Spring Play: A Man for All Seasons

This was the first staged production (at Newman University here in Wichita) of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons I have ever seen. The play differs most from the movie in the inclusion of the Common Man (which in this production included a Common Woman), a kind of chorus offering commentary on the story while also playing small roles (servant, jailer, etc). Newman's theatre department staged the play on a multi-level, stationary set, with few props--and a boat that glided along the Thames.

The production was a straightforward presentation of Bolt's play, emphasizing More's steadfastness, as this story from Newman University notes:

“A Man for All Seasons,” written by Robert Bolt, is based on the true story of Sir Thomas More, the 16th-century Chancellor of England who refused to endorse King Henry VIII’s wish to divorce his wife who did not bear him a son.

“I believe it is the tale of one man who chose to remain as steadfast as a stone while the rushing river of the times attempted to budge him from himself,” Director of Theatre Mark Mannette said. “When he did not budge, remaining true to himself, they found a means to end him. Later sainted for his martyrdom, he became St. Thomas More. In life, when so many people follow the herd, it is refreshing to see the bravery of an individual who does not.”

Newman senior Mark Carlson, who plays Sir Thomas More, said the role has been a good experience.

“The role of Sir Thomas More is, I feel, one of the most complicated yet rewarding characters I have portrayed,” Carlson said. “The play does an excellent job of portraying everyone in both positive and negative lights. No one character is truly ‘good’ or ‘evil,’ but a mixture of the two. More’s strict adherence to law and his devotion to the Catholic Church is both his most admirable quality and the cause of his descent from royal favor. More is at times a dry wit, a passionate spokesman for justice, and a calculating lawyer, torn by loyalties to both God and his country.”

I appreciated Carlson's portrayal of More; in fact, nearly all of the roles were well done. I appreciated even more what a foil to More the character of Will Roper is: he's the one who should be the martyr, but More ends up in his place. The Common Man and Woman actors sometimes "lost" their lines--in their rapid delivery and stage movements including prop management, the impact and humor was reduced. The portrayal of Henry VIII lacked majesty: he was mercurial and menacing, but when he was supposed to be charming, he seemed almost lecherous. But Carlson portrayed More's careful negotiation of the trap that was being sprung around him very well: thoughtfully, compassionately; with humor and pathos both.

I've been posting and speaking about the contrast between the good "Seasons" More and the bad "Wolf Hall" More quite a bit, but after seeing the play--not the movie with all its production values, music, and Paul Scofield's majestic performance, etc--I'm rethinking even the foundation of Bolt's characterization of Sir Thomas More. My reaction was that Bolt's More is such a lawyer, so bound up with the law, placing such faith in the law and the administration of justice, that his condemnation and death seemed an even greater injustice to me. He seems even more innocent and indeed as naive as many of his friends, enemies, and family members say he is. The repeated comment, "This isn't Spain" referencing the Black Legend of Spanish injustice and persecution was the bellwether: Henry VIII's and Cromwell's England WAS Spain. 

All the laws in the world can't protect a man if the administration of justice is determined to destroy him. More protects himself and his family, who also suffer, as much as he can, but Cromwell will persecute him on Henry's behalf. Once the powerful start manipulating the laws and the administration of justice, no appeals to the Magna Carta or English Common Law will protect either the innocent or the guilty--even if you give the devil his due process in the hope of defending yourself . With thoughts like these roiling around in my brain Saturday night, I did not sleep well. But as the Common Man says at the end of the play, I'm still breathing. And you?

The Man Who Knows Campion

In 2005, Gerard Kilroy's book Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription was published by Ashgate, which has now become part of Routledge:

The death of Edmund Campion in 1581 marked a disjunction between the world of printed untruth and private, handwritten, truth in early modern England. Gerard Kilroy traces the circulation of manuscripts connected with Campion to reveal a fascinating network that not only stretched from the Court to Warwickshire and East Anglia but also crossed the confessional boundaries. Kilroy shows that in this intricate web Sir John Harington was a key figure, using his disguise as a wit to conceal a lifelong dedication to Campion's memory. Sir Thomas Tresham is shown as expressing his devotion to Campion both in his coded buildings and in a previously unpublished manuscript, Bodleian MS Eng. th. b. 1a "2, whose theological and cultural riches are here fully explored. This book provides startling new views about Campion's literary, historical and cultural impact in early modern England. The great strength of this study is its exploitation of archival manuscript sources, offering the first printed text and translation of Campion's Virgilian epic, a fully collated text of 'Why doe I use my paper, ynke and pen', and Harington's four decades of theological epigrams, printed for the first time in the order he so carefully designed. Edmund Campion: Memory and Transcription lays the foundations of the first full literary assessment of Campion the scholar, the impact he had on the literature of early modern England, and the long legacy in manuscript writing.

