Boris Johnson and Catholicism in England

Crisis Magazine posts an interesting story that poses the question: is the Prime Minister of England a practicing Catholic? or is he still an Anglican? Sean Fitzpatrick notes that this question arises because Johnson married a Catholic woman in a Catholic ceremony in Westminster Cathedral:

When asked by a journalist after his Catholic marriage and the Catholic baptism of his son, “Are you now a practicing Catholic?” Johnson, an Anglican since Eton, replied, “I don’t discuss these deep issues—certainly not with you.” Fair enough, sir.

In any event, the Prime Minister is now under suspicion of being England’s first Catholic prime minister, which would complicate his relation to the Church of England (God save the Queen). Mr. Johnson known for his wry and ready wit, and he wielded it in that moment to keep to himself what so many seek to fling into public scrutiny. Whether it be our religion, our political affiliation, or our vaccination status, the deep issues of our lives are boarding themselves up against undue exposure as they become increasingly divisive.

Fitzpatrick follows his own of inquiry in the rest of his essay, but what interests me is the church-state relationship in England: the government (the United Kingdom doesn't have a Constitution the way that we in the USA have one) still has an officially anti-Catholic stance. No monarch can be a Catholic, and it's not very clear whether or not a Catholic can be Prime Minister. According to the amended Catholic Relief Act of 1829:

It shall not be lawful for any person professing the Roman Catholic religion directly or indirectly to advise his Majesty, or any person or persons holding or exercising the office of guardians of the United Kingdom, or of regent of the United Kingdom, under whatever name, style, or title such office may be constituted, or the lord lieutenant of Ireland], touching or concerning the appointment to or disposal of any office or preferment in the Church of England, or in the Church of Scotland; and if any such person shall offend in the premises he shall, being thereof convicted by due course of law, be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and disabled for ever from holding any office, civil or military, under the Crown.

Yet the question of Boris Johnson's Christian religion was broached when he was elected, as this in July, 2019 article from The Irish Times (Northern Ireland) evidences :

BORIS Johnson has become the first baptised Catholic to become prime minister.

The 55-year-old, whose mother Charlotte Fawcett is Catholic, was baptised as a child.

His godmother is Lady Rachel Billington – daughter of the devoutly Catholic Lord Longford.

However, Mr Johnson was confirmed an Anglican while studying at Eton as a teenager.

That Confirmation in the Church of England probably smoothed over the issue; his marriage to a Catholic in a Catholic Cathedral and the baptism of their child has raised it again.

One of the duties of the Prime Minister is to advise the Queen on episcopal appointments in the Church of England. I cannot imagine Boris Johnson refusing to pass along recommendations for a woman to succeed in an English diocese or to otherwise interfere in those appointments on doctrinal, spiritual, or moral grounds. Nor would Queen Elizabeth II veto any on such grounds, the Anglican church being so thoroughly Erastian. In view of that fact, I'd imagine his Catholicism is a moot point. That's probably why there haven't been any "Johnson Riots" in England. Some would probably have other reasons for burning the Prime Minister in effigy on Bonfire Night, but not because he was baptized Catholic and married a Catholic woman.

As Sean Fitzpatrick concludes, citing Chesterton:

G. K. Chesterton (who was definitely a Catholic) wrote, “The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” Boris Johnson may or may not be Catholic, but he is certainly Chestertonian, and that goes somewhere beyond his doughy build and rumpled hair. He is elusive and playful and insightful—and those are traits that often go with the faithful. But let us not, as Catholics, be as the slavish children of the age sniffing for social controversy or social stigma—or even stigmata. Let us worry about being Catholic rather than who may or may not be Catholic.

Nevertheless, these are interesting considerations, leading to one more question: when will the monarch be able to be a Catholic? or another way to ask it: when will the Church of England be dis-established as the State Church of the United Kingdom? Should it be? What purpose does its establishment serve now? Those questions lead us all the way back to July 14, 1833!

