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REGINA Inspiring. Intelligent. Catholic.

The Secret Catholic Insider’s Guide to England Summer 2013

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O

ur third issue focuses on Catholic England, traditionally ‘Our Lady’s Dowry.’

The ancient heart and soul of this sceptered isle is Catholic to its core – from architecture and liturgy to traditions in fashion (bridal dresses and church hats), food (Sunday Roast) and famous writers (G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and Hilaire Belloc).

From her tortured religious history to the realities of her multicultural and secular present-day, England has always been a bellwether for Catholics. Christianity was a persecuted slave religion, which after the fall of the Roman Empire was reintroduced by St. Augustine at Canterbury. Legend has it that Pope Gregory, inspired by the sight of blond English children (“Angles’ who he dubbed “Angeli”) for sale in slave markets, dispatched Augustine and his monks to bring the Faith there.

The Romans reconciled with the Irish monks at the Synod of Whitby in 663.

Christianity thereafter grew strong roots in ’Angle-land’; Canterbury is still the ancient seat of the Church. In the light of history, scholars today argue that the Reformation was top-down, imposed by a tyrant and later cemented by a ‘robber class’ of avaricious barons enriched by stolen Church wealth. Certainly the more than 400 official martyrs murdered by the Crown in those tragic days attest to the strength of the Faith. Many Catholics fled underground – and over the Channel -for more than two centuries until the Toleration Acts of 1823. The recusant families stubbornly remained.

All of this was a long time ago. Today, the Oxbridge nexus and London’s power in the global financial markets give the British media and its intellectual class tremendous influence. While this has been true for centuries, the Internet today extends this beyond the confines of the academy and the world of journalism. The Catholic Church has long held pariah status with these elites, of course. England’s unparalleled intellectual heritage makes independent thinkers, however – as the stories of the famous Oxford Movement converts illustrate. This remains true today, as we shall see in this issue.

Within England, the Catholic Church is news. The Anglican Ordinariate provides a home for new converts fleeing the modernist hegemony of the Established Church.

In a new ironic twist of history, a direct descendant of Charles Darwin, Laura Keynes, has joined Catholic Voices, an apologist organization set to defend the Church in the UK. Meanwhile, floods of immigrant workers from Eastern Europe revitalize many parishes. England’s famous recusant families – loyal through the centuries – today are alive and well, quietly influential and supportive of the Old Faith. While Catholics who have finally been accepted in suburban, wealthy London steer clear of controversy, Latin Masses grow -- attracting artists, intellectuals, professionals and young people wherever the Mass is allowed to blossom.

REGINA Editor Beverly De Soto Writers Michael Durnan Suzanne Pacis Duque Barbara Monzon-Puleo Christopher Gillibrand Robert Beaurivage Beverly De Soto Layout/Graphic Designer Phil Roussin Photography Credits: Harry Stevens Michael Durnan Evelyn Nicholson Joseph Shaw Webmaster Jim Bryant

REGINA Magazine is a quarterly Catholic review published electronically on www.reginamag.com.

REGINA draws together extraordinary Catholic writers with a vibrant faith, and wide-ranging interests. We’re interested in everything under the Catholic sun — from work and family to religious and eternal life.

We seek the Good, the Beautiful and the True – in our Tradition and with our God-given Reason. We really do believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. We are joyfully loyal to the Magisterium. We proudly celebrate our literary and artistic heritage and seek to live and teach the authentic Faith.

Outside of England, what happens there in the Catholic Church has great influence – particularly in the Commonwealth countries. This is arguably also the case in the United States, England’s estranged-but-still-loving daughter.

REGINA is under the patronage of Our Lady, Mary Most Holy. We pray that she lays our humble work at the feet of her Son, and that His Will be done.

Beverly De Soto Editor, REGINA London, August 2013

Today we place REGINA under the patronage of Our Lady, Mary Most Holy. We pray that she lays our humble work at the feet of her Son, and that His Will be done.

There is no charge for REGINA. Inquiries should be directed to “Regina Magazine” on Facebook or the Editor at REGINA@gmail.com.

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Table of Contents GK Chesterton’s “Secret People” English Catholics Today Shades of Evelyn Waugh Eye-Opener: Update on the Latin Mass in England and Wales A ‘Modest Proposal’ The English Bride Sunday Roast Bucking the System What’s in a ‘Christian’ Name?

Clues to Britain’s Catholic Past When God Hated Susan What had she done?

The Message of Julian of Norwich All Will Be Well The Sisters of Saint Cecilia’s Abbey Traditional English Benedictine Order Glorious Hats Make a Comeback The Church Lady The Saints of England’s Holy Island The Legend of Lindisfarne Ghosts of a Catholic Age The Haunted Ruins of England A Story of Catholic Valour When Jesuits Were Hunted in England A Tale of Two Margarets A King’s Niece and a Butcher’s Wife The English Catholic Exiles Refugees to Spanish Shores A Homeschooler’s Guide to Inspiring England “Divorced, beheaded, died…”

The ‘Pope of Oxford’ The Real Cardinal Newman The Enigmatic G.K. Chesterton Anglican Convert and Defender of the Catholic Faith Hilaire Belloc The Englishman Who Walked Across America Famous Converts Beyond the Oxford Movement A Passion for England The Astonishing Story of the Passionists Honour Roll of English Martyrs The Art of the English Recusants Upper Class and Underground Jerusalem Glastonbury Tor

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Chesterton’s Secret People The English Catholics

By Beverly De Soto Editor, Regina Magazine

I

t was a rainy spring morning in Wallingford, a charming grey stone market town in Oxfordshire bordering the meandering Thames. I slipped out of a friend’s house on foot, headed for morning Mass. The wet streets were practically empty, save for a few early Sunday shoppers.

Finding the church was a little tricky, as its location in an un-charming, newbrick edifice around the corner from a street ATM was more than discrete; a tiny sign was the only indication of its presence. Inside, however, were pews filled with Catholics, standing room only. I looked around me in wonder – the place was filled with people from every continent and walk of life. From my cramped seat in the back, I listened carefully. The priest was an Irishman, and his homily was forceful and direct.

In the last 15 years, I have attended Masses all over England, and what has struck me most about English Catholics in the pews is how similar they are to Catholics in the United States today. In the suburbs, you find the churches filled with older people, there out of long habit and young families, trying to pass on the Faith. There are almost no single young people. In the big city churches, a grand mix of types of all races and nationalities – singles, couples, old and young, plus a sprinkling of tourists. And in the solemn Latin Masses, the pews are filled with a creative minority of intellectuals, artists, entrepreneurs and young families with lots of children.

So who are they, G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Secret People,’ the Catholics of England?

Today’s Catholics represent a small minority – 9.6 percent of the population in England and Wales, about 5 million people. These derive from five distinct groups: Lancastrians, Irish, recusant families, converts and immigrants. To varying degrees, these groups have inter-married and mixed, of course, but it helps to understand their provenance.

Lancaster, in the north of England, stubbornly persisted in the Faith for nearly four hundred years, despite the persecutions of the Crown and later oppression and discrimination. Its capital is Liverpool – home of the Beatles, but more importantly the center of immigration for Irish fleeing the famine of the 1840s. Thousands died of cholera and other diseases; in the crypt of the Cathedral are buried ten priests who died heroically, struggling to save the lives of the sick poor refugees. In Liverpool, and in many other northern cities, the Irish set up urban parishes in ‘ghetto’ patterns which will be familiar to ethnic European diaspora Catholics the world over. Today, Liverpool is 46 percent Catholic.

The recusant families of England are famous for both their wealth and intransigent adherence to the Faith through the centuries of brutal repression. Many of the high aristocracy trace their lineage back to the Norman French who invaded the island in 1066, though recusants can also be found among ordinary people and the country squires in remote villages in the North unreached by the Crown. For hundreds of years, these families paid astronomic sums to the Crown in order to be allowed to practice their religion. Their unofficial leader has always been the Duke of Norfolk, a hereditary dukedom based in the diocese of Arundel. The Duke has stepped in at various critical points, for example in the depths of World War II Nazi bombing of Birmingham, to quietly arrange to move John Henry Newman’s Oratory School to safety on 600 bucolic acres in Berkshire. (When the next Monarch is crowned, it will be the Duke who will be in charge of the coronation, a responsibility traditionally entrusted to him, regardless of his religion.)

Catholicism attracted famous converts in the 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly intellectuals who found themselves kneeling alongside the Irish servant class in the pews of the Church. Today, converts still find their fascinating way to Holy Mother Church, often through the Latin Masses that were permitted by special indult from Pope Paul VI in 1971. This was in response to a letter penned by Evelyn Waugh and signed by a host of

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English luminaries, including the redoubtable Anglican Dame Agatha Christie. (Legend has it that Paul VI was a fan of detective fiction; hence the indult.)

Today, the pews are also filled with Catholic immigrants, from Eastern Europe – Poles are the largest group –and the Middle East, Southeast Asia and indeed everywhere. These people are in England to work, and they have brought their Faith with them. Most are oblivious of the historic persecution and oppression that existed in England.

Catholics tell me that a slice of English society is still vocally anti-Catholic, though not in the same ways as years ago. Whereas before the Church was Public Enemy Number One for the No-Popery crowd, nowadays they have been replaced by the equally-intolerant Fashionable Atheistic crowd, according to James Bogle, a London barrister and head of the Catholic Union, a lay organization dating back to the 19th century. Both were/are fringe elements in society.

There are subtler forms of anti-Catholicism, however, as anyone who objects to ‘political correctness’ knows -- a subject familiar to generations of English Catholics in the pervasive Protestant interpretation of the nation’s history. (This is also true in England’s former colonies.) For centuries, the English have been taught that the Crown’s unprovoked and brutal attack on the Church was justified by the supposed ‘superstition’ and ‘corruption’ of the ‘rich abbeys.’ Only in recent years have less-biased scholars begun to unearth the true story, about how the wealth and property of the abbeys passed into the hands of the petty nobles willing to do Henry’s dirty work, and how those same families generations later turned the peasantry off their lands in the hated “Enclosure Acts.”

The poor, with no place else to go, wound up on the streets of the industrial cities, whose appalling conditions Dickens recorded and the Methodist Wesley brothers decried. It was these same urban poor whom the Labour movements mobilized, spurred on by the theories of the German Karl Marx, writing in the British library.

But this was many years ago, and today the Catholic Church in England represents every class, and every conceivable background. On the surface, all is well. But Bogle points to a new, and perhaps more devastating threat than rack or rope ever was – indifferentism, and its cousin, secularism. Both essentially derive from 19th and 20th century materialistic philosophies, though the individual lapsed Catholic may not know or care about this.

Essentially, it boils down to unbelief. For university graduates, the story may read: ‘since there is no scientific proof that God exists, and history is replete with painful proof that religion breeds intolerance and sectarian violence, why bother?’ For those less ideologically-inclined, ‘if the Church is not helping me materially or spiritually, why bother?’

Attempts to address this by making the Church more ‘relevant’ since the 1960s have ended in abject failure, for the most part. Watereddown catechism has resulted in a situation where many English Catholics would be hard-pressed to explain what the difference actually is between Catholicism and Anglicanism – or any other religion, for that matter. This is especially true in the parishes, which have been dominated by an Irish hierarchy with strong modernist tendencies since Vatican II, says Bogle.

The English have been more strongly represented in the various Catholic orders since the Reformation. Brave Jesuits were hunted, drawn and quartered by a Crown wielded by a Monarch whom Protestant historians taught us all to regard as ‘Good Queen Bess.’ (One young priest’s ‘quarters’ were hung from the church steeples of the four towns he frequented, including his birthplace, Preston – a warning against others who might decide to ‘Pope.’)

Elsewhere, Passionists dreamed of bringing Our Lady’s Dowry back into the fold, and were spat upon in English cities when Catholicism became legal again in 1823. Benedictines labored to rebuild their abbey schools – once the glory of England – and now teach the children of wealthy Catholics at co-ed ‘posh’ schools such as Ampleforth and Downside Abbeys. The Oratorians at London, Oxford and Birmingham – and very recently, York – fill their urban churches with several Masses a day where the faithful come for frequent Confession, reverent liturgies, Latin Chant and demanding homilies.

There are two major Catholic publications in England – The Tablet, a venerable-but-fusty old maid much concerned with ‘social relevance’ and the Catholic Herald, a livelier mix of news and opinion whose webmasters are kept busy policing a red-hot readers’ commentary column. Overall, however, Catholics rejoice that Archbishop Antonio Mennini’s appointment as nuncio to Great Britain has been having an effect on a most critical area – the appointment of orthodox bishops. Ancient pilgrimage sites are also being revived, drawing Catholics and other Christians to walk in the steps of their forefathers, before such popular expressions of faith were banned by the Crown -- and later suppressed by modernizing elements in the Church.

Whatever they are, the English are never boring. A case in point was the much-ballyhooed visit of Benedict XVI in 2010, where the British press feverishly prophesied massive anti-Pope rallies – apparently unconscious of the historic irony they were courting. The freedom-loving British, they confidently predicted, would not tolerate Ratzinger the Rottweiler, the Pope who dared to uphold the Church’s hated teachings.

In the event, the massive anti-Pope crowds never materialized. A few London crazies with multi-colored hair and complicated sex lives waved banners for the cameras. But the TV crews soon packed up and headed off to the real story – the crowds that lined the streets ten-deep to wave excitedly, greeting the papal motorcade joyfully in London, and in every city and small village it passed.

Somewhat more controversially, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was set up by Pope Benedict XVI to allow Anglicans to enter into full communion of the Catholic Church while retaining much of their spiritual, liturgical and pastoral tradition. English leaders of the Anglican Ordinariate include the Duke of Norfolk, the Countess of Oxford and Asquith, the Duchess of Somerset, Lord Nicholas Windsor, Sir Josslyn GoreBooth and the Squire de Lisle, whose ancestor Ambrose de Lisle was a 19th-century Catholic convert who advocated the corporate reunion of the Anglican Church with Rome.

The Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Monsignor Keith Newton, recently told thousands of Mass-goers in the Catholic Westminster Cathedral that many Catholics are unaware of - or misunderstand - the Ordinariate. He said it could be quite distressing for Anglicans who had made a difficult journey in order to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church to be asked, for example, why they did not become “proper Catholics”.

“Our priests are just like any other Catholic priests; you can attend Mass with an Ordinariate congregation with an Ordinariate liturgy and fulfill your obligation, just as you would by going to Mass in any Catholic church anywhere in the world”, he said, speaking of the great joy of Ordinariate members and of how its clergy were serving in the wider church as chaplains in prisons, hospitals and schools or as diocesan parish clergy. He quoted Pope Benedict’s description of the Ordinariate as a “prophetic gesture” to promote Christian unity.

Finally, the Apostolic Exarchate for Ukrainians serves the 15,000 Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Great Britain and the Lebanese Maronite Catholic Church, as well as the Eritrean, Chaldean, Syriac, Syro-Malabar, Syro-

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Malankara, and Melkite Rites – all in communion with Rome – are also present in England today.

As always, history is never far away from English Christians, however. A thousand years ago, another pope released St. Edward the Confessor from a vow — if the king built a monastery dedicated to the first bishop of Rome.

Thus, St. Peter’s Abbey was rebuilt in Westminster.

Legend has it that as the abbey neared completion, St. Peter appeared to some Thames fishermen, asking to be ferried to the site. As they neared the structure, the entire building was suddenly filled with light. The Saint told them that he had consecrated the church and that they would be rewarded with a great catch of salmon. Then he instructed them never to work on Sunday, and disappeared.

Pope Benedict XVI gently stressed our common history during his visit to Westminster Abbey, “I thank the Lord for this opportunity to join you … in this magnificent abbey church dedicated to St. Peter, whose architecture and history speak so eloquently of our common heritage of faith. Here we cannot help but be reminded of how greatly the Christian faith shaped the unity and culture of Europe and the heart and spirit of the English people.

Here, too, we are forcibly reminded that what we share, in Christ, is greater than what continues to divide us. …I thank the Lord for allowing me, as the successor of St. Peter in the See of Rome, to make this pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor.” R.

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FAMILY TRIBUTE: Hundreds of years later, England’s Catholics recover an altar from the ruins of a robber baron’s mansion. RECUSANT NOBILITY: The Duke of Norfolk, who during World War II, saved Newman’s Oratory School from Nazi bombings. PILGRIMAGES RETURN TO ENGLAND: Catholics re-discover their ancient faith. GROWING MOVEMENT: Typical congregation at a Latin Mass in England. ANCIENT CATHOLICS: The tomb of the Black Prince in Canterbury cathedral. GAUNT REMAINS: The arch of a monastery destroyed

by King Henry VIII, one of hundreds of such Catholic ruins. CATHOLIC FUTURE: The Oratory boys (in yellow and black) rugby team wins against bigger, richer secular schools. MAN FOR ALL SEASONS: St. Thomas More’s earthly remains. BELMONT ABBEY: The Benedictines have long labored in England for the Faith.

HAUNTED RUINS: Bolton Abbey suffered badly under King Henry VIII, one of hundreds destroyed and looted, their wealth stolen to build great private fortunes. Owned today by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. CANDLES IN THE DARK: the ‘Slipper Chapel’ in remote Walsingam was where pilgrims left their shoes so they could walk the last mile barefoot. A young Henry VIII was among them; later, the prior of Walsingam hoped to be spared the King’s wrath because of this. He was hung, drawn and quartered, and Walsingham mercilessly stripped.

Shades of Evelyn Waugh Update on the Latin Mass in England and Wales

‘SINCE the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Roman Catholic church has striven to adapt to the modern world. But in the West—where many hoped a contemporary message would go down best—believers have left in droves. Sunday mass attendance in England and Wales has fallen by half from the 1.8m recorded in 1960; the average age of parishioners has risen from 37 in 1980 to 52 now. In America attendance has declined by over a third since 1960. Less than 5% of French Catholics attend regularly, and only 15% in Italy. Yet as the mainstream wanes, traditionalists wax.’

Joseph Shaw is the 42 year old Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. An Oxford don, he teaches Philosophy at St Benet’s Hall, the Benedictine house of studies in Oxford University. In this exclusive Regina Magazine interview, Dr. Shaw discusses the Society, its history and the amazing success the Extraordinary Form has met with in recent years.

Q. Tell us about the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. When was it founded, and by whom?

Three people are principally responsible for the founding of the Society, in 1965: Evelyn Waugh, the foremost Catholic writer of his day (“Brideshead Revisited”), Sir Arnold Lunn, controversialist and skiing pioneer, and Hugh Ross Williamson, media personality and historian.

a pamphlet arguing that it was invalid. He saw a strong parallel with the liturgical changes made by Cranmer in the course of the English Reformation.