And in 2011, he wrote about Campion for the Jesuits in Britain:

The Elizabethan regime may have dismembered Campion’s body, but the battle over his reputation was as fierce as the battle over the body of Patroclus in the Iliad. The topic was still contentious in 1587 when the censors, in the week before the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, took out 47 lines asserting that Campion died for religion from the work we know as ‘Holinshed’, the ‘Continuation’ of the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

What was lost in all this noise was Edmundus Campianus Anglus Londinensis, the boy born in the heart of the printing trade, Paul’s Churchyard, son of an anti-Catholic publisher also called Edmund, schoolboy prodigy at St Paul’s (1547-52) and Christ’s Hospital (1552-57), who was chosen to address the new queen, Mary Tudor. Also lost was Edmundus Campianus Oxoniensis, the brilliant Oxford scholar (1557-70) who could turn a speech on the earth and moon into a subtle plea to the Queen and the Earl of Leicester not to interfere in the university’s affairs; and the carefree, companionable novice in Brno (1573-74) and lecturer in rhetoric in Prague (1574-80), whose drafts for student performances on feast days like Corpus Christi or All Souls survive in autograph at Stonyhurst. And, of course, Edmund Campion, the affectionate friend who effortlessly attracted patrons and friends among merchants, aldermen, nobles and foreign princes.

Descriptions of Campion as a friend seem to deal only in superlatives. Letters to Campion from the translator of the Rheims New Testament, Gregory Martin, begin ‘Dilectissime’ (‘most dearly beloved’) or ‘Suavissime et optime’ (‘sweetest and best’). Robert Persons, Campion’s superior on the mission to England, describes himas ‘facillimi ingenii’ (‘of a most yielding disposition’), a trait that was, literally, to be the death of him. In fact, all four of the major decisions that led to his capture and subsequent torture were decisions made on the point of, or after, departure, and in response to requests from others.

And last year he published another book with Ashgate/Routledge:

Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life is the response, at long last, to Evelyn Waugh's call, in 1935, for a a "scholarly biography" to replace Richard Simpson's Edmund Campion (1867). Whereas early accounts of his life focused on the execution of the Jesuit priest, this new biography presents a more balanced assessment, placing equal weight on Campion's London upbringing among printers and preachers, and on his growing stature as an orator in an Oxford riven with religious divisions. Ireland, chosen by Campion as a haven from religious conflict, is shown, paradoxically, to have determined his life and his death. Gerard Kilroy here draws on newly discovered manuscript sources to reveal Campion as a charismatic and affectionate scholar who was finding fulfilment as priest and teacher in Prague when he was summoned to lead the first Jesuit mission to England. The book argues that the delays in his long journey suggest reluctant acceptance, even before he was told that Dr Nicholas Sander had brought a "holy war"to Ireland, so that Campion landed in an England that was preparing for papal invasion. The book offers fresh insights into the dramatic search for Campion, the populist nature of the disputations in the Tower, and the legal issues raised by his torture. It was the monarchical republic itself that, in pursuit of the Anjou marriage, made him the beloved a "champion" of the English Catholic community. Edmund Campion: A Scholarly Life presents the most detailed and comprehensive picture to date of an historical figure whose loyalty and courage, in the trial and on the scaffold, swiftly became legendary across Europe.

Gerard Kilroy is an Honorary Visiting Professor of English at UCL (University College of London). Simon Caldwell reviews his latest work on Campion for The Catholic Herald here.

