umblepie

'The Rosary' by Frances Caryll Houselander (1901-1954)

2012-01-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

Frances Caryll Houselander
- mystic, poet, artist, writer
(1901 - 1954)

The Rosary

In the doorway of a low grey house,
built of stones as old as the Crusades,
a woman of Bruges sits in the sunlight,
among the flowers, saying her Rosary.

She seems to be carved out of season walnut

and polished smooth
by the constant touch of the hand of God,
and the beads that twine her crippled fingers
are scarlet berries on the thorny twigs.

The running rhythm
and the repetition
of the Paters and the Aves
is like the rhythm that in nature
moves through the seasons
from seed to harvest
with the unity
and the pause and stress
of music;
like the bloodstream of Christ,
that flows through the seasons
from Advent to Easter
in the Liturgy of the Church,
the ebb and flow of the tide of love
in the Mystical Body of Christ.

II
God has given His children strings of beads,
as we give strings of beads to our children,
to teach them to count.

We do not say,
“Learn from these the doctrine of numbers,
the measure of human life,
the dream of Pythagorus,
counting the pulse of the world.”

We do not say
to a child with a string of beads,
“learn the perfection of reason in mathematics.”

We say,
“Learn to count on the beads,
small for your hands to hold,
bright for your eyes to see.”
And he begins,
slowly,
with one, two, three:
the spark is kindled
to light the flame of philosophy.

God has counted in fifteen Mysteries,
on the fingers of human creatures,
the singleness of the Undivided Love,
the simplicity
that we cannot comprehend
because our hearts are divided.

III
We are not all vessels of gold,
lifted up in virginal hands,
empty chalices to receive
from the perfect vine
love,
absolute
and complete.

But the old woman of Bruges
is a round bowl,
lifted up to be brimmed
with pure wine.
and the Mysteries of the Rosary
concern familiar things
known in her own life.

Her mind, like a velvet bee
droning over a rose,
gathers the honey of comfort
from the story of God,
familiar as the things in her kitchen –
the shining pots and pans,
the milk in the jar of earthenware,
and the flags of the scrubbed floor.

The story told by the Rosary
is the story of primitive beauty,
true as the burden of folk- songs.
It is a song piped on the hills,
by a shepherd calling his sheep.

IV
The cradle of wood,
the wood of the cross;
from cradle to cross,
like a lullaby;
the wail of an infant,
lost on the wind –
the arms of a girl
in a circle of love,
rocking to rest;
a woman’s arms
in a circle of love,
the young Man dead
on His Mother’s breast.

The jewels that glow
low in the grass
on the feet of Christ,
risen from death,
touching the flowers
and touching the dust,
even in glory.

The dust of the earth
on the feet of God,
walking the soft blue meadows of stars.

V
In the doorway of a low grey house,
built of stones as old as the Crusades,
a woman of Bruges
sits in the sunlight, among the flowers,
saying her Rosary.

The story of Mary is her own story,
and her son was her life’s joy
and her life’s sorrow;
and for ever
her son is her life’s glory.

In a field in Flanders,
among the red poppies, he is sleeping:
he will sleep soundly
until the day of resurrection.

She has still the patchwork quilt
made, when her hands were nimble,
for the wooden cot:
now he is sleeping, and each year
he has a new coverlet
of delicate young grass,
and at the end of his cot
a wooden cross.

The cradle of the wood,
the wood of the cross:
from cradle to cross,
like a lullaby.

The story of the woman of Bruges
is the world’s story.
it is the story
of human joy and sorrow,
woven and interlaced,
like the blue and crimson thread
in a woven cloth:
the story of birth and death,
of war and the rumours of war
and of peace past understanding,
peace in the souls that live
in the life of Christ.

In the doorway in Bruges,
sitting among the flowers,
her mind like a velvet bee
droning over a rose,
taking the honey of comfort
out of the heart of Love,
the old woman is nodding
over her Rosary.

She has lived her meditation,
like the Mother of God,
living the life of Christ:
let her sleep in Christ’s peace.

VI
Under the loud din
of the tramp of metallic feet
in the armed march of time,
like a river moving
under the dark hills,
the everlasting life
is flowing, eternally.

The measured beat of love,
with pure perfection of music,
timing the life of Christ
in the human heart
goes on.
     Frances Caryll Houselander


