's famous "The Second Spring" sermon, is a rhetoric and composition textbook for high school students. He introduces the sermon, which Newman preached at the first diocesan synod held since the English Reformation, discusses Newman's Ciceronian style and then, after the text of the sermon, provides exercises for the students. He guides them in analyzing the structure of the sermon, each paragraph, selected sentences, and various other aspects of word choice, etc. He assigns themes so the student may treat them as Newman treats the extraordinary reversal of most human history--the Catholic Church in England had been dead; the Catholic Church in England is alive again!

Imagine being a high school student in Perry, Oklahoma--or anywhere else--and being asked to imitate this as a way to form your writing style:

But what is it, my Fathers, my Brothers, what is it that has happened in England just at this time? Something strange is passing over this land, by the very surprise, by the very commotion, which it excites. Were we not near enough the scene of action to be able to say what is going on,—were we the inhabitants of some sister planet possessed of a more perfect mechanism than this earth has discovered for surveying the transactions of another globe,—and did we turn our eyes thence towards England just at this season, we should be arrested by a political phenomenon as wonderful as any which the astronomer notes down from his physical field of view. It would be the occurrence of a national commotion, almost without parallel, more violent than has happened here for centuries,—at least in the judgments and intentions of men, if not in act and deed. We should note it down, that soon after St. Michael's day, 1850, a storm arose in the moral world, so furious as to demand some great explanation, and to rouse in us an intense desire to gain it. We should observe it increasing from day to day, and spreading from place to place, without remission, almost without lull, up to this very hour, when perhaps it threatens worse still, or at least gives no sure prospect of alleviation. Every party in the body politic undergoes its influence,—from the Queen upon her throne, down to the little ones in the infant or day school. The ten thousands of the constituency, the sum-total of Protestant sects, the aggregate of religious societies and associations, the great body of established clergy in town and country, the bar, even the medical profession, nay, even literary and scientific circles, every class, every interest, every fireside, gives tokens of this ubiquitous storm. This would be our report of it, seeing it from the distance, and we should speculate on the cause. What is it all about? against what is it directed? what wonder has happened upon earth? what prodigious, what preternatural event is adequate to the burden of so vast an effect?

We should judge rightly in our curiosity about a phenomenon like this; it must be a portentous event, and it is. It is an innovation, a miracle, I may say, in the course of human events. The physical world revolves year by year, and begins again; but the political order of things does not renew itself, does not return; it continues, but it proceeds; there is no retrogression. This is so well understood by men of the day, that with them progress is idolized as another name for good. The past never returns—it is never good;—if we are to escape existing ills, it must be by going forward. The past is out of date; the past is dead. As well may the dead live to us, well may the dead profit us, as the past return. This, then, is the cause of this national transport, this national cry, which encompasses us. The past has returned, the dead lives. Thrones are overturned, and are never restored; States live and die, and then are matter only for history. Babylon was great, and Tyre, and Egypt, and Nineve, and shall never be great again. The English Church was, and the English Church was not, and the English Church is once again. This is the portent, worthy of a cry. It is the coming in of a Second Spring; it is a restoration in the moral world, such as that which yearly takes place in the physical.

More about the book I went to Eighth Day Books to purchase tomorrow. That's me outside the front door of Eighth Day Books, bag full of books in hand.

Happy 203rd Birthday to A.W.N. Pugin

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was born on March 1, 1812 in London. His parents were emigres from the French Revolution and his father, Augustin Pugin was an architect. He set his son to drawing Gothic buildings. His interest in Gothic architecture led him to study the Catholic faith and A.W. N. Pugin joined the Catholic Church in 1835.

On the Continent, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's career is roughly coterminous with Pugin's and both contributed to the revival of Gothic architecture. Viollet-le-Duc was more interested in restoration of Gothic cathedrals, churches, and castles throughout France. Pugin was convinced that Gothic was THE style for Christian buildings. He wanted not only to design churches and cathedrals in the Gothic style but to furnish them and decorate them throughout--designing every aspect of the building. Unfortunately, his patrons did not always have the money necessary to complete all that work.

When the Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850 after emancipation in 1829, of course, Catholics had to build a new infrastructure: churches, cathedrals, convents, monasteries, schools, and seminaries--there was a lot of work to do! In collaboration with John Talbot, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, Pugin designed and built 14 chapels, schools, etc between 1836 and 1848 in Staffordshire. He also worked in Ireland, especially in County Wexford in the late 1830s and throughout the 1840s. He travelled on the Continent, visiting France and the Netherlands, but did not go to Rome until 1847--where the Renaissance and Baroque architecture of the churches disappointed him. (I think there is only one truly Gothic church in Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.)

He was only 40 years old when he died. He suffered from mental illness and tremendous stress--and perhaps syphilis, according to his major modern biographer, Rosemary Hill. His sons Edward Welby and Peter Paul continued his work in their partnership, Pugin and Pugin. E.W. Pugin also died at the age of 40, in 1875 and Peter Paul finished several of his works in progress and maintained the family style.

Gracewing publishes several books by and about Augustus Welby Northmore Putin, including THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF Pointed or Christian Architecture and AN APOLOGY FOR The Revival of Christian Architecture. The bicentennial of his birthday was celebrated in 2012--find more background on that celebration here.