Deep in History and Culture

Tyler Blanski wrote When Donkeys Talk and it was published by Zondervan in 2013. While Blanski followed his "Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity" he found the Catholic Church. From Zondervan:

Tired of church as you’ve known it? Thirsty for a fresh look at Christian faith? American singer/songwriter and author Tyler Blanski was, too. So he set out on a Holy Pilgrimage to rediscover the saints, stars, and beauty of Christianity for the twenty-first century. Rich with deep application for living in the modern world, When Donkeys Talk is an invitation to become enchanted again with Christ and his world.

Tyler reminds us that God works in unexpected, unusual, and miraculous ways and that he inhabits and speaks through the wondrous world he has made. Blanski redefines “magical” to help us see that the world is guided by a hand greater than science and materialism. Using scripture, the wisdom of the church fathers, and respected theologians and Christian thinkers from centuries past, as well as a creative and humorous narrative, you will find the wonder of our ancient faith still alive and well.

From Tyler Blanski at Churchpop.com:

If I were to tell you that I had a talking donkey, you would probably chuckle and pour another drink. If I were to insist that I was entirely serious, you would probably back away slowly and, with no masked alarm, look for the nearest exit.

Nothing ruins a good party like a story about a miracle.

“It was a trick of the nerves, an illusion,” those who dared to hang around would counsel, surveying me with concerned puppy eyes. “Have you taken your medication?” I do not have a donkey, but if I did, I would want it to be a talking donkey.

So begins the book that eventually made me become Catholic, a book in which Christianity is an old-growth forest, a world crowded with angels and saints and sacraments and wild theories about how the Incarnation has comprehensive implications for the universe and for us.

We need a holy renaissance. But the path through Christendom is old and dangerous, and careful reconnoitering is necessary. This is, at least, the modest justification for the travelogue, When Donkeys Talk: A Quest to Rediscover the Mystery and Wonder of Christianity (Zondervan, 2013).

The strange thing is, it’s written by a Protestant; that is to say, I had not yet been received into the Church when I wrote it. I was somewhere in between, in a via media, and I was searching for home. Writing When Donkeys Talk was my way of going on a “holy pilgrimage” in search of something more.

So I plunged irreversibly into the old forests Christendom. Even though I was no Saint George when it comes to fighting dragons, I hoisted a backpack of library books, tightened my grip on my proverbial donkey’s reins, and stepped portentously onto the old trail at the edge of the darkening pines. It was to be my ruining. As John Henry Cardinal Newman once said, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

And then, over at The Coming Home Network, Tyler describes how he and his wife Brittany read themselves into the Catholic Church, as he was preparing to be a minister in the Anglican church:

Since our wedding day, Brittany and I have been on a long journey of repentance, discovering and receiving one Catholic truth after another — the Blessed Virgin Mary, transubstantiation, purgatory, the priesthood, the papacy, conjugal openness to life, even hell. We stopped using birth control. We met with a priest. We prayed. We read every Catholic book we could get our hands on, especially the Bible. We read Karl Keating and Scott Hahn and Stephen Ray, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Vladimir Soloviev, and the Catechism.

Brittany believed before I did. She just knew — the way you just know that the sky is high and that trees are beautiful and that apples will fall — that Christ established the Church on Peter and endowed her in Christ with every spiritual blessing (Matt 16:17-19; Eph 1:3). And her faith made her flower. I was close behind.

I was simmering, just simmering, but Gerard Manley Hopkins brought me to a boil. Then G.K. Chesterton and Cardinal John Henry Newman made me sing like a teakettle. The saints, the Scriptures, the Mass, the hope of glory…I was more than wooed: God had trampled me. It was not long before deep in my heart I knew the truth of the Catholic Church, nothing less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Blanksi blogs here.

Side-by-Side-by-Side Catholic Bibles

Matthew Schmitz praises Baronius Press for their Catholic Bible Online resource in this post on the First Things blog. The Catholic Bible Online features the Latin Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims translation, and the Ronald Knox translation, side-by-side-by-side, or you may read each one separately.

Since I'm going to Mass this morning at Blessed Sacrament and Father Jirak is offering Low Mass for the First Saturday of the month in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite, I've linked the beginning of the eighth chapter of St. John's Gospel. Verses 1 through 11 are today's Gospel.

Baronius also publishes a hardcover edition of The Holy Bible with the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims side-by-side.