*********************

'Frances Caryll Houselander was born in Bath, England, on Sept 29, 1901, the second of two daughters. She was not expected to survive for more than a day, and was immediately baptized, given the name ‘Frances’ after her uncle, a gynaecologist who helped deliver her, and ‘Caryll’, after the yacht on which her mother had spent the last months of her pregnancy!
She went on to survive her first day, and indeed many more after that, though her health continued to be poor throughout her life.
When she was 6 years old, a family friend persuaded her mother to have the children baptised in the Catholic faith. Although little formal religious education followed her reception into the Church, her mother encouraged a deep sense of piety and devotion in the home, and Frances, a devout child, made her first confession and Holy Communion when she was just seven years old.
Two years later, her world was shattered when her parents separated. Though they were never divorced, the separation was to be a permanent one. For the next several years, she changed homes and schools, never fully settling in one place before she was moved to the next.
Her erratic health led her doctors to advise that she avoid all class work, and, by the time she returned home in 1917, her formal education was virtually non-existent. During her years in the convent schools, she experienced three religious visions, which led to a personal and absolute conviction that she had been called by Christ to give recognition to the reality of His loving Presence and Image in all people, particularly the suffering and poor of this world, and to convey the realisation and awareness of this to all those with whom she came into contact, personally and through her writings. Frances had a great affinity with young children, and during her life wrote and illustrated children's books, always revealing a simple delight in the love of God and His creation.
When the war ended, she attended art school and it was during this period that she drifted from the Catholic Church. She explored the Orthodox Church among others, but found them all wanting, and craving for peace of soul and longing for the Sacraments, she returned to the Catholic Church; she was then twenty-four years old.
Advised to concentrate on her writing, she began to write articles and illustrate for the ‘Children’s Messenger of the Sacred Heart’, often on an unpaid basis. Her work ultimately led to her making the acquaintance of the Catholic publishers, Sheed and Ward, who were subsequently to become the major publishers of her many books.
Always willing to open her home and her heart to those in need, she was frequently physically and emotionally overwhelmed by those who sought her advice, yet she remained reluctant to turn people away.
Msgr. Ronald Knox, a contemporary, and admirer of Houselander, recognized her tremendous gift of insight, and was later to say, "She seemed to see everything for the first time, and the driest of doctrinal considerations shone out like a restored picture when she had finished with it."
Her popularity and success in healing the hurts and the hearts of many can be measured by the support of such eminent physicians as Dr. Strauss, later President of the British Psychological Society, who sent patients to her. His explanation was that "she loved them back to life".
Her impact, both literary and personal, was due above all, to the intensity of her vision of the suffering Christ, a vision she expressed with utter sincerity and immediacy and, on occasion, with breathtaking luminosity. Indeed, she can best be described not just as a writer, nor even just an artist, but as a mystic and a visionary, even in the tradition of Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, or Teresa of Avila, which would explain how she was able to communicate so directly and movingly to her large reading public, and accounts for her extraordinary success in counselling British and foreign children who had been traumatized by the war.
Not gregarious by nature, she nevertheless radiated gaiety and a sense offun; her wickedly funny tongue often provoking as much hilarity among herintimates as it caused her remorse.
She was unquestionably a genuine mystic whose frailties were transformed into real strength and whose neuroses became the means whereby she was able to join her sufferings with Christ on the cross.It was as though her burning love of God overflowed for the refreshment of all who came in contact with her.
"She seemed to possess a well that never ran dry for anyone but herself. She gave of her food to feed the hungry, her time to counsel those in need, her energy to write countless letters, articles and books, and ultimately her health for the health and well-being of others. She spent years attending to the rigorous demands of her ailing parents, and, having been plagued by ill health her entire life, had become accustomed to pain and slow to address her own physical ailments. Her lack of self-concern, however, which extended to everything from her looks, to her diet, her sleep, her health, her living quarters, etc., took its toll."
During her last years, she worked tirelessly to complete books, write letters, strengthen the works of charity she had begun, and minister to the many mentally ill children who were sent her way'
  She died on October 12, 1954, from breast cancer.
"The wonder of Frances Caryll Houselander is found in her humble willingness to suffer with Christ, tolet Him transform her flawed and sinful nature into a divine work of art."

Ack. Karen Lynn Krugh / Catholic Culture.org
Ack. Margot H. King - currently working on biography for Peregrina Publishers.
Ack. Robin Maas - Caryll Houselander, an appreciation.
www.ewtn.com/library

                      *******************************

Books by Caryll Houselander

SPIRITUALITY
"Guilt"
"The Reed of God"
"This War is the Passion"
"The Stations of the Cross"
"The Passion of the Infant Christ"

AUTOBIOGRAPHY
"A Rockinghorse Catholic"

ANTHOLOGIES
"The Mother of God"
"A Rockinghorse Catholic"

BIOGRAPHY
"Caryll Houselander: That Divine Eccentric" by Masie Ward

St Teresa of Avila - 'a wandering, disobedient and quarrelsome woman'

2011-12-21T13:45:00.000-08:00

I never tire of reading the Letters of Pope John Paul I (Albino Luciani), published as ‘Illustrissimi’ by Collins in 1978.
The letters were written when the author was Patriarch of Venice, and were published as ‘open letters’ in the Italian Christian paper ‘Il Messaggero di Sant’ Antonio’, and addressed to various individuals, some fictional, some historical. He writes to legendary figures, to important scientific, historical and literary people, to characters from their books, plays, operas and poems, to saints, and even to Christ Himself.

