Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 20

Preview: Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show

As might be expected, Father Henry Sebastian Bowden dedicates more than one day to the memory of Saint John Fisher, Cardinal Bishop of England in his book Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors. Around the date of his June 22, 1535 beheading Father Bowden includes five:
June 22: Ascending the StepsJune 23: Learning for LifeJune 24: The Wedding GarmentJune 25: A Martyr's Sleep, andJune 26: The Bones of Elias
On Monday, June 26 on the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll reflect on the memory of Saint John Fisher stopping on the way from the Tower to Tower Hill to open his New Testament and pray for a suitable verse to sustain him before his execution. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!
We should remember that Bishop John Fisher was a brilliant scholarly and a holy man, renowned for both among his peers in England and on the Continent. As the old Dictionary of National Biography explains:
In 1501 he was elected vice-chancellor of [Cambridge] university. We learn from his own statements, as well as from other sources, that the whole academic community was at that time in a singularly lifeless and impoverished state. To rescue it from this condition, by infusing new life into its studies and gaining for it the help of the wealthy, was one of the chief services which Fisher rendered to his age. In 1503 he was appointed by the Countess of Richmond [Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII's mother and Henry VIII's grandmother] to fill the newly founded chair of divinity, which she had instituted for the purpose of providing gratuitous theological instruction in the university; and it appears to have been mainly by his advice that about the same time the countess also founded the Lady Margaret preachership, designed for supplying evangelical instruction of the laity in the surrounding county and elsewhere. The preaching was to be in the vernacular, which had at that period almost fallen into disuse in the pulpit. . . .
Fisher's genuine attachment to learning is shown by the sympathy which he evinced with the new spirit of biblical criticism which had accompanied the Renaissance. It was mainly through his influence that Erasmus was induced to visit Cambridge, and the latter expressly attributes it to his powerful protection that the study of Greek was allowed to go on in the university without active molestation of the kind which it had to encounter at Oxford (Epist. vi. 2). Notwithstanding his advanced years, Fisher himself aspired to become a Greek scholar, and appears to have made some attainments in the language.
Yet as he goes to his death, so weak that he has to carried in a chair, he stops, stands up, leans against a wall and opens his small New Testament book at random, praying:

"O Lord, this is the last time that ever I shall open this book. Let some comfortable place now chance unto me--" and he opens it to John 17:3-4:
"This is everlasting life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work that Thou gavest me to do."
Having read that he said, "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end." 
Father Bowden chose Psalm 138:6 for this daily entry: "Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me."
His calmness and readiness for his martyrdom is also demonstrated in his final preparations for his execution: Awakened early the morning of June 22, 1535, he asked to be allowed to sleep a few more hours until 9:00 a.m., the time set for him to die ("A Martyr's Sleep"), and he dressed warmly before he left his cell ("The Wedding Garment"). He was asked not to make any speech on the scaffold and he was content with that.
On the scaffold ("Ascending the Steps"), Father Bowden provides the detail that Saint John Fisher recited another Psalm (33:6): "Come ye to Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall be confounded." He forgave the executioner and removed his gown and tippet (like a stole over his shoulders) and the crowd there to witness his execution was shocked at how emaciated he was because his face was "a mere death's head". His body was left on the scaffold but his head was prepared for exhibition on London Bridge, where it stopped the traffic because his face seemed to look more lifelike! ("The Bones of Elias") Finally his head was dumped into the Thames and replaced by St. Thomas More's.
Speaking of St. Thomas More's head, which was retrieved by his daughter Margaret Roper before it could be dumped into the Thames, there are fears that his skull, a major relic, is deteriorating in the vaults of St. Dunstan's Anglican church in Canterbury. It is buried in the church because the Roper family vault is there and Margaret's husband Will Roper, kept the relic after her death.
Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Fisher and More Religious Freedom Week Thoughts