Image Credit (public domain): The Gordon Riots by Charles Green (1840–1898)

A Monument, a Museum, or a Church?

For Crisis Magazine, Tom Jay writes about a visit to Westminster Abbey (it costs about $25.00 to enter this place of prayer):

It’s odd that a church where royal weddings and coronations take place does not receive any funding from the royal family or the Church of England. This fact only reinforces the impression that the English monarchy is a royal drain on the nation’s finances. What does England get in return? It’s possible that what Westminster Abbey gets in return is tourist dollars that help keep this beautiful monument maintained and open to the public. For, in the end, Westminster Abbey still stands as a magnificent achievement of gothic architecture. To continue drawing tourists, perhaps it’s necessary to highlight the link between Westminster and the Royals. No doubt this is what draws many Americans who have little interest in history, let alone an appreciation for the beauty and ingenuity of medieval religious architecture. Looked at from this perspective it might even be considered laudable that the Dean, while facing unavoidable economic realities, also insists that Westminster is “first and foremost a working church” as the brochure puts it. It is Henry VIII, not the Dean, who is responsible for the confusion that clouds Westminster Abbey today.

As a Catholic, my visit left me grateful for the imperviousness of Spain and Italy to the influences of the Reformation that swept through northern Europe and England. One needs no reminding in the great Catholic churches of Europe that these are truly sacred spaces dedicated to the glory of God alone, the only crown of note being the one affixed to the head of the King of Kings.

Read the rest there. When we visited the Abbey we also felt many misgivings. There was so much blocked off that we felt we'd been cheated the cost of admission. The Catholic priest we were with did receive a discount as a member of the clergy. But is sad to think of a place that was once filled with prayer--the seven hours of prayer by Benedictine monks--filled with milling tourists listening to audio descriptions of what they are seeing. What would John Feckenham, the last Abbot of Westminster Abbey, think if he saw it today?

Photo credit: The Benedictine Chapter House.

The Second Spring and the "Catholic Spring"

From Crisis Magazine and the inimitable Father George Rutler, this comparison between a great, holy Newman and 21st-century Newman:

On a Tuesday in 1852, the thirteenth of July for the literary record since it was a day important for English letters, Blessed John Henry Newman mounted the pulpit of Oscott College, its halls relatively new though designed by Joseph Potter and Augustus Pugin to recall the best of the Tudor times before the depredations of the eighth Henry. Always attentive to signs of decay, at 51 he claimed to be entering old age but was ready for a second breath, both for himself and his Church. That sermon, “The Second Spring,” is as poetic as homiletic, and could take its place in the annals of free verse as one of its most lyrical samples.

The occasion was the gathering of the First Provincial Synod of Westminster, when the Catholic episcopate had been restored, and hope was mingled with a quality of caution, for the road ahead was not straight and smooth and there were no sureties of rest along the way. That is why Newman took the temperature of the times:

Have we any right to take it strange, if, in this English land, the spring-time of the Church should turn out to be an English spring, an uncertain, anxious time of hope and fear, of joy and suffering,—of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and cold showers, and sudden storms?

The same might be preached today, in this peculiar period when the Church seems as conflicted as our nation, for the issues at hand have never been greater and the commentaries on them both in Church and State are almost burlesque in their shallowness and venality. Napoleon called China a sleeping giant and various sources have said the same of the Catholic Church. During the present election season, fevered as it is with unprecedented bitterness and banality, the Church could almost pass as a giant more comatose than slumbering.

If anything has stirred the Church, rusty when urban and flaccid when suburban, it has been the discovery of documents revealing cynical attempts by political strategist to subvert and suborn the institution, stripping her of supernatural credentials to become a tool of the State, like the Gallican Church of the French Revolution. Leaked emails from February 10-11, 2012 record exchanges entitled “Opening for a Catholic Spring?” between the current manager of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, John Podesta, and Sandy Newman, president of a political action group called Voices for Progress. Sandy Newman is certainly no heir to John Henry Newman nor are his visions of Spring like those of the Second Spring preached at Oscott. For Sandy Newman, “There needs to be a Catholic Spring in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.” The mandate for contraception coverage in medical plans might be a rallying point to “plant the seeds of the revolution.”