*************

St Teresa of Avila - the mystic

St Teresa of Avila, a Spanish Carmelite nun, born 1515 died 1582, came from a rich, noble family, becoming a Carmelite nun at the age of 21 years, and eventually succeeding in reforming her Order, restoring it to its original austerity. In his letter to St Teresa, Pope John Paul I has this to say:-

Dear St Teresa,
Anyone who looks at Bernini’s famous marble group, in which he depicts you pierced by the seraph’s arrow, will think of your visions and ecstasies. And rightly so: the mystical Teresa, rapt away in God, is a true Teresa.
But there is another Teresa, one I like better. A Teresa of everyday life, who experiences the same difficulties as we do and who skilfully surmounts them; who can smile and laugh and make others laugh; who moved about the world with great self-possession and lived through the most varied events, helped by her many natural gifts but even more by her constant union with God.

When the Protestant Reformation broke out, the situation of the Church in France and Germany became critical. It saddened you Teresa, ‘If I could have saved a single soul among the many lost there, I would have sacrificed my life a thousand times’ you said, ‘but I am a woman’.

A woman! But one worth twenty men, who left no method untried, and managed to carry out splendid internal reforms and influence the whole Church with her work and writings.

You were a woman who spoke out frankly, dear Teresa, and wrote in a polished, cutting style. Although you had a very elevated idea of the mission of nuns, you wrote to Father Graziano: ‘For the love of God, be careful what you do! Never believe nuns, because if they want something they’ll try every possible means to get it.’ And to Father Ambrose, refusing a postulant, you said: ‘You make me laugh when you say you know her soul just by seeing her. It’s not so easy to know women!’

Yours was the perfect definition of the devil: ‘That poor wretch, who cannot love.’

To Don Sancho Davila you wrote: ‘I have distractions too, in reciting the divine office. I confessed it to Father Dominic, who told me to take no notice. I say the same to you, because it’s an incurable disease.’ This was spiritual advice, but you were very free with advice of all kinds. You even advised Father Graziano to make his journeys on a better-tempered donkey, one without the bad habit of tossing friars to the ground; or else to have himself tied to the donkey to avoid tumbling off.

But when the time came to do battle, you seemed unconquerable. The papal nuncio, no less, had you shut up in the convent at Toledo, declaring you to be ‘an unquiet, wandering, disobedient, and quarrelsome woman.’ But from your convent the messages you sent to Phillip II, and to princes and prelates, sorted everything out.
Your conclusion was this: ‘Teresa on her own is worth nothing; Teresa and a penny are worth less than nothing; Teresa, a penny and God can do everything.’

St Teresa of Avila - a spiritual and practical leader

To me, you are a remarkable example of something that keeps turning up regularly in the Catholic Church.
Women don’t rule in the Church – that’s a function of the hierarchy, but very often they inspire, promote and sometimes direct. On the one hand the spirit ‘blows where it will’; on the other, women are more sensitive to religion than men and more capable of giving themselves generously to great causes. This means that a great many women saints, mystics and foundresses have been recognised in the Catholic Church. There are also women who led religious movements, and influenced a very wide range of people.

Marcella, a noblewoman who directed a kind of convent of rich and cultivated patricians on the Aventine, collaborated with St Jerome in translating the Bible.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century Madame Acarie influenced distinguished people such as the Jesuit Coton, Friar Canflet, St Francis de Sales and many others, and thus had an effect upon the whole of French spirituality at the time.
Princess Amalia Gallitzin, who was appreciated even by Goethe, spread a current of intensely spiritual life through the whole of northern Germany.
Sophia Swetchine, a Russian convert in the early nineteenth century, turned up in France and became the ‘spiritual directress’ of all kinds of people, lay and clerical.
I could cite other examples, but I will come back to you, Teresa, who were not so much the daughter as the spiritual mother of St John of the Cross and the first reformed Carmelites.

Today there are no problems in the Carmelite Order, but in your day there was the row I mentioned earlier.
You were on one side, full of charismatic gifts, and of ardent luminous strength given to you for the benefit of the Church; on the other stood the papal nuncio, or rather the hierarchy which had to judge the authenticity of your gifts. At first, on the basis of distorted information, the nuncio decided against you. Once he had things explained to him and had examined them better, everything was cleared up, the hierarchy approved, and your gifts were able to expand in the service of the Church.

Today we hear much about charismatic gifts and the hierarchy, but allow me to take the following principles from your works. First; the Holy Spirit is above everything, ultimately ensuring the unity of the Church. Second; Charismatics and the hierarchy are both necessary to the Church, but in different ways. The former act as accelerators, favouring progress and renewal, with the latter using the brake, in favour of stability and prudence. Third; the role of each sometimes overlap and even conflict, but since the hierarchy has to regulate all the main stages of ecclesiastical life, charismatics cannot, with the excuse that they have visions, remove themselves from its guidance.And fourth and last; Charismatic experiences are not anyone’s private reserve; but it is one thing to be able to have visions, and quite another to actually have them.

Dear St Teresa, if only you could come back today, the word ‘charisma’ is squandered. All kinds of people are known as ‘prophets’, even the students who confront the police in the streets, or the guerrillas of Latin America. People try to set up the charismatics in opposition to the pastors. What would you say– you who obeyed your confessors, even when their advice turned out to be the opposite of that given to you by God in prayer?