The Clementine Vulgate was proclaimed the official Latin Bible of the Church after the Reformation. From St. Jerome's time, through the Middle Ages, until vernacular editions were introduced, educated Catholics throughout the world were familiar with the Vulgate.

Those familiar with the Douay Rheims Bible will know that it is one of the most beautiful and accurate Bible translations available today – a word for word translation of the Clementine Vulgate.

Having both Bibles side by side allows us to see exactly where the vernacular translation came from. Even those with limited Latin skills will be able to follow along, using the Douay Rheims translation as an aid. You'll see how the Douay Rheims is a literal translation of the classic Vulgate.

It is a beautiful, captivating read. The Biblia Sacra is not difficult to understand and it doesn't take much study of Latin to be able to get through the texts passably.

Included in this Bible are Challoner's notes, and the texts found in the appendix to the Vulgate, namely 3 and 4 Esdras and the prayer of Manasses (in Latin with an English translation). This makes the Bible totally comprehensive and ideal for theology students.

And Baronius publishes the Ronald Knox translation in a separate volume, so this free resource gives us the opportunity to see how his translation compares with Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims. Baronius describes the history of Knox's translation:

The translation of the Bible by Ronald Knox was officially made at the request of the Bishops of England and Wales, although Knox had wanted to try his hand at updating the language of the Bible for some time.

It had been the desire of a succession of bishops for almost a 100 years to create a new Bible translation to replace the Douay Rheims edition. This Bible which had served English speaking Catholics since the time of the reformation had undergone several revisions, but was filled with archaic language, making it incomprehensible in a few places.

Originally, it was hoped that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, the most famous convert to Catholicism of the 19th Century would translate the Bible, but this project was never begun. In his book, The Idea of a University, Blessed John Henry Newman pointed out the “great difficulty in combining the two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and purity in the adopted vernacular.”

I reviewed the Knox translation several years ago.

The First Ordinariate Chrism Mass with Its Bishop

Since the Anglican/Episcopalian Ordinariate in North America, named for The Chair of St. Peter, now has an ordained Bishop as its ordinary, he will celebrate the first Chrism Mass for the Ordinariate this Holy Week:

On March 17 at 7 pm, Bishop Steven J. Lopes, the recently ordained first bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, will come to Washington, D.C. to celebrate a historic Chrism Mass.

The Chrism Mass will be at St. Luke’s at Immaculate Conception Church, an Ordinariate parish in downtown Washington. This is a historic event because Bishop Lopes will be celebrating the very first Chrism Mass for the Ordinariate.

The Most Reverend Carlo Maria Viganò, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, will be in attendance. As the Holy Father’s personal representative to the U.S., Archbishop Viganò’s presence at the Ordinariate’s Chrism Mass is a powerful sign of the Holy See’s support and encouragement for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

A Chrism Mass is the Mass at which a bishop blesses the holy oils that will be used in his diocese throughout the year to baptize and confirm catechumens and for the sick. Since only a bishop can bless the holy oils, Ordinariate priests have until now obtained the oils used for anointing from the geographical dioceses in which they reside. During the Mass, the priests of the Ordinariate will renew their priestly promises, as well.

“It is an honor that Bishop Lopes has chosen to come to St. Luke’s for his first Chrism Mass, which is a landmark event in the life of the Ordinariate,” Father Mark Lewis, pastor of St. Luke’s, said.

A recent article in the U.K. Catholic Herald bore the headline, “Why You Should Attend A Chrism Mass at Least Once in Your Life.” The author was struck that many people, some as yet unborn, would be anointed with the oils blessed at that Mass. The Chrism Mass at St. Luke’s at Immaculate Conception will be additionally interesting because it will be the first Chrism Mass in the Catholic Church celebrated with Divine Worship: The Missal, the newly propagated Missal which blends language from the Anglican tradition with a fully Catholic Mass.

The Ordinaries of the Ordinariates in the U.K. and Australia are Monsignors, former Anglican ministers who are married and thus not eligible for the episcopate. In England, for example the Apostolic Nuncio, The Most Reverend Antonio Mennini, is the principal celebrant at the Chrism Mass, receiving the vows of obedience from the priests and deacons on behalf of the Pope.

More about St. Luke's at Immaculate Conception here.

