Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 232

In Search of St. John Southworth

That's the title of a DVD issued in 2011 about the Catholic martyr of the Diocese of Westminster, who is being celebrated today (since yesterday was the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus) at Westminster Cathedral. When you think about it, many people have searched for St. John Southworth--the authorities in England during the reign of Charles I and the Protectorate and those who found his body in the 1920's in France when Douai College was finally destroyed. His last words are famous:

“My faith and obedience to my superiors is all the treason charged against me; nay, I die for Christ’s law, which no human law, by whomsoever made, ought to withstand or contradict… To follow His holy doctrine and imitate His holy death, I willingly suffer at present; this gallows I look on as His Cross, which I gladly take to follow my Dear Saviour…I plead not for myself…but for you poor persecuted Catholics whom I leave behind me.

"My faith is my crime, the performance of my duty the occasion of my condemnation. I confess I am a great sinner; against God I have offended, but am innocent of any sin against man, I mean the Commonwealth, and the present Government."

Westminster Cathedral honors their diocesan martyr saint by having his remains in the Chapel of St. George and the English Martyrs and by launching a new organization in his name:

The Guild of St John Southworth will be launched between Autumn 2014 and Spring 2015. The aim of the Guild will be to build on the very valuable and important work carried out by the volunteers on the Information Desk and the current Cathedral tour guides and to welcome people to Westminster Cathedral and offer them information and guiding if they wish.

On the Cathedral facebook page, there are photographs showing preparation for several big celebrations: St. John Southworth's feast, an ordination, the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul and the anniversary of the Cathedral's dedication. It's awe-inspiring to think that the ordinands will be in the presence of the relic of a priest-martyr in London!

Book Review: The Oxford Movement Beyond Oxford

Table of ContentsNotes on contributors
Abbreviations

Introduction; Stewart J. Brown and Peter Nockles

Prelude
1. The Oxford Movement in an Oxford college: Oriel as the cradle of Tractarianism; Peter Nockles
Part I. Beyond England: The Oxford Movement in Britain, the Empire and the United States:
2. Isaac Williams and Welsh Tractarian theology; John Boneham
3. Scotland and the Oxford Movement; Stewart J. Brown
4. The Oxford Movement and the British Empire: Newman, Manning and the 1841 Jerusalem Bishopric; Rowan Strong
5. The Australian Bishops and the Oxford Movement; Austin Cooper
6. Anglo-Catholicism in Australia, c.1860–1960; David Hilliard
7. The Oxford Movement and the United States; Peter Nockles
Part II. The Oxford Movement and Continental Europe:
8. Europe and the Oxford Movement; Geoffrey Rowell
9. Pusey, Tholuck and the reception of the Oxford Movement in Germany; Albrecht Geck
10. The Oxford Movement: reception and perception in Catholic circles in nineteenth-century Belgium; Jan De Maeyer and Karel Strobbe
11. 'Separated brethren': French Catholics and the Oxford Movement; Jeremy Morris
12. The Oxford Movement, Jerusalem and the Eastern question; Mark Chapman
13. Ignaz von Döllinger and the Anglicans; Angela Berlis
14. Anglicans, Old Catholics and Reformed Catholics in late nineteenth-century Europe; Nigel Yates

Index.

Books like this so often present articles of uneven quality or even interest to the reader. After reading Romantic Catholics, for example, I was very interested in reading about French Catholics and the Oxford Movement; in that chapter (11), I learned that the same leaders of the Lamennais movements in France were anticipating a large scale conversion of Anglicans to Catholicism so that the Catholic Church would gain influence in England after the 1829 Emancipation (the same was true of Belgium).

The quality of most of these essays is very high and the authors pay attention to all the leaders of the Oxford Movement, not just John Henry Newman. And although they don't always make this distinction clear, they are often discussing the period after the Tracts ceased publication with the famous/infamous #90 and the Oxford Movement continued as a liturgical reform movement. That's the emphasis in Wales, Scotland, and Australia: the architecture, High Church liturgies, Altars, candles, incense, and other liturgical adaptations of the Book of Common Prayer, with a high view of the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, liturgical music and even processions and Benediction.