As Anna Mitchell pointed out during our discussion of Henry VIII's prison visit to Blessed Sebastian Newdigate Monday morning on the Son Rise Morning Show, the USCCB's Religious Freedom Week begins today, June 22, the feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More. The portraits above laud them as "England's Most Glorious Martyrs" (note that the clipping dates from before their canonization in 1935, 400 years after their executions).
On the day of their feast, the USCCB asks us to reflect on "Respect for Sacred Spaces":
In a pluralistic society such as ours, respect for sacred spaces is especially vital for the sake of civil peace, which is part of the common good. In recent years, a wave of vandalism and arson has hit Catholic churches and statues. That wave rose following the leaked draft of the Dobbs decision, and it crested after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to regulate abortion. June and July of 2022 saw a huge spike in anti-Christian and anti-life attacks on churches. There have been over 250 attacks so far, and that number steadily continues to grow. [well, it certainly can't diminish!]
Before Fisher and More were executed in 1535, sacred spaces in England seemed to be safe: chantry chapels, parish churches, abbey churches, cathedrals, pilgrimage sites, friaries, priories, convents, and monasteries. All their shrines, stained glass, statues, altars, libraries, chalices, patens, pixes, and reliquaries also seemed safe. But with the Dissolution of the Monasteries during Henry VIII's reign, and the greater destruction of the religious fabric of sacred spaces during Edward VI's reign and the Elizabethan iconoclasm after the brief restoration of Catholic worship under Mary I, the pattern of destruction began. We could say that it started, however, in 1536, with the first wave of dissolutions or suppressions, and continued with the larger houses and the campaign against monastic life in general with the Visitations of the larger monasteries and the establishment of the Court of Augmentations to dispose of the sacred spaces of the monasteries with the conversion of some abbey churches into parish churches or cathedrals.
Of course, sixteenth century England did not have any idea of religious freedom: this meme from the beginning of the USCCB's attention to matters of religious freedom in the USA with the "Fortnight for Freedom" in reaction to the HHS/ACA contraception mandates and the Little Sisters of the Poor battles against them reminds us of that!
I'd previously shared this article from The Historical Journal (2022) by Martin Heale, "Thomas More and the Defense of the Religious Orders in Henry VIII's England", and draw your attention to it again with a couple of excerpts. In the course of the article, Heale comments more than once about St. Thomas More's admiration for the Observant Friars at Greenwich, the Carthusians at the London Charterhouse, and the Bridgettines of the House of Syon. On page 936 of the journal, he begins to explore More's defense of monasticism in general:
Alongside his unfettered praise for strictly observant religious orders,More’s polemical writings echoed his ‘Letter to a monk’ by repeatedly emphasizing the inherent value of the monastic way of life. In his ‘Letter toBugenhagen’, More expressed a very high estimation of the monastic calling:‘Religious orders have produced a great many men of extraordinary sanctity…[while] the purest segment of the Christian people have always beenfound in religious orders.’ Their way of life was also certified by the great holiness of their original founders. Monastic living, More added, with its austerities and self-denial, followed Christ’s teaching and example far morefaithfully than the pampered and indulgent lives of its evangelical critics.75The supplication of souls set out a robust defence of the friars’ practice of begging and the endowments held by monastic houses.76 And in the Apology,More denied that the professed religious life was in any way inferior to thecalling of secular priests, and asserted that Christian people were bound toshow honour towards religious persons on account of their ‘holy professionof their godly state of living’.77 
You'll need to access the article for the end note links.
Nevertheless, Heale emphasizes that More, the Christian humanist and Catholic apologist, balanced that "very high estimation of the monastic calling" with an acknowledgement of problems among the monastic houses in England, and a rather tepid defense of those houses. While he regretted the dissolution of monasteries in Lutheran Germany (p. 940) More did not mount a defense of the monastic orders or houses. Heale concludes:
It is improbable that Thomas More himself, through his polemical writings,could have impeded the Henrician regime’s plans to embark upon a significantprogramme of monastic suppression in the mid-1530s. After all, More . . .  had issued stark warnings about the likely negative socialand economic consequences of dissolving religious houses: a viewpoint thatcame to be quite widely shared within a few years of the suppressions. 113 Hewas, moreover, by no means unique among English humanists in his predilection for strictly observant forms of monastic life, and a concomitant lack ofenthusiasm for ‘unreformed’ religious houses.
Tomorrow I'll post my preview for on Monday, June 26 discussion of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's mementoes of Saint John Fisher on the Son Rise Morning Show!
Saint John Fisher, pray for us!Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

From "First Things": A Consideration of the 'Anglican Reset'

Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, and Greg Peters collectively ask: "Is the Anglican "Reset" Truly Anglican?" in First Things, posted on June 9 of this year:

The Kigali Commitment of April 21, 2023, was a shot heard around the world. Thirteen hundred Anglican leaders, dominated by bishops and clergy from the Global South, gathered in Kigali, Rwanda, to declare that they no longer recognized the Archbishop of Canterbury as their leader. Representing 85 percent of the Anglican Communion, they pronounced their determination to “reset the Communion on its biblical foundations.”  

The boldness of this statement is striking. Not only does it signal the end of English domination of the Communion, but it also demonstrates counter-cultural courage. The leaders of the Global Anglican Fellowship Conference (GAFCON) and the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) have defied Global North elite opinion and financial coercion by denouncing the Church of England’s February 2023 decision to bless same-sex couples. . .

The question they ask, while commending the one thousand, three hundred leaders for taking a stand, is if they've taken their stand on the right foundation:

The Kigali Commitment repeatedly appeals to the authority of the Bible alone and fails to mention either the authority of the Church or the role of tradition, describing the Bible as “the rule of our lives” and the “final authority in the church” without mentioning that Scripture functions within the context of tradition—in particular, the common liturgy of the Church and the Book of Common Prayer—and the Church’s teaching authority.