Pope John Paul I - author of 'Illustrissimi'

Don’t think I'm a pessimist. I hope this business of seeing visions everywhere is just a bad habit that will pass. On the other hand I know that the authentic gifts of the Spirit are always accompanied by abuses and false gifts. And the Church has gone on just the same.

In the young Church of Corinth, for instance, visionaries flourished. St Paul was rather worried about it because he’d found some abuses. Later these abuses became more noticeably aberrant.
Two women, Priscilla and Massimilia, who supported and financed Montanism in Asia, began by preaching a moral awakening ‘charismatically’; this involved great austerity, the total renunciation of marriage, and absolute readiness for martyrdom. They ended by setting up new prophets against the bishops. These men and women, ‘filled with the spirit’, preached, administered the sacraments, and waited for Christ, who was to come and inaugurate the new kingdom of heaven at any moment.

In the time of St Augustine we find Lucilla of Carthege, a rich lady whom Bishop Ceciliano had scolded because she used to press a small bone of some martyr to her breast before Communion. Hurt and angry, Lucilla induced a group of bishops to oppose Ceciliano. They failed to establish their point in Africa, but protested successfully to the Pope, then to the Council at Arles, finally to the Emperor himself. A new Church began. In nearly all the cities of Africa there were thus two bishops, and two cathedrals frequented by two opposing categories of the faithful, who, when they met, came to blows. Catholics on the one hand; the followers of Donato and Lucilla on the other.

Donato’s followers called themselves ‘the Pure’. They never sat down in a place previously occupied by a Catholic without first cleaning it with their sleeve. They avoided the Catholic bishops like the plague, appealed to the Gospel against the Church, which they said was supported by the authority of the Emperor, and set up assault squads.

In the seventeenth century, there were the nuns of Port Royal. One of their abbesses, Mother Angelica, had started well: she had ‘charismatically’ reformed herself and the monastery, keeping even parents out of the cloister. She had great gifts and was born to rule, but she became the soul of Jansenist resistance, intransigent to the last in the face of the ecclesiastical authorities. Of her and of her nuns it was said that they were ‘as pure as angels and as proud as devils’.

How far all this is from your spirit, Teresa! What a gulf between these women and you! ‘Daughter of the Church’ was the name you loved best. You murmured it on your death-bed; while in life you worked hard for the Church and with the Church, even accepting a certain amount of suffering from the Church. Couldn’t you teach some of today’s ‘prophetesses’ a little of your method?

St Teresa of Avila - daughter of the Church

"Christ has no body now, but yours.
No hands, no feet on earth, but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ looks compassion into the world.
Yours are the feet
with which Christ walks to do good.
Yours are the hands
with which Christ blesses the world."
(St Teresa of Avila)

'A Common Catholic Looks Back' by David Read

2011-11-20T14:33:00.000-08:00

This post is a reminder of the shock and dismay bordering on despair, experienced world-wide in the years immediately following Vatican II, by thousands of devout and loyal Catholics, at the debasement of so much of the liturgy of the Church; the brutal alteration some would say desecration, of so many beautiful churches; the unjust treatment by certain bishops of priests who dared criticise; the disastrous relaxation in the rules and dress of Religious; the adoption of a false ecumenism seriously weakening the primacy and Divine authority of the Church, particularly applicable to schools, with great loss of young souls to the Faith; the abandonment of Catholic musical tradition; the list goes on.

This personal anguish and holy anger is manifest in the writings of David Read, notably in his poems, ‘A Common Catholic Looks Back’, printed privately between 1976 and 1981.
In his writings David Read laments the rupture in the tradition and liturgical practices of the Catholic Church following Vatican II.

Since 2007, with the 'Summorum Pontificum', of Pope Benedict XVI, the traditional Latin Mass has enjoyed a gradual, but perceptable re-emergence in many countries, although still experiencing hostile opposition in many powerful ecclesiastical quarters. This will undoubtedly dissipate as intolerant modernist Bishops retire or die, and more obedient Bishops, loyal to the Magisterium, take their place. Although progress is slow, it is happening and I believe it will accelerate over time. David Read will be encouraged, as are many Catholics, by the words and actions of Pope Benedict XVI re-asserting the importance of tradition in the Church and the unequivocable right of all priests to say the traditional Latin Mass at any time.

The Transfiguration of Christ (Andre Ivanov)

The following is just a small selection of David Read's poems, all protected by copyright.

PREFACE

Sweet Catholic lady, honoured Catholic man,
I crave your pardon, writing as I can.
If some poor words of mine offend,
Forgive me pray, for I do not intend to shock.

Upon my rude interior is laid
A thin veneer of culture, and is made
A poetaster in some humble wise,
Of rough-hewn lump,(although in gentle guise), of rock.

Please be assured, before the work’s begun,
My cruder words are never used in fun;
They break from me when silly men annoy;
When shepherds, by their foolishness, destroy their flock.