Arnold Lunn was a great apologist, as well the inventor of slalom ski racing; as an agnostic he had a debate with Monsignor Ronald Knox which was turned into a book, ‘Difficulties’, and although many thought he’d done rather well in the debate, two years later he became a Catholic. Even as an agnostic he had been a fierce opponent of scientific materialism, and was very interested in the roots of the decline in religious belief. He researched the way religion was being taught in the great Anglican public schools and published a book, ‘Public School Religion’, about it.

Basically it wasn’t being taught at all because the chaplains in those places no longer had any confidence in their religion – this was in the 1930s. The great contrast, he discovered, was with the Catholic schools, where it was still being taken very seriously. He could see where things were going; like many in the early 20th Century the Catholic Church looked like the last bastion of reason and civilisation, let alone religion. And then the Catholic Church started to incorporate many of the same ideas and reforms which had hollowed out the Anglicans.

Evelyn Waugh’s concerns about Vatican II and the liturgical reform are recorded in his diaries and letters, and in a famous Spectator article at the onset of the Council.

Much of this material, and responses to his letters from Cardinal Heenan, has been turned into a book, ‘A Most Bitter Trial’ (ed Scott Reid). Waugh didn’t live to see the 1970 Missal, but he was deeply concerned about the 1955 Holy Week Reform, the Dialogue Mass, and Mass in English. He wrote in the Spectator article: The attitude of these three was not unusual: one of the great early successes of the LMS was organising a petition to ask Pope Paul VI that the Traditional Mass ‘Participation’ in the Mass does not mean hearing our own voices. It means God be preserved. This led to the ‘English Indult’ of 1971. The petitioners were all hearing our voices. Only He knows who is ‘participating’ at Mass. I believe, to intellectual and cultural figures, mostly non-Catholic; the included Yehudi Menuhin, compare small things with great, that I ‘participate’ in a work of art when I study it Agatha Christi, Grwham Greene and Sir Colin Davis. You can see more about that and love it silently. No need to shout. …If the Germans want to be noisy, let them. here and here But why should they disturb our devotions?’

That is a key idea: the responses, the English, the jumping up and down, shaking hands and so on ‘disturbs our devotions’: the serious business of engaging prayerfully in the Mass.

Hugh Ross-Williamson was an Anglican clergyman who converted. He had been brought up in a non-conformist (Presbyterian) family, had become a High Anglican, and was finally received into the Catholic Church when the Anglicans recognized the orders of a group of Methodist clergy in India in 1955. He wrote a book about the Roman Canon, ‘The Great Prayer’, as well as plays, history, and journalism; he was on the ‘Brains Trust’ TV programme until his conversion. (His complaint ‘This is 1955, not 1555!’ fell on deaf ears: a Catholic was not acceptable on the programme.)

PHOTOS TOP: Annual Requiem 2012, Celebrated by Bishop John Arnold, in Westminster Cathedral.

Williamson was very disturbed by the theology of the New Mass and later wrote

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ABOVE: Pilgrimage to Walsingham 2012

Q. Given that England was the first nation to obtain an indult for the Latin Mass, what progress do you see being made, say, since the Motu Proprio of 2007?

We have records for the number of publicly advertised Masses taking place, as we publish lists every quarter, and have done so for decades. A few months ago we put these figures together for The Economist • In 2007, there were regular Masses in the Extraordinary Form being celebrated in 26 locations.

• In 2012, the figure is 157.

A typical Holyday of Obligation: All Saints, 1 November: • In 2007 there were 10 Masses in the Extraordinary Form celebrated on All Saints Day. • In 2012, the figure is 60 and counting.

Q. Extraordinary! Are there many more priests learning the Mass?

Since 2007, we have run eight residential training conferences for priests and 200 places have been taken up at these. Many have attended more than one conference, so that represents around 120 individual priests. Of these, we understand that about 100 have gone on to celebrate the old rite at least occasionally, but usually at least monthly, in public.

In addition, the LMS is aware of some 50 or so priests who celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass in public at least occasionally. These are priests who taught themselves privately, or who are older priests who were taught at seminary when they were younger. There is an unknown number of priests (mainly retired now) who celebrate the Extraordinary Form privately. Recently, we did an exercise identifying priests who say the TLM and I think the total is certainly in the region of 200. Before the Motu Proprio we reckon there were about 50 priests.

Q. This is great news. Does this mean that the Mass is now available regularly on Sundays all over England and Wales?

The availability of EF Sunday Masses in stable venues (ie a Mass every week) is still limited, at 33 in England and Wales, plus a handful of ‘rotating venue’ situations (one in Kent, one in Arundel and Brighton diocese, for example.)

Even this represents a big increase on the number before the Motu Proprio.

Q. So, in your experience, how does the Mass gain a foothold? What typically happens?

First, you have groups of the Faithful asking for the Extraordinary Form. This was the usual case until the Motu Proprio, but it was very hard work. A group like this kept the TLM going at the Brompton Oratory, for example, where it was said in the Little Oratory for years – not the main church – and wasn’t advertised. A group of laity in the Reading area managed in the end to get the FSSP to come to serve them. A group in Oxford had a succession of priests who were retired to say Mass for them in private houses; eventually this was taken over by the Oratory here. The community in Chesham persuaded a local priest to say the EF and, following his recent death, has been proactive in getting priests in week by week to keep it going.

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Second, you get individual priests who fall in love with the Mass in the Extraordinary Form. This has now become quite common. There are quite a few priests who do a weekday or Saturday Mass and the occasional ‘big’ thing they manage to arrange; others have taken it a step further and introduced it into their parishes on a Sunday.

For example Fr Bede Rowe, assigned to a remote parish in Clifton Diocese, started a Sunday evening EF Mass and a congregation for this gradually established itself.

Fr John Saward in Oxford (the translator, in fact, of Pope Benedict’s ‘Spirit of the Liturgy’) says the EF in his parish of SS Gregory and Augustine twice a week on weekdays and once a month has a sung TLM on a Sunday: it is really entirely his own initiative, though of course he is also mindful of pastoral needs. Another local example is Fr John Osman, in St Birinus, Dorchester on Thames. Fr Osman waxes quite lyrical about how he fell in love with it, and how important it has been for his spiritual life.

A good example of how this happens is Fr Timothy Finigan of Blackfen in London, who was asked some years ago to say a TLM for a funeral. He said: ‘yes why not?’ and had to learn it from scratch. It made such an impression on him that he gradually learned more and introduced it to his parish on a Sunday.

Another important factor is priests influencing each other. We find little ‘hot spots’ of priests learning the Mass because they all know a particular priest who loves it, and spreads the word.

Q. You have publicly discussed the Inclusivity of the TLM; what did you mean?

I’ve certainly noticed that in a big parish with different Masses the congregations tend to separate into different groups according to liturgical preference; this also happens between parishes. This separation can very easily gain a class character – in England, where class is never very far away!

The universal appeal of the TLM is very evident from talking to members of the congregation. You really do have all sorts of people. Some engage with the liturgy primarily in an intellectual way.

Others engage primarily in an aesthetic or emotional way. The intellectual and the other aspects of the TLM are not in competition with each other -- you can take out of it whatever you need.

There is an excellent book about this by a Dominican (now ex-Dominican) sociologist Anthony Archer, ‘The Two Catholic Churches.’

Archer says the working classes engaged with the liturgy in a particular way, in relation to what they saw as ‘ritual efficacy’: what was going on at the Altar was real, objective, it made a difference, it made something happen. They focused on that and were absorbed by it.

The things which are supposed to help participation in the New Mass are more appealing to the middle class: they require social confidence, being articulate. There is a class distinction also about what sort of community people are comfortable with -- little cliquey groups (middle class) and larger numbers (working class). All the stuff about sharing your experiences at a charismatic prayer meeting or cosy little house Masses is middle class and off-putting to everyone else.

That is Archer’s thesis, and it fits with my own observations.

Q. In many countries, there seems to be no crisis of priestly vocations in circles where the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is supported. Have you noticed this to be the case in England and Wales?

This is certainly true. We have now 10 young men from England and Wales in traditional seminaries, mostly the FSSP; two more are joining them in September.

That is totally disproportionate to the size of the EF-going community in England and Wales, compared to vocations coming out of the Novus Ordo congregations.

What is more, a great many seminarians in ordinary seminaries have had contact with the EF and like it, and it has played a part in their spiritual development and vocation. They will be wanting to learn it as soon as they can.

have lapsed were it not for the TLM. A good female friend converted from Judaism in the context of the EF. The aesthetics and emotionality of many Novus Ordo celebrations can be exquisitely painful, particularly to young men. When they find the TLM, they can fall in love with it instantly – that happened to me, in a Low Mass. That’s not aestheticism, even if we agree we are using the term in a non-pejorative sense: it is glimpsing Christ made present in the liturgy.

‘Beauty’ is perhaps a misleading term here. No doubt some people will go to a Mozart Mass because of the Mozart, but such Masses are actually quite rare. The music and the vestments vary from the ‘decent’ to the ‘not very good’ in a lot of places, and there are a lot of Low Masses going on.

In fact, the only new priest for East Anglia this year said a TLM a day or two after his ordination; he was at the Priest Training Conference the LMS had this year in They can be very attractive, nevertheless, because of the contemplative quality, the Leicester. This is increasingly common. peace, the reverence, the invitation to pray and be quiet with God. A better term than ‘beauty’ here would be ‘spirituality’: they are attracted by the spirituality of Q. Many Catholics today no longer see the need for Confession, or Reconciliation, the TLM. R. though this does not seem to be the case for those who attend the TLM. Why do you think this is?

Yes certainly EF-goers seem to go to confession more than the average Catholic (who, I suppose, goes pretty infrequently). This is an indication of a wider truth, that the TLM brings with it traditional spirituality, theology, preaching, and so on.

The priests encourage it and make it available, the people read the good old books which encourage it, and the Mass itself fosters a sense of sin and a sense of the reality of grace and of sacramental efficacy.

The communities which grow up around the TLM quickly become characterized by traditional attitudes and devotions, a strong pro-life stance, large families, modest clothing, mantillas, all that stuff. This alarms some people, but these are countercultural communities giving each other mutual support.

Q. Anecdotally, I have heard many people say that they were converted to Catholicism through the beauty of their experience of the Extraordinary Form.

Do you find this to be true?

I can’t say I know many atheists, but a good non-Catholic friend of mine certainly finds the EF more attractive than the OF (he also for a time went to the Orthodox).

I know a number of young men who lapsed and came back for the TLM, or could

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  Two ‘lost generations’.

From the mid-1960s, every official indicator of the Catholic Church in England and Wales went into free-fall. Ordinations, conversions, baptisms, Catholic marriages—all went through the floor.

Lapsation rates of children at Catholic high schools have reached 98 percent. Regular Mass attendance has reduced to a rump—a mere 15 percent.

But in 1965, something else happened. Bucking the cultural trend, the Latin Mass Society was founded to defend the Traditional liturgy and the Faith that it embodies. A beacon of hope. Now, nearly 50 years later, the Latin Mass Society is leading a small but growing revival within the Church, in England and Wales, and within English society, and it needs your help.

Against the current, the Traditional Latin Mass is growing in popularity, and availability, and

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most of the groundwork, campaigning and organizing to achieve that in England has been done by the Latin Mass Society and its small army of volunteers.

They care about their immortal souls, and those of their children and grandchildren, and their fellow countrymen. They are working now to ensure an orthodox Catholic future for their families, starting with the Mass.

But this comes at a price. Our resources are limited, often stretched to breaking point, and we need some assistance, right now, from you, our friends.

In England we also have a legacy of protestant anti-Catholicism to contend with and, even more worrying, a new and aggressive secularism that mocks religion, and the Catholic Church in particular. It has the ear of those in government. We have a battle on our hands. Will you help us?

Please, if you can, make a donation towards our work at www.lms.org.uk. Thank you.

The Latin Mass Society www.lms.org.uk

A Modest Proposal The English Bride

England

the land of princess brides, is the trend-setter. The 2011 wedding of Kate Middleton to Prince William held the entire world in thrall, harkening back to the late Diana, ‘England’s Rose.’

Fashion commentators breathlessly reported on Kate’s gown, which was so, well, modest. Experts wondered -- was Kate setting a trend away from the naked shoulders and deep décolleté of the last decade?

Debra Turvey, the English proprietor of Sunflower Bridal, specializes in modest wedding clothing for British brides. In this exclusive Regina interview, she reveals all -- about not revealing all.

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“Brides like to feel comfortable, demure and elegant. Many don’t even realize that they have a choice.”

‘A bride should wear what she is comfortable with and what makes her feel good.’

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Q. Do you think Kate Middleton’s dress has had an impact on modest wedding clothing?

A. I think Kate Middleton has had some impact; her dress was so beautiful and elegant. I think however that brides are just wanting to be different and follow their desires, rather than fashion.

Certainly Kate Middleton showed that a bride should wear what she is comfortable with and what makes her feel good. She shouldn’t feel compelled to simply follow fashion.

Q. What inspired Sunflower Bridals?

A. In October, 2009 one of my daughters got engaged. She didn’t want a dress that needed a jacket or camisole, but did want to be covered for religious reasons.

We visited many bridal boutiques but it was impossible to find one in the UK, so Emily looked on the internet. She found a dress she fell in love with, found a source for the dress in Utah and we called them and ordered it.

Her father was able to pick the dress up on a business trip there.

However, as a mother I missed the experience of trying dresses on with Emily and finding that one special dress. So Sunflower Bridal was born. I began trading in September 2010.

© 2013 Emily Beale Photography www.emilybealephotography.com

“Brides are relieved that they have found dresses they can try on in the UK. They are happy and excited and travel great distances to come.”

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Q. How and why do brides seek out Sunflower Bridals?

A. It’s exciting to see how my business is growing. My brides either come from word of mouth, or by internet search, looking for ‘wedding dresses with sleeves’ or ‘modest wedding dresses’. (They find us at http://www. sunflowerbridal.co.uk) My brides come to Sunflower Bridal for all sorts of reasons: religious, coverage, size (at both ends of the spectrum), or because they want something different because of their age or second marriages.

One of the first reactions I get from bridal enquiries is simply an expression of relief that they have found dresses they can try on in the UK. They are happy and excited and travel great distances to come and try them on.

I’ve had brides from all over the United Kingdom, and even some from mainland Europe. Because brides are often travelling a long way to get here, I try to keep a good selection of styles and sizes and often the bride can take her dress away with her. I also encourage brides to try lots of different styles so they can see for themselves which suits them best.

England has always been a taste-maker, particularly in weddings and coronations. (Above: The 1953 coronation gown of Queen Elizabeth II, designer’s rendering.)

Q. England has always been a tastemaker, particularly in weddings and coronations. Do you see growing interest in modest wedding clothing among English brides?

A. I have been surprised how many brides I have seen who simply want to be a little more covered, purely to suit their own taste, and not necessarily for religious reasons.

‘Dare to bare’ might work for some on a beach but not for such a special occasion as a wedding.

Brides like to feel comfortable, demure and elegant and I see that there is definitely a growing interest in wedding dresses with a little more coverage.

Many brides don’t even realize that they have a choice. R. 14 | Page

“Bless us, oh Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

Sunday Roast Bucking the System

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ow deeply ingrained the Old Faith is in the English culture can be found in both its calendar and table culture. For example, English schools traditionally begin with the Michaelmas (pronounced MICKel-mus) term, on or near the September 29 feast of St. Michael the Archangel.

St. Michael is usually depicted in art carrying a sword and/or shield, battling Lucifer. Christian tradition holds that Michael (whose name in Hebrew translates, “Who is like God?”) was the leader of the angelic army that threw Satan out of Heaven after a considerable row. He is the patron of knights, policemen, soldiers, paramedics, ambulance drivers -- and also danger at sea, for the sick, and of a holy death.

The Michaelmas Daisies, among dede weeds, Bloom for St Michael’s valorous deeds.

And seems the last of flowers that stood, Till the feast of St. Simon and St. Jude. (October 28) “She Loves Me:” At this time of year, the Aster (Aster nova-belgii) blooms, known as the Michaelmas Daisy – famous as a portent for lovers. English-speakers the world over are familiar with seasonal custom of pulling these daisy petals, reciting “S/he loves me,” and “S/he loves me not,” until all the petals are gone. (The words one intones while pulling off the last petal lets one know if one’s love is requited.)

Michaelmas was when geese were brought to market to be sold from farms into towns, so roast goose dinners are traditional. It was also the time when the fishing season ended, the hunting season began, and apples were harvested.

Roast Goose with Apples (serves 8) 1 13-lb. goose, giblets and neck discarded (you’ll need 1 lb per person) 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced 8 golden delicious apples, peeled, each cut into 6 wedges 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice 6 TBSP sugar 1/4 cup Calvados (apple brandy) 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon Position rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 350°F. Rinse goose inside and out; pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle inside and out with salt and pepper.

Using knife, cut small slits all over goose; place garlic slices into slits. Place goose on rack, breast side down, in large roasting pan. Roast goose 2 hours 45 minutes, basting occasionally with drippings and removing excess fat; reserve 6 tablespoons fat. Turn goose over. Roast until brown and thermometer inserted into thickest part of thigh registers 175°F, basting occasionally with drippings, about 45 minutes longer.

Meanwhile, toss apples and lemon juice in large bowl.

Pour 6 tablespoons goose fat into 15 x 10 x 2-inch glass baking dish. Using slotted spoon, transfer apples to baking dish; toss apples in goose fat. Add sugar, Calvados and cinnamon to apples; toss. Bake apples alongside goose until very tender and golden, about 1 hour. Serve goose with caramelized apples and a Bordeaux wine.

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If one day you are invited to ‘Sunday Lunch’ in England, say a grateful prayer and accept with pleasure. Whether in a gastropub or an Englishman’s castle, these people know what they are doing. You are in for a treat-classically delicious seasonal roasted meat, complemented by local vegetables. And though your hosts may not know it, they are continuing a centuries-old Catholic tradition. For, from the time when the earliest Christians came to England in 159 AD,* we have come together over a table blessing after Sunday Mass.

* According to the Venerable Bede, during the reign of Roman emperor Marcus Antoninus, a British king named Lucius wrote Pope Eleutherus in Rome requesting instruction in the Christian faith.

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CHRIST IN THE KITCHEN: English Catholics in the Middle Ages would cross-section an apple to show their children how the 5 seeds inside the 5-pointed star found inside represented the Five Wounds of Christ.