Blessed Christopher Bales and Companions

Blessed Christopher Bales, priest and martyr, and companions (laymen who assisted him) Blessed Alexander Blake, and Blessed Nicholas Horner, were all executed on March 4, 1590 at three different sites in London. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, his career as a missionary priest in England was brief:

 

Priest and martyr, b. at Coniscliffe near Darlington, County Durham,England, about 1564; executed 4 March, 1590. He entered the English College at Rome, 1 October, 1583, but owing to ill-health was sent to the College at Reims, where he was ordained 28 March, 1587. Sent to England 2 November, 1588, he was soon arrested, racked, and tortured by Topcliffe, and hung up by the hands for twenty-four hours at a time; he bore all most patiently. At length he was tried and condemned for high treason, on the charge of having been ordained beyond seas and coming to England to exercise his office. He asked Judge Anderson whether St. Augustine, Apostle of the English, was also a traitor. The judge said no, but that the act had since been made treason by law. He suffered 4 March, 1590, "about Easter", in Fleet Street opposite Fetter Lane. On the gibbet was set a placard: "For treason and favouring foreign invasion". He spoke to the people from the ladder, showing them that his only "treason" was his priesthood. On the same day Venerable Nicholas Horner suffered in Smithfield for having made Bales a jerkin, and Venerable Alexander Blake in Gray's Inn Lane for lodging him in his house.

In this autobiography, Father John Gerard, SJ, mentions Father Bales and another priest from Rheims, Father George Beesley, as being among those coming with him and Father Edward Oldcorne, noting that three of them suffered martyrdom while he did not:

"Two priests from Rheims joined us, as our former companions preferred to take time before they faced the dangers which awaited them on the opposite shores. The ship then set sail with four priests on board, a goodly cargo indeed, had not my unworthiness deprived me of the crown, for all those other three suffered martyrdom for the faith. The two priests were soon taken, and being in a short space made perfect, they fulfilled a long time. Their names were Christopher Bales and George Beesley, but my companion, the blessed Father Oldcorne, spent eighteen years of toil and labour in the Lord's vineyard, and watered it at length with his blood."

 

They were  beatified on December 15 in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

 

Philip Caraman, SJ, includes Blessed Christopher Bales' question to Judge Anderson in his collection of primary sources, The Other Face: Catholic Life Under Elizabeth I:

 

He was asked by the judge according to custom . . . when judgment was about to be pronounced, if he had anything to say for himself. He answered, "This only to I want to know, whether St. Augustine sent hither by St. Gregory was a traitor or not." They answered that he was not . . . He answered them, "Why then do you condemn me to death as a traitor? I am sent hither by the same see: and for the same purpose as he was. Nothing is charged against me that could not also be charged against the saint." But for all that they condemned him. (Greene, Collections); page 230.

The Catholic Encyclopedia also has an entry on Blessed Nicholas Horner and his sufferings and consolations:

Layman and martyr, born at Grantley, Yorkshire, England, date of birth unknown; died at Smithfield, 4 March, 1590. He appears to have been following the calling of a tailor in London, when he was arrested on the charge of harbouring Catholic priests. He was confined for a long time in a damp and noisome cell, where he contracted blood poisoning in one leg, which it became necessary to amputate. It is said that during this operation Horner was favoured with a vision, which acted as an anodyne to his sufferings. He was afterwards liberated, but when he was again found to be harbouring priests he was convicted of felony, and as he refused to conform to the public worship of the Church by law established, was condemned. On the eve of his execution, he had a vision of a crown of glory hanging over his head, which filled him with courage to face the ordeal of the next day. The story of this vision was told by him to a friend, who in turn transmitted it by letter to Father Robert Southwell S.J., 18 March, 1590. Horner was hanged, drawn and quartered because he had relieved and assisted Christopher Bales . . .

Father Francis Walsingham, SJ

From the Worcester Cathedral Library and Archive blog: the other Francis Walsingham--not the spymaster Secretary of Elizabeth I--convert, controversialist, and Jesuit:

Francis Walsingham is best known as Elizabeth I’s secretary and spymaster. As Elizabeth’s trusted ally and a master of political and military intelligence, Walsingham was also a staunch supporter of the Protestant cause. He was one of the instigators of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (the rival Catholic claimant to Elizabeth’s throne), and directed English espionage on their Spanish enemies. You can well imagine my surprise then to find a 17th Century Jesuit tract authored by a Francis Walsingham, outlining the causes of his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism. What had caused a man so committed to Protestantism to suddenly renounce his faith?