They cite Bishop John Jewell (1552-1571), Richard Hooker (1554-1600), and Bishop Francis White (1564-1638), and more recently, the 2002 statement of Evangelicals and Catholics Together to demonstrate that Anglicans and even some Evangelicals have acknowledged "there is no such thing as Scripture without tradition, that every person reads Scripture through the lens of some tradition or other, whether he realizes it or not", attributing that sentiment to Hooker. This is in contrast to the Kigali Commitment's reliance on the "clarity" of the Biblical text as Boersma, McDermott, and Peters see it.

That reminded me that Catholic World Report recently featured an interview with Casey Chalk about his new book  The Obscurity of Scripture: Disputing Sola Scriptura and the Protestant Notion of Biblical Perspicuity (Emmaus Road, 2023). Chalk also refers to this hermeneutic of interpretation as "perspicuity", citing the Westminster Confession of Faith , paragraph 7:

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

Chalk's comment:

The above statement requires a little bit of unpacking. The Westminster divines are not saying that all of Scripture is equally clear, but that enough of it is that both learned and unlearned Christians, relying on the Holy Spirit in prayer and leveraging things like biblical preaching or good commentaries, that they should be able to understand what is necessary for salvation.

So, anytime you talk to a Protestant and he or she says something like “the Bible clearly teaches X,” they are making recourse to the doctrine of clarity. Of course, a lot of times that person may be going well beyond what the Westminster divines had in mind, given their narrow understanding of perspicuity. But the basic premise is that Scripture is clear enough on what’s necessary for salvation, or the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, that any well-meaning Christian should be able to read his or her Bible and find precisely that.

Be that as it may, when I read the text of the Kigali Commitment, I did note that the signers of this document did appeal to Anglican tradition and the teaching authority of the Church of England, specifically to the Lambeth Conference of 1998:

Public statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Church of England in support of same-sex blessings are a betrayal of their ordination and consecration vows to banish error and to uphold and defend the truth taught in Scripture.

These statements are also a repudiation of Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which declared that ‘homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture,’ and advised against the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions’. 

This occurred despite the Archbishop of Canterbury having affirmed that ‘the validity of the resolution passed at the Lambeth Conference 1998, I.10 is not in doubt and that whole resolution is still in existence’. (page 2)

I thought of what Saint John Henry Newman might say about this putative schism in the Anglican Communion. Or rather, what he did say to those in "the Religious Movement of 1833" who had remained in the Church of England as he referred to them in his lectures on Anglican Difficulties.

In the first lecture "On the Relation of the National Church to the Nation" he warned them:

I have said all this, my brethren, not in declamation, but to bring out clearly to you, why I cannot feel interest of any kind in the National Church, nor put any trust in it at all from its past history, as if it were, in however narrow a sense, a guardian of orthodoxy. It is as little bound by what it said or did formerly, as this morning's newspaper by its former numbers, except as it is bound by the Law; and while it is upheld by the Law, it will not be weakened by the subtraction of individuals, nor fortified by their continuance. Its life is an Act of Parliament. It will not be able to resist the Arian, Sabellian, or Unitarian heresies now, because Bull or Waterland resisted them a century or two before; nor on the other hand would it be unable to resist them, though its more orthodox theologians were presently to leave it. It will be able to resist them while the State gives the word; it would be unable, when the State forbids it. Elizabeth boasted that she "tuned her pulpits;" Charles forbade discussions on predestination; George on the Holy Trinity; Victoria allows differences on Holy Baptism. While the nation wishes an Establishment, it will remain, whatever individuals are for it or against it; and that which determines its existence will determine its voice. Of course {9} the presence or departure of individuals will be one out of various disturbing causes, which may delay or accelerate by a certain number of years a change in its teaching: but, after all, the change itself depends on events broader and deeper than these; it depends on changes in the nation. As the nation changes its political, so may it change its religious views; the causes which carried the Reform Bill and Free Trade may make short work with orthodoxy.

We'll have to wait and see how the Archbishop of Canterbury, et al, respond to the Kigali Commitment, but Newman predicted the direction the Church of England would go: following the Nation, the Parliament, and the zeitgeist of the age.

Preview: King Henry VIII Visits an Old Friend in Prison

On Monday, June 19, we'll discuss Henry VIII's visits to his old friend/courtier, Blessed Sebastian Newdigate, held in prison on the king's orders because he would not swear the Oath of Supremacy. It's very appropriate that we remember these events because Monday is the anniversary of Newdigate's martyrdom, along with Humphrey Middlemore and William Exmew on June 19, 1535.

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

Arrested on May 25, they had been imprisoned in Marshalsea for about a fortnight before their trial at Westminster on June 11. The three were taken before the Privy Council before their trial, refused again to swear Henry's oaths and were condemned to death. While in prison, they were chained at the neck and hand and foot against pillars, unable to move. 