I was rather surprised that the chapter on the Oxford Movement in the United States did not mention St. Stephen's Church in Providence, Rhode Island. I visited it and have read about it--it was the very model of an Anglo-Catholic parish. I remember seeing pamphlets about the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross; daily mass was being celebrated in a side chapel when I visited once and the minister faced the altar during the canon.

Part II is a little less even in quality as the connections between German theologians and the Oxford Movement don't seem that strong. The ecumenical efforts between the Church of England and the Old Catholics were indeed facilitated by the spirit of the Oxford Movement.

As the editors note, there is no discussion of any influence of the Oxford Movement in Ireland and of course other parts of Europe are also ignored.

The prelude is one of the best essays as Nockles describes what made Oriel College the perfect breeding ground for the Oxford Movement--its classic High and Dry Anglicanism and conservative history, emphasis on Aristotelian realism, but most of all its program of tutors and its common room. The influence of tutor upon student, and tutor upon tutor, meant that friendships, combined with common interests and goals for the Church of England, built up a strong community that unfortunately was divided by the reaction to Tract 90 and the separation of friends into Catholics following Newman and Anglicans remaining with Pusey.

For a reader who knows the main history and personages of the Oxford Movement in Oxford this book is an excellent introduction to the story of its influence in the British Empire, the United States, and the European Continent.

Should I Give Philippa Gregory Another Chance?

I read The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen's Fool and found them repetitious in structure and plot devices; I refused to read The Constant Princess because she made Katherine of Aragon into a liar. Now Philippa Gregory has written a historical fiction novel that is out in the UK now (see the top cover) and will be issued later this year in the USA (see the bottom cover) in "The Cousins' War Series"--and it's about the Countess of Salisbury, Blessed Margaret Pole:

This is the story of deposed royal Margaret Pole, and her unique view of King Henry VIII’s stratospheric rise to power in Tudor England.

Margaret Pole spends her young life struggling to free her brother, arrested as a child, from the Tower of London. The Tower – symbol of the Tudor usurpation of her family’s throne – haunts Margaret’s dreams until the day that her brother is executed on the orders of Henry VII.

Regarded as yet another threat to the volatile King Henry VII’s claim to the throne, Margaret is buried in marriage to a steady and kind Tudor supporter—Sir Richard Pole, governor of Wales. But Margaret’s quiet, hidden life is changed forever by the arrival of Arthur, the young Prince of Wales, and his beautiful bride, Katherine of Aragon, as Margaret soon becomes a trusted advisor and friend to the honeymooning couple.

Margaret’s destiny, as an heiress to the Plantagenets, is not for a life in the shadows. Tragedy throws her into poverty and rebellion against the new royal family, luck restores her to her place at court where she becomes the chief lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and watches the dominance of the Spanish queen over her husband, and her fall. As the young king becomes increasingly paranoid of rivals he turns his fearful attention to Margaret and her royal family.

Amid the rapid deterioration of the Tudor court, Margaret must choose whether her allegiance is to the increasingly tyrannical king, Henry VIII, or to her beloved queen and princess. Caught between the old world and the new, Margaret has to find her own way and hide her knowledge of an old curse on all the Tudors, which is slowly coming true . . .

The author's note about her research makes me wonder, especially when I read the words with my added emphasis (in bold):