What’s in a ‘Christian’ Name? t was long ago in the U.S. that we abandoned this terminology, ostensibly for fear of offending non-Christians. (As a result, many Americans now invent their children’s first names out of whole cloth, with lamentable results. Or name them after celebrities. Actually, sometimes it’s hard to decide which is worse.)

Digressions aside, what exactly, is a Christian name? My Anglican friends think this a very strange question, until I point out that Christian names are actually saints’ names, or biblical names.

Names are manifestations of a culture. For centuries, Catholics, orthodox Christians and many Protestants have given their children the names of saints.

Despite reformation and secularism, it is a sign of the ongoing English respect for Christian tradition that the country’s most popular baby names in 2012 still derive from these Catholic sources. It may be a sign that most of us don’t know history that ‘Oliver’ -- the third most popular name for boys -- is the name of the last Catholic martyr in England (see chart).

“The English school application form stopped me dead in my tracks. What was my son’s ‘Christian’ name?”

Interestingly, the other five of the six top baby names in England are foreign – French, Spanish, Belgian, German and Jewish – saints. Perhaps this is another cultural clue, harkening back to a time when England was part of an international Catholic civilization?

This was done as a religious talisman and also as a life-long reminder of the careers of these successful Christians. In some countries people celebrated the feast days of their name saints in So, here’s the full Catholic treatment for the lieu of their ‘birth’ days. top six baby names in England in 2012:

Harry

Boys #1

Jack

Boys #2

Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor

From St. Henry, Holy Roman Emperor from 10141024, the only German monarch ever to be canonized.

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From St. John. There are more than 70 saints by this name, derived from John the Baptist (Jesus’s cousin, depicted left, by El Greco) or John the Evangelist, one of the four Gospel writers.)

source: http://www.babycentre.co.uk

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Clues to Britain’s Catholic Past

Oliver

Amelia

Boys #3

Girls #1

St. Oliver Plunkett, archbishop of Ireland.

On 1 July 1681 (aged 51), Plunkett became the last Roman Catholic martyr to die in England when he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn

From Saint Amalberga of Maubeuge, a Belgian who was the mother of five saints; she died in 773. There have been several other saints with this name since.

Lily

Emily

From Saint Liliosa, a lay woman in Moorish- controlled 9th century Cordoba, Spain. Lily was cruelly martyred for appearing in public with her face exposed during the persecutions of Caliph Abderraham II.

St. Emily de Vialar, Foundress of the Sisters of St. Joseph “of the Apparition” in France. She is the patron saint of single women and neglected children. She died in 1856.

Girls #2

Girls #3

When God Hated Susan

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What had she done to deserve this?

hey are that rare bird, English Catholics. Susan’s mother had insisted on the church wedding to her first husband. Her mum wanted to ‘make things respectable.’ As far as Susan was concerned no amount of respectability could make her stay with her partying, abusive ex-husband.

He was in the Queen’s Arms in Coles End, utterly stoned, while she was in court for the divorce.

Jim was nothing like her ex, though. He was a tall, dark and handsome civil engineer, wellpaid by the local council. And at 29, Susan was still a charmer -- small, lithe and filled with fun. Her eyes danced with mischief, and the rollicking good humor of her Irish ancestors. After a quick wedding with a hired preacher in a hotel (“We don’t need to be paying the Church any money for one of their divorces,” Jim had said) they settled in an ‘upper middle-class’ suburb of Birmingham. She couldn’t get pregnant right away after all those years on the Pill, so she’d endured a year of intensive hormone ‘therapy.’ Two births quickly followed, a boy and a girl. She promptly commenced to take the Pill again afterwards, reasoning that there was no sense in endangering their financial well-being. Plus, Jim showed signs of impatience with the strain of caring for two little babies.

broke down and sobbed. He was a ‘sex addict,’ he said.

Susan knew there was trouble.

First there was the porn she found on his computer, then the pay-for-sex telephone numbers on the bill.

Things didn’t get any better when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 40. Shortly after her course of radiation was complete, Jim was arrested for the first time. A ‘sting’ operation had swept him up, along with dozens of other hapless men, in a porn-and-prostitution ring. As it was Jim’s first offense, he was let go with a stern warning. But the illness and the arrest had taken its toll on Susan; she slept in a separate room, and prayed that the nightmare would go away.

It was not to be. Over the next ten years, the internet sex business exploded. The third time Jim was arrested, the police came to the house. He was led away before the incredulous eyes of his 19 year old son and 17 year old daughter. This time, the judge was not so lenient.

Jim had progressed further in the sex business, going from consumer to procurer, hustling girls younger than his own daughter for paying She spent the next few years blissfully caring for their family. But by clients. He was convicted on seven felony counts of human trafficking, the time the children were in their early teens, Susan knew there and sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison. was trouble. First there was the porn she found on his computer, then the pay-for-sex telephone numbers on the bill. Confronted, Jim The judge gave Susan control over their finances, which helped them

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survive. Without marketable skills, she was reduced to stocking shelves It was from that day forward that Susan dated their recovery. Small in the local Boots pharmacy, at £4.92 (US$7.48) an hour. Their house steps back to sanity, beginning with her own trip to the confessional was put up for sale. after more than 20 years away from the Sacrament. The priest was compassionate, listening carefully to her halting attempts to explain Her son’s fury and shame erupted on the football field one day, and her life, between floods of tears that often left her unable to speak he was beaten quite badly in a melee sparked by his attack on an between wracking sobs. He taught her The Prayer. I renounce my will. opposition team player. As he lay unconscious, Susan found herself I turn it all over to you, Mary my true mother, to lay at the feet of Your sobbing uncontrollably in the ladies’ room at the local hospital, when Son. Not my will, but His be done. “For your penance, I want you to the nun walked in. say this prayer at least three times a day, and I want you to visualize taking these great burdens off your shoulders, and laying them at the Her son’s fury and shame erupted on the football field one feet of Our Lord,” he told her. In the darkness of the confessional, day, and he was beaten quite badly in a melee sparked by tears streamed down Susan’s face as she watched his hand raise in the his attack on an opposition team player. words of absolution. Afterwards, she knelt in the pew for a very long time, repeating the Prayer over and over again.

She felt cleansed, and at peace for the first time in years, strong enough to persevere through the annulment process from her first husband. She then obtained a simple ‘disparity of cult’ document for her marriage to Jim. A year later, Susan had a heart-to-heart talk with her children.

“The Church took very seriously what I – in my ignorant youth – refused to,” she told them. “This is because the Church understands marriage as a sacrament – not simply as an agreement between a man and a woman that can be dissolved at will. If I had understood that, I would have gotten my first marriage annulled after it was over – which would have helped me understand that both of us had gone into that marriage completely incapable of sustaining it. It would have also prevented me from marrying your father.”

The girl hung her head. “That means that I would have never been born,” she whispered sadly. Her brother looked away stonily.

There’s something about a sister in a habit, as any nun will tell you.

People tell you their troubles – especially fallen-away Catholics in deep “Yes,” Susan said quietly. Then she smiled and took both young people trouble. in her arms. “But God is always generous, and He gave me you – the lights of my life. You both were the greatest gift I have ever received.”

Her excruciating story came out all in a rush. Through her tears, Susan wanted to know what she had done to deserve all this pain, she told But Susan wasn’t finished. “That a marriage should be open to life the nun. Why did God hate her? She had wanted a family. Was that turns sex into a completely different thing,” she went on doggedly, so bad? She had taken some shortcuts, okay. A marriage outside the despite her children’s evident discomfort. “The Church understands Church. All that contraception. But what did the Church expect? That the body with great reverence, as the ‘temple’ of your soul. Your body she be a baby-making machine? Jim would have never agreed to any is not a ‘thing’ to be used – manipulated in any way for pleasure, or of it, starting with the pre-Cana classes. “That’s probably true,” Sister to produce babies. Your body is to be cherished, and nurtured, and Mary Clare nodded, looking into Susan’s swollen red eyes. She handed rightly understood by your spouse, and you – because we are made in her a Kleenex. “And then what would have happened?” the image of God.” “If I-I followed what the Church said, I would have n-never married him.” Susan heard herself say it, as if in a dream. For a moment, she contemplated the truth of this. Her life would have been completely different, had she followed the rules.

Susan was an honest woman. This simple fact was crystal clear: she had married a man who scorned the Church, and everything the Faith stood for. And he had then proceeded to build their lives on his lies, and his addiction.

‘The Church understands the body with great reverence, as the ‘temple’ of your soul. Your body is not a ‘thing’ to be used – manipulated in any way for pleasure, or to produce babies.’

In that year, Susan discovered Natural Family Planning. NFP required both understanding how her body functioned, and a little bit of restraint, and she wondered why she had never heard of it before. Though she had to admit, Jim would have never accepted such restrictions on his sexual ‘rights’ – just as he had accepted no restrictions on the sexual “Addictions are ways in which we sin, and sin repeatedly,” the nun said slavery that led to his prison cell. sympathetically. “They always involve the people we love, dragging them down with us.”

Susan’s house was sold, and their belongings moved to a small apartment with cheap rent. Susan has found a job as a receptionist, Susan nodded, looking down at the balled-up tissue she was clutching. and she and her children are slowly rebuilding their lives. Both children After the agony of this sex business, she herself felt besmirched. She are attending Mass along with their mother. knew her children felt it too – smeared filthy with Jim’s sins, and deeply angry.

As for Sister Mary Clare, she is glad that her habit gave her the opportunity to step into Susan’s life that day in the hospital ladies’ After the agony of this sex business, she herself felt room. “We religious are a sign of God’s love in this world,” she says besmirched. She knew her children felt it too – smeared simply. “Our religious habits make that very clear.” R. filthy with Jim’s sins, and deeply angry.

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The Message of Julian Norwich ‘All Will Be Well, and All Manner of Things Will Be Well’

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he was a medieval English anchoress of a convent tucked away in East Anglia, far from London’s busy streets. But Mother Julian of Norwich has a message for today’s Catholics: “[God] did not say ‘You shall not be tempest-tossed...But he did say, ‘You shall not be overcome.’ God wants us to heed these words so that we shall always be strong in trust, both is sorrow and in joy.” As many of us are having our comfortable faith tested by today’s climate, I believe a revisit of Julian’s teaching may be in order.

Julian lived in the 1300s in Norwich and served as an Anchoress, which effectively meant that she never left her room attached to the church. There, she wrote the first book in English by a woman, an account of the “showings” she claimed to have received from Christ in 1373.

Although a cult (a group of followers who are devoted to her cause for sainthood) developed around her and she is called “Blessed Juliana,” she has never been canonized. As she lived two hundred years before the Reformation, Julian was most definitely a Roman Catholic, and many Anglicans also hold her in high regard.

According to Julian, her visions came about at the end of a severe illness which she actually asked God to send her. Seeing it as a way to physically participate in the sufferings of Christ and hoping to better understand God’s love, she begged God to bestow on her a year of special suffering when she was 30, the same age when He began His ministry.

Mother Julian received a series of fifteen visions of the suffering of Christ and immediately after wrote them down in a short text. Many years later, after contemplating them and praying over their possible meaning, she wrote a much longer text, The Revelations of Divine Love, the first book written in English by a woman.

The visions, centering on the Passion and death of Christ, and indeed her whole text can be best summed up in one word: love.

As Julian said, “Know it well, love was His meaning.

Who reveals it to you? Love. What did He reveal to you?

Love. Why does He reveal it to you? For love. Remain in this, and you will know more of the same.”

In sharing Christ’s suffering, Julian was able to more fully understand God’s love for the world. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Ironically, Julian’s ancient church, including the small cell where she spent her life, was all but destroyed by a Nazi bomb in World War II. Today it stands, fully reconstructed, a monument to the durability of Mother Julian’s legend, and the tenacity of the Gospel message in England.)

Julian’s is a lesson that should be taught: to understand love we must understand suffering. If we understand these things, then we will also understand her wisdom in saying “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” R.

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ABOUT THE AUTHER: Bridget Green is a wife, mother, homeschooler, and writer who is obsessed with the lives of the saints and checking closets for Narnia. She lives with her husband and their six children in her hometown of Newark, NJ, where she chronicles their lives in her personal blog, Life at Le. Rheims, and contributes weekly to Truth and Charity.

The Sisters of St.Cecilia’s Abbey Young Novices Enter Traditional English Benedictine Order

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ounded in 1882 in Ryde on the Isle of Wight, St Cecilia’s Abbey belongs to the Benedictine Order, part of the family of houses connected to the famous Abbey of Solesmes, France.

The nuns live a traditional monastic life of prayer, work and study in accordance with the ancient Rule of St Benedict. At the heart of their life is the praise of God, expressed through the solemn celebration of the sacred liturgy.

The Sisters maintain ‘the truth of the hours,” singing the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours at the same times which have been kept by the monastic orders since ancient times. For example, the “little hours” (Terce, Sect and None), ‘sanctify the day and are a powerful help in “the return to God” that we make throughout the day,’ according to Sister Mary David.

Ceremony, a strong family spirit and pure contemplation are characteristic of the Solesmes Congregation, founded in 1832

by Dom Prosper Guéranger. For almost two hundred years, Solesmes and its daughter houses have worked to preserve what is called ‘plainchant’ in England and ‘Gregorian chant’ elsewhere.

Q. Why do you still have your Liturgy in Latin?

A. “We always have the Mass readings in English. In the Divine Office we have the Patristic readings in English. But we made a deliberate choice to keep the rest in Latin for several reasons. First, the Gregorian Chant which we use for all of our liturgy was composed for Latin texts. The melodies weren’t written first and then the words fitted to them; the melodies were made for the existing texts (almost all quotations from Scripture). We couldn’t use the same melodies for English words, and they’re so subtle and beautiful that to adapt them would be to spoil them.”

These chants evolved from the music of the synagogues which the first Christians adopted, and developed over more than a thousand years. There’s often a theology in the melody itself - for example, as it becomes more elaborate at the important words or phrases. Then, all the great monastic figures in the western Church wrote in Latin and it’s good to keep in touch with them.

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“Today, young people are drawn to a rich liturgical life which includes the singing of Mass and the Divine Office in Latin, the Church’s traditional language, and Gregorian Chant, its traditional song,” says Sister Mary David. “In the last year and a half, we have been blessed with a Solemn Profession, two First Professions, and two new entrants. Except for the most recent entrant, who is now a novice, all were in their twenties when they entered. One was only nineteen.”

Often we’re singing chants which they would have known and prayed with just as we do. While Vatican II allowed the use of modern languages and modern music in the liturgy, it also insisted on the value of the Latin language and Gregorian Chant, and subsequent Popes have stressed that Benedictine monasteries have a particular duty and privilege to cherish and draw life from this wonderful spiritual heritage.

If girls don’t know Latin when they enter - and they usually don’t know any - they learn it in the novitiate. It is astonishing how quickly you pick it up with one-to-one teaching and singing it in the liturgy several times a day. The same is true of Gregorian Chant. Most of us are not “musical”, but our choir mistress says she has found that anyone can learn to sing the Chant. People nowadays often use discipline in posture and breathing as aids to prayer, or learn to discern the promptings of the Spirit through their memory or imagination or emotions. Learning Latin and music for the sake of praying through the Chant is just another discipline which centuries of experience have shown to be a way to deeper union with God. For Dom Guéranger, the Benedictine is someone who ‘tends towards God’ and who invites others by his example to also tend towards God. The monk is a contemplative, and his contemplation, like that of the angels, expresses itself in a life of praise. In praising God, the monk is a sign to all in the Church of their primary duty to pray.

In a letter to the Abbot of Solesmes signed in a shaky hand just ten days before he died, Blessed Pope John Paul said “be strengthened in their commitment and in the service that they give to the world in an invisible way, keeping vigil before God in liturgical prayer. Thanks to them, the world is lifted up towards God . . . Reviving the figure of Dom Guéranger is an invitation for all the faithful to rediscover the roots of the liturgy and to give a new breath to their journey of prayer.”

For almost two hundred years, Solesmes and its daughter Benedictine houses have worked to preserve the haunting, ineffable strains of ‘plain’ or ‘Gregorian’ chant, the ancient music of the Church.

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Is your life very austere?

“Learning Latin and music for the sake of praying through the Chant is just another discipline which centuries of experience have shown to be a way to deeper union with God.”

Anyone can try to fast from chatter or from trivia or from shutting doors noisily.

Some find it an austerity to respond promptly when the bell goes for prayer or if they are asked to lend a hand unexpectedly: it’s good to remember that these are opportunities for showing love, just as a mother responds promptly to her crying baby, even if she’s not filled with a warm maternal glow at that particular moment.

Monastic poverty does not mean living in destitution but it does mean cutting out, as far as possible, all that is superfluous. So we eat sensibly and have sufficient clothing and heating but we try to avoid luxuries. Benedictine poverty includes taking care of material things, even if they’re old and worn, and avoiding waste. We do not each plan our own finances but we can exercise responsibility about not wasting water or electricity. We do a certain amount of fasting in Lent and Advent and at certain other times, and newcomers accustom themselves to this gradually.

The Abbess has to take into account St. Benedict’s principle that the regime should be such that “the strong may still have something to long after and the weak may not draw back in alarm” (Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 64).

R.

‘Happy is he who prays with the Church.

Prayer said in union with the Church is the light of the understanding, the fire of divine love in the heart. Let not the soul that is possessed with a love of prayer be afraid that her thirst cannot be quenched by these rich streams of the liturgy, which now flow calmly as a streamlet, now roll with the loud impetuosity of a torrent, and now swell with the mighty heavings of the sea. The liturgy is suitable for all souls, being milk for children and solid food for the strong, thus resembling the miraculous bread of the desert.’

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For more information on the Sisters of St. Cecilia’s Abby, please write to: St Cecilia’s Abbey Ryde Isle of Wight England PO33 1LH Tel (01983) 562602 Fax (01983) 614003 email: abbey@stceciliasabbey.org.uk http://www.stceciliasabbey.org.uk

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or centuries before the 1960s Vatican II, women veiled themselves in church.

In fact, in 1917 the Church clearly prescribed head-coverings for women with canon 1262 -- which under pressure from modernists was abrogated in 1983.

The English fondness for hats in church derives from their 1394 years of Catholicism before the Reformation. The biblical source for this proscription is the Apostle Paul’s injunction in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.

The Church Lady

Glorious Hats Make a Comeback

The American Catholic Jackie Kennedy instinctively grasped what the English always knew: there’s just something about a lady in a hat. And in England, hats for church weddings have always been de rigueur.