So read my lines, and do not me condemn:
They may be hard, but hurt love lives in them.
A little warmth, when they have read their fill,
Perhaps from some cold hearts may still unlock.

(c)David Read

BLAME THE TEACHERS

Not far from where you live my friend, exists a Catholic school,
And four times out of five my friend, so-called progressives rule
The school is much the same my friend, as others round about;
No stress put on R.E., my friend, morality left out.

The modern teaching ways, my friend, are different you’ll see,
From those in your young days, my friend, no simple A.B.C.
The Faith is changed as well, my friend, the old books in the bin.
Humanities they sell, my friend, and let’s not talk of sin.

“O” levels head the list, my friend, and mammon must be paid,
So something must be missed, my friend, when timetables are made.
D’you search your daughter’s mind, my friend, to find out what she’s heard?
Her faith’s a different thing, my friend, from yours, in thought and word.

Does your son know the Creed, my friend? And what the phrases mean?
They may not feel the need, my friend, on the progressive scene.
You’ll blame the teaching staff, my friend, for failing to supply
A steadfast Catholic life, my friend, and ask the reason why.

They’ll all be wrong but you, my friend, when your kids go astray.
There’s nothing you could do, my friend, to teach them how to pray.
But when you go up there my friend, your soul is opened wide,
St Peter strips you bare, my friend, there’s nowhere left to hide.

Responsibility, my friend, for generations more
God gave to you and me, my friend, to even up the score.
He will not say, “Hard luck, my friend, the teachers have to pay.”
No passing of the buck, my friend, for us on Judgement Day.

So take a long hard look, my friend, at what is on the slate;
For wrong must be forsook, my friend, before it is too late.

(c)David Read

St George slaying the dragon (Raphael)

NEW CHURCH

This the new church, Father? Just wait a while,
In a few moments I’ll get back my smile.
Yes, it’s impressive; mod-art? Is that true?
(Looks like a concrete and brick public loo).

Let’s go inside, tell me, which is the door?
Nice purple carpet you’ve got on the floor.
But first of all, I must just say a prayer.
Oh yes, the Sacrament’s right over there.

Where? Oh I see, in this hole in the wall.
(Wouldn’t have known You were here, Lord, at all).
Cross made of chipboard and nails, very nice;
Three thousand pounds? Very cheap at the price.

Got to be with it, and artists come dear,
Look at the Stations, they’re all over here.
This is the confessional? Oh sorry, no,
That’s where the new amplifiers will go.

Must you be off, Father? See you again.
Phew! Now he’s gone, this a church? What a pain!
Look round the walls, not a statue in sight,
Stained glass that looks like two dogs in a fight.

Altar just like a juke-box on a stand,
Everything spiritual must have been banned.
Who paid the money for this monstrous fraud?
Were we so bad,You allowed it, O Lord?

(c)David Read

BELSHAZZAR

M odernism, well, what’s in a name?
E verybody likes to feel they’re in the game.
N o-one wants to be the odd man out.
E ven popes and prelates join the silly rout.

M eaningful is what it all must be.
E xpert planning worship now for you and me.
N evermore the truth shall be the guide.
E nd the dogmas, let’s all join the winning side.

T heologians change the basic facts.
E levations soon will be symbolic acts.
K eep the answers from the people’s eyes.
E nd their questioning with sweet and crafty lies.

L ove your neighbour first is what you do,
U nder modern thinking, God is number two.
F irst, though, come to think, is always me:
A fter me, the neighbour, God is number three.

R ise and shine, and sing and dance and shout!
S peak up loud, That’s what the Mass is all about.
E nd the fasting, feast in solemn state.
N ow, the Medes and Persians live within the gate!

(c)David Read

POST SCRIPTUM

Almighty God and Father of mankind
Before you here, I humbly bend my head.
Forgive the pain that honest men may find
In these poor rhymes, and words that I have said.

Be merciful, O Giver of all gifts;
Such talent as you gave I wish to use
To help to heal the ever-spreading rifts
Caused by the power that your priests abuse.

Emotion’s voice, Lord, I try not to heed
With small success, for souls are cast away.
My conscience, which the priests told me would lead,
Speaks in a muddled tone, and err I may.

His hands are black, who dares the pitch to touch;
But who loves greatly is forgiven much.

(c)David Read

Resurrection of Christ (Coypel)

NITTY GRITTY

Responsibility belongs to each of us alone,
Salvation still demands, you personally shall atone.
No standing up together shouting “We believe” will do,
The final nitty-gritty for your soul depends on YOU.

c) David Read

                                           ******************************

Finally a thought from St Alphonsus:-

"If beggars do not receive the alms they ask they do not cease asking; they return to ask again.
If the master of the house does not show himself any more, they set to work to knock at the door.
This is what God wishes us to do: to pray, and to pray again, and never to leave off praying"

'Oboedientia et Pax' - Blessed Pope John XXIII (1881-1963)

2011-10-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was born on 25 November 1881 in the Bergamo province of the Lombardy region of Italy. He was fourth in a family of thirteen, and the first born son. His family worked as ‘share-croppers’, and although poor, could trace their heritage back to Italian nobility who had fallen on hard times.