How Victorian! Accusing the Catholic Church of being medieval! 

Gentlemen, the Catholic Church is ancient; we are one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Podesta and this Newman may think they are sophisticated and brilliant strategists, planning the infiltration of the Catholic Church, but they should look up Julian the Apostate, Napoleon Bonaparte, and a few others along the long history of the Church and see how well they fared in their attempts.

As Father Rutler concludes:

So there we are at this crossroads of culture and, more than that, of civilization itself. Two Newmans proffer two Springtimes and they are not occasional variations of a common climate. Our nation has endured recent years of eroding faith and moral reason. It cannot endure several years more in the confidence that the erosion can be reversed as though it were just the habit of a cyclical season. There is a better prospect, but it is possible only if Catholics assent to the lively oracles of the Gospel and cast their votes and vows against those who are against it. The Newman who is blessed saw a Catholic Spring in the pulpit at Oscott that is not the clandestine plot of e-mails:

I listen, and I hear the sound of voices, grave and musical, renewing the old chant, with which Augustine greeted Ethelbert in the free air upon the Kentish strand. It comes from a long procession, and it winds along the cloisters. Priests and Religious, theologians from the schools, and canons from the Cathedral, walk in due precedence. And then there comes a vision of well-nigh twelve mitred heads; and last I see a Prince of the Church, in the royal dye of empire and of martyrdom, a pledge to us from Rome of Rome’s unwearied love, a token that that goodly company is firm in Apostolic faith and hope.

The photograph above is of the shrine Father Rutler installed in his former parish in New York, the Church of the Saviour. I certainly hope it is still there (the succeeding pastor made some changes). I took this picture in 2011 and so it is (c) Stephanie A. Mann.

Coincidentally: Katherine of Aragon's Grave

When two stories about Katherine of Aragon's grave at Peterborough Cathedral appear in my in-box, I just can't ignore the coincidence:

K.V. Turley writes about a journey to visit her grave and pray for her in Crisis Magazine, beginning with the circumstances of her death, including Henry VIII's refusal to let the Princess Mary see her mother one last time:

By December 1535, she lay dying. Banished from the Royal Court, she was at Kimbolton Castle with a few faithful attendants. As the end drew near, the king continued to refuse her pleas that she might see their daughter, Mary. Suffering was all this queen was to know, and, indeed, had known for many years; those final few years were to prove bitter fare indeed for Katherine. She had watched a younger woman, Anne Boleyn, bewitch her husband and then covet Katherine’s royal title. Nevertheless, not for a moment did Katherine countenance divorce, nor would she have any part in the theological games Henry played in his attempt to salve a guilty conscience. Throughout it all, she saw his predicament not as a constitutional one but as a moral one.

This was no ordinary woman. It is sometimes forgotten that Katherine was the daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Like her mother, she was Catholic first, a monarch second, understanding her life and vocation in that order. Her faith was to be no pragmatic political piety; under her royal robes she wore the garb of the Third Order of St. Francis. Each day her religious devotions took many hours; a rosary was never far from her hands. Even in the forlorn days of exile from Henry’s court, she prayed earnestly for her husband.

At the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, Linda Fetterley Root describes the graves of the first three of Henry VIII's wives, starting with Katherine's:

On the morning of her death, Henry VIII’s discarded wife dictated two letters, one to her kinsman The Holy Roman Emperor, and the other, to the husband who had put her aside. It is not the scornful lament to which she was entitled and which the king deserved. In it, she wishes him well and requests Henry to extend benevolence toward their daughter and generosity to her servants. But it ends as the last letter written by a lover: 'Lastly, I make this vow. That mine eyes desire you above all things.’