The answer is that there are in fact two different Francis Walsinghams, distantly related to one another and born 35 years apart. The younger Walsingham could not be more different in his religious outlook than his elder relative. Yet the younger Walsingham was still an apostate – he had been a Deacon in the Church of England, before traveling to Rome and entering a seminary to train as a Catholic Priest. In 1609 he published his A Search Made into Matters of Religion – the copy held at Worcester Cathedral Library is a second edition of 1615. It was deemed so effective as Jesuit propaganda that it was used until well into the 18th Century as the standard recruitment textbook to be shown to Protestants inclining towards Catholicism.

Naturally, such a work would not be without controversy. In 17th Century England, the lot of Roman Catholics did tend to fluctuate with the time, but it can’t be said to have ever been a happy one. There were notable outbreaks of persecution following the Gunpowder plot of 1605 and Titus Oates fabricated ‘Popish Plot’ of 1678-81, with attacks on Catholic individuals, property and books. While I have been unable to find any evidence that Walsingham’s book was ever officially proscribed, many similar works did suffer that fate at one point or another. What we can state for certain is that the circulation and ownership of this book would have been limited and largely taboo.

By "taboo" the author means that possessing this book would have been considered evidence that the owner was a Catholic, perhaps himself a convert, perhaps hoping to convert another, perhaps assisting priests, knowing where a priest would be saying Mass, perhaps attending Mass--and therefore violating several English laws. Someone found with Father Walsingham's book, or any other Catholic book, would be arrested, detained, questioned, and depending on the dedication of the pursuivant, tortured for information (in spite of the fact that was illegal). The term "apostate" earlier in the post is also rather startling--after all, England had been thoroughly Catholic before Henry VIII's breakaway. 

From the Dictionary of National Biography: 

WALSINGHAM, FRANCIS (1577–1647), jesuit, who assumed the name John Fennell, the son of Edward Walsingham of Exhall, near Alcester, Warwickshire, was born at Hawick, Northumberland, early in 1577. His father died before his birth, and his mother, who was a Roman catholic, brought him to London. His uncle, Humphrey Walsingham, who was kindred of Sir Francis, placed him at St. Paul's school. As the result of his instruction there he read the protestant divines Foxe, Jewell, Calvin, and Beza, and in 1603 was ordained deacon by Martin Heton, bishop of Ely. Doubts were raised as to the validity of his orders and of his belief by reading the ‘Manual’ of Robert Parsons (1546–1610) [q. v.], and in October 1606 Walsingham entered the English College at Rome. He was ordained priest on 12 April 1608, and early next year, having entered the Society of Jesus, he visited England, and there published his ‘Search made into Matters of Religion, by F. W., before his change to the Catholike’ (s. l. 1609, 4to; 2nd edit. St. Omer, 1615). The work was dedicated to James I, to whom the author states he had formerly submitted his religious difficulties. Down to the time of Alban Butler it has been frequently commended to those showing an inclination to Roman catholicism, and has been often reprinted and abridged. In the controversial parts, and especially in the attack upon the ‘falsities’ of Matthew Sutcliffe [q. v.], it is probable that the author was aided by Father Parsons. In 1618 Walsingham published his ‘Reasons for embracing the Catholic Faith’ (London, 16mo). Two years previously he had been formally attached to the ‘English mission,’ and served in Leicestershire. In 1633 he removed to the college of the Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire, and there he died on 1 July 1647. He left in manuscript at the convent at Newhall, Essex, a little prayer manual, ‘The Evangelique Pearle,’ dedicated to the abbess of the English nunnery at Pontoise.

Eugenics in America: The Catholic Response

After posting excerpts from Amity Shlaes' review of two new books on the Eugenics movement in the United States in the early twentieth century, I wondered about the Catholic Church's response to the legislative efforts. There was a response of course, and a 2013 book from the University of Chicago Press describes it:

During the first half of the twentieth century, supporters of the eugenics movement offered an image of a racially transformed America by curtailing the reproduction of “unfit” members of society. Through institutionalization, compulsory sterilization, the restriction of immigration and marriages, and other methods, eugenicists promised to improve the population—a policy agenda that was embraced by many leading intellectuals and public figures. But Catholic activists and thinkers across the United States opposed many of these measures, asserting that “every man, even a lunatic, is an image of God, not a mere animal."