He received his First Communion aged seven years, and was confirmed the following year. He was a pupil at the minor seminary of Bergamo from 1892-1895, followed by a period at the major seminary until 1900. He then attended the main Roman seminary, the Apollinare, and after a break of twelve months for compulsory military service, was ordained priest in 1904 . The following year he was appointed secretary to Mgr Radini Tedeschi, Bishop of Bergamo, retaining this position until 1914.

During World War I he was drafted into the Royal Italian Army, responsible for co-ordinating religious assistance to the troops, and appointed Military Chaplain to the reserve hospital at Bergamo. Discharged in 1919 he was then appointed as Spiritual Director to the diocesan seminary at Bergamo.

Fr Roncalli (3rd rt. back) with Bishop Radini Tedeschi

In 1925 Pope Pius XI appointed him Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria, and in 1935 he was appointed as Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece.
In 1944 he was appointed by Pope Pius XII as Apostolic Nuncio to France, and in 1953 Patriarch of Venice and made a Cardinal.
On 28 October 1958 he was elected Pope following the death of Pope Pius XII.
He called the 2nd Vatican Council (1962-1965) but did not live to see it to completion, dying in June 1963.
He was beatified on 3 September 2000.

Bishop Roncalli (front left) - late 1930's?

From 1895 he kept a written record of his life, in the form of spiritual notes, in which is revealed that which he kept ‘a jealously guarded secret behind his smiling and innocent gaiety’: his prayer, his soul. In fact it contains notes, resolutions, meditations written on the occasion of various retreats and Spiritual Exercises from 1895, when the author was barely fourteen, until 1962, a few months before his death at the age of eighty-one.
These notes, many written at night, by the light of an oil lamp, were recorded in bundles of dog-eared papers and crumpled copy-books, which were kept always close at hand, and over the years were re-read many times. In the spring of 1961, Pope John handed these notes to Mgr Loris Capovilla, an old and trusted friend, who asked him whether he might publish them. The Pope agreed somewhat reluctantly, for whilst recognising the potential world-wide interest in his diaries , he was sensitive to the personal and intimate spiritual matters revealed in their pages, and he thus stipulated that they were not to be published until after his death.
'I was a good boy, innocent, somewhat timid. I wanted to love God at all costs and my one idea was to become a priest, in the service of simple souls who needed patient and attentive care. Meanwhile I had to fight an enemy within me, self-love, and in the end I was able to get the better of it....Now, at a distance of more than sixty years, I can look upon these first spiritual writings of mine as if they had been written by someone else, and I bless the Lord for them.” (Pope John XXIII) speaking to Mgr Loris Capovilla.

Pope John XXIII ( b.1881-d.1963)

'It has been suggested that initial perusal of ‘Journal of a Soul’ might leave a feeling of disappointment in the reader. The book could be adjudged as literal and formalistic piety .... a piety centred more on human contrivance than on the word of God, one that puts its trust in an exasperating profusion of wire entanglements, instead of that freedom based on familiarity with Sacred Scripture, the liturgy and writings of the Fathers; yet this was the kind of spirituality that produced Pope John. This rigorously constructed spirituality was based on the letter of the law, but within it lived and from it soared a great conception. Spiritual techniques degenerate if they remain purely mechanical, that is, isolated from all noble inspiration. On the other hand no great conception can be realized without a rule, without a discipline.
There is evidence in Pope John’s ‘Journal’, of a powerful and exalted evangelical impulse which dominated his whole existence. Holy simplicity, the awareness of man's failings, scrupulous moderation and reserve, sensitivity, and above all, the will to aspire to the fullness of Christ, shine through his words. The ‘Journal’ records constant, yet gradual growth in understanding and knowledge of God’s purpose, reflected in both his personal life and ecclesiastical office. The formal framework becomes less rigid, the letter yields more and more to the spirit.' (Fr Giulio Bevilacqua 1964)

'oboedientia et pax'

Coat of Arms, Cardinal Patriarch of Venice,
- the words 'oboedientia et pax' inserted by Cardinal Roncalli, describing them as - 'in a way, my own history and my life'.

‘After having skimmed through the doctrine of various ascetical authors, I am now quite content with the Missal, the Breviary, the Bible, The Imitation and Bossuet......my spiritual life must be intensified. No overloading with devotions of a novel and secondary character, but fidelity to those which are fundamental, with passionate fervour ....gathering speed as I near the end.’(John XXIII Pp.)