When the king heard of her death, he donned clothes of celebratory yellow and frolicked the night away. He was not dancing with his wife, Queen Anne, for whom he had all but moved mountains to marry. He had already tired of her.

And thus, the daughter of the legendary lovers Ferdinand and Isabella was taken to the nearby Abbey of Peterborough and interred in the choir aisle to the north of the altar, with no more pomp than due a Dowager Princess of Wales, the title to which she had been demoted. She was put to rest as Arthur’s wife, not Henry’s. Katharine died on January 2, 1536, and was buried 22 days later. A mere three months after that, on May 2, Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested, and 17 days later, she was dead. Four months and a week after Katharine's death, Lady Jane Seymour was Queen of England.[ii]

In his excellent biography Catherine of Aragon, written in 1941, Garrett Mattingly remarked that few of the hopes the Queen still held when she died had been realized.[iii] However, her burial site at Peterborough may well have been an incidental beneficiary of her death. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, achieved by a legislative scheme orchestrated by Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, Peterborough Abbey Church was confiscated but spared. By royal edict, Henry granted Letters Patent to Peterborough making it a Cathedral and named the former abbot as its bishop.[iv] Thus, Peterborough was appropriately Anglicanized. Some historians think it was spared because it housed the remains of a royal who had once been considered Queen of England. It is just as likely that Henry saw it as a potential source of revenue for the Crown.

May she rest in the Peace of Christ.

Image Credit: Released by author into Public Domain.

The Narrow Gate and the Cause of Martyrdom

John Andra writes about St. Thomas More's martyrdom for Crisis Magazine:

Martyrdom is in practice narrow. When St. Thomas More died on a scaffold in Henry VIII’s kingdom, it was for a narrow matter. Henry said he was the head of the Catholic Church in that realm, and Thomas disagreed. Thomas believed only a bishop could head the Church, specifically the bishop who had succeeded St. Peter on the chair in Rome.

It is a strange thing, though, that Henry would kill for narrowness. It was so important that he, with the backing of Parliament, considered it treason to disagree. Henry and Thomas agreed on nearly everything else in Catholic teaching, and Henry died still an enemy of Protestantism. For his own need to control the Church, however, Henry repeatedly killed.

Few resisted him, perhaps because the matter was so narrow. Would it really matter if Henry were called the head of the Church? It would not change the reality, after all. The sacraments also continued, the bishops and priests still taught, and none but the religious orders, possessors of great wealth, were entirely despoiled. Many probably thought Thomas, and the sole bishop to lose his life resisting, St. John Fisher, were unreasonable.

He makes a connection to Catholics and other Christians resisting State coercion today:

But we should always remember our Lord’s warning to enter by the narrow gate. “For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter that way. How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher with the grace of God found the narrow gate. We must likewise prepare to resist any claim by an earthly power to jurisdiction over a matter of faith and morals. St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, gave us the fundamental rule: “ ‘We must obey God rather than men’ ” (Acts 5:29).

I've drafted an article for the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More--focusing on the Bishop of Rochester this time--in connection with the annual Fortnight for Freedom, which this year focuses on witnesses/martyrs from the early Church until today (including the Coptic martyrs beheaded on the beach in Libya last year by ISIL/ISIS). And, I'm working on a presentation for the Eighth Day Institute's Sisters of Sophia group on Margaret More Roper, St. Thomas More's daughter, to be given on June 21, the beginning of the Fortnight and the vigil of her father's feast! 

After those two projects are completed, I'll be keeping company with Dorothy L. Sayers, preparing a presentation for the EDI Inklings Festival in July and then with Blessed John Henry Newman, preparing a presentation for the Spiritual Life Center in August!