This is a novel which changed its nature, content and significance from when I started research until publication. Right up until the last stage of copy editing I was revising and adding material and characters to this dark story. I started it, thinking that it would be a relatively simple telling of the tragic story of Margaret Pole - daughter of George, Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville. George was the brother of Edward IV, probably drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine for treason against Edward and Queen Elizabeth. As the book progressed I discovered that Margaret was a central figure in the Tudor court, and probably actively involved in the endless conspiracies against the Henry VIII and his advisors. This hidden rebellion reached its peak in the uprising of the North called the Pilgrimage of Grace. The pilgrims won their aims of defending the Roman Catholic traditions and the return of the traditional advisors, but Henry reneged on his promises and sent his troops for a terrible persecution to men who held a royal pardon. Margaret, and her entire family, came under suspicion too and this novel moved far from the template of a persecuted heroine and became the story of a merciless murder of a family. Margaret's betrayer, and her defenders all come under the gaze of a king who was increasingly frightened and, I believe delusional. It's been a chilling and powerful book to write and the image of Henry VIII, composer of 'Greensleeves' beloved of primary school history, will never be the same again for me. He was a serial killer and this book traces his steps towards psychosis.

I don't think there is much evidence that Margaret Pole was "actively involved in the endless conspiracies against Henry VIII and his advisors". Her arrest and subsequent attainder and execution were mostly driven by Henry's anger with her son Reginald's "Pro ecclesiasticæ unitatis defensione", and the only "evidence" presented against her was a white silk tunic with the Five Wounds of Jesus embroidered on the back. Although devotion to the Five Wounds was a constant in England at that time, Cromwell and Henry used the presence of such an embroidered tunic as an indication of Margaret Pole's support of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Otherwise, we know that Henry did target the entire Pole family--Margaret Pole's grandson Henry (1st Baron Montagu Henry Pole's son) was held in the Tower of London until his death (possibly by starvation), Reginald was condemned in absentia (Parliament had to pass a law removing the penalty of death for his return to England in 1554 as Papal Legate).

These hints about Gregory's historical view of Margaret Pole and her family make me a little leery of her fictional presentation of this great lady's story--perhaps our local public library will have a copy when it's released and I can check it out.

WWI in the WSJ

Margaret MacMillan, author of The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 , writes about World War I in The Wall Street Journal:

What is harder to pin down and assess are the war's long-term consequences—political, social and moral. The conflict changed all the countries that took part in it. Governments assumed greater control over society and have never entirely relinquished it. Old regimes collapsed, to be replaced by new political orders. In Russia, czarist autocracy was succeeded by a communist one, with huge consequences for the rest of the century.

The scale and destructiveness of the war also raised issues—many of which we still grapple with today—and spread new political ideas. President Wilson talked about national self-determination and making the world safe for democracy. He wanted a League of Nations as the basis for international cooperation. From Russia, Lenin and his Bolsheviks offered a stark alternative: a world without borders or classes. The competing visions helped fuel the Cold War, which ended just 25 years ago.

Before 1914, Russia was a backward autocracy but was changing fast. Its growth rate was as high as any of the Asian tigers in the 1960s and 1970s; it was Europe's major exporter of food grains and, as it industrialized, was importing machinery on a massive scale. Russia also was developing the institutions of civil society, including the rule of law and representative government. Without the war, it might have evolved into a modern democratic state; instead, it got the sudden collapse of the old order and a coup d'état by the Bolsheviks. Soviet communism exacted a dreadful toll on the Russian people and indeed the world—and its remnants are still painfully visible in the corrupt, authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin.

The war also destroyed other options for Europe's political development. The old multinational empires had their faults, to be sure, but they enabled the diverse peoples within their boundaries to live in relative harmony. Both Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans were trying to work out ways of encompassing the demands of different groups for greater autonomy. Might they have succeeded if the war had not exhausted them to the point of collapse? We will never know, but since then, the world has suffered the violence and horrors of ethnic nationalism.

The armistice of 1918 ended one gigantic conflict, but it left the door open for a whole host of smaller ones—the "wars of the pygmies," as Winston Churchill once described them. Competing national groups tried to establish their own independence and to push their borders out at the expense of their neighbors. Poles fought Russians, Lithuanians and Czechs, while Romania invaded Hungary. And within their borders, Europeans fought each other. Thirty-seven thousand Finns (out of some 3 million) died in a civil war in the first months of 1918, while in Russia, as many as a million soldiers and many more civilians may have died by the time the Bolsheviks finally defeated their many opponents.