While in the last 50 years most Catholics have abandoned head-coverings, the Anglicans retained this churchly tradition, especially for weddings. Kate and William’s wedding has brought hats out in full force – first, all over Westminster Abbey, and now, the world! Who knows, perhaps hats will make a comeback in Catholic churches, too? R. 24 | Page

The Saints of England’s Holy Island The Ancient Legend of Lindisfarne

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indisfarne is a cold, wild and lonely island, isolated from the rest of England by twice-daily tides. But its misty shores have witnessed strange and marvellous things.

The story of Lindisfarne reaches far back into the mists of time, to another island, Iona. It was here that the Irish began to save civilization when St. Columba, or Columcille, arrived from Ireland in the year 576 AD with twelve companions.

From here, Columba and his monks took the Gospel to the Pictish Tribes of Scotland – and founded another monastic community on Lindisfarne. Lindisfarne was to become as influential and significant as Iona in the development of Christianity in Britain, especially England.

Our story begins in 634 AD when Oswald became King of Northumbria. A recent convert, he wished to evangelise his subjects, so he sent to Iona for missionary monks. The Abbot of Iona, Segenius, dispatched Corman, an austere monk, who, on finding the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria to be both barbarous and obstinate, promptly returned to Scotland.

Fortunately, the Abbot’s next recruit, Aidan, turned out to be a better choice. It was Aidan who selected Lindisfarne as a secluded and peaceful place, ideal for the monastic life – yet close enough to the Northumbrian capital, present day Bamburgh.

From Lindisfarne, Aidan preached the Gospel throughout the Kingdom of Northumbria, sometimes with the assistance of King Oswald who acted as interpreter. Aidan’s mission flourished; people donated land and money to establish churches and monasteries throughout the kingdom. Parents sent their children to be educated by the Celtic monks and four brothers who arrived there, Cynebil, Caelin, Cedd and Chad were ordained priests.

As we learn from the chronicles of St Bede the Venerable, St. Aidan earned a reputation for his pious charity and devotion to those less fortunate, such as his assistance to orphans and paying to free slaves. He insisted on travelling on foot, rather than horseback. The monastic community he founded quickly grew, as did its reputation as a place of scholarship and learning. Aidan died on 31st August, 651 AD, and his body was interred beneath Lindisfarne abbey. St. Aidan has been proposed as a patron saint for the entire United Kingdom because of his Irish origins, his Scottish monasticism and his mission to the Anglo-Saxons of northern England.

On the night St. Aidan died, a young man named Cuthbert was tending his sheep in the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland, near Melrose Abbey. According to the Venerable Bede, he saw a vision of Aidan’s soul being taken up by a Heavenly Host. When Cuthbert learned that Aidan had died at the exact time of his vision, he immediately entered the monastery.

Whilst tending his sheep, Cuthbert saw a vision of Aidan’s soul being taken up by a Heavenly Host. When he learned that Aidan had died at the exact time of his vision, Cuthbert immediately entered the monastery.

Ten years later, Cuthbert became Prior of Lindisfarne, where he often spent time alone on a rocky outcrop, today known as Cuthbert’s Island. Later he went into greater isolation, retreating to the Inner Farne Island and building himself a cell and oratory. Cuthbert’s solitude would be broken by visitors seeking counsel from this wise and pious man, but when he was alone legends have it that he would mortify himself by standing in the sea up to his waist for the entire night, and sea otters would dry his feet and warm his frozen legs. He had a great love

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of wildlife and he is particularly associated with the Eider Duck, known locally as Cuddy’s Duck.

In 687 AD, Cuthbert’s body was buried on Lindisfarne. More than 100 years later, Vikings attacked the island, and in 875 AD Cuthbert’s loyal monks took up his body and fled. In one of the most astounding stories of Christian monasticism, these monks wandered for generations, safeguarding the incorrupt body of Cuthbert, until eventually founding a church in Durham. When the Norman French built Durham Cathedral almost 300 years later, they re-interred Cuthbert behind the altar, where he rests today.

The ancient Saint Aidan has been proposed as a patron saint for the entire United Kingdom because of his Irish origins, his Scottish monasticism and his mission to the Anglo-Saxons of northern England.

St. Wilfrid, the son of a nobleman, left Lindisfarne for Rome -- the first known pilgrimage by an Anglo-saxon to the Eternal City. There, he learned the Roman method for calculating Easter. Wilfrid returned to Northumbria and became

involved in the historic dispute between the Celtic and Roman calendars. The dispute came to a head when King Oswiu of Northumbria, who followed the Celtic date for Easter, married Eanflaed, who followed the Roman date for Easter.

To resolve the issue, the famous Synod was held at Whitby in 664 AD, chaired by the Abbess of Whitby, St. Hilda. St. Wilfrid supported the Roman method whilst the Celtic method was supported by Cedd and Colman of Lindisfarne along with King Oswiu and Hilda of Whitby. Wilfrid’s arguments in support of the Roman practice won the day and the Kingdom of Northumbria from then on adopted the Roman practice. Wilfrid also introduced the Rule of St. Benedict at the many monastic houses he founded; some say he was the first to introduce the Benedictine Rule into England and not St. Augustine of Canterbury.

as is St. Cuthbert Gospel, a pocket gospel written in Latin in the 7th C. and placed inside St. Cuthbert’s coffin.

The nine saints of Lindisfarne are St. Aidan, St. Finan, St. Colman, St. Tuda, St. Eata, St. Cuthbert, St. Eadberht, St. Eadfrith and St. Ethelwald.

The lonely ruins of Lindisfarne still stand today, mute testimony to the light of the Gospel carried by St. Aidan, which illuminated Anglo-Saxon England.

After the Viking raids, Lindisfarne remained uninhabited for over 200 years, when Benedictine Monks re-established the monastic life there. They renamed Lindisfarne ‘Holy Island,’ to commemorate the holy blood shed during the Viking raids. The Benedictine Monks were on Holy Island for about 450 years until the In one of the most astounding stories of Christian monasticism, these monks Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1533 under Henry VIII. The ruins of Lindesfarne wandered for generations, safeguarding the incorrupt body of Saint Cuthbert. still stand today, mute testimony to the light of the Gospel carried by St. Aidan, which illuminated Anglo-Saxon England. R. Besides producing nine saints and evangelizing large parts of England, Lindisfarne’s monks produced one of the greatest treasures of Anglo-Saxon England, The Lindisfarne Gospels. This priceless illuminated manuscript is one of the finest surviving examples of Celtic Art. The Gospels are now kept in the British Library

PRAYER OF St. CUTHBERT Bless, O Lord, this island, This Holy Island.

Make it a place of peace and love.

Make it a place of joy and light.

Make it a place of hospitality.

Make it a place of grace and goodness And begin with me.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A graduate of Bristol University and for many years a Catholic educator, Michael Durnan made a pilgrimage to Lindisfarne in 2002. He walked the sixty mile route from Melrose in Scotland in the footsteps of St. Cuthbert.

They were great favorites of the Victorians. The Romantic Age poets sighed over them; painters silhouetted them against blazing sunsets.

Ghosts of a Catholic Age The Haunted Ruins of England

Today, towns plant flower gardens in them, and keep the lawns 27carefully | Page tended for tourists.

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n reality, these romantic ruins were once scenes of a ferocious government attack on a centuries-old way of life.

Modern historians agree that King Henry VIII ordered the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 to ruthlessly suppress any political opposition – and grab the Church’s property.

Henry had willing accomplices.

While many of his great nobles avoided committing such sacrilege, the King found ample minor nobility eager for the generous percentage of loot promised them.

And so it began. The ‘King’s men’ descended on 600 monasteries, intent on looting the unarmed religious houses that had been the great centers of learning, agriculture and medicine for the English peasantry since time immemorial.

Monks and nuns were evicted, church treasure stolen and the very stones carted away to build the estates of Henry’s supporters.

Any resistance was met with vicious cruelty, and many a grave old abbot was hung from the towers of their monastery, then drawn and quartered, disemboweled and forced to watch as their entrails were burnt before their eyes.

In the North, brave nobles and peasants joined forces in the name of the Faith in the ill-fated ‘Pilgrimage of Grace.’ When Henry’s soldiers were victorious, the king was merciless. The head of every religious house involved was executed, and Henry’s troops then took their terrible revenge on the hapless people in what has been called ‘the Harrying of the North.’

But this is not commonly known.

In fact, for centuries English schoolchildren have been taught that the monasteries were ‘rich’ and that they kept the peasantry ignorant with their ‘superstitions.’

Only recently have revisionist historians such as Yale’s Eamon Duffy done the careful scholarship that proves this to be a myth, invented by the victors to conceal the true origins of the wealth of England’s upper classes

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Today, these gaunt bones of stone still vault into English skies, stark reminders of the Catholic roots of the English culture.

And many a ‘stately home’ bears the name of the religious house it supplanted. Think ‘Downton Abbey.’ R. 29 | Page

A Story of Catholic Valour When Jesuits Were Hunted in England

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here is a sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica which flanks Bernini’s Monument to Pope Alexander VII, strategically and metaphorically set over an exit door from the Basilica. The Allegory of Truth by Lazzaro Morelli and Giulio Carteri is a gigantic marble figure of a woman with one toe on a thorn symbolizing Protestantism, set atop England.

From the point of view of England’s Crown, the Jesuits could very well be a thorn in England’s side; they created obstacles to Protestant uniformity by ministering to the spiritual needs of English Catholics and fueled zeal to defy acquiescence to the Church of England. To the Protestant, “‘Jesuit’… meant conspiracy…Their founder was Spanish and they were sworn to another allegiance than the Queen’s…The Jesuits were the vanguard of Spanish invasion; their business was to murder the Queen and Council…

The news that disguised Jesuits were now at large in the English countryside caused indignation and alarm.”1 This took place against a background where humanism sanctioned a shift in focus from a theocentric to an anthropocentric view of the world, and intellectual skepticism normalized a historical-critical reading of the Bible.

At the same time, the Society of Jesuits was establishing its ministry as educators and soldiers for Catholic orthodoxy.

This Jesuit engagement with the world marked the period when the myth of the ‘evil Jesuit’ began. This article looks at the effects of Jesuit involvement in the preservation of Catholicism in England during the first century of the Anglican Church.

It is important to note that the English Catholics from Oxford who went to Douai and Rheims were the same men who returned as Jesuit missionaries in the English Mission. With the exodus to the continent of Catholic Oxford

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Chairs and Fellows who refused to take the Oath of Submission, Douai in the Spanish Netherlands and Rheims in France caught England’s most valuable cultural resource: the erudite Catholic.

One could certainly say that without the ‘Oxfordizing’ of the universities in Douai and Rheims, there might not have been higher education for England’s Catholic youth and the Jesuits might not have stepped in to administer

and to counter the zealous and violent erasure of everything Catholic from England.

A.O. Meyer described these priests as “worthy representatives of the spunk of the English national character.”2 They had to adapt to a strange way of life; in public, the priest wore a disguise; in hiding spaces he was priest. His life was spent “laid low in the attic room which contained a bed, a table and an altar, and was told to walk along the beams so that the floor would not creak and to be careful about opening windows and showing lights; he was not allowed to go about the house, might only slip out after dark, and must not come back until the servants were at supper or in bed. In an otherwise bustling household he might spend weeks or months alone, seeing only those who came to mass, the maid who brought his dinner, and with luck after meals one of the children, or their mother looking in to apologize for not having been able to pay him a visit sooner.”3 Life in a Priest’s Hole: “he lay low in the attic room which contained a bed, a table and an altar, and was told to walk along the beams so that the floor would not creak and to be careful about opening windows and showing lights.”

seminaries to accommodate the rise in priestly vocations among English Catholic men -- not to mention a spike in English scholarly priests choosing to be Jesuits. Without Douay and Rheims, there might not have been a regrouping of English Catholics. These English exiles prayed together and worked to implement various daring strategies to abort the total protestantizing of England’s religious heritage

Naturally, men who worked under such conditions were perceived as major threats. An elite corps formed under military standards who vowed obedience to the Pope, these former Oxford Catholics had a vested interest in preventing the total eclipsing of England’s Catholic heritage. Jesuits were an entirely different breed of priests from the type English Catholics were used to: “men of new light equipped in every continental art, armed against every frailty, bringing a new kind of intellect, new knowledge, new holiness.”4

Even before the first Jesuit missionaries were sent to England, secular priests from Douai were already being deployed. They were ordered not to engage in disputation but to simply focus on the pastoral care of English Catholics. Their movements were limited to covert activity, under the radar to avoid apprehension and execution. Regulations for Jesuits were different in that they were expected to be “responsible for adjustments”5 and to adapt to time, persons and places. This suggests that the Jesuits were expected to execute pastoral agility. As first hand witnesses to the plight of English Catholics, it would have been so against the grain to expect a Jesuit disciplined by Ignatian Spirituality and experienced in Oxfordian confrontational discourse to remain passive and quiet.

One Oxford refugee with influential friends in the Continent, Fr. Robert Parsons SJ, felt that the English mission need not just be a march to the gallows by a ‘growing martyr cult.’6 Parsons believed it was his sacred duty to be a missionary in a situation that had “taken on the importance and urgency of a holy war.”7 According to his memoirs and letters, Parsons planned to accomplish several missions akin to a spy thriller.

Besides establishing connections with the Recusants, they solidified and systematized the underground network by securing a network of gentryowned country houses -- including rented ones in London -- to serve as safe houses for priests. In these houses, Jesuit Brother Nicholas Owen built priest holes in case these houses were searched. And for a sense of community among the missionaries, the Jesuits established semi-annual meetings for all mission operatives, secular priests included, to pray and hold “discussions to prevent concessions to secular life from eroding religious fervor and identity.”8 To disseminate rebuttals to Protestant propaganda, a clandestine printing press was set up. Moreover, the Jesuits laid down an ecclesiastical structure to enable fielding priests, including secular ones, to specific locations. There was a network of communications to enable contact with church authorities in Rome. And of course, they instituted a way of transferring funds out of the country.

Their success came at a price, however. Secular priests felt threatened

by Jesuit domination. People became paranoid and suspicious that some foreign power backed their activities, which included a plot to assassinate the Queen. “Opponents saw Jesuits as overly-Hispanized zealots whose high-profile antics only goaded the Government’s more extreme measures.”9 But then there was Edmund Campion. He was serving as a missionary in Poland when he was recalled to be part of the English Mission. For one thing, it meant certain execution, for simply being priests. The anticipation of martyrdom transformed men so that “they came with gaiety among a people where hope was dead. The past only held regret and the future, apprehension; they brought with them, besides their priestly dignity and the ancient and indestructible creed, an entirely new spirit of which Campion is the type; the chivalry of Lepanto and the poetry of La Mancha, light, tender, generous and ardent.”10 Sensing it was only a matter of time that he would be apprehended and executed, Campion decided to take advantage of the print media to say what should not be left unsaid. Campion wrote two final documents; the first was his letter to the Privy Council informing them who he was and that his mission in England was strictly for religious rather than political reasons. His final piece, Decem Rationes or Ten Reasons why the Roman Catholic Church is the True Church, was written in the recognizably Campion rhetorical style that would have been familiar to upper reaches of English society. Campion had once been referred to by the Queen’s top adviser as the ‘diamond of England.’ What could have been more irksome than the diamond of England defecting to the Catholic side, and becoming a Jesuit priest?

Henry Walpole watched the execution of Edward Campion and was inadvertently sprinkled with his blood, prompting him to abandon his law practice, leave England and convert at Rheims. He, too, became a Jesuit priest and martyr.

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Edward Campion was hung, drawn and quartered, but the truth of the English Mission did not die with him. Several other English Jesuit martyrs who became saints, including Alexander Briant, a pupil of Campion’s in Oxford; Henry Walpole, who while watching the execution of Campion was sprinkled with his blood, prompting him to abandon his law practice, leave England and convert at Rheims; and Henry Morse, another convert at Douai, to name only a few.

Such valour does not die, or tarnish with the ages. I shouldn’t have been surprised but I was when a Google search on the keywords ‘English Mission’ retrieved an entry from the America’s Central Intelligence Agency.

“Clandestine methods of the Jesuits in Elizabethan England as illustrated in an operative’s own classic account” is based on the Latin text of Fr. Gerard SJ where he described “the 18 years’ undercover duty in England.” The CIA entry opined that while “Gerard’s book is not in any modern sense a tradecraft manual, it is possible to derive from it a confident sense of how he and his Superior made expert use of the standard paraphernalia of covert action-- cover, aliases, safe houses, secret printing presses, invisible ink.”

America’s Central Intelligence Agency is interested in “Clandestine methods of the Jesuits in Elizabethan England as illustrated in an operative’s own classic account.”

The community of Catholics in Douay and Rheims were hopeful that the protestantizing of England was only temporary. All England needed was a Catholic monarch and Catholicism would be restored. But what they hoped never came to be.

The Anglican Church stabilized, a female monarch showed the world what she could do with power, and the will of the secular aristocracy held strong.

By the time of Elizabeth’s death, successor James I was no longer Catholic enough to effect any major changes. But the small group of faithful English Catholics was able to preserve traditional Catholic rituals and a mode of spirituality to enable English Catholics to thrive at the margin of English culture, even down to today. R. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Suzanne Duque-Salvo is a Filipina-American Roman Catholic with a MA (Harvard Divinity School), a BA in Religion and a BA in Psychology (Wellesley College). She is Director/Founder of a non-profit organization now establishing a homestead for recovery and healing. In 2012, her book (and eBook) A Battered Woman Went to Harvard was published. Duque-Salvo has five adult children and four grandchildren. She is a member of the American Academy of Religion

1. Waugh, Evelyn. Edmund Campion. (San Francisco: Oxford Press, 2005), 128-129.

2. Carrafiello, Michael L. “English Catholicism and the Jesuit Mission of 1580-81.” The Historical Journal, 37:4 (1994), 762.

3. Bossy, John. The English Catholic Community 1570-1850, (New York: Oxford Press, 1976), 255.

4. Waugh, p.130.

5. Coupeau SJ, J. Carlos. “Five Personae of Ignatius of Loyola.” Worcester, Thomas, Ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, (New York: Cambridge Press, 2008), 45.

6. Carrafiello, p. 762.

7. Ibid, p. 768.

8. McCoog, SJ, Thomas. “The Society of Jesus in Three Kingdoms.”

Worcester, Thomas Ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits, (New York: Cambridge, 2008), 90.

9. Ibid, p.91-92.

10. Waugh, 114.

A Tale of Two Margarets My Lady Margaret, A King’s Niece

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o d e r n my t h makers have propounded a view in films and books showing Catholic women ‘oppressed’ by their religion – relegated to the status of inferiors, incapable of valour or great deeds.

As the stories of these two great Englishwoman demonstrate, real history tells a very different story.