English Law and Irish Hedgerow Schools

Tom Jay writes for Crisis Magazine, summarizing the Penal Laws in Ireland:

the Anglo-Irish Parliament, controlled by England, passed a code of laws called “Laws in Ireland for the Suppression of Popery,” commonly known as the Penal Code. The Penal Laws struck deep into the political, economic, and religious life of Irish Catholics. The Code had three objectives: to deny the Irish any means of participating in civic life; to deny them access to education; and, to separate them from the land. Like the pernicious Apartheid laws of South Africa, the Penal Code was aimed specifically at a particular group: native Irish Catholics, three-fourths of the population of Ireland at that time.

The Penal Code included restrictions on education:

…no person of the popish religion shall publicly teach school or instruct youth, or in private houses teach youth, except only the children of the master or mistress of the private house, upon pain of twenty pounds, and prison for three months for every such offence. (7 Will III c.4 [1695])

Schoolmasters were now treated as criminals. To encourage the “Popish” schoolmaster’s neighbors to turn him in, a reward, extracted from those neighbors, would be given of

10 pounds for each popish schoolmaster, usher or assistant; said reward to be levied on the popish inhabitants of the county where found. (8 Ann c.3 [1709])

Any papist clergy or schoolmaster liable to transportation under these Acts shall within three months be transported to the common gaol of the next seaport town, to remain until transported. (8 Ann c.3 [1709])

Being “transported” had a very different meaning in the Penal Laws than it has in spiritual terms. It meant being shipped off to the West Indies. Any schoolmaster who tried to return to Ireland after being “transported” would be imprisoned indefinitely. Irish parents were also forbidden to send their child out of the country to be educated. This restriction was meant to deplete the number of priests in Ireland, who were generally educated in French seminaries. Irish Catholics were forbidden to teach Irish or Latin.

But the Irish resisted:

Despite all of this, the people of Ireland maintained a quiet rebellion. They were determined to keep classical education and Catholic tradition alive in their land through what was called the hedge school.

A hedge school is what it sounds like. Lessons were sometimes conducted in secret by Irish teachers out in the country side, often behind hedges but sometimes behind large rocks or in barns. The students would take turns keeping watch for the authorities.

Read the rest there.

The Prisoner of Zenda

Sean Fitzpatrick writes about the great adventure novel, The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope for Crisis Magazine:

Rudolf Rassendyll—an indifferent young man who enjoyed his leisure well. Though in excellent training as a horseman, swordsman, and marksman, he bore no desire whatsoever to become the proverbial man of action—until he found himself a man assailed by action, immured in one of the most dangerous and delicate plots imaginable. On an impromptu journey to attend the coronation of the new King of Ruritania, to whom he bears a distant, illegitimate relation, Rassendyll is discovered and swept up by two members of the Royal Cabinet due to an uncanny resemblance he bears with the soon-to-be-crowned King. This curiosity becomes a crucible when the King is suddenly and subtly kidnapped. With the political state of Ruritania hanging in the balance, Rassendyll agrees to undertake the risk of impersonating the King before the entire nation in order to buy the time necessary to rescue the imprisoned monarch from the schemes of Black Michael, the evil Duke of Strelsau.

Thus it runs—a romp of mistaken identity, plot twists, swashbuckling heroism, and high romance with the King’s intended, the beautiful Princess Flavia, with whom, of course, Rassendyll falls madly in love as he woos her in place of the King. Thus it runs with blazing revolvers, ancient castles, woefully grim councils, wonderfully glib speeches, daring souls pulling at brandy flasks, midnight marauding, and one of the most memorable villains of Victorian fiction: the malevolent, murderous Rupert of Hentzau.

Thus it runs, and the running pace is one of the elements that perhaps accounts for the unprecedented popularity of The Prisoner of Zenda. The plot hurtles on like a horse and is dominated by a sense of time running out.