The war had brutalized European society, which had grown accustomed during the largely peaceful 19th century to think that peace was the normal state of affairs. After 1918, Europeans were increasingly willing to resort to other sorts of force, from political assassinations to street violence, and to seek radical solutions to their problems. The seeds of the political movements on the extremes of both the right and the left—of fascism and communism—were sown in the years before 1914, but it took World War I to fertilize them.

Read the rest here. The WSJ also has stories about women on the home front, the poets of WWI, how WWI led to the Great Depression, the end of the British Empire, and warfare--plus some book reviews.

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist and Elizabeth I's 1559 Act of Uniformity

Today is the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist. Only two other birthdays are celebrated on the Church Calendar: The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Otherwise, saints and blessed are remembered on the dates of the deaths (or perhaps the "translation" of their remains or some other important date--not usually their birthdate). The saint's day of earthly death is the beginning of their eternal life in Heaven. This site offers the reason for honoring St. John the Baptist on his birhday--because he was cleansed from Original Sin, baptised as it were, when Mary visited her cousin Elizabeth and he leapt in his mother's womb when the unborn Jesus in Mary's womb came near him. St. Augustine pointed to this understanding of St. John the Baptist's holy birth.

(St. John the Baptist has another feast, that of his Beheading, on August 29, and a friend of mine pointed out that the Orthodox churches honor St. John the Baptist even more often: September 23 —Conception of St. John the Forerunner; January 7 — The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner; February 24 — First and Second Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; May 25 — Third Finding of the Head of St. John the Forerunner; June 24 — Nativity of St. John the Forerunner, and August 29 — The Beheading of St. John the Forerunner!)

Devotion to St. John the Baptist is ancient in the Church and his Nativity was celebrated with a vigil and with bonfires on the feast. This site points out a pilgrimage site in Norfolk before the English Reformation demonstrating devotion to the saint as a martyr, as it had a replica of the head of St. John the Baptist. The image was destroyed at some point during the Reformation, of course.

The provisions of Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity of 1559 all took effect on this feast:

Where at the death of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI there remained one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies in the Church of England, which was set forth in one book, intituled: The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of Sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies in the Church of England; authorized by Act of Parliament holden in the fifth and sixth years of our said late sovereign lord King Edward VI, intituled: An Act for the uniformity of common prayer, and administration of the sacraments; the which was repealed and taken away by Act of Parliament in the  first year of the reign of our late sovereign lady Queen Mary, to the great decay of the due honour of God, and discomfort to the professors of the truth of Christ's religion:

Be it therefore enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the said statute of repeal, and everything therein contained, only concerning the said book, and the service, administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies contained or appointed in or by the said book, shall be void and of none effect, from and after the feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist next coming; and that the said book, with the order of service, and of the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies, with the alterations and additions therein added and appointed by this statute, shall stand and be, from and after the said feast of the Nativity of St. John Baptist, in full force and effect, according to the tenor and effect of this statute; anything in the aforesaid statute of repeal to the contrary notwithstanding.

St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, Prophet and Martyr, pray for us!

In Wichita, Kansas tonight, at Blessed Sacrament Church, Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite will be celebrated at 19:00 hours! (7:00 p.m.)

Image credit: (public domain) Birth of St John the Baptist by Artemisia Gentileschi c. 1635

Saints Fisher and More on the Son Rise Morning Show

Since yesterday (June 22) was the usual date of the feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More and the Fortnight for Freedom began on Saturday (June 21), I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to discuss these two great martyrs--a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern Time.

You may listen on your local EWTN Radio affiliate--or on line here.