‘Journal of a Soul’ is an interesting and fascinating account of the life of Pope John, deeply spiritual-often intimately so, always sincere and sympathetic to human frailty. Unlikely to be read in one sitting, but essential reading for those interested to learn more about Blessed Pope John XXIII. The book includes several appendices relating to specific events and devotions particularly dear to Pope John, also a copy of a letter written by him to his brother Severo, some 18 months before the Pope’s death, a letter described as a 'spiritual testament to all the Roncalli family', which reflects his great love of God, the Church, and his family. Below are some extracts:-

My dear brother Severo,
Today is the feast of your great patron saint, who bore your own real Christian name, which is Francesco Zaverio, the same as that of our dear great-uncle, our ‘barba’, and now happily, the name of our nephew Zaverio.
..... I used to enjoy typing so much and if today I have decided to begin again, using a machine that is new and all my own, it is in order to tell you that I know I am growing old - how can I help knowing it with all the fuss that has been made about my eightieth birthday? – but I am still fit, and I continue on my way, still in good health ..... For the present at least I can continue in the service of the Lord and Holy Church.
This letter which I was determined to write to you, my dear Severo, contains a message for all, for Alfredo, Giuseppino, Assunta, our sister-in-law Caterina, your own dear Maria, Virginio and Angela Ghisleni, and all the members of our large family, and I want it to be to all of them a message from my loving heart, still warm and youthful. Busied as I am............ I cannot forget the members of my dear family, to whom my thoughts turn day by day.
.......Now the great manifestations of reverence and affection for the Pope, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, are at an end and I am glad, because rather than receive the praises and good wishes of men, I prefer to enjoy the mercy of God who has chosen me for so great a task and who, I trust, will uphold me until the end of my life.
...... You are very wise to keep yourselves very humble, as I too try to do, and not let yourselves be influenced by the insinuations and tittle-tattle of the world. All the world wants is to make money, enjoy life, and impose its own will at all costs, even with violence, if this should unhappily seem necessary.
My eighty years of life completed tell me, as they tell you, dear Severo, and all the members of our family, that what is most important is always to keep ourselves well prepared for a sudden departure, because this is what matters most: to make sure of eternal life, trusting in the goodness of the Lord who sees all and makes provision for all.
I wish to express these sentiments to you, my beloved Severo, so that you may pass them on to our closest relatives.... wherever they may be..... Go on loving one another, all you Roncallis, with the new families growing up among you........I like to remember the names of those among you who have most to bear: dear Maria, your good wife, bless her, and the good Rita who with her sufferings has earned paradise for herself and for you two, who have cared for her so lovingly, and our sister-in-law Caterina, who always makes me think of her Giovanni and ours, who look down at us from heaven - and all our Roncalli relations....
I am well aware that you have to bear certain mortifications...... to have a Pope in the family, a Pope regarded with respect by the whole world, who yet permits his relations to go on living so modestly, in the same social conditions as before! But many know that the Pope, the son of humble but respected parents, never forgets anyone; ...... and a Pope does not honour himself by enriching his relations, but only by affectionately coming to their aid, according to their needs and the conditions of each one.
At my death I shall not lack the praise which did so much honour to the saintly Pius X: ‘He was born poor and died poor.’
I always keep by my bedside the photograph that gathers all our dead together with their names inscribed on the marble: grandfather Angela, ‘barba’ Zaverio, our revered parents, our brother Giovanni, our sisters Teresa, Ancilla, Maria, and Enrica. Oh what a fine chorus of souls to await us and pray for us! I think of them constantly. To remember them in prayer gives me courage and joy, in the confident hope of joining them all again in the everlasting glory of heaven.
I bless you all, remembering with you all the brides who have come to rejoice the Roncalli family and those who have left us to increase the happiness of new families, of different names but similar ways of thinking. Oh the children, the children, what a wealth of children and what a blessing!
Joannes XXIII Pp.
Vatican. December 1961.

Ack. 'Journal of a Soul'
Published by Four Square Books,
New English Library,1966

'Blessed Pope John XXIII, pray for the Church, especially for those who have strayed'

Essential Reading - 'Our Father's House' - h/t 'Countercultural Father'

2011-09-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

A very few lines to recommend a wonderful post on the 'Countercultural Father' blog-site, entitled 'Our Father's House - a Short Fable ....'
http://ccfather.blogspot.com/
- don't miss it!! Thank you Ben Trovato!

Cricket is such a Simple Game

2011-08-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

Lords Cricket Ground

The summer of 2011 has been an eventful one. In spite of economic doom and gloom, civil unrest, natural disasters around the world, et al., one event will forever be recorded in the annals of sporting history, namely the achievement of the England cricket team , under the captaincy of Andrew Strauss, in attaining the no.1 spot in the World Cricket League. Their magnificent victories this summer against India, previously the top team, crowned their achievement in Australia last year, when they defeated the home country to retain the Ashes.
Regrettably the cricket season will soon be over, with football ‘mania’ encroaching ever deeper into the summer months, historically the preserve of the ‘gentleman’s’ game. However, cricket lovers need not fear, for nothing can match the special pleasure of playing in, or watching a cricket match on a summer’s day in our 'green and pleasant land'. The unique sound of ball against bat, or ball striking the stumps, the pleasure of watching a skilled batsman or bowler practising their craft, the air of peace and tranquillity, the often beautiful surroundings; ‘ah those were the days’ says he reminiscing, and happily still ‘are the days’ and will ‘continue to be the days’, for generations to come.