There are two sound-era motion picture versions of this novel, the later of which is a scene-for-scene recreation in technicolor of the earlier black and white version. The Ronald Colman-Madeleine Carroll version is usually the preferred. But both of them display the beauty and solemnity of the king's coronation in a Catholic cathedral, although the novel adds the tremendous detail that this coronation includes reception of the Holy Eucharist--and Rassendyll is an Englishman (an Anglican):

At last we were at the Cathedral. Its great grey front, embellished with hundreds of statues and boasting a pair of the finest oak doors in Europe, rose for the first time before me, and the sudden sense of my audacity almost overcame me. Everything was in a mist as I dismounted. I saw the Marshal and Sapt dimly, and dimly the throng of gorgeously robed priests who awaited me. And my eyes were still dim as I walked up the great nave, with the pealing of the organ in my ears. I saw nothing of the brilliant throng that filled it, I hardly distinguished the stately figure of the Cardinal as he rose from the archiepiscopal throne to greet me. Two faces only stood out side by side clearly before my eyes-- the face of a girl, pale and lovely, surmounted by a crown of the glorious Elphberg hair (for in a woman it is glorious), and the face of a man, whose full-blooded red cheeks, black hair, and dark deep eyes told me that at last I was in presence of my brother, Black Michael. And when he saw me his red cheeks went pale all in a moment, and his helmet fell with a clatter on the floor. Till that moment I believe that he had not realized that the King was in very truth come to Strelsau.

Of what followed next I remember nothing. I knelt before the altar and the Cardinal anointed my head. Then I rose to my feet, and stretched out my hand and took from him the crown of Ruritania and set it on my head, and I swore the old oath of the King; and (if it were a sin, may it be forgiven me) I received the Holy Sacrament there before them all. Then the great organ pealed out again, the Marshal bade the heralds proclaim me, and Rudolf the Fifth was crowned King; of which imposing ceremony an excellent picture hangs now in my dining-room. The portrait of the King is very good.

In the previous chapter, Rassendyll had received some catechesis:

The cool morning air cleared my head, and I was able to take in all Sapt said to me. He was wonderful. Fritz hardly spoke, riding like a man asleep, but Sapt, without another word for the King, began at once to instruct me most minutely in the history of my past life, of my family, of my tastes, pursuits, weaknesses, friends, companions, and servants. He told me the etiquette of the Ruritanian Court, promising to be constantly at my elbow to point out everybody whom I ought to know, and give me hints with what degree of favour to greet them.

"By the way," he said, "you're a Catholic, I suppose?"

"Not I," I answered.

"Lord, he's a heretic!" groaned Sapt, and forthwith he fell to a rudimentary lesson in the practices and observances of the Romish faith.

"Luckily," said he, "you won't be expected to know much, for the King's notoriously lax and careless about such matters. But you must be as civil as butter to the Cardinal. We hope to win him over, because he and Michael have a standing quarrel about their precedence."

We were by now at the station. Fritz had recovered nerve enough to explain to the astonished station master that the King had changed his plans. The train steamed up. We got into a first-class carriage, and Sapt, leaning back on the cushions, went on with his lesson. I looked at my watch--the King's watch it was, of course. It was just eight.

I remember when I read those passages as a student at Kapaun-Mount Carmel Catholic High School--I was shocked and dismayed!

Blessed John Henry Newman on Friendship

Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, quoted Newman in a talk given to teachers in his diocese, "reprinted" in Crisis Magazine:

My spiritual patron, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, said that friendship is a school of love, a school of Christian charity. He thought that human friendship teaches us, in a particular way, how to exercise universal charity.

Newman wrote that “the best preparation for loving the world at large, and loving it duly and wisely, is to cultivate an intimate friendship and affection towards those who are immediately about us.”