Book Review: A Journey Through Tudor England

While my husband and I visited Columbus, Ohio last week we went to The Book Loft of German Village where I purchased Suzannah Lipscomb's A Journey Through Tudor England even though Hilary Mantel endorsed it (I'm only kind of kinding). From the publisher, Pegasus Books:   For the armchair traveler or for those looking to take a trip back to the colorful time of Henry VIII and Thomas Moore (sic), A Journey Through Tudor England takes you to the palaces,castles, theatres and abbeys to uncover the stories behind this famed era. Suzannah Lipscomb visits over fifty Tudor places, from the famous palace at Hampton Court, where dangerous court intrigue was rife, to less well-known houses such as Anne Boleyn’s childhood home at Hever Castle, or Tutbury Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned. In the corridors of power and the courtyards of country houses, we meet the passionate but tragic Katheryn Parr, Henry VIII’s last wife; Lady Jane Grey, the nine-day queen; and come to understand how Sir Walter Raleigh planned his trip to the New World. Through the places that defined them, this lively and engaging book reveals the rich history of the Tudors and paints a vivid and captivating picture of what it would have been like to live in Tudor England. Lipscomb selects her locations very carefully: the site or building has to have a crucial Tudor connection--to an event or a person important to the era--and there has to be something to see that will help the Tudor traveller, armchair or not, understand both the significance of the location and of the person or event. She selects 50 locations and restricts herself to England proper (not even going to Wales). Although she provides an appendix of "Opening Times and How to Get There" I think the book serves as background to certain sites rather than a guidebook--it lacks a map. Also, except for sketches at the beginning of each chapter of the building or ruin (formerly Catholic sites like abbeys and shrines) there are few illustrations and none of the portraits mentioned in certain chapters are reproduced in the book--but the reader can search for them online, I suppose. Here's a sample of the contents of the book. The author has her bona fides: as Kirkus Review notes: Lipscomb (Early Modern History/Univ. of East Anglia; 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII, 2009) combines her credentials as historian/TV presenter/author to give us a thorough history/guided tour of the Tudors. She also has her theories and biases, and because she is presenting history in this rather unsystematic way, there are lapses in detail. Starting with the latter, she mentions that neither Henry VIII or Mary attended Katherine of Aragon's funeral at Peterborough Cathedral--but does not clarify that Mary wanted to attend and Henry forbade her. That's an important detail. Lipscomb also sides with those who select 1501 rather than 1507 for Anne Boleyn's year of birth which I think makes little sense if Henry wanted a younger woman to bear him a healthy son and heir. Why would he marry a 32 year old woman? See Gareth Russell's blog on this issue. Although Lipscomb mentions only "Protestant martyrs" in her introduction (p. 2), she actually dedicates much more ink to the Catholic martyrs during Henry VIII's and Elizabeth I's reigns: the Carthusians of the Charterhouse, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, St. Edmund Campion, St. Robert Southwell, and St. Henry Walpole. While she explores a Catholic safe house (Harvington Hall) and thus discusses Catholic dissent from the established Church of England, she does not present an example of Puritan dissent from Elizabeth I's incomplete reformation of that via media. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I receive the lion's share of attention, although Lipscomb's treatments of Henry VII and Mary I are balanced and fair--Edward VI is a little slighted. Of Henry's six wives of course Anne Boleyn dominates--but Lipscomb offers a convincingly sympathetic analysis of Anne of Cleves. This was an entertaining book offering a different angle on familiar Tudor history. I think a reader would need to know more about Tudor history, however, to have the proper line of sight for this angle.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Sts. John Fisher & Thomas More, and the Fortnight for Freedom

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in most dioceses of the United States of America, the feast having been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. On the sanctoral calendar, it is the feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, two of the greatest and best known of the Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation. It is also the memorial of St. Alban, the first English martyr. Quite a combination of events--but wait, there's more!

In the United States we are observing another Fortnight For [Religious] Freedom from June 21 to July 4, our Independence Day. In the last two years, Fisher and More have really been emblems of the struggle for religious freedom in the U.S. as the Catholic Bishops, many Catholic and non-Catholic organizations have worked against HHS contraceptive, abortafacients, and sterilization mandates. This year the focus is "on the freedom to serve the poor and vulnerable in accord with human dignity and the Church's teaching."