In An Image of God, Sharon Leon examines the efforts of American Catholics to thwart eugenic policies, illuminating the ways in which Catholic thought transformed the public conversation about individual rights, the role of the state, and the intersections of race, community, and family. Through an examination of the broader questions raised in this debate, Leon casts new light on major issues that remain central in American political life today: the institution of marriage, the role of government, and the separation of church and state. This is essential reading in the history of religion, science, politics, and human rights.

The author, Sharon M. Leon, is director of public projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and research associate professor of history at George Mason University.

This blog by attorney and author Ed Mannino provides an overview and review of Professor Leon's book:

While the Catholic Church supported positive eugenics initiatives, including encouraging married couples to have more children, and enactment of legislation providing for social welfare programs, it vigorously opposed negative eugenic proposals, including compulsory sterilization and restrictions on immigration from certain countries. This opposition was based on two separate grounds, only one of which was based on Catholic doctrine. In the words of Professor Leon, Catholic opposition centered first on attacking eugenic science as not being “rigorous,” as having its roots in concealed “ethnic, racial and class prejudices,” and as ignoring the the importance of environmental and other factors in the development of an individual’s character. A second, religious objection argued that the state could not “violate the bodily integrity of an innocent individual, regardless of the supposed biological improvements that will result.”

Professor Leon concludes that “Asserting their rights as citizens to participate in the public debate about the importance of environment and heredity and about the proper role of the state and the responsibility of the individual, Catholics transformed public discourse.”

In the public debate, Catholics developed the points that genetic makeup does not dictate the inheritance of mental defects in children, and that environmental factors play an important role in individual development. In addition, the Catholic hierarchy and lay groups such as the Knights of Columbus lobbied for the passage of legislative initiatives promoting both social and economic justice. Moreover, Catholics opposed legislation banning mixed-race marriages, and the view that the “white race” was somehow superior.

Read the rest there.

John Sheppard on BBC 3

You may listen to the Sunday, February 28 BBC3 Early Music Program on-line here for the next 27 or so days. The subject is John Sheppard:

No-one knows for sure the birth-date of Tudor composer John Sheppard, but it is thought to have been around 600 years ago in 1515-16. Lucie Skeaping is joined by singer and musicologist Sally Dunkley to explore the life and work of one of England's finest composers, with performances by The Sixteen, The Tallis Scholars, Stile Antico, the Gabrieli Consort, The Clerkes of Oxenford and the Choir of Westminster Abbey.

John Sheppard: Libera nos I
The Sixteen
Harry Christophers (director)

John Sheppard: Verbum caro (excerpt)
The Clerkes of Oxenford
David Wulstan (director)

John Sheppard: The Lord's Prayer
Stile Antico

John Sheppard: Magnificat (from Second Service)
The Choir of Westminster Abbey
James O'Donnell (director)

John Sheppard: Agnus Dei (from Missa Cantate)
Gabrieli Consort
Paul McCreesh (director)

John Sheppard: Libera nos II
The Sixteen
Harry Christophers (director)

John Sheppard: Media vita
The Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips (director).

Stile Antico explored his works on one of their CDs, too:

Winner of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Stile Antico’s fourth recording is entirely devoted to the remarkable music of John Sheppard. Once overshadowed by his illustrious contemporary Thomas Tallis, Sheppard is now recognised as a composer of extraordinary originality. The disc explores his achievement in wide range of forms, from enchanting English miniatures written during the Protestant reign of Edward VI to great Latin hymns, antiphons and responsories – chief amongst them the outstanding Media vita, one of the longest and most emotionally involving works of the entire Renaissance.