Friendship is a “school of Christian charity” because friendship makes demands upon us. Our friends are those who are most close to us, who share a vision, and a mission. Our friends are collaborators in the great work—the magnum opus—of our lives. But our friends, like us, are human beings. And relationships with human beings require forgiveness, forbearance, patience, and understanding. We learn those virtues by loving our friends. Newman says that

The real love of man must depend on practice, and therefore, must begin by exercising itself on our friends around us, otherwise it will have no existence. By trying to love our relations and friends, by submitting to their wishes, though contrary to our own, by bearing with their infirmities, by overcoming their occasional waywardness by kindness, by dwelling on their excellences, and trying to copy them, thus it is that we form in our hearts that root of charity, which, though small at first, may, like the mustard seed, at last even overshadow the earth.

Bishop Conley is quoting from Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermon "Love of Relations and Friends", based upon the verse from the First Letter of St. John: "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God." (4:7). Blessed John Henry Newman goes to demonstrate how observing the old adage that "charity (love) begins at home" has an influence on how we respond in charity (love) to our neighbor and even those we don't know but want to help:

Further, that love of friends and relations, which nature prescribes, is also of use to the Christian, in giving form and direction to his love of mankind at large, and making it intelligent and discriminating. A man, who would fain begin by a general love of all men, necessarily puts them all on a level, and, instead of being cautious, prudent, and sympathising in his benevolence, is hasty and rude; does harm, perhaps, when he means to do good, discourages the virtuous and well-meaning, and wounds the feelings of the gentle. Men of ambitious and ardent minds, for example, desirous of doing good on a large scale, are especially exposed to the temptation of sacrificing individual to general good in their plans of charity. Ill-instructed men, who have strong abstract notions about the necessity of showing generosity and candour towards opponents, often forget to take any thought of those who are associated with themselves; and commence their (so-called) liberal treatment of their enemies by an unkind desertion of their friends. This can hardly be the case, when men cultivate the private charities, as an introduction to more enlarged ones. By laying a foundation of social amiableness, we insensibly learn to observe a due harmony and order in our charity; we learn that all men are not on a level; that the interests of truth and holiness must be religiously observed; and that the Church has claims on us before the world. We can easily afford to be liberal on a large scale, when we have no affections to stand in the way. Those who have not accustomed themselves to love their neighbours whom they have seen, will have nothing to lose or gain, nothing to grieve at or rejoice in, in their larger plans of benevolence. They will take no interest in them for their own sake; rather, they will engage in them, because expedience demands, or credit is gained, or an excuse found for being busy. Hence too we discern how it is, that private virtue is the only sure foundation of public virtue; and that no national good is to be expected (though it may now and then accrue), from men who have not the fear of God before their eyes.

That reminded me of the goals of Blessed Frederic Ozanam and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul: not organized, systematic philanthropy, but personal, immediate charity from one Christian to another.

The first coat of arms at the top is Bishop Conley's, the second is Cardinal Newman's.

St. John Fisher, Defender of Marriage (And a Few Colleagues)

From Crisis Magazine, this article by Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute:

In his October 2013 article on the question of communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Cardinal Gerhard Müller underscored that the Catholic Church had risked much to uphold Christ’s teaching regarding true marriage’s indissolubility. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith singled out the fact that Catholicism had suffered the schism of “a Church in England” “because the Pope, out of obedience to the sayings of Jesus, could not accommodate the demands of King Henry VIII for the dissolution of his marriage.”

In this context, most people immediately think of Saint Thomas More. In at least two accounts of his trial, More stated that the real core of Henry VIII’s animus against him was that More did not believe Anne Boleyn to be Henry’s wife. After all, one reason for More’s imprisonment was his refusal to affirm, on oath, the marriage’s validity.

In truth, however, More had tried to say as little as possible about the King’s Great Matter before and after his resignation as Lord Chancellor. In public at least, the real water on the marriage issue was carried by another Saint: Cardinal John Fisher of Rochester.

Fisher was by far the most formidable defender of the validity of Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage, penning at least 7 tracts on the subject. Widely regarded as one of the greatest bishop-scholars of his time and a successful Chancellor of Cambridge University, Fisher’s writings underscore his deep familiarity with the Scriptures, church fathers, and scholastic and renaissance thought. Not many people learn Greek in their forties. Yet Fisher somehow managed to do so.