So how to put it all together? The Solemnity of Corpus Christi, obviously, is the most important event today--all three martyrs would say so themselves. To focus on the two English Reformation martyrs, referenced so prominently during the Fortnight for Freedom in 2012 and 2013: St. John Fisher, clearly as a priest, bishop, and cardinal of the Catholic Church, was ordained to celebrate the Sacraments, especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The feast of Corpus Christi, with its special office written by St. Thomas Aquinas, the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, and the English people's great love and devotion to the Real Presence was part of his life. He wrote apologetic works defending the priesthood, the Mass, and the Real Presence against the teachings of Martin Luther and Oecolampidus.

St. Thomas More spent the last years of his life, from the time he resigned as Chancellor of England and retired to his study at Chelsea, meditating on the Holy Eucharist and on the Passion and Death of Jesus. He also wrote to defend the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence against the Protestant reformers attacks while he was Chancellor.

Indeed, the man who sent the holy bishop and his former friend also defended the Real Presence. Henry VIII, even though he separated himself and his country from the universal Catholic Church, continued to defend the Church's teaching about the Holy Eucharist. Even as he sentenced Sts. John Fisher and St. Thomas More to death, commuting their sentences from being hung, drawn, and quartered to being beheaded, he had those who denied the Real Presence sentenced to being burned alive at the stake.

Reflecting on the focus of the Fortnight for Freedom, "on the freedom to serve the poor and vulnerable in accord with human dignity and the Church's teaching", these two martyrs also demonstrated their dedication to service and charity. St. John Fisher was also renowned for his personal poverty and simple life combined with his great efforts to help the poor of his diocese--materially and spiritually. The great project of his life was to improve the education of priests and the quality of their preaching, so that the Church could serve the flock of Christ more effectively and completely.

As a layman, husband, and father, St. Thomas More took no vows of poverty--although he had considered a vocation as a Carthusian in the Charterhouse on London--but he fulfilled the usual obligation of a layman to give alms and help the poor. Since the great work of his public life was the administration of justice, More was renowned for his fairness, incorruptibility, and impartiality in dispensing justice and following the law to those rich or poor.

There is much to meditate on today about this great feast and these great martyrs. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show tomorrow morning to talk about St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More (after the  7:45 a.m. Eastern news update). The date of their shared feast, June 22, is the commemoration of St. John Fisher's martyrdom. Henry VIII had no good choice of a date on which to execute this great holy man: the symbolism of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, to whom the bishop of Rochester had compared himself in his defense of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, loomed in the days after his trial and condemnation (June 24)--and the vigil of that feast, June 23 was just as bad, as was the Octave after--so Henry's choice was June 22, the feast of the first English martyr, St. Alban.

Edward VII and the Catholic Church

 My frequent correspondent Edward Short, whose books about Newman and abortion I have reviewed on my blog and elsewhere, reviewed The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince for The Weekly Standard . In it, he comments:
One corollary of Bertie’s continental savoir-faire was his marked distaste for many of his compatriots’ prejudices, especially their anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism. At the same time, he was adamant about respecting the different traditions of his subjects: When his first sea lord, Admiral Fisher, marveled at his concern for the health of the socialist firebrand Keir Hardie, Bertie responded, “You don’t understand me. I am the King of all the people.”

Edward VII, according to some other sources, had several Catholic and Jewish friends, and demonstrated both some interest in Catholicism and some good common sense about Anglican-Catholic relations. He attended a Requiem Mass for the King of Portugal, Carlos I, after his assassination in 1908, at the Portuguese Embassy Chapel. The Archbishop of Westminster, Francis Bourne, seated the King and Queen Alexandra rather prominently in the chapel and the Protestant Alliance said that Edward VII had violated his coronation oath to the Defender of the (Protestant) Faith.