She lived at the summit of English society. In 1473, Margaret Plantagenet was born at Farley Castle, near Bath. Margaret’s family was the famous Plantagenet royal dynasty, which had ruled England since the late 12th century. Indeed, she was the niece of two kings -- King Edward IV and King Richard III of England.

Her father, Prince George, was brother to two kings.

Her mother, Isobel, was the daughter of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, the most powerful man in England after The King, known as “Warwick the Kingmaker”.

Power and connections, however, have their price – especially if you happen to be born, as Margaret was, in the midst of the tumultuous and bloody Wars of The Roses. Anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s history plays will know the cast of characters from this period of English history. Rival factions of the Plantagenet Dynasty, the Houses of Lancaster and York, were vying for the Crown. In 1476, when Margaret was three years old, her mother, Isobel, died. Two years later, her father, George, Duke of Clarence, was imprisoned in The Tower of London after he led a revolt against his brother, King Edward IV. He was later tried and executed -- in Shakespeare’s Richard III, he is drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

Now an orphan, Margaret lived at Court with her cousins, the children of King Edward IV. When he died in 1483 and was succeeded by Margaret’s other uncle, Richard, both Margaret and her brother Edward continued to reside at court. A scant two years later, Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth. In 1487, Henry VII married Margaret’s cousin and the daughter of Edward IV, Elizabeth of York, a move uniting the rival factions of The Wars of The Roses. The child of this union would be the future King Henry VIII.

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A frail and ill old lady, Margaret was dragged from her cell, still protesting her innocence, and refusing to put her head on the block willingly.

When Margaret was eighteen, Henry VII gave her in marriage to his cousin and supporter, Sir Richard Pole. The marriage was a happy and fruitful one, as Margaret soon gave birth to five children.

The background to her happiness was deeply overshadowed, however, when Margaret’s brother Edward, was imprisoned in the Tower of London simply because he was a claimant to the throne. In a foreshadowing of the cruelty of the Tudors, Edward was later executed, alleged to have been involved in a plot against Henry.

In a move that would have catastrophic consequences for his mother, Lady Margaret, Pole withheld his support and went into self-imposed exile in Italy and France. By 1536, Reginald Pole finally broke with Henry VIII over his divorce of Katherine and his marriage to Anne Boleyn. At this point, events overtook the Pole family in breath-taking sequence.

Over his objections, Reginald was appointed Cardinal by the Pope. Cardinal Pole then encouraged the Catholic monarchs of Europe to overthrow Henry.

He also wrote to Henry indicating his objections and criticisms of Henry VIII’s policies concerning the Church in England and his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

Henry was incensed by the Cardinal, and ordered his agents to assassinate him. Several attempts ended in failure, so Henry exacted his revenge on Lady Margaret and her other children. They were all arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London; Margaret was stripped of her titles and property. She Lady Margaret, however, was considered to be was held in the Tower for two and half brutal years blameless. She was appointed to be Katherine before being sentenced to death for High Treason of Aragon’s lady-in-waiting when Katherine was against The Crown – an accusation she denied to the betrothed to Henry VII’s son, Prince Arthur -- but end. That end came on the morning of the 27th May, this was short lived, as Arthur died soon thereafter.

1541, when she was executed on Tower Hill.

Just two years later, Sir Richard Pole suddenly died, leaving Margaret a widow with five children. She Because she was of noble birth, she was spared the was left with only a small amount of land, no income humiliation of being executed as a public spectacle. or future prospects.

By now a frail and ill old lady, she was dragged from her cell, still protesting her innocence, and refusing to Lady Margaret’s fortunes took a turn for the better put her head on the block willingly. As she struggled when she once again became Katherine of Aragon’s on the block, the inexperienced executioner swung lady-in-waiting after Katherine married Henry VIII in down but gashed her shoulder and missed her neck.

1509. Her fortunes and outlook continued to improve It needed a further ten blows to finally execute her. after Parliament restored the lands and titles from her brother, Edward, which had been confiscated by Lady Margaret was buried in the chapel of St. Peter the Crown. Lady Margaret became the Countess of ad Vincula (St. Peter in Chains) within the Tower Salisbury, and by 1538 she was one of the richest of London. After her execution, a poem was found nobles in England. After the birth of Henry VIII’s first inscribed into the stone of her cell: child, Princess Mary, she was chosen as her sponsor at Baptism and Confirmation and later appointed For traitors on the block should die; her Governess.

I am no traitor, no, not I! My faithfulness stands fast and so, Lady Margaret had placed her promising son, Towards the block I shall not go!

Reginald, in the care of the Church after she was Nor make one step, as you shall see; widowed. Now Reginald was a rising star, educated Christ in Thy Mercy, save Thou me! at Oxford University and Padua in Italy. Half his tuition fees were paid for by Henry VIII; when When he heard of his mother’s brave death, Cardinal Reginald Pole returned home, Henry VIII offered him Reginald Pole said he would “ ….never fear to call the Archbishopric of York or Bishop of Winchester. himself the son of a martyr.” Lady Margaret’s trial Either appointment would come at a great price, and execution were considered a grave miscarriage however: Henry wanted Reginald’s support in his of justice, both at the time and subsequently. annulment from Katherine of Aragon.

Some say that Henry VIII’s cruelty when dealing with Margaret and her family can be traced to She lived at the summit of the fact that they were the last direct Plantagenet descendants and therefore possible claimants to the English society. Power and throne that Henry’s own father had seized at The connections, however, have Battle of Bosworth.

their price.

Under Queen Elizabeth I it had become High Treason against the Crown to assist a Catholic priest ordained outside of England; the punishment was execution. The Clitherows’ house in The Shambles became a Mass centre and a hiding place for Catholic priests; one of the priests Margaret sheltered was her husband’s brother.

In time, Margaret’s own son, Henry, was sent to Douai College in France to train for the priesthood.

Margaret was brought in for questioning in 1584, as the authorities were suspicious about her son’s disappearance and his whereabouts, since any prolonged period of absence, especially overseas, was interpreted as meaning those involved were linked to the Catholic Mission. For sending her son abroad, Margaret was placed under House Arrest for a total of eighteen months, though she was able to slip out at night, to pray at places where Catholic priests had been executed.

From time to time, those suspected of harbouring priests would have their houses searched; in Margaret’s house there was a hole cut between the attics of the neighbouring house and hers, so that a priest could escape if there was a raid.

During this time, John Clitherow remained silent which made him an accessory to her deeds, which suggests a possible sympathy with the Catholic cause. In 1586 he was called in for questioning about his son’s continued absence, whilst at the same time the authorities went to search the Clitherow’s house. A little Flemish boy guided them to a place where Mass vestments were hidden.

Margaret was promptly arrested and called before York assizes for the crime of harbouring Catholic priests, specifically Fr. John Mush and Fr. Francis Ingleby.

She charged with High Treason. She was interrogated at length by both civic and ecclesiastical authorities but she would not yield to accepting the Church of England. John and the children were also seized and imprisoned at isolated places around the city. Her twelve year old daughter, Anne, was especially harshly treated after she refused to answer questions about her mother’s activities and because she continued to pray according to Catholic practice.

On December 29th, 1886, some 350 years after her execution, Lady Margaret Pole was beatified by Pope Leo XIII. (See ‘The Honour Role of English Martyrs” in this issue.)

Margaret Clitherow, A Butcher’s Wife She is called the ‘Pearl of York.’ St. Margaret was born in the Northern English city of York about the year 1533, just two years before the Church in England broke with Rome under Henry VIII. At the age of 18, Margaret married a butcher and chamberlain of the city, John Clitherow. Margaret and her husband moved into a house on a street known as ‘The Shambles’, which still stands today.

John Clitherow had embraced the new Protestant faith but several of his family were Recusants, and it was under their influence that Margaret began to associate with other Recusant Catholics. Finally she reverted to the Catholic Faith of her childhood. By this time, Henry VIII was dead and his third child, Elizabeth, was Queen of England. In Margaret’s young life, the faith and religious landscape of England had changed completely.

At her appearance before the judges at York assizes, Margaret refused to plead to the charges against her saying, “Having made no offence, I need no trial. If you say I have offended, I will be tried by none but God and your own conscience.” Margaret refused to plead so as to spare her family the ordeal of being called as witnesses.

But by refusing to enter a plea, Margaret was condemning herself to death. The trial judge had little choice in issuing the sentence and, despite his qualms about executing a woman, The Council of The North laid down what he must do.

The judge pronounced her sentence, “You shall be taken to the place from whence you came, and in the lower part of the prison be stripped naked, laid down with your back on the ground, a door placed over you and as much weight laid upon you as you are able to bear and thus you shall continue for three days without meat or drink except a little barley bread and puddle water; and the third day you shall have a sharp stone placed under your back and your hands and feet tied to posts, that more weight being placed upon you, you shall be pressed to death.”

Margaret calmly accepted the verdict and began to prepare for her death. In the days leading up to her execution, she was repeatedly urged to conform to the Church of England and so save herself or at least offer a plea to the charges, but Margaret’s knowledge and love of her Catholic Faith was enough to rebut the arguments of those trying to persuade her to abandon her Catholic Faith. Further pressure was put on her when it was discovered she might be pregnant, but still Margaret refused to tell the judge, which might have saved her life.

John Clitherow already had several children when he married Margaret, but she cared for them as if they were her own. John was fined repeatedly because Margaret refused to attend the Church of England. (The fine for non-attendance at C of E Margaret declared, “I die not desperately, nor procure mine own death; for not services was about £20 per month, an enormous sum of money in Elizabethan being found guilty of such crimes as were laid against me, and yet condemned, I England.) could but rejoice – my cause also being God’s quarrel. I die for the love of my Lord Jesus. I ground my Faith upon Jesus Christ and by Him steadfastly believe to be Margaret remained steadfast in her Catholic Faith; she was eventually imprisoned saved, as is taught in The Catholic Church through all Christendom and promised for two years for repeated non-attendance at her local Anglican Parish Church. to remain with her unto the world’s end and hell’s gates shall not prevail against Despite being kept in a cold, damp cell away from her family and being fed meagre it: and by God’s assistance, I mean to live and die in the same Faith; for if an angel prison food, she kept her faith and described her imprisonment as a, “a happy and come from heaven and preach any other doctrine, I should disobey the Apostle’s profitable school,” since she was able to fast and pray without interruption. It was Commandment.” during her imprisonment that Margaret learned to read and write and upon her release she applied her new-found education to teach the Catholic children of her The three day sentence as handed down by the judge was not carried out but neighbourhood about the Faith. on Good Friday, 25th March 1586, Margaret Clitherow walked barefoot, to Ouse Bridge Tollbooth. She had sent her shoes to her daughter, Anne, so she could follow Even though John Clitherow attended Anglican services, he supported Margaret in her mother’s footsteps. The authorities tried to persuade Margaret to plead and for she was, “a good wife, a tender mother, a kind mistress, loving God above all still accused her of High Treason but she responded, “No, no, Mr. Sheriff, I die for things as herself.” the love of my Lord Jesu.”

John Clitherow said his wife Margaret was “a good wife, a tender mother, a kind mistress, loving God above all things as herself.”

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Two Sergeants chosen to carry out the task could not bring themselves to do so, so they hired four desperate beggars to execute her. She was stripped naked and then laid down with her arms outstretched, with a sharp rock, the size of a man’s fist, underneath her back. A door was then placed on to of her and gradually loaded

with immense weight of rocks and stones so that, eventually, her spine would be broken. Unusually, Margaret’s execution was held in private, possibly because it was so opposed by the residents of York.

As the weight placed upon her was increased, and with it her suffering, Margaret cried out in excruciating pain, “Jesu! Jesu! Jesu! Have mercy upon me!” She endured about 15 minutes of suffering before her sternum gave way and was crushed causing her ribs to burst out from under her skin and she was then left for a further six hours before the weight was removed from her corpse.

After her death, her corpse was buried in secret on a dunghill within the confines of York city walls, so as to prevent Catholics from taking her remains for veneration and as relics. However, about six weeks later, her remains were found uncorrupted by a party of Catholics and they buried her privately away from the city. One of her hands was removed (a common practice with Catholic Martyrs during Penal Times) and is now preserved in the Bar Convent, York.

In an ironic gesture for our ‘gender-neutral’ times, after Margaret’s execution, Queen Elizabeth I wrote to her subjects in York to say how horrified she was at the treatment of another woman; due to her gender, Margaret should not have been executed.

St. Margaret’s stepson, William, became a priest, as did her own son, Henry, whilst her daughter, Anne, became a nun at St. Ursula’s in Louvain, France.

On the 26th October, 1970, Margaret Clitherow, along with thirty-nine other English and Welsh Catholic Martyrs from Penal Times, was canonised

by Pope Paul VI. Collectively they are known as the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Her feast day in the current Roman calendar is the 26th March.

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THE TOWER OF LONDON

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: On 4th May, 2013, Michael Durnan attended the National Pilgrimage to York in honour of St. Margaret Clitherow which was organised by The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. The Pilgrimage started with Solemn Mass in the Extraordinary Form at St. Wilfrid’s Catholic Church, York, followed by a procession carrying a statue of St. Margaret through the streets of York to the house where she lived.

The procession ended at the English Martyrs Catholic Church where there was Benediction and Veneration of the relic of St. Margaret.

TRAITORS’ GATE: Entrance to the Tower from the River Thames

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The English Catholic Exiles Refugees to Spanish Shores

O

ne little-known consequence of the fateful divorce of Henry VIII of England from Catherine of Aragon is that the fallout locked England and Spain in a political and religious struggle which brought waves of English refugees fleeing to Spanish shores for almost 150 years afterwards.

Between 1533 and 1675, thousands of Englishmen and women fled their homeland for their lives, accused of hiding recusant priests.

These English exiles settled in various cities in Spain -- particularly in the colder North -- and their presence influenced both religious practices and political intrigues in their adopted country for years afterwards.

Under Philip II and his son Philip III, seminaries for the purpose of training and returning English priests to restore Catholicism in England were established and protected. The Jesuit Robert Persons, an associate of St Edmund Campion, opened schools in Valladolid, Seville, and Madrid.

The most notable of these was the Royal English College of St Alban. Twenty-two alumni of this college became martyrs in England, including Blessed Henry Walpole and St. John Roberts. The priest Joseph Cresswell authored numerous Catholic pamphlets there for circulation in England. By 1591, the Lord Treasurer of England, William Cecil, proclaimed Spain “a center of sedition.” The English sent a spy, the infamous Titus Oates, to report the names of the English students there.

Today, the Valladolid seminary still houses the mutilated image of Our John Dutton -- a nobleman who had accompanied Lady of Vulnerata, rescued from the British sack of Philip II on his marriage trip to wed Mary of England the port of Cadiz in 1596. The Church has a long -- settled in the town of Viveiro, Galicia during the memory. An Act of Reparation for the sins of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Dutton brought English Protestants is performed in that church many wooden images from English churches to every single day -- more than four centuries later.

Spain. One of these, an image of the Madonna R. he rescued from St Paul’s Cathedral, now hangs in the sanctuary of the Blessed Sacrament in the ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara MonzonPuleo is a Traditionalist Catholic wife Cathedral Church in Mondoñedo. Known as the and mother of two children as well as ‘English Madonna,’ it is still venerated in procession a retired assistant principal, educator of each year.

Dutton also brought the famous ‘Christ of the Chains’ now in the Church of Santa Maria de Nedad in Corunna. He also sold several pieces to an industrious priest, Alonso Ares de Mourelle, who then distributed the English images throughout his diocese.

Other exiles also seemed to have undertaken the sale of religious images from the port of El Ferrol.

These images and statues were brought by Spanish priests to their small village churches, eventually becoming points of interest on the ‘English Way’ along the Compostela pilgrimage route.

The English sent a spy, the infamous Titus Oates, to report the names of the English students in Spain.

Twenty-two alumni of the Royal English College of St Alban became martyrs in England.

Photos Top:The English Madonna in Mondroñedo, smuggled to Spain from the old St. Paul’s Cathedral during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Right: Father Robert Persons, founder of English Seminaries in Spain.

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29 years and an historian. She did her graduate work at New York University and in Spain with specializations in medieval religious history and the history of women.

A Homeschooler’s Guide to Inspiring England “Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.”

Finally, for older students, meeting the great British authors within the dynamics of a Catholic co-op is an excellent way to hone critical thinking skills.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, A Man for All Seasons and the works of Chesterton and Belloc come alive in peer discussions -- with parents taking turns as facilitators, guiding the conversation through the eyes of faith. This is a great time for teens to hear adults other than their own parents reflect the same values and priorities that they are being taught at home. Their newly emerging logic and argumentation abilities will be challenged to grow and solidify, equipping them for a lifetime of discriminating thinking.

Contemplating the role that the Faith has played in England is especially relevant to homeschoolers, as we share not only a common language but also a common Catholic ancestry with the English people.

Students learn about the sacrifice and service that led men to greatness – and the repercussions when vice triumphs over virtue, and culture inevitably begins to disintegrate.

I

t’s the Fourth of July in America, a fitting time to reflect on all things British, the country where the foundation of democracy was laid. We enjoy the freedom to homeschool here, derived from the ancient freedoms won in England. I have the great privilege of knowing some fine young adults, homeschooled as children. What, I asked them, had they learned about British history?

present-day American secular ideas into high relief. Statesmen who kept their eye on Heaven despite the threat of execution contrasts with our contemporary weak-kneed politicians -- especially Catholic ones -- who seem unable to think past the next election.

There is much in English history to inspire children, so here are some tried-and-true techniques: First, kids love castles – and there’s lots of teaching tools out there. There’s fantastically-detailed full color books with diagrams and cut-away illustrations, three dimensional computer programs which permit your student to wander around the inside of a castle and intricate cardboard cutout models with elaborate details sturdy enough to survive multiple curious siblings. (We had one monastery model which features miniature friars and animals -- a great touch for young imaginations.)

“Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived” recited one, remembering the hapless wives of Henry VIII. Others told me about Saints Margaret Clitherow, Edmund Campion and Thomas More. Still others spoke of Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen. (Poor old George III was down the list.)

Such vivid portraits are fascinating proof that good homeschooling indelibly engraves ideas in students in a way that state-approved, bland and puréed curriculums simply cannot. Exploring the days when monasteries anchored a whole civilization and feast days set the rhythm of public life throws

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Second, combining food with lessons grabs kids’ attention. Constructing a simple graham cracker castle with icing mortar is engaging for a 5 yearold. Huge, elaborate co-op projects engage older students. (Hint: Pointy-ended ice cream cones make great turrets. Ditto for stained glass window cookies!)