While his former courtier, now a Catholic priest, was in Marshalsea, Henry VIII visited him to try to persuade to swear the oath. It's interesting that according Father Bowden, the king's method of persuasion, other than imprisonment and confinement, is similar to the line of questioning often used in this period, when the issue was the monarch's Supremacy over the Church in England: Why can't you just go along with everyone else? Why do you have a problem with the king being the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England? What makes you so special? Do you think you're better, holier, than everyone else?

As Bowden quotes the exchange: after hearing the Henry's bribes and threats, Father Newdigate replied:

In court I served your Majesty loyally and faithfully, and so continue still your humble servant, although kept in this prison and bonds. But in matters that belong to the doctrine of the Catholic Church and the salvation of my poor soul, Your Majesty must excuse me.

Then Henry VIII asked:

Art thou wiser and holier than all the ecclesiastics and seculars of my kingdom?

Father Newdigate's reply:

I may not judge of others, nor do I esteem myself wise or holy, being far short in either; only this: I assure myself that the Faith and doctrine I profess is no new thing, but always among the faithful held for Christians and Catholics. We must obey God rather than men.

Thinking of why Father Bowden assembled these Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors in 1910: it was because he knew Catholics in England then--as Catholics all over the world today--face the same question Henry VIII asked: why do you have to be different from everyone else? 

And Blessed Sebastian Newdigate answered, basing his steadfastness not on himself, but on the Truth he believed in: We must obey God rather than men, quoting the Acts of Apostles (5:29)

Father Bowden titles this memento: "The Whims of a King" with the Psalm verse: "Put not your trust in princes: in the children of men, in whom there is no salvation." (Psalm 145:2-3)

"All Is True" Isn't; Shakespeare at Home

I couldn't sleep one night last week, so I left my bed and sat down to watch TV. There I stumbled onto All Is True , Kenneth Branagh's 2018 film about Shakespeare going home after the Globe burns down, staying at home, reconciling with family, and dying there on his birthday. Of course, all in the movie is not true, but the screenwriter Ben Elton offers some theories to explain the mysteries of Shakespeare's life. The Folger Library describes some of those mysteries:

Despite new insights being revealed every year about his work and the early modern world he inhabited, the things we still don’t know about William Shakespeare would fill several internets. Though we talk a lot about Shakespeare’s genius — the richness of his language, the timelessness of his characters, the universality of his stories, and the beauty of his poetry — for my money, we don’t talk enough about his greatest achievement of all: The mystery surrounding the man himself.

We know only the barest facts of Shakespeare’s biography: Where he was born and when he died, when he was baptized, the date of his marriage, the birthdays of his children, a number of his court appearances, and a handful of real estate dealings. There are huge gaps where we know practically nothing about him (most of his first 18 years) and don’t know where he was or what he was doing (particularly the seven-year gap between 1585 and 1592). And after 400 years of searching, scholars still haven’t uncovered any of Shakespeare’s workbooks, diaries, rough drafts, or love letters written to his wife (and/or mistress) — anything that would reveal something of the man’s politics, personality, or personal feelings.

In All is True, Shakespeare is not particularly welcome at home; he's been away too long for his wife to allow him to share her bed, so he sleeps in the "second-best bed" which is prepared for visitors (and Elton uses that designation to offer some explanation for why Shakespeare wills that second-best bed to his wife Anne). He mourns his son Hamnet to the disappointment of Hamnet's surviving twin, Judith, who has a secret, while Anne and Judith share a secret about the boy's death at age 11. When Shakespeare learns their secrets, he changes and some of the wounds of the family are healed.

He doesn't seem to fit in very well in his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon either, and has some conflict with Sir Thomas Lucy, which may date from an earlier accusation of poaching. For the most part, Elton ignores the issue of religion in sixteenth century England, although Anne does remind her husband that on Sunday in their town, you'll be fined if you don't attend Church of England services. And Sir Thomas Lucy would be one of those noting whether or not you attended on Sunday at Holy Trinity Church. As William and Anne take their place in church, Lucy alludes to the fact that Shakespeare's father John had not been regular in his attendance, but Branagh's Shakespeare provides the explanation in another scene that John did not attend because of the debts he owed in town, not because he was a recusant Catholic. The main religious conflict in town is between Anglicans and Puritans, and the vicar of the church is trying to keep the peace.