Concerns about what his scholarly peers might think, however, didn't prevent Fisher from confronting doctrinal and moral error. He also actively combated corruption and lax morality among clergy and laity alike. Nor was Fisher ever distracted from his pastoral responsibilities. Testimonies abound to Fisher personally serving the poor, spending long hours in the confessional, regularly visiting the sick and dying, penning devotional writings for ordinary folk, and leading an abstentious life. Eligible for any number of more famous sees, Fisher chose to remain in the very poor, insignificant diocese of Rochester.

Other great defenders of the validity of Henry and Catherine's marriage met the same fate as good Bishop Fisher: Fathers Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell (except that they endured the full sentence of the execution of traitors, being hung, drawn, and quartered). The Observant Franciscans, formerly Henry VIII's favorite mendicants, openly opposed Henry's marital machinations and defended the validity of his marriage to Queen Catherine. Friars Peto and Elstow publicly stated their opposition and defense during sermons in the Greenwich chapel. Perhaps on this date, April 8, in 1533, the friars appeared before Henry's Council. According to this website:

Again the friars repeated their strong condemnation of Henry's course of action. The Earl of Essex (sic) [Henry did not name Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex until 1540, less than two months before his arrest and attainder] told them that they deserved to be put in a sack and cast into the Thames. Elstow's response deserves recording: "Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk who are clothed in purple, fare delicately, and have their chiefest hope in this world, for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the discharge of our duties we are driven hence. With thanks to God we know the way to Heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not which way we go." 

Astonishingly the two friars were not flung into the Thames or even into prison (Henry was still flexing his proto-totalitarian muscles) and were instead banished from the country. Friar Peto was eventually to be raised in Rome to the purple [during the reign of Mary I].

Father Rutler on Sir Jeffrey Hudson, a Catholic Dwarf

Only Father George Rutler, pastor of The Church of Our Saviour on Park Avenue in New York City, can pull this kind of stuff off--humourous, punning, but never cruel, he here describes the life and career of a Catholic dwarf in the Courts of the Stuarts (from Crisis Magazine):

In the saga of Catholic curiosities, unique is the smallest known adult Catholic, Sir Jeffrey Hudson who as a man was eighteen inches tall. His parents and siblings were of average height. He was not a typical dwarf, inasmuch as he was perfectly proportioned in every way, only tiny—more of what is called vernacularly a midget, and technically a pituitary dwarf, conditioned by a lack of growth hormone. But his hypopituitarism was without precedent in England and his perfect and delicate miniature size distinguished him from the common Continental court dwarves of his day. As a possible portent, he was born on June 14, 1619 in England’s smallest county, Rutland, whose motto is “Multum in Parvo,” or, Much in Little as David Cameron might try to translate it. His father raised cattle, particularly bulls for baiting, for the Duke of Buckingham. When little Jeffrey failed to grow, he was taken in to the Buckingham household as a “rarity of nature.” He was seven years old and when King Charles I and his queen Henrietta Maria were entertained by the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham, the lavish banquet ended with a large pie out of which popped Jeffrey Hudson in a miniature suit of armor. This gave rise to a rumor that he had been baked in the pie, but this was not the case. The Queen was so delighted that the Buckinghams presented their rarity to her. The Queen kept a separate household at Denmark House in London, and Jeffrey joined it at the end of 1626, along with two disproportionate dwarfs and a Welsh giant. Jeffrey became favored for his wit and elegance, and Inigo Jones wrote costumed masques in which he took part. The French queen’s court was Catholic and housed so many priests that some objections were raised among Londoners who feared a conspiracy might be afoot. Jeffrey embraced Catholicism and kept his faith throughout his difficult life, regularly assisting at Low Masses which occasioned tasteless puns.

I'll keep this post short--read the rest here. Image source: wikipedia commons.