Third, nothing beats dressing up as peasants, knights and ladies. Knights are especially cool, especially if you get to wear armor and a sword.

Throw in a knight who was a saint and you have a win/win. And if that saint slew a dragon, you just scored a trifecta!

As Americans, scrutinizing in the light of faith the footsteps that England has taken is both an inspiration and a warning, helping our children see past secular rhetoric and remain focused on the great call to follow Christ. R.

Photos: Above, Constructing a simple graham cracker castle with icing mortar is engaging for a 5 year-old. Huge, elaborate co-op projects will engage older students. Left, Dorothy Gill is Regina Magazine’s ‘Homeschooling Goddess.’

She is the mother of four homeschooled boys, and lives with her husband and family in Vancouver, Washington.

The Pope of Oxford The Real Cardinal Newman

By Beverly De Soto, Regina Magazine

H

e is Pope Benedict’s favorite theologian, and hundreds of “Cardinal Newman” schools have made his name familiar to Catholics in the English-speaking world. But who was John Henry Newman, really?

had been handed down intact since Apostolic times.

Against everything he had ever learned and taught at Oxford, Newman’s intellectual honesty forced him to admit that Catholicism was the true Faith.

Newman paid a huge personal price for crossing the Tiber. His family emphatically did not understand; in fact, leaving his living at Oxford essentially removed his ability to support his widowed mother. His old friends at Oxford refused him. Newspapers openly berated him. Eventually, he became an Invisible Man as far as English society was concerned.

Newman paid a huge personal price for crossing the Tiber.

Eventually, he became an Invisible Man as far as English society was concerned.

In the years since his death, Newman’s works have been translated into many languages, and read by serious Christians around the world.

At Littlemore in Oxford, people from all over the world have sent in photos, paintings and sculptures of Newman.

His amazing long life spanned nearly all of the 19th century. Born in a time when Napolean was threatening the West, he died as the 20th century was dawning. He was a don, a leader of the “Oxford Movement” and perhaps the leading Church of England theologian (“the pope of Oxford”) in a proud age when the British Empire was at its apogee.

Doing the Unthinkable

At the very height of his career, however, Newman took a turn that shocked and dismayed the Victorian ‘chattering classes’ in a way that even Charles Darwin’s revolutionary Theory of Evolution failed to do.

He did the unthinkable. He became a Catholic.

Stranger still, John Henry Newman read and reasoned his way into the Catholic Church. He didn’t actually know any Catholics. When he read the early Church Fathers on heresy, however, his superbly trained mind could reach no other conclusion.

He explained himself at great length to Victorian society in a variety of books and sermons, but essentially it came down to the basics: Rome was the ancient seat of Peter. The doctrine of the Faith

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Worse, English Roman Catholics seemed not to know what to do with this towering intellect who spoke so softly. The Catholic bishops did not receive him with joy; recently re-established in England, in a delicate position vis-a-vis an unsympathetic Protestant nation, they did not need this highprofile convert to complicate things. Far from being lauded as the great theologian he was, Newman was assigned to an urban parish, filled with immigrants and the poor with no idea who this man was who heard their confessions and worried about the plumbing in the old building.

In fact, throughout his life as a Catholic, Newman would be regarded with suspicion by other Catholics, which caused him great pain. Every single project he labored to begin seemed to struggle hopelessly, causing him no end of worry and concern. In fact, his two greatest works – the establishment of the Oratory School at Birmingham and a Catholic University at Dublin – faced seemingly-insurmountable problems at their inception, and indeed only prospered after he was no longer involved with them.

Every single project Newman labored to begin seemed to struggle hopelessly, causing him no end of worry and concern.

Newman in the 21st Century He continued to write and to teach, however. One reason he speaks so compellingly to Catholics today is that he was one of the earliest to identify the problem of liberalism in religion. In 1838 he made an outlandish prediction which has become all too true in our day: “The view henceforth is to be, that Christianity does not exist in documents, any more than in institutions; in other words, the Bible will be given up as well as the Church. It will be said that the benefit which Christianity has done to the world, and which its Divine Author meant it should do, was to give an impulse to society, to infuse a spirit, to

direct, control, purify, enlighten the mass of human thought and action, but not to be a separate and definite something, whether doctrine or association, existing objectively, integral, and with an identity, and forever, and with a claim upon our homage and obedience. And all this fearfully coincides with the symptoms in other directions of the spread of a Pantheistic spirit, that is, the religion of beauty, imagination, and philosophy, without constraint, moral or intellectual, a religion speculative and selfindulgent. Pantheism, indeed, is the great deceit which awaits the age to come.”

Cardinal Newman Pope Leo XIII refused to let any of Newman’s personal frustrations frustrate his own intentions: he would make Newman a Cardinal. And a Cardinal the frail old Oxfordian became, at the age of 80.

Newman responded to the papal bestowal of a red hat in his famous biglietto speech, once again seeing far into the future, down to our present day: “For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion.

Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth…

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternize together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.”

In 2010, John Henry Newman was declared blessed by his 20th century pupil, Pope Benedict XVI, amidst a crowd of English well-wishers in a Birmingham park. The old Pope had braved a hostile press and protests by anti-Catholics to come to England, telling the thousands of faithful Catholics who stood in the rain that Newman’s “insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilised society, and into the need for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance to Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.”

The Cardinal’s Miracle In 2001, Jack Sullivan, a deacon from Massachusetts, attributed his recovery from a spinal cord disorder to Cardinal Newman. On 24 April 2008, the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory reported that the medical consultants at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints had met that day and voted unanimously that Sullivan’s recovery defied any scientific or medical explanation. The question of the genuineness of the alleged miracle then went to the panel of theological consultants who unanimously agreed to recognize the miracle a year later, clearing the way for Pope Benedict XVI to beatify Newman. Canonisation – which awaits one more miracle -- would make Cardinal Newman the first English person who has lived since the 17th century to be officially recognized as a saint.

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The Cardinal’s School Today

The Oratory School motto of “Cor ad cor loquitur” (heart speaking to heart) is John Henry Newman’s own, taken from his Cardinal’s Coat of Arms. “I could add my own motto of ‘a busy boy is a happy boy’!” says the present Headmaster, Clive Dytor MA(Cantab) and MA(Oxon). “Boys need a particular approach to help them achieve their academic potential within their overall personal growth. Girls outperform boys on many levels and a school dedicated to boys-only can concentrate on boys’ strengths – and weaknesses!”

The Oratory School came into being on 1st May 1859. It was founded by Blessed John Henry Newman, at the request of a group of eminent Catholic laymen of the time, in order to provide a boarding school for boys run on English public school principles for the small English Catholic community.

Newman was closely involved with the school during its first thirty years, and it remained attached to the house of the Oratory Fathers in Birmingham until 1922, when it moved to what is now the BBC Monitoring Station at Caversham Park, Reading. The Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory handed over control of the School to a Governing Body in 1931, but links with the London and Oxford Oratories, as well as with the one at Birmingham, remain strong. To escape Nazi bombing of city centers during World War II, the School moved in 1942, to settle finally on its present site at Woodcote, South Oxfordshire, some 40 miles west of London.

“We embody and practise today our Founder’s spiritual, moral and educational principles, which are just as relevant at the beginning of the twenty-first century as they were when he imbued his School with them. Each individual is to be valued for his own sake; the system should be there to support the needs of the individual, not vice versa. In this way a person’s dignity and sense of self-worth are respected in the way that they should be; as a result they will be more at ease in the society in which they find themselves and more willing to accept the necessary constraints of that society.

Furthermore if each individual is regarded as special, then his special needs and gifts will be given proper respect and attention.

“The pastoral welfare of the boys in the School, the relationships with their families, the continuing contact with past pupils – all these, therefore, are central to the ethos of Newman’s educational vision.”

Left: Newman’s Chapel: He had a spare stall in the old barn at Littlemore converted to a Catholic chapel – with all the windows and walls carefully covered so that no curious passerby could peer in and report on his ‘popish’ worship.

Bottom Left: ‘Littlemore,’ the converted stables where Newman and his friends moved from Oriel College at Oxford.

Here, he came to the conclusion that the great Church that he was the leading light of was heretical -- and that the religion of the poor, despised Irish immigrants who had cleaned his rooms at Oxford was actually the true church. Below: Newman’s own writing desk and chair, from which he penned his famous letters to his friends and family announcing his decision to convert to Catholicism.

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Anglican Convert and Defender of the Catholic Faith

The Enigmatic G.K. Chesterton Today, we acknowledge G. K. Chesterton as one of the greatest Catholic minds of the twentieth century, and perhaps its greatest writer. More than 75 years after his death, Chesterton Societies abound in the Englishspeaking world, and many of his 90 books are in multiple printings.

G

But who was this man, really – this English convert, formidable intellect, prolific writer and staunch defender of the Catholic Faith?

ilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London, England on May 29, 1874. Though he thought of himself as a journalist, GKC was actually many things including a playwright, novelist, literary and social critic, poet, illustrator, essayist, apologist, hagiographer and broadcaster.

Chesterton wrote voluminously and brilliantly in most literary genres of the day. His prodigious output includes about ninety books and thousands of essays for London newspapers such as the Daily News, Illustrated London News, and G.K.’s Weekly.

Chesterton’s Early Years Chesterton was born into a middle-class, liberal Unitarian family and retained fond memories of childhood. “What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world” (Autobiography, 1936).

GKC attended St. Paul’s School, where he was an academic underachiever and forgetful student. He enrolled next in the London’s Slade School of Art, making no significant accomplishments. Somewhat later, he attended lectures in English literature at London’s University College. He did not earn a college degree.

Chesterton was a large figure of a man, at 6’ 4”, 300 lbs., cigar-smoking – and sporting a swordstick, cape and sombrero.

GKC’s Career and Marriage During 1900, Chesterton began publishing essays for periodicals, collections of verse, and fantasies. His writing transformed him from an obscure scribbler into a Fleet Street legend and household name.

GKC was to become a familiar sight on Fleet Street. He was a large figure of a man, 6’ 4”, 300 lbs., cigar smoking, sporting a swordstick, cape and sombrero.

In 1901, Chesterton married Frances Blogg, a devoted AngloCatholic. The marriage was a happy one. Unhappily, though, the

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Chesterton’s could not have children of their own so they frequently entertained other people’s children in their home.

GKC publicly debated the leading figures of his day, including H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Clarence Darrow. Despite differences in views, Chesterton’s opponents admired him. He made no enemies. His life exemplified the Christian virtues of charity and humility.

Chesterton’s books, Orthodoxy (his 1908 companion volume to Heretics, 1905) and The Everlasting Man (1925), were destined to become classics of Christian apologetics. The latter book contributed to C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity.

Chesterton Converts to Catholicism In 1922, GKC converted to the Roman Catholic Church. Frances converted four years later through her own convictions. Hilaire Belloc, the famous Catholic historian, essayist and poet, and Chesterton’s close friend, said, “He advanced towards the Faith over many years and was ultimately in full communion with it…. He approached the Catholic Church gradually but by a direct road. He first saw the city from afar off, then approached it with interest and at last entered.

Few of the great conversions in our history have been so deliberate or so mature. It will be for posterity to judge the magnitude of the event.”

Chesterton was motivated to conversion by his concern for legitimate authority. The teaching authority of the Church exemplified a firm point of reference in a changing world. “The Catholic Church is the only thing that saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

Even more significant to GKC was the Sacramental authority of the Church to forgive sins. To those critics who believe it is morbid to confess one’s sins, Chesterton replied, “The morbid thing is not to confess them. The morbid thing is to conceal your sins and let them eat away at your soul, which is exactly the state of most people in today’s highly civilized communities.”

“The difficulty of explaining why I am a Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.”

Chesterton’s Death GKC died on June 14, 1936 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. Étienne Gilson, the pre-eminent 20th century Thomist philosopher and historian of medieval philosophy, called Chesterton “one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed.”

Shortly after his death, Pope Pius XI declared Chesterton defensor Fidei, Defender of the Faith. R.

“The most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard of it …. that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages…. The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.”

Furthermore, in The Well and the Shallows (1935), Chesterton explains the role of the Virgin Mary in his conversion: “I never doubted that the figure (of Mary) was the figure of the faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.”

Chesterton said, “The difficulty of explaining why I am a Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.”

He often challenged critics of the Church by turning their arguments around to expose their hollowness. For example, he says, “The most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard of it …. that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages…. The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them”.

“The morbid thing is not to confess your sins. The morbid thing is to conceal your sins and let them eat away at your soul, which is exactly the state of most people in today’s highly civilised communities.”

Few people have applied thought to defending Christianity and Catholicism as successfully as Chesterton. Hilaire Belloc said, “His mind was oceanic, subject indeed to a certain restriction of repeated phrase and manner, but in no way restricted to the action of the mind. He swooped upon an idea like an eagle, tore it with active beak into its constituent parts and brought out the heart of it. If ever a man analyzed finally and conclusively Chesterton did so.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Thomas Yonan currently resides in California (USA). He’s an avid Chesterton aficionado who enjoys Thomistic philosophy, backpacking, nature studies and hosting a Facebook page about G.K. Chesterton (https://www.facebook. com/G.K.Chesterton).

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‘Because my name is Lazarus and I live.’

Immediately after his reception into the Church, G.K. Chesterton composed this sonnet:

THE CONVERT After one moment when I bowed my head And the whole world turned over and came upright, And I came out where the old road shone white.

I walked the ways and heard what all men said, Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, Being not unlovable but strange and light; Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite But softly, as men smile about the dead.

The sages have a hundred maps to give That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree, They rattle reason out through many a sieve That stores the sand and lets the gold go free: And all these things are less than dust to me Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Hilaire Belloc The Englishman Who Walked Across America to Win His Bride

W

e live in times where the idea that ‘everything is relative’ has trumped all. Catholics in the West are now routinely admonished by our neighbors, politicians, academia and the media that our Faith is merely a matter of opinion, just one among many. Moreover, Catholicism is an opinion that some of our fellow men find particularly inconvenient.

Small wonder that today Catholics seem like a defeated people, befuddled by politics and economics. Gone is the conviction of Jesus’s first disciples when they went forth to “teach all nations.”

As a result of our befuddlement, Catholics now stand in danger of losing our patrimony, our inheritance, and our way through this Valley to the longed-for Paradise in the next. We also stand to lose everything that can make our way through this life so delightful --‘the Good, the Beautiful and the True’ elements of a Catholic society.

What can shake us out of our doldrums? Well, a large dose of ‘the Good, the Beautiful and the True’ would help. Luckily, we have the work of the great early 20th century Anglo-French writer and historian, Hilaire Belloc, to help us in this, our time of great need.

Vigour and humour After being educated at John Henry Newman’s Oratory School (see article), Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc served his term of military service as a French citizen, with an artillery regiment. He then studied at Balliol College, Oxford, as a History scholar, where he obtained first-class honors.

One of the “Big Four” of Edwardian letters, Belloc’s appreciation for what made the Faith great is second to none. A Catholic historian with an understanding and love for the Catholic underpinnings that made Western Civilization great, Belloc had the heart of a poet -- and the ability to entertain.

This was a great asset, as Belloc publically debated the major figures of his day. H.G. Wells remarked that “debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm.” Belloc’s review of Outline of History famously observed that Wells’ book was a powerful and well-written volume, “up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven.” Wells’ riposte was a small book, Mr. Belloc Objects. Not to be outdone, Belloc responded with Mr. Belloc Still Objects.

Alas for the humourless and the politically-correct, Belloc wrote some of the most hilarious children’s verse of all time. Among his best-remembered poems are ‘Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion’ and ‘Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death.’

Belloc was powerfully built, a vigorous man given to long bouts of walking wherever he wanted to go. For example, in the days before online dating he walked from the Midwest to California to woo his San Francisco bride, Elodie. She accepted him, and theirs was a deeply happy marriage blessed with five children until her untimely death from influenza in 1914.

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What Would Belloc Say? Catholics today need to remember the other side of the coin. Despite all our many faults and scandals, we have the Truth. This is no credit to us, nor a measure of our superiority. The Truth is a gift, a trust given to us by God to pass on to others.

From Hilaire Belloc: Letter to an Anglo-Catholic “IS there a God? Yes. Is He personal? Yes. Has He revealed Himself to men? Yes. Has He done so through a corporation—a thing not a theory?

Has He created an organism by which He may continue to be known to mankind for the fulfillment of the great drama of the Incarnation? Yes. “Where shall that organism be found? There is only one body on earth which makes such a claim: it is the Catholic Roman Apostolic Church. That claim we of the Faith accept. The consequences of that acceptation are innumerable, satisfactory and complete. We are at home. No one else of the human race is at home.”

Of Belloc and Drinking Songs It will be young Catholics who will be charged with the noble cause of restoring society. To do this, they must understand our patrimony, that great gift. They must understand what we are, doctrinally as well as culturally.

This is a tall order, to say the least. For example, in the long history of the Faith, the plethora of ancient heresies can result in confusing Arians with Donatists or Manicheans. But you will never forget what a Pelagian is if you have read Belloc’s The Pelagian Drinking Song.

Pelagius lived at Kardanoel And taught a doctrine there How, whether you went to heaven or to hell It was your own affair.

It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy, But was your own affair.

No, he didn’t believe In Adam and Eve He put no faith therein!

His doubts began With the Fall of Man And he laughed at Original Sin. With my row-ti-tow Ti-oodly-ow He laughed at original sin.

On a more sober note, Hilaire Belloc can teach us courage. When Belloc ran for Parliament, his campaign adviser sternly warned him not to speak about his Catholic Faith. Belloc took this as a challenge, and at the first opportunity addressed a political rally thus:

“I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day. This (taking a rosary out of his pocket) is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative!”

There was stunned silence -- followed by applause, and to the everlasting credit of his Anglican constituency, they elected Hilaire Belloc to Parliament.

Belloc’s Boldness Belloc’s boldness in the defense of the truth did not always lead to adulation and (worldly) success, however. Though one of the brilliant writers of his age, Belloc lived a life of frequent material want due to his lack of acceptance in the literary establishment -- which he wore as a badge of honor. The brilliant English scholar and theologian Msgr. Ronald Knox said it best in his panegyric at Belloc’s funeral:

Stout adventurer, brilliant teacher, great entertainer and fascinating muse -- what more can we ask of a writer as we make our way down our own path of pilgrimage, under the banner of Faith, to our heavenly home? R.

“He was such a man as saw what he took to be the evils of our time in a clear light, and with a steady hatred; that he found, or thought he had found, a common root in them and traced them back to their origins in history.