But Sir Thomas Lucy was an earnest Protestant, and as the old Dictionary of National Biography explains: "He often appearedat Stratford-on-Avon as justice of the peace and as commissionerof musters for the county. As justice of the peace he showedgreat zeal against the Catholics, and took his share in the arrestof Edward Arden in 1583." Edward Arden was a relative of William Shakespeare (Mary, his mother, was an Arden). He was implicated in one of the plots against Queen Elizabeth I and as Robert Harrison in the old Dictionary of National Biography judges, he:

was a probably innocent victim of the rigorous severity adopted by the ministers of Queen Elizabeth in order to defeat the numerous Roman Catholic conspiracies in favour of Mary Queen of Scots and against the protestant sovereign. He was the head of a family that had held land in Warwickshire for six centuries from the days of Edward the Confessor downwards. His father, William, having died in 1545, Edward succeeded his grandfather Thomas Arden in 1563. He kept to the old faith and maintained in his home, Park Hall, near Warwick, a priest named Hall, in the disguise of a gardener. This man, animated with the fierce zeal of his order, inflamed the minds of the Arden household against the heretical queen, and especially influenced John Somerville, Edward Arden's son-in-law. This weak-minded young man had been greatly excited by the woes of the Scottish queen, who had given to a friend of his a small present for some service rendered her when at Coventry in 1569. He talked of shooting the Queen of England, whom he vituperated as a serpent and a viper, and set out for London on this deadly errand. Betraying himself, however, by over-confident speech, he was arrested, put to the rack, and confessed, implicating his father-in-law in his treason, and naming the priest as the instigator of his crime. All three were tried and sentenced to death. Somerville strangled himself in his cell. Arden was hanged at Tyburn (October 1583), but the priest was spared. Arden's head and Somerville's were set on London Bridge beside the skull of the Earl of Desmond. 

Interesting that the priest was spared . . . 

I enjoyed watching All is True; it's a film trying to answer some of the questions we have about Shakespeare: some things may be plausible, others not. 

One funny note: Branagh as Shakespeare never wears a hat, even when in town. I think that's so he looks like Shakespeare in the Chandos portrait!

Preview: Mementoes of Five Jesuit Popish Plot Victims

The mementoes for the next few Mondays in our Son Rise Morning Show series on the English Martyrs selected by Father Henry Sebastian Bowden are among the most dramatic so far: five Jesuit martyrs, offered a pardon while the nooses are around their necks at Tyburn Tree; one of the Carthusian martyrs, visited by Henry VIII himself while in prison; and the great Cardinal Bishop, St. John Fisher on the day of his beheading.

We'll start on Monday, June 12 with Blessed Thomas Whitebread (or Whitbread), SJ, preparing his fellow Jesuits for great suffering on the Feast of Saint James almost a year before their execution and the dramatic scene of Fathers John Gavan, William Harcourt, Anthony Turner, John Fenwick, and Whitebread himself at Tyburn on June 20, 1679. 

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here!

On page 192 of Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, Father Bowden describes the homily Father Whitebread gave on the Feast of St. James, July 25, 1678, as the Provincial Superior to the Jesuits in England. Father Whitebread had been a missionary to the Catholics in England since 1647--more than 30 years--traveling back and forth to the Continent. On one of his trips to the Jesuit college at Saint-Omer in Flanders, Whitbread met Titus Oates. Oates presented himself as a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism and as wanting to join the Jesuits. Whitbread rejected his application and told him to leave Saint-Omer. Both men returned to England.

On the Feast of Saint James, Father Whitebread expanded upon the question Jesus asked the Apostle James and John after their mother asked Him to give them special honors in His Kingdom, sitting at His right and left: "Can you drink the chalice I am going to drink? They said to him, "We can." (Matthew 20:22) Whitebread goes on to ask his congregation of Jesuits:

Can you drink the chalice? Can you undergo a hard persecution? Are you contented to be falsely betrayed and injured? . . . Can you suffer the hardships of a jail, the straw bed, the hard diet, the chains and the fetters? Can you endure the rack? . . . Can you patiently receive an unjust sentence of a shameful death?

To each question the answer is "Possumus (We can). Blessed be God."

And they did.

On his return to England as this Jesuit website explains, Titus Oates had

joined forces with Israel Tonge, whoharbored suspicions of the Jesuits' plotting against the king. Tonge and Oatesinvented the story of a plot by the Jesuits to assassinate the king, overthrowthe government and re-establish the Catholic religion. They were able topresent this accusation to the king in mid-August, 1678, but he did not findit credible. So Oates fabricated more details and presented the revisedaccusation to the king's privy council on September 27, setting into motion adeadly chain of events.

Then members of the Jesuit order, including Thomas Whitebread, were arrested, put on trial, and eventually found guilty of this treasonous and murderous conspiracy.

So that brings us to Bowden's second memento of these Jesuit martyrs, on page 197, "A Bribe Rejected". As the five Jesuits, John Gavan, William Harcourt, Anthony Turner, John Fenwick, and Whitebread had prepared themselves at Tyburn to suffer the "shameful death" of condemned traitors--with the nooses around their necks--

there came a horseman in full speed from Whitehall, crying, "A pardon! A pardon!" . . . the King granted them their lives . . . on condition of their acknowledging the conspiracy and laying open what they knew thereof. They all thanked His Majesty . . . but they knew of no conspiracy, much less were guilty of any, and could not therefore accept any pardon on these conditions. . . .