Both The Telegraph and The Catholic Herald published stories in the lead up to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to Scotland and England about Edward VII even being received into the Catholic Church of his deathbed, like Charles II. From The Telegraph :

Edward was known for his Catholic sympathies. He had tried to change the Coronation service to keep out anti-Catholic remarks. As Prince of Wales, he had visited Pope Pius IX three times. When guests at Marlborough House were unwell, Fr Forster would bring the Sacrament to them, and the Prince would meet him at the door, conducting him upstairs with lighted tapers to the sick-room.

More detail from The Catholic Herald:

What about King Edward VII? We certainly know that he had strong Catholic sympathies. He expressed his detestation of the Protestant declaration in the coronation service, involving an oath against Transubstantiation. He was a champion of Catholic equality and attended many Masses, where it is reported that “he would stand in the sanctuary following every detail, missal in hand, with attention, veneration, and respect”. Moreover, he had no particular friends among the Anglican bishops, but was a close friend of the famous Catholic preacher Fr Bernard Vaughan SJ; also, of Henry Duke of Norfolk, and of such as the Abbot of Tepl and the Marquess de Soverall.

As Prince of Wales he visited Pope Pius IX three times and later became the first English king since the Plantagenets to cross the threshold of the papal palace in Rome to visit Leo XIII. He gave money for the upkeep of at least one Catholic church and the last big religious function he attended was the Blessed Sacrament procession at Lourdes, where he entered the grotto and apparently prayed at La Roque church. . . .

Well, Paul Cambon, the French ambassador at the time of the King’s death, was summoned by Queen Alexandra to pay a final friendly visit to the King as he lay dying, and noticed a Catholic priest leaving his bedside. According to Gerard Noel, the former editor of The Catholic Herald, Cambon noted in his memoirs that he knew the priest by sight, but not by name.

There is evidence that the priest may have been Fr Forster himself. A member of the same family, Dr Lavinia Braun-Davenport, has stated that in her family tradition she was “brought up with the knowledge that my grandmother’s great uncle, Fr Cyril Forster, had converted the King of England to Catholicism on his deathbed”. The king was Edward VII. The suggestion is that Fr Forster was taken by Sir Ernest Cassel , a close friend of the King and a Catholic convert himself (from Judaism), to see the sovereign as he lay dying. It is claimed that Edward there accepted the Catholic faith. There seems to be no doubt that Fr Forster was one of the King’s visitors on his last day. Dr Braun-Davenport’s grandmother left a note saying that Edward’s conversion was “a ‘family secret’ – the Old Rake’s Repentance”!

Interesting and intriguing . . .

Report on the Mass in London with the Portuguese Ambassador

A month ago, I posted on this special event, Mass at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory, the Ordinariate parish in that part of London to honor the Portuguese Ambassador to the Court of St. James. The Ordinariate has now reported on the event here:

Several pews were filled with Portuguese children and adults dressed in colourful regional costumes; the music featured works by Portuguese as well as English composers and some of the prayers were in Portuguese.

Also present at the Mass were His Most Eminent Highness Fra' Matthew Festing, Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, who is an honorary vice-president of the Friends of the Ordinariate, and His Excellency Fra' Ian Scott of Andross, Grand Prior of the Priory (Order of Malta) of England.

The church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory - which was dedicated to the life of the Ordinariate in 2013 - was built in the late eighteenth century on the site of a Catholic chapel which had served the Portuguese Embassy earlier that century, at a time when Catholic churches were not generally permitted in London.

The Mass, for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, was celebrated by the Rt Revd Monsignor Keith Newton, Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, who explained in his sermon that embassies built during those penal times - when Catholics were excluded from public life - provided a refuge for English Catholics at their time of need.The embassies, he said, provided priests and opportunities for Mass, which exceeded the particular needs of the Embassy staff. At one point, there were no fewer than five chaplains serving the Portuguese Embassy.

Mgr Newton went on: "I assume they did this because they shared a common faith, were in communion with their Catholic brothers and sisters and expressed that in a tangible way, which was entirely legal but also providential. That idea of communion with each other across the Catholic Church is at the very heart of what we celebrate today; our belief that we worship God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit".
Read the rest here and view pictures here.