A prophet… is one who speaks out. He must not wrap up his meaning; he must not expect success. ‘To brazen-faced folk and hard-hearted thy errand is, and still from the Lord god a message thou must deliver, hear they, or deny thee a hearing; rebels all, at least they shall know that they have had a prophet in their midst.’

There is the double tragedy of the prophet; he must speak out, so that he makes men dislike him, and he must be content to believe that he is making no impression whatever.”

Belloc: Prophet and Catholic Muse Belloc put many of the issues we struggle with today into a Catholic perspective.

He refused to view science as the modern dispenser of infallible doctrine.

In his essay on Science as the Enemy of Truth, he opines on the “Modern Scientific Spirit” -- not to be confused with the Scientific Method.

“It adds together numerically a comparatively small number of ascertained truths with regard to any object and then propounds its conclusion, as though by possession of these few gross certainties it had a sufficient basis for that conclusion. What is more, it very impudently puts forward such a conclusion against the sound conclusion arrived at by the powers of integration present in the common man.”

He also predicted the rise of Islam in his book The Great Heresies, and understood the malaise that was coming and what its effects would be.

As a historian, Belloc explodes the historical myths that the Englishspeaking world grew up with. To this day, his writings point out the folly of Western Civilization in deviating from those Catholic and Natural Law principles -- our patrimony, which has come down to our times. He regales us with stories of good food, wine, and the real-life characters he meets along the way. He educates, informs and entertains.

Hilaire Belloc loved Life, but he loved two things best of all: his wife and his Church. For each he walked many miles on foot in search of his goal. In his delightful book, The Path to Rome, Belloc describes the journey he made to “see all of Europe, which the Christian Faith had saved.” He walked from southern France to Rome, to be present at Mass for the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul. Exhausted, Belloc traversed the last few miles of the Appian Way on a mule-driven cart– with feet dragging so his vow would not be broken.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Robert Beaurivage obtained a law degree in San Diego and practiced there for a while before returning back to his home state of Maine. He has an interest in current events, Catholic theology and liturgy.

Famous Converts Beyond the Oxford Movement

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ince doubting Saint Thomas responded to the invitation of Jesus to touch His wounds by saying, Dominus meus et Deus meus- my Lord and my God, there have been converts to Catholicism.

women to the Catholic Church for almost two thousand years.

The conversion is towards the divinity and humanity of Jesus, as subsequently defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Deeply associated with the conviction that Jesus is divine is that His intent was unconditioned by history and society, but rather that the Church which He founded and entrusted to Saint Peter, the first Pope, is of divine origin and, as such, infallibility in doctrine inheres in Her and no other ecclesiastical groupings, who suppose themselves to be churches.

It is the first in which deep spiritual longing, as expressed by the Saint himself,

The great prototype of modern conversions was that of Saint Augustine who defected from the self-loathing sect of Manichaeism.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace, is accompanied by intellectual assent to the Church and laid out in all its majesty and integrity in the saint’s voluminous works. Yet beyond the intellect, it is a discovery of the beauty, truth and love, the almost inexpressible transcendentals of the Catholic Faith. A Faith across time and space, in the words of Saint Vincent of Lerins, Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.

That is truly and properly ‘Catholic,’ as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally.

Much later, in 1591, the Oratorian, Father Bozio identified no less than one hundred signs of the Church in his work De signis Ecclesiae, which made Her distinct from all other claimants to Christ’s inheritance. However, by the time of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, these had already be crystallised in debates with non-Catholics into four notes, Unity, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity, to coincide with the Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam of the Nicene Creed.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! ‘ The great prototype of modern conversions was that of the North African Saint Augustine who defected from the self-loathing sect of Manichaeism in the 400’s. (On left, with Saint Jerome in red.)

The supreme climax of the expression of divine intention for the future glory of the Church was the institution of the most Holy Eucharist by Our Lord on Holy Thursday, the summit and summation of his life, as a prefiguring of the Passion to take place the next day.

Every Catholic Mass is a repetition of the Sacrifice of Our Lord on Calvary, save that it is unbloody and at every Catholic Mass, Christ is indeed present in substance. Other ecclesiastical groupings have a form resembling the Eucharist, but none His Presence.

Also associated with the unique divinity of Christ is the necessity that he should be free from Original Sin and its baleful effects, yet at the same time His humanity is preserved. Every Catholic experiences the sweetness of devotion to Our Lord’s Mother, but her unique privilege of being conceived Immaculate is also in conformity with reason. As Our Lady was the handmaid of the Lord, so in all these matters reason is the handmaid of Faith but must never usurp it.

Such are the supernatural realities that have attracted men and

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So what attracted the saintly Cardinal to the Catholic Church? It was not such much his intellect, although it was formidable and he was later to write the highly academic, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. He had not been argued into the Church, although many later converts certainly read themselves into the Church before they converted. Chesterton’s great Catholic book, Orthodoxy was, in fact, written before he converted. Rather it was personal, Heart speaking to the Heart, Cor ad Cor loquitur to quote the Cardinal’s motto, itself taken from Saint Francis de Sales Treatise on the Love of God. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak.

This echoes moreover Saint Augustine for whom the Cardinal had such a deep devotion, rejecting what he felt to be dry intellectualism of the other great master of Catholic thought, Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.

The great barrier for the then Revd. Newman was that he could not identify the Catholic Church with holiness, one of the four marks of the Church cited above. He said,

If they want to convert England, let them go barefoot through our industrial cities, let them preach to the people like Francis Xavier, let them allow themselves to be beaten and spat upon, and I will recognise that they can do what we cannot…Let them use the true weapons of the Church, and by using them they will prove that they are “the” Church.

Providence disposed his encounter with the holy Passionist, Blessed Dominic Barberi who was indeed barefoot save for open sandels, following a rule based on the Franciscan Rule. Then could he indeed recognise holiness in the Church.

A thread running through the Anglican conversion narratives from Cardinal Newman, even to the present day, (for example, Monsignor Ronald Knox famously quipped that in the collection of essays, A ‘those who want to travel on the Barque of Saint Path to Rome (Gracewing)) Peter had better not examine the engine room. ‘ is deep scepticism about the apostolic succession, also a mark of the true Church cited above, of the Church of England. Indeed, the only thing that the bench of Anglican bishops has in common with the Apostles is their ability to run away at crucial times- an ability seen at its height during the Reformation, when one after another caved under the King’s duress.

Many indeed have been brought to the Faith by the study of history.

Few of any intellectual and spiritual honesty can read the History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland by William Cobbett (he of “Rural Rides”) and remain indifferent to the claims of the Church. Such was the case with the distinguished historian of the English and Welsh Catholic martyrs, Bede Camm OSB and more recently the prolific traditional Catholic author, Michael Davies.

For some Catholic converts, they accept the providence of God docilely- while others have a tougher spiritual life, like Francis Thompson, the son of a convert, here in his poem, the Hound of Heaven, which opens, I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

And closes, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me. Monsignor Ronnie Knox famously observed that those who want to travel on the Barque of Saint Peter had better not examine the engine room- this is even more true in modern times, when one scandal has followed another and the modern Church is gripped by liturgical decadence. As Evelyn Waugh, himself a convert (later disillusioned by the, as it turned out, temporary abandonment of the Latin Mass in 1969), said of Ronnie Knox, He became a Catholic in violation of all his tastes and human sympathies.

Converts took in the whole range of opinion within the Catholic Church, from Dr William G Ward, the don deprived of a tutorship by the University of Oxford for saying that the only hope for the Church of England lay in submission to the Catholic Church, who said he would be happy with an Infallible pronouncement to arrive from the Pope each day at breakfast to the Shakespeare scholar, Richard Simpson, of whom Newman said, He will always be flicking his whip at the Bishops, cutting them in tender places, throwing stones at Sacred Congregations and....

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‘I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him...’ -Francis Thompson

discharging pea shooters at Cardinals.

The convert, George Tyrell, even got himself excommunicated for his intransigent modernist views. But the Gates of Hell will and have never prevailed against the Church.

Any new Crosses have to be born will be lightened by the realisation that the convert is privileged to be sharing in the suffering of Christ, the King who reigns from the Cross. The Revd. Sibthorpe, an Anglican precursor of Cardinal Newman converted, then returned to the Anglican ministry for almost two decades, then re-converted but was never really happy, dying with the Book of Common Prayer in his lap. Time will always find out motives- Anglicans in recent times who converted simply because they did not like the idea of women in any walk of life or profession have soon found that Rome is not so safe a harbour.

The glory of the converts are surely Chesterton and Belloc, so close that George Bernard Shaw nicknamed them Chesterbelloc. Far from being morbid in belief and practice, they enjoyed the Faith that God had led them to. Belloc was so unashamed to be Catholic that when seeking a Parliamentary seat, he stated in one of his speeches.

Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to Mass every day.

This is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that he has spared me the indignity of being your representative.

Oh that more Catholics today would assert their Faith in such terms!

His five years in Parliament left him disillusioned, thinking that the Opposition and the Government were virtually indistinguishable.

He would surely have recognised the even greater decadence of modern politics.

One can only end with the last words of Cardinal Newman to the

In the 19th century, the great barrier to converting for the then -Anglican Rev. Newman was that he could not identify the Catholic Church with holiness, one of the four marks of the Church .’ If they want to convert England, let them go barefoot through our industrial cities, let them preach to the people like Francis Xavier, let them allow themselves to be beaten and spat upon, and I will recognise that they can do what we cannot…Let them use the true weapons of the Church, and by using them they will prove that they are “the” Church.

Church of England, his sermon called, the Parting of Friends. For in those days before religion became a personal lifestyle choice, converting to Catholicism would mean, for intellectuals, to be put outside the mainstream of academic life, and for others more generally to sacrifice personal and social bonds. The University of Oxford had its first post-Reformation Catholic fellow, Francis “Sligger” Urquart only in 1896.

Followed by Cardinal Newman’s own fictional account of his conversion in the novel, Loss and Gain, He was still kneeling in the church... before the Tabernacle, in the possession of a deep peace and serenity of mind, which he had not thought possible on earth. It was more like the stillness which almost sensibly affects the ears when a bell that has long been tolling stops, or when a vessel, after much tossing at sea, finds itself in harbour. It was such as to throw him back in memory on his earliest years, as if he were really beginning life again. But there was more than the happiness of childhood in his heart; he seemed to feel a rock under his feet; it was the soliditas Cathedræ Petri. He went on kneeling, as if he were already in heaven, with the throne of God before him, and angels around,

And, O my brethren, O kind and affectionate hearts, O loving friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he has ever told you what you knew about yourselves, or what you did not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted you by the very reading; has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed; if what he has said or For conversion is indeed but a beginning of the glory to be revealed. done has ever made you take interest in him, and feel well inclined towards him; remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know God’s will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it.

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R.

A Passion for England

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The Astonishing Story of the Passionists

f all the amazing stories surrounding England and Christianity, the story of the Congregation of the Discalced Clerks of the Most Holy Cross and Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (‘Passionists’) stands out. What can one say about a group of Italian idealists – monks and priests – who consecrated their lives to the conversion of England, just when all seemed darkest for the Catholic cause?

For it was almost 200 years after Henry broke from Rome, in the waning days of 1720, that Saint Paul of the Cross recorded his thoughts and prayers in a diary kept during a Forty Day retreat whilst writing the Rule of his Passionist order. On the Feast of Saint Stephen, December 26, he tells us, ‘On Thursday I experienced a particular spiritual uplift, especially during Holy Communion. I longed to go and die as a martyr in some place where the adorable mystery of the most Blessed Sacrament is denied.

The Infinite Goodness has given me this desire for some time, but today Passionist Father Ignatius Spencer, convert I felt it in a special way. I desired the from Anglicanism and the great, great, great conversion of heretics, especially uncle of Lady Diana Spencer, prior to his own in England and the neighbouring entrance into the Order in 1840. kingdoms, and I offered a special prayer for this intention during Holy Communion.’

Three days later, on the Feast of that most faithful of all English martyrs, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, Paul wrote ‘I had a particular inspiration to pray for the conversion of England, especially since I wanted the standard of the faith to be raised there so that the devotion, reverence, homage, love and frequent adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament …would be increased.’

‘From their commencement of their existence as a body, Passionists have been sighing to shed their blood for England.’

For the fifty years of his life that followed, Paul was unable to pray without pleading for the conversion of England, such was the height and breadth of his devotion and love. He said indeed, ‘As soon as I pray, England comes before my eyes.’

He was often heard to murmur during the day, ‘Ah! England, England: let us pray for England!’ Often during Mass, he would fall into ecstasy, ‘Where was I just now? I was in spirit in England considering the great martyrs of times past and praying God for that Kingdom.’ He even had a mystical vision shortly before he died, after which he was full of tears, crying ‘Oh, what I have seen, my children in England!’

Paul’s spiritual sons, the Passionists would no more forget England than Jeremiah would forget Jerusalem -- as the prophet attests in Jeremiah 51.50: Remember the Lord from afar, And let Jerusalem come to your mind. Generations of Passionists worked and prayed for the fulfilment of Saint Paul’s desire to send missionaries to England.

Indeed, it wasn’t until 120 years later that it began to bear fruit in an extraordinary series of conversions.

The Italian Peasant Dominic Barberi couldn’t have come from a more different milieu than learned and aristocratic Oxford. His parents were peasant farmers outside Viterbo, Italy who died while Dominic was still a small boy. He was employed to take care of sheep, and when he grew older he did farm work. He was taught his letters by a Capuchin priest, and learned

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to read from a country lad of his own age; although he read all the books he could obtain, he had no regular education until he entered the Passionists.

In 1844, Barberi wrote to the Passionist Superior General, Father Anthony Testa, declaring England is our portion, our vineyard, more than any other place in the world, That thought was always dear beyond words, and deep-rooted in the mind of our Holy Founder.

Barberi had long shared the devotion of his Founder towards England.

In 1831, he wrote the Lamentation for England, modelled on the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, Ah yes! England was once that island, that was with reason called the island of saints; ah it was that land that abounded with soothing milk for its children, with the honey of sweetness and the fruits of holiness. Oh England whither has thy beauty fled, how has thy loveliness disappeared? Ah this was the abode of all beauty, that rejoiced the whole earth! oh how it is now left destitute! her people groan, her children beg their bread, but they can find no one who gives them any thing but poisoned food. Alas! alas! unhappy England, all thy beauty is departed from thee.

The deeply emotional Barberi pulled no punches when allocating the blame for the unhappy state of the spiritual desert that was England, Our temples, those venerable churches which were built by our ancestors and dedicated to thy divine majesty which, in the happy days of old England when we were thy elect people, we used to assemble before thee, have been seized and polluted by strangers, by the followers of Calvin and Cranmer, and innumerable other heretics, who impiously blaspheme thee in their infamous conventicles. Alas my God! alas divine Jesus! alas for these holy churches erected in ancient times by the hands of thy holy saints, where thy everlasting gospel was daily announced to us! alas for these churches, in which an innumerable company of thy servants each day and each hour of the day lifted up their suppliant hands to thy divine majesty!

A Fascinating Connection Today, the extraordinary work of these 19th century missionaries has been re-interpreted in some circles with unfortunate results.

Identifying Fathers Barberi or Spencer (who founded the Prayer Crusade for the Conversion of England) as prototypes of modern ecumenism is misleading. Indeed, it tends to distract from the reallife conversation and connection amongst these Victorian-era divines, which is fascinating.

Spencer did desire Christian unity and even once visited John Henry Newman, while the latter was still an Anglican, to invite him to join the Catholic Church. Newman sent Spencer away but he was later put in touch with Dominic Barberi by an earlier convert from Anglicanism, the remarkable, John Dobree Dalgairns, a product of Exeter College, Oxford and later himself an Oratorian.

In fact, it was Dalgairns’ letter to the French Catholic newspaper, L’Univers, while he was still an Anglican (he converted in 1844) which prompted the second great piece of writing from the pen of Dominic Barberi, the heart-felt Letter to the Professors of the University of Oxford.

Dalgairns had maintained, against the clearest meaning of the text and all reason, that the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Book of Common

Prayer could be interpreted as being consistent with the Decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Trent. This theory Barberi methodically and lovingly takes apart, prefacing his remarks in the most emotional of terms: Although I have never seen you with the eyes of the flesh, I have always kept you in my heart; and on, how often and how fervently in the bitterness of that same heart have I besought the Lord for you!

How long, O Lord, wilt Thou be forgetful of us? When will the heart of the Father be turned towards His children? How long am I to wait in expectation? When shall there be one fold and one shepherd? Wilt Thou be angry with us even for ever? Wilt thou forget us in the length of days? Thee, O Lord, do the islands expect, and thy name will they honour: but how long are they to wait?

And further Not only does the Church militant here on earth, but the Church triumphant in heaven pray for you. Beautiful hope, which can be founded on the faith of the Church in the communion of saints, and on her belief in the intercession of the saints in paradise. The saints pray, especially SS Gregory, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas; they pray for England, as they always have done, I hope, even after the separation.

Barberi chose his words – and his saints – carefully, intending that the stories of these ancient connections with Rome would stir some response in his learned readers’ hearts. He was also alluding to the close connections across time and space between England and Rome, tied intimately to the Passionists’ own history.

Centuries before, it had been Pope Saint Gregory the Great who had sent Saint Augustine of Canterbury to England, who then converted the people by first converting the King. (This was not dissimilar to the way that Barberi hoped first to convert the nation’s intellectual and social elite of Oxford.)

Saint Augustine had been sent from the Benedictine Monastery of Saint Andrew’s on the Caelian Hill which, by providence, is adjacent to the even more ancient Basilica of Saint Paul and Saint John, of which the Passionists took possession in December 1773. In May 1832, Ignatius Spencer had been ordained in the Church of Saint Gregory, which is attached to Saint Andrew’s, on the Feast Day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury itself.

Father Spencer waited another fifteen years before seeking admission into the Passionists, but in his person and on this day united the special place in which England is held by the Benedictine and Passionist orders. Every Saturday, the English Benedictines are meant to say a Salve Regina for the conversion of England, following a promise made to Father Spencer by the Rector of the English Benedictine College at Douai in 1854.

Aristocrats and Intellectuals Dominic Barberi’s first meeting with an Englishman was when he instructed the widowed Sir Harry Trelawney, 5th Baronet, on how to say Mass. The seventy year old convert, about to be priested, was accompanied by his daughter, who had herself been the first to convert. Trelawney was a living connection with history, as the 1st Baronet had distinguished himself in the service of King Charles I. After finally arriving in England and establishing a religious house in Aston, Dominic Barberi’s greatest convert, however, was undoubtedly John Henry Cardinal Newman. The historical importance of this conversion should not be underestimated- Masses of thanksgiving were said and Te Deums sung throughout the continent when they heard the story of England’s greatest theologian kneeling before the astonished Italian peasant priest: ‘What a spectacle it was for me to see Newman at my feet! All that I have suffered since I have left Italy has been well compensated by that great event and I hope that the effects of such a conversion may be great.’