If they did, they would be lying.They could not sin to save their lives. In a way they answered the King's implied questions with "Non Possumus"--We cannot.

Bowden uses one of Our Lord's replies to Satan's temptations in the desert from the Gospel of St. Matthew as the verse for this memory of five Blessed English martyrs: "Then Jesus saith to him: Begone, Satan: for it is written, The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and him only shalt thou serve." (Matthew 4:10)

Blessed Thomas Whitbread, pray for us!

Blessed John Gavan, pray for us!

Blessed William Harcourt, pray for us!

Blessed Anthony Turner, pray for us!

Blessed John Fenwick, pray for us!

Preview: A Bishop Confessor in Elizabeth I's Reign

After our Memorial Day break, I'll be back on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, June 5 to discuss another of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors. On at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here as we (Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I) discuss Bowden's comments about Bishop David Poole or Pole of Peterborough, a Confessor (not proclaimed a saint but perhaps a martyr in chains in a cause never begun).

Bishop David Poole had a full academic and ecclesiastical career in the midst of Henry VIII's Great Marital Matters, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, although it's not clear from that source how he responded to Henry VIII's efforts to obtain a decree of nullity of his first marriage and how the king resolved that issue, but he must have taken the Oaths of Succession and Supremacy to hold the various offices listed below. Evidently, the date of his birth is not recorded, because he first

appears as a fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1520. He devoted himself to civil law, and graduated B.Can.L. on 2 July 1526 and D.Can.L. on 17 Feb. 1527-1528. In 1529 he became an advocate in Doctors' Commons. He was connected with the diocese of Lichfield, where he held many preferments, first under Bishop Geoffrey Blyth, and then under Bishop Rowland Lee. He was made prebendary of Tachbrook in Lichfield Cathedral on 11 April 1531, archdeacon of Salop in April 1536, and archdeacon of Derby on 8 Jan. 1542-3. He had previously received the high appointment of dean of the arches and vicar-general of the archbishop of Canterbury on 14 Nov. 1540.
Bishop Rowland Lee was certainly Henry VIII's man, accepting his appointment as the Bishop of Lichfield in 1534 "taking at his consecration the new oath to the king as head of the English Church and not seeking confirmation from the pope. As bishop he remained in Henry’s personal service, endeavouring to establish the legality of his marriage with Anne". Since 1533, Thomas Cranmer had been the Archbishop of Canterbury and in 1540, Henry VIII had been declared the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England by Parliament. When Poole was named an Archdeacon, the suppression of the Monasteries had begun. 
Note there's no information about his activities or offices during the reign of Edward VI at all. The 1900 Dictionary of National Biography picks up his career with this statement:
A conscientious adherent of the Roman catholic (sic) faith, he occupied several positions of importance during Mary's reign. In her first year he acted as vicar-general of the bishop of Lichfield (Richard Sampson) and commissioner for the deprivation of married priests (Strype, Memorials, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 168), and in his capacity of archdeacon he sat on the commission for the deprivation of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and the restoration of Bonner and other deprived bishops (ib. p. 36). He stood high in the favour of Cardinal Pole, said to be a relative, who appointed him his vicar-general (ib. p. 476). During the vacancy of the see of Lichfield on Bishop Sampson's death in 1554, he was appointed commissary for the diocese. In the early part of the same year he took part in the condemnation of Hooper and Taylor (ib. pp. 288, 290). On 25 April 1556 he was appointed on the commission to inquire after heretics, and to proceed against them. On the death of John Chambers, the first bishop of the newly formed diocese of Peterborough, the queen sent letters commendatory to Paul IV in Pole's favour. He was consecrated at Chiswick on 15 Aug. 1557 by Nicholas Heath [q. v.], archbishop of York.
Note that he was consecrated on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that Queen Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury both died later that year on November 17.
Father Bowden recounts Bishop Poole standing up to Elizabeth I and maintaining his loyalty to the Catholic Church. It's commonly stated that while all the bishops but one (Saint John Fisher, martyr) acceded to Henry VIII's Supremacy, all the bishops appointed during Mary I's reign refused Elizabeth I's Supremacy and Reformation Parliament actions. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle did preside at her Coronation but all 20 (twenty) of the Catholic bishops in the House of Lords voted against her Act of Settlement in 1558.
Bowden notes that by the time of Elizabeth I's accession to the throne, Poole was a chronic invalid and received permission not to attend that first Parliament. "Old as he was, he could still bear his witness", Bowden states--Poole would be at least in his 70's if he received his degree before 1520 when he became a Fellow  at All Souls. "He refused to obey Elizabeth's behest" to consecrate Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury and "he preferred deposition to taking" her Oath of Supremacy. Deprived of his office, he was allowed for a time to live in Staffordshire with a Catholic gentleman, Brian Fowler. Thomas Bentham, Elizabeth I's bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, "represented his presence as injurious to the interests of religion, and he appears to have died in the Fleet [prison] in 1568".
Father Bowden gives this memento the title "Wisdom of the Ancients" and cites Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 8:11-12: "Let not the discourse of the ancients escape thee, for they have learned of their fathers: For of them thou shalt learn understanding, and to give an answer in time of need."
So what lessons do we draw from Bishop Poole's career? While he seems to have gone along with Henry VIII's Supremacy and take-over and remaking of the Church in his image--perhaps he retired from ecclesiastical office during Edward VI's reign?--he seems to have maintained the Catholic Faith and was ready to practice it fully under Mary I and Cardinal Pole. Finally, he was willing to refuse Elizabeth I's Supremacy and remaking of the Church when she came to the throne.
God gave him another opportunity to stand fast for the "Wisdom of the Ancients", the Fathers and Councils of the Church whom St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher and others cited before him. He took it, endured the consequences, and perhaps died as martyr in chains, although that's not certain. His Dictionary of National Biography entry, cited above, says he "was 'courteously treated by all persons among whom he lived, and at last' died 'on one of his farms in a good old age,' in May or June 1568 (Heylyn, Hist. of Reformation, anno 1559; Strype, Annals, vol. i. pt. i. pp. 214, 411)."