Cardinal Merry del Val and Blessed John Henry Newman

From The Catholic Herald, this article by Stephen Bullivant, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, describes how one faction in Catholic theology, the Modernists, tried to claim Newman as one of them. Bullivant demonstrates the crucial role of Rafael Merry del Val y de Zulueta, Cardinal Merry del Val, who died on February 26, 1930:

His unlikely name notwithstanding, Merry del Val is surely among the most remarkable churchmen this country has ever produced. The son of a Spanish diplomat, he was born in London in 1865. He lived here until he was thirteen, later returning to begin his ordination studies at Ushaw. Following a meteoric rise within the Vatican diplomatic corps – including, bizarrely, being made a monsignor before he was a priest – he was ultimately appointed Secretary of State by Pius X in 1903, aged just 38. Though a Spanish national, he considered himself to ‘be English to all intents and purposes’, even to the point of dreaming in English. There were rumours of his succeeding Cardinal Bourne as Archbishop of Westminster in 1903.

Though this was not to be – Pius had other plans for him – his gimlet eye remained fixed on English ecclesiastical life, and on its burgeoning modernism especially. It was Merry del Val who commissioned Joseph Lemius, procurator of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, to draft Pascendi; Merry del Val who took a lead role in enforcing its anti-modernist agenda; and – nota bene – Merry del Val who tirelessly championed Newman’s orthodoxy, using the semi-official L’Osservatore Romano to underline the ‘world of difference between what the Cardinal taught and the Modernism which is condemned in the Encyclical.’

Pius himself, in the same letter I quoted above, wrote to Bishop O’Dwyer of Limerick to commend him for showing, in a pamphlet, that ‘the writings of Cardinal Newman, far from being in disagreement with Our Encyclical Letter Pascendi, are very much in harmony with it’. To [George] Tyrrell’s guessing assertions, neither the magisterium nor its closest confidants had then any intention whatsoever of censuring, or casting aspersions upon, Newman’s thought and legacy. The simple fact is that, at this time, nobody – Protestant or Catholic, ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ – had a bad word to say about him.

Today especially, this point is of more than merely historical interest. The significant point is this: had Tyrrell been more successful in arguing for Newman’s condemnation, or Merry del Val and St Pius less proactive in denying it, then a great doubt would surely have been cast over his orthodoxy. So much so, that even his latter-day supporters John Paul II (who declared him Venerable) and Benedict XVI (who broke his own protocol to beatify him personally, and who has previously suggested Newman to be a Doctor of a Church) might have been wary of overturning it.

Read the rest there. The best book on the Modernist Crisis and papal response to it is Marvin R. O'Connell's Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis, published by the Catholic University of America Press:

Here for the first time [published in 1994], the story of the Catholic Modernists is presented as a chronological narrative of events, with special emphasis placed upon the persons involved, their interrelations and opinions. Through a study of the participants, Marvin O'Connell traces the emergence of Modernism and the controversies related to it, offers a careful examination of the movement's multiple causes and ramifications, and places the events within the political, social, and intellectual context of the time.

Rather than analyze the phenomenon called Catholic Modernism or argue one side or the other, the author tells the story of the Modernists themselves. These intellectuals-scripture scholars, philosophers, apologists, priests, and laypersons-were bound together by a mutual concern that the church could not survive the challenges of the modern world unless it brought its teaching and its constitution into line with contemporary thought. They offered unconventional solutions to the religious questions of the day, solutions they were convinced would reform and revivify their church.

Their story involves a cast of fascinating characters: the deeply learned and deeply skeptical exegete, Alfred Loisy; the lyrical and melancholy Anglo-Irish Jesuit, George Tyrell; the eccentric polymath, Friedrich von Hegel; the apostle of Christian democracy, Romolo Murri; the combative philosopher, Lucien Laberthonniere, and his mentor, Maurice Blondel. Against them stood the pope who, in the name of doctrinal integrity, sought to root out and destroy their ideas.

O'Connell follows the drama step by step until it reaches its climax in the condemnations of 1907, when Pius X denounced Catholic Modernism as the synthesis of all heresies. The author recounts the story largely in the words of the Modernists and their opponents, as well as those who, like the journalist and biographer Wilfrid Ward and the scripture scholar Marie-Joseph Lagrange, desperately sought a middle ground.

Critics on Trial offers the nonspecialist a reliable, compelling account of the Modernist crisis; it offers the student of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious and intellectual history a thorough introduction to the topic.

Cardinal Merry del Val wrote the great Litany of Humility:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…