Barberi could not have known what a bounty he would help to harvest.

Indeed in the nineteenth century the list of converts from the English aristocracy and the gentry filled no less than 106 pages, headed by a duke, two marquises, ten earls, twenty-two lords, twenty-seven

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baronets or knights, seventeen honourables and forty squires.

Barberi In England

“The second spring did not begin when Newman converted nor when the hierarchy was restored. It began on a bleak October day of 1841, when a little Italian priest in comical attire shuffled down a ship’s gangway at Folkestone.”

In February, 1842, after twenty-eight years of effort, Dominic Barberi established the Passionists at Aston Hall in Staffordshire. His reception was less than welcoming, as local Catholics feared these newcomers would cause renewed persecutions. His attempts to read prayers in English were met with laughter from his congregation.

But the community increased in numbers and as the people of Aston grew to know Dominic they began to love him – the Passionists soon began to receive a steady stream of converts.

In neighboring Stone where Dominic would say Mass and preach to the local populace, youths would throw rocks at him. (Two such converted to Catholicism when they saw Dominic kiss each rock that hit him and place it in his pocket.) Local Protestant ministers often held anti - Catholic lectures and sermons. One followed Dominic along a street shouting out various arguments against transubstantiation.

The priest was silent, but as the man was about to turn off, Dominic suddenly retorted: “Jesus Christ said over the consecrated elements, “This is my body” you say “No. It is not his body!” Who then am I to believe? I prefer to believe Jesus Christ.” Converts increased at Stone, so much so that a new church had to be built.

It was at Aston however that in June 1844 that the first Corpus Christi procession since the Reformation was held in the British Isles, an event which attracted thousands of Catholics and Protestants alike.

Dominic then began to visit other parishes and religious communities in order to preach. His ‘missions’ frequently took place in the industrial cities of northern England, such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham – just as John Henry Newman (see article, this issue) had requested as a sign of the ‘true’ Church. R.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christopher Gillibrand, MA (Oxon) MBA is a European policy consultant. He lives in Wales.

Requiescant in Pace

English Confessors and Martyrs (1534-1729) Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)

by John Hungerford Pollen (1858-1925) Cardinal John Fisher + Lord Chancellor Thomas More + John Houghton + Robert Lawrence + Augustine Webster + Humphrey Middlemore + William Exmew + Sebastian Newdigate + John Rochester + James Walworth + Thomas Johnson + William Greenwood + John Davye + Robert Salt + Walter Pierson + Thomas Green + Thomas Scryven + Thomas Redyng + Richard Bere + Robert Horne + Richard Whiting + Hugh Farringdon + Thomas Marshall (or John Beche) + John Thorne + Richard James + William Eynon + John Rugg + Thomas Abel + Edward Powell + Richard Fetherstone + John Haile + John Larke + Richard Reynold + John Stone + John Forrest + Adrian Fortescue + Margaret Pole + German Gardiner + John Felton + Thomas Plumtree + John Storey + Thomas Percy + Thomas Woodhouse + Cuthbert Mayne + John Nelson + Thomas Nelson + Everard Hanse + Edmund Campion + Ralph Sherwin + Alexander Briant + John Payne + Thomas Ford + John Shert + Robert Johnson + William Filby + Luke Kirby + Lawrence Richardson + Thomas Cottom + William Lacey + Richard Kirkman + James Thomson + William Hart + Richard Thirkeld + Anthony Brookby + Thomas Belchiam + Thomas Cort + Friar Waire + John Griffith + Cardinal Pole + Sir Thomas Dingley + John Travers + Edmund Brindholme + Sir David Gonson (also Genson and Gunston) + John Ireland + John Larke + Thomas Ashby + John Slade + John Bodley + William Carter + George Haydock + James Fenn + Thomas Hemerford + John Nutter + John Munden + James Bell + John Finch + Richard White + Thomas Alfield + Thomas Webley + Hugh Taylor + Marmaduke Bowes + Edward Stransham + Nicholas Woodfen + Margaret Clitherow + Richard Sergeant + William Thompson + Robert Anderton + William Marsden + Francis Ingleby + John Finglow + John Sandys + John Adams + John Lowe + Richard Dibdale + Robert Bickerdike + Richard Langley + Thomas Pilchard + Edmund Sykes + Robert Sutton + Stephen Rowsham + John Hambley + George Douglas + Alexander Crowe + Nicholas Garlick + Robert Ludlum + Richard Sympson + Robert Morton + Hugh Moor + William Gunter + Thomas Holford + William Dean + Henry Webley + James Claxton + Thomas Felton + Richard Leigh + Edward Shelly + Richard Martin + Richard Flower (Floyd or Lloyd) + John Roche + Mrs. Margaret Ward + William Way + Robert Wilcox + Edward Campion + Christopher Buxton + Robert Windmerpool + Robert Crocket + Edward James + John Robertson + William Hartley + John Weldon (vere Hewett) + Robert Sutton + Richard Williams + John Symons, or Harrison) + Edward Burden + William Lampley + John Amias + Robert Dalby + George Nichols + Richard Yaxley + Thomas Belson + Humphrey Pritchard + William Spenser + Robert Hardesty + Christopher Bayles + Nicholas Horner + Alexander Blake + Miles Gerard + Francis Dicconson + Edward Jones + Anthony Middleton + Edmund Duke + Richard Hill + John Hogg + Richard Holliday + Robert Thorpe + Thomas Watkinson + Monford Scott + George Beesley + Roger Dicconson + Ralph Milner + William Pikes + Edmund Jennings + Swithin Wells + Eustace White + Polydore Plasden + Brian Lacey + John Masson + Sydney Hodgson + William Patenson + Thomas Pormort + Roger Ashton + Edward Waterson + James Bird + Joseph Lampton + William Davies + John Speed + William Harrington + John Cornelius + Thomas Bosgrave + John Carey + Patrick Salmon + John Boste + John Ingram + George Swallowell + Edward Osbaldeston + Robert Southwell + Alexander Rawlins + Henry Walpole + William Freeman + Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel + George Errington + William Knight + William Gibson + Henry Abbott + William Andleby + Thomas Warcop + Edward Fulthrop + John Britton + Peter Snow + Ralph Gromston + John Buckley + Christopher Robertson + Richard Horner + John Lion + James Dowdal + Christopher Wharton + Thomas Sprott + Thomas Hunt + Robert Nutter + Edward Thwing + Thomas Palasor + John Norton + John Talbot + John Pibush + Mark Barkworth + Roger Filcock + Anne Linne + Thurstan Hunt + Robert Middleton + Nicholas Tichborne + Thomas Hackshot + James Harrison + Anthony Battie or Bates + James Duckett + Thomas Tichborne + Robert Watkinson + Francis Page + William Richardson + John Sugar + Robert Grissold + Lawrence Bailey + Thomas Welborne + John Fulthering + William Brown + Nicholas Owen + Edward Oldcorne + Robert Ashley + Robert Drury + Matthew Flathers + George Gervase + Thomas Garnet + Roger Cadwallador + George Napper + Thomas Somers + John Roberts + William Scot + Richard

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Newport + John Almond + Thomas Atkinson + John Thouless + Roger Wrenno + Thomas Maxfield + Thomas Tunstall + William Southerne + Edmund Arrowsmith + Richard Herst + William Ward + Edward Barlow + Thomas Reynold + Bartholomew Roe + ; John Lockwood + Edmund Catherick + Edward Morgan + Hugh Green + Thomas Bullaker + Thomas Holland + Henry Heath + Brian Cansfield + Arthur Bell + Richard Price + John Duckett + Ralph Corbin +Henry Morse + John Goodman + Philip Powell + John Woodcock + Edward Bamber + Thomas Whitaker Peter Wright + John Southworth + Edward Coleman + Edward Mico + Thomas Beddingfeld + William Ireland + John Grove + Thomas Pickering + Thomas Whitbread + William Harcourt + John Fenwick + John Gavin or Green + Anthony Turner + Francis Nevil + Richard Langhorne + William Plessington + Philip Evans + John Lloyd + Nicholas Postgate + Charles Mahoney + John Wall + Francis Levinson + John Kemble + David Lewis + Thomas Thwing + William Howard + Oliver Plunkett + Elizabeth Barton + John Dering + Edward Bocking + Hugh Rich + Richard Masters + Henry Gold + Matthew Mackerel + John Tenent + William Cole + John Francis + William Cowper + Richard Laynton + Hugh Londale + William Wood + William Thyrsk + James Cockerel + Adam Sedbar + George Asleby + Richard Harrison + Richard Wade + William Swale + Henry Jenkinson + Nicholas Heath + William Gylham + William Trafford + Richard Eastgate + John Paslew + John Eastgate + William Haydock + Robert Hobbes + Ralph Barnes + Laurence Blonham + John Pickering + George ab Alba Rose + William Burraby + Thomas Kendale + John Henmarsh + James Mallet + John Pickering + Thomas Redforth + Lord Darcy + Lord Hussey + Francis Bigod + Stephen Hammerton + Thomas Percy + Robert Aske + Robert Constable + Bernard Fletcher + George Hudswell + Robert Lecche + Roger Neeve + George Lomley + Thomas Moyne + Robert Sotheby + Nicholas Tempest + Philip Trotter + Henry Courtney, + Henry Pole, Lord Montague + Sir Edward Nevell + Sir Nicholas Carew + George Croft + John Collins + Hugh Holland + Lawrence Cook + Thomas Empson + Robert Bird + William Peterson + William Richardson + Giles Heron + Martin de Courdres + Paul of St. William + Darby Genning + Thomas Bishop + Simon Digby + John Fulthrope + John Hall + Christopher Norton + Thomas Norton + Robert Pennyman + Oswald Wilkinson + Thomas Percy + Thomas Gabyt + William Hambleton + Roger Martin + Christopher Dixon + James Laburne + Edward Arden + Richard Creagh + Thomas Watson + Austin Abbott + Richard Adams + Thomas Belser + John Boxall + James Brushford + Edmund Cannon + William Chedsey + Henry Cole + Anthony Draycott + Andrew Fryer + — Gretus + Richard Hatton + Nicholas Harpsfield + — Harrison + Francis Quashet + Thomas Slythurst + William Wood + John Young + Alexander Bales + Richard Bolbet + Sandra Cubley + Thomas Cosen + Mrs. Cosen + Hugh Dutton + Edward Ellis + Gabriel Empringham + John Fitzherbert + Sir Thomas Fitzherbert + John Fryer + Anthony Fugatio + — Glynne, + David Gwynne + John Hammond (alias Jackson) + Richard Hart + Robert Holland + John Lander + Anne Lander + Peter Lawson + Widow Lingon + Phillipe Lowe + — May + John Molineaux + Henry Percy + Richard Reynolds + Edmund Sexton + Robert Shelly + Thomas Sommerset + Francis Spencer + John Thomas + Peter Tichborne + William Travers + Sir Edward Waldegrave + Richard Weston + John Ackridge + William Baldwin + William Bannersly + Thomas Bedal + Richard Bowes + Henry Comberford + James Gerard + Nicholas Grene + Thomas Harwood + John Pearson + Thomas Ridall + James Swarbrick + Anthony Ash + Thomas Blinkensop + Stephen Branton + Lucy Budge + John Chalmer + Isabel Chalmer + John Constable + Ralph Cowling + John Eldersha + Isabel Foster + — Foster + Agnes Fuister + Thomas Horsley + Stephen Hemsworth + Mary Hutton + Agnes Johnson + Thomas Layne + Thomas Luke + Alice Oldcorne + — Reynold + — Robinson + John Stable + Mrs. Margaret Stable + Geoffrey Stephenson + Thomas Vavasour + Mrs. Dorothy Vavasour + Margaret Webster + Frances Webster + Christopher Watson + Hercules Welborn + Alice Williamson + James Brown + Richard Coppinger + Robert Edmonds + John Feckinham + Lawrence Mabbs + William Middleton + Placid Peto + Thomas Preston + Boniface Wilford + Thomas Rede + Sister Isabel Whitehead + Thomas Brownel + John Almond + Thomas Mudde + David Joseph Kemys + Thomas Ackridge + Paul Atkinson + Laurence Collier + Walter Coleman + Germane Holmes + Matthew Brazier (alias Grimes) + Humphrey Browne + Thomas Foster + William Harcourt + John Hudd + Cuthbert Prescott + Ignatius Price + Charles Pritchard + Francis Simeon + Nicholas Tempest + John Thompson + Charles Thursley + William Baldwin + James Gerard + John Pearson + James Swarbick + Thurstam Arrowsmith + Humphrey Beresford + William Bredstock + James Clayton + William Deeg + Ursula Foster + — Green+ William Griffith+ William Heath + Richard Hocknell + John Jessop + Richard Kitchin + William Knowles + Thomas Lynch + William Maxfield + — Morecock + Alice Paulin + Edmund Rookwood + Richard Spencer + — Tremaine + Edmund Vyse + Jane Vyse + Cuthbert Turnstall + Ralph Bayle + Owen Oglethorpe + John White + Richard Pate + David Poole + Edward Bonner + Gilbert Bourne + Thomas Thurlby + James Thurberville + Nicholas Heath +

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The Art of the English Recusants Upper Class and Underground “The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the opposing slope was already in twilight, but lakes below us were aflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death, drawing long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the rich stone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing on cornices and colonnade and dome, spreading out all the stacked merchandise of colour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me.”

“Brideshead Revisited” by the redoubtable Evelyn Waugh, is a 20th century tale about an English family descended from the recusants of Elizabethan times.

T

o be sure, to be Catholic, powerful, landed, wealthy and talented during this period of English history was dangerous.

Nevertheless, the Catholic Recusant families in Elizabethan England refused to publicly renounce their allegiance to Rome and to attend Anglican services. For centuries, these families had been the minority, a wealthy few at the apex of English society. Their households consisted of immediate family, servants and tenants, all Catholic -- a propertied and titled class who could afford to pay protection money to the Crown so they could practice the Catholicism woven into the rhythm of their lives.

From the recusants’ perspective, the Crown’s determination to deprive them of access to the Sacred was a stronger threat than any potential depletion of family finances. So, while the Reformation raged around them, many felt that the only way to practice Catholicism was to have their own in-house family chaplain. Hence, the Elizabethan priest, hidden in a ‘priest’s hole,’ cleverly concealed in the woodwork of an ancient stately home.

Recusants were vulnerable to informers, who sought Crown bribes in return for accusing them of collaborating with priests -- those most likely to be executed in gruesome ways. In this era of fear, intrigue and suspicion, recusants found their own ways to deal with the mortal threat to their lives and property. This article highlights two Recusant heads of family who used the fine arts as a non-violent form of rebellion – a counter-reformation in a context where being Catholic was outlawed.

An Architecture of Defiance Sir Thomas Tresham was a Catholic recusant who was imprisoned fifteen times, and whose son was a convicted conspirator in the Gun Powder Plot.

In the late 16th century, Tresham built one of the most astonishing structures in England -- the

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Rushton Triangular Lodge in Northamptonshire, England. A tribute to Catholicism’s Tridentine Creed and a monument to the Tresham family’s valor, the Lodge is also a testament to the times, full of religious symbolism.

Tresham built the Lodge on the grounds of his own estate, uniting the idea of the Trinity with ‘tres’ or the number ‘three’ in his family name.

The Rushton Triangular Lodge is a three floor building with three walls, each thirty-three feet long, and each with three triangular windows with three gargoyles.

Three Latin texts, each thirtythree letters long, wrap around the building. (One text reads: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’) The Lodge is replete with religious symbolism in the figures of pelicans, hens and chickens, doves and serpents.

had to be distinct. Byrd popularized the English madrigal, which was distinctly Elizabethan court and banquet music. Some of this music was written to honor the Virgin Queen; some were even her own texts set to music.

She must have been so thrilled not only to have songs in her honor but for her Church to impress upon onlookers that it was a ‘high church’ in their own Anglican way.

In this way, Byrd made himself a treasure for the Anglican Church, so that any act of possible treason implicating him could well be overlooked. It is said that Elizabeth intervened many times to keep him out of jail.

For Byrd lived a double life, as most recusants did. His spiritual life was nurtured by the Jesuits’ service; Byrd’s choice of themes for his music was influenced by Jesuit engagements. Some corresponded with specific Jesuit published works, often using language that would resonate only with the Catholic community. Another The Double Life of William Byrd source of inspiration for Byrd were ‘gallows The man who was hand-picked by Elizabeth I to texts’- which happen to be verses from Psalms ‘set the tone’ for Anglican worship services was uttered as last words by certain English Jesuits considered to be a national treasure. William just before martyrdom.

Byrd was a composer of sacred music and a recusant who was selected to be Director of Byrd’s Catholic work not only provided highly the Queen’s Chapel Royal and to compose “The contextualized liturgical music, but mobilized Great Service” for Anglican Worship. Elizabeth a creativity on the margins -- depicting and was willing to overlook the fact that Byrd was perpetuating Catholic courage, something to be once the composer for Catholic Queen Mary; rallied upon the remaining faithful Catholics. he was someone who could project a cultured, irenic and positive image of her reign.

Recusancy produced tangible testaments of faith, evidence to the standing, unceasing But while Byrd worked for Elizabeth and made prayers of praise, gratitude and supplication her happy, he was not what “Gloriana” thought and of God’s immanence, particularly on the he was; he secretly composed forbidden Latin margins of Catholic England. Marginalization liturgical music. Because he was brilliant and had allowed the recusants to ally with the greater a high degree of diplomatic intelligence, Byrd Catholic community in the Continent and Rome. was able to navigate composing for both the Never mind that many of them had to deal with secular world and for the Anglican Church -- but a series of law suits that depleted their wealth. at the same time retaining the Catholic identity It was a daring enterprise for the recusants to in his Catholic works. Scholars today agree that uphold a fidelity emboldened by deprivations Byrd’s Catholic musicR. embodied his deepest besides threats to life and property, and to and truest beliefs. He made it a conscious effort embody a passion to reach and touch the holy to compose far more excellent works for his with facts-on-the-ground and in the open, that Catholic audience - the ‘highest art’ he said. symbolize Catholic steadfastness, and perhaps even Christian unity. R. But Byrd did not sacrifice quality when he worked with other genres; he knew each one

Jerusalem And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold: Bring me my arrows of desire: Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land.

--William Blake, 1757 – 1827

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R.

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