There is a stained glass depiction of Bishop Poole in St Mary's, Wellingborough, an Anglo-Catholic parish (refusing women's ordination in the Church of England), designed by Sir Ninian Comper in the Perpendicular Gothic Style.
May he rest in peace.

Image Source: The English Convent in Bruges, Belgium

On Monday this week on the Son Rise Morning Show, we discussed Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's "Mementoes" for two Catholic Martyrs, Blesseds John Shert and Thomas Ford. I used a portrait of Blessed Thomas Ford on my preview blog post, published on Friday, May 19, which I found on his Wikipedia page. Here's some information about its source, the English Convent in Bruges, Belgium. Professor Francis Young posted some comments on his blog after he visited that site on Carmersstraat 83/85, B-8000 Brugge in August, 2015:
The Priory of Nazareth of the Augustinian Canonesses Regular of St John Lateran, to give it its full title, was founded from St Monica’s Priory in Louvain in 1629 and, with the exception of the colleges for training secular priests at Rome and Valladolid, it is the only English Catholic religious house in Continental Europe, the sole survivor of dozens of communities founded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the sons and daughters of recusants. Virtually all of the communities on the Continent went into ‘exile’ in England in the 1790s, fleeing the French Revolutionary armies (a notable exception was the Benedictine Priory of St Edmund at Douai in France, which was forced out by anti-Catholic laws as late as 1904 and is now located at Woolhampton, Berkshire). The Canonesses of the English Convent were no exception; what was exceptional was that the Bruges community, led by their redoubtable Prioress Mother Mary Augustina More (1732-1807) returned to the Low Countries after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 and have been there ever since.
I encourage you to read the rest of his post, which explains his interest in the community, the location of their exile in England, and of course, the connection to Saint Thomas More, ancestor of Mother Mary Augustina More. She was one of the daughters of Thomas More VIII and Catherine Gifford, a direct descendant in the male line of John More, St. Thomas More's only son. See this list of the descendants of the male and female lines of St. Thomas More and his first wife Joanna (Colt), beginning on page 10 for that generation of Mores.
On the English language version of the convent's website, you'll find a commentary on Saint Thomas More as one of their "Inspirers". On the French version, they cite two other sources of inspiration from the Devotio Moderna tradition, Gerard Grote and Thomas a Kempis.
As the pattern is for these English Catholic nuns in exile after the English Reformation, they had to return to England for refuge during the French Revolution--and were mostly welcomed with some sympathy for their plight. But as Professor Page points out, these nuns returned to the Continent.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Because the staff of the Son Rise Morning Show take the Memorial Day Holiday off, I will not discuss any of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's "Mementoes" on Monday, May 29. The next Preview Post will be on Friday, June 2 and the next segment on Monday, June 5!

Preview: Commentary on the Coronation on Treasures of the Faith

Tomorrow morning (Tuesday, May 23), I'll be on a radio program called  Treasures of Faith  on Divine Mercy Radio (WDMC, 920 AM) in Melbourne, Florida, 10:00 a.m. Central Time, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Listen live here; the host, Mike Gisondi, will send me a link to the podcast of the show about a week later.

AND: he did send me the link for the St. Thomas More interview we conducted in March!

Tomorrow, however, we'll be talking about the recent Coronation of King Charles III and how Catholic Liturgy and Tradition was certainly reflected in the service--down to the vestments Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Church of England prelates wore. He had to borrow them from the Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, according to this story (confirmed by Lambeth Palace, the London headquarters of the Archbishop, and a spokesman from the Cathedral) because he could not access appropriate vestments for himself and the other bishops and prelates.

Mike and I will discuss various other aspects of the event, based on some of the comments I made on the Son Rise Morning Show before the Coronation and an update I posted here.

I included the cover of my magnum--and only--opus here because this has been the theme I've been studying, reading about, talking about, and writing about for the past 15 years  or so (13 years since Supremacy and Survival was published and a few years before that as I wrote and rewrote it and searched for a publisher!). 

The theme: the long-lasting consequences for not just Catholicism but for religion in England after Henry VIII's still-crucial break from Rome. And some of those signs of healing of the break except for one crucial divide: the monarch cannot be a "Roman" Catholic!

The book is readily available from Eighth Day Books here in Wichita, Kansas! And if you want me to sign it before they send, let Warren or any of the staff know and I can easily drop by and autograph it, dedicate it, etc.

Preview: Two Martyrs from Campion's Class of 1581-1582

On Monday, May 22, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time to discuss Father Henry Bowden's "Mementoes" of two martyrs executed on May 28, 1582. Blesseds John Shert and Thomas Ford were among the 20 priests, including St. Edmund Campion, accused of conspiring against Queen Elizabeth I in the fictitious "Rome and Reims" plot.

Please listen live here at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, or check out the podcast later here.

In 1581, it was not yet Treasonous for an Englishman to return to his native land as a Catholic priest: the 1585 Act Against the Jesuits and the Seminary Priests made it easier to condemn him to death. So when 20 (twenty) priests were arrested in 1581, they had to be charged under existing treason laws. So they were accused of conspiracy, one they'd developed in meetings held in Rome and Reims. Except they hadn't formed any conspiracy, and they testified at trial that they were in England when they were supposed to be in Rome or Reims. Since the guilty verdicts were a foregone conclusion, even after Campion and others had been questioned and tortured, that didn't matter.

On page 175 of  Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, Father Henry Sebastian Bowden recounts Blessed John Shert's last words at Tyburn on May 28, 1582, with the title "Praise and Thanksgiving" and the verse "Offer to God the Sacrifice of Praise and pay thy vows to the Most High" (Psalm 49:14). Blessed Thomas Ford, who had been captured with Campion at Lyford Grange in Berkshire, was still hanging from Tyburn Tree and Shert exclaimed:

"O happy Thomas! Happy art thou that didst run the happy race! O benedicta anima! O blessed soul, thou art in a good case! Thou blessed soul, pray for me."

When he was rebuked for "praying to the dead", he continued:

"O Blessed Lady, Mother of God, pray for me, and the saints of heaven, pray for me."

Then he made an Act of Thanksgiving:

"O Blessed Lord, to Thee be all honor and praise" and rejoiced that he would die "so happy a death for Thy Sake"!

Then he was hanged, drawn, and quartered. 

As for Blessed Thomas Ford, Bowden provides some insight into the traps the authorities tried to catch him in--to prove the conspiracy--in an entry titled "The Snares of the Pharisees" with the verse "And the Pharisees watched . . . that they might find an accusation against Him " (Luke 6:7) on page 177. 

They wanted him to say that he was in England to enforce Pope Pius V's Bull Regnans in Excelsis and further the efforts of the Northern Rebellion. He answered them:

. . .  He could not reply as to the legality of the bull of Pius V against Elizabeth, as he was not privy to its circumstances . . .

. . . As to the pope's authorization of the Northern Rebellion, being a private subject, he cannot answer . . .

As Bowden notes, this questioning "was a mere pretext, and Fr. Ford saw through the device . . ."

He, like Saint John Henry Newman centuries later, was a graduate of Trinity College at the University of Oxford. As Bowden notes, Ford began to express "Catholic sympathies," and he "abjured Protestantism and went to Douay" in 1570, and returned to England in 1576. Blessed John Shert was also an Oxford man, earning his degree from Brasenose College. The Catholic Encyclopedia offers this brief outline:

Successively schoolmaster in London, and servant to Dr. Thomas Stapleton at Douai, he entered the seminary in 1576, and was ordained subdeacon. He was ordained priest from the English College, Rome, of which he was the senior of the first six scholars. He left Reims for England 27 August, 1579, and was sent to the Tower 14 July 1581.

Along with Blessed John Shert and Thomas Ford, Blessed Robert Johnson was also executed at Tyburn on May 28. 1582. Father Bowden provides a memento of his martyrdom on page 169: Father Johnson began to pray in Latin and was admonished to "Pray as Christ taught." He replied, "Do you think Christ taught in English?"

The spirit of the martyrs! Keeping their wits about them and being witty too!

Blessed John Shert, pray for us!

Blessed Thomas Ford, pray for us!

Blessed Robert Johnson, pray for us!

Saint Edmund Campion, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait of Blessed Thomas Ford in The English Convent in Bruges (NB: the long wound on his chest and the knife protruding, signifying that he was disemboweled at his execution.)