Village Cricket

Some years ago a kind friend gave me a copy of ‘The Cricketer’s Bedside Book’, edited by R Roberts. and published by B.T.Batsford Ltd (1966), a fascinating anthology of cricket events, personalities, and anecdotes. Contributors include such legendary cricketers as Colin Cowdrey, Richie Benaud, Alec Bedser, Mickey Stewart, Wally Grout, Gary Sobers, and others , also those forever associated with this great sport, such as John Arlott, E.W.Swanton, and Brian Johnston.
There are numerous amusing anecdotes - contributed by Brian Johnston, some reproduced below, which reflect the light-heartedness and a certain ‘esprit de coeur’, shared by the vast majority of cricket lovers; N.B. a miniscule knowledge of the rules of cricket and cricketing terms is recommended, although not absolutely essential!

****************************

In a Lancashire match a fast bowler was bowling on a bad wicket, and the opening batsman – who shall be nameless- had to face a number of terrifying deliveries. The first whizzed past his left ear; the second nearly knocked his cap off; and the third struck him an awful blow over the heart. He collapsed and lay on the ground – then after a minute or two got up and prepared to strike again. The umpire asked him if he was ready. He replied, ‘Yes, but I would like the sight-screen moved.’
‘Certainly’, said the umpire. ‘Where would you like it?’
The batsman replied, ‘About half-way down the wicket between me and the bowler.’

***************************

Alec Skelding was umpiring a match in which the bowler had a complete set of false teeth. As he delivered a particularly fast ball all his teeth dropped out. The ball hit the batsman on the pad, and the bowler turned round and mouthed un-intelligible noises. Alec quick to see what had happened, said, ‘I beg your pardon, I cannot tell what you say.’ The bowler tried again but Alec still pretended he could not distinguish the words, so the bowler stooped down, recovered his dentures covered in dust, replaced them and turning round, said, ‘How’s that?’
‘Not out’, said Alec.

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In a match against Gloucestershire Brian Close was fielding at forward short-leg with Freddie Trueman bowling. Martin Young received a short ball which he hit right in the middle of the bat. It hit Close on the right side of the head and rebounded to first slip, who caught it.
Close seemed none the worse, but when he returned to the pavilion at the next interval someone asked him: ‘That was a terrible blow; aren’t you worried standing so near? What would have happened if the ball had hit you slap between the eyes?’
‘He'd have been caught at cover,’ replied the indomitable Yorkshire captain.

***************************

The Nottinghamshire Club and Ground used to play an annual match against a local village club, and the club’s captain, feeling very sure of his side’s strength, warned the Nottinghamshire secretary that he had better send a strong team this year, otherwise they were ‘in for trouble’. He got what he asked for, and Harold Larwood was a member of the strong side that came from Trent Bridge. The village club batted first, and their opener was a huge, massive ‘village blacksmith’ who took guard and settled down to face the great Larwood. The first ball was a typical thunderbolt. It shaved the off-stump and landed viciously in the gloves of the wicket-keeper standing very well back’
As the ball looped its way back from wicket-keeper to bowler, via slip, cover and mid-off, it was noticed that the massive batsman had not moved a muscle. His brawny arms still held the bat firmly in the block-hole, his menacing crouch was unchanged and his eyes were still fixed firmly on the far end of the wicket. A second Larwood thunderbolt, again whistling past the off stump, had the same effect: not a move, not even the flicker of an eyelid from the vast and massive batsman. As the third ball was delivered the umpire’s arm was flung out and his shriek of ‘No ball!’ echoed round the ground. For the first time the batsman unbent. He strained ponderously upwards, turned to first slip and confided, ‘’E couldn’t fool me, I knew ‘e never ‘ad one all the toime!’

**************************

Finally, cricket is such a simple game:-

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.

Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.

When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.

Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.

There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

What could be more simple?

STORM AT SEA

2011-07-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

"Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." (John X, 37-38)

*******

‘It had been a hard day, the last of a series of hard days. The weight of the burthen was pressing on Him heavily; the future was dark, and He knew it would be full of storm. It is easy, with all this, to understand the spirit which impelled His next movement. He was with His Twelve, in the cottage by the shore. In the streets outside, and along the water’s edge, many of the people still hung about, squatting in their little groups and discussing far into the night the events of that day; others had settled down to rest here and there, wrapped from head to foot in their blankets. He must get away, if only for a night and morning. The old desire to be alone at times was never long absent from Him; He must get away, and give Himself a few hours of peace. He turned to the fishermen; He looked towards the lake. The moon was up, there was a gentle ripple on the water.

'Let us go over the water', He said,

‘To the other side of the lake’.

It was a welcome order. These men had already learnt, and they were yet to learn more and more, what a different, what a wholly precious possession Jesus was when He was with them alone. In His company, when His heart would soften towards them, and He was with them as He was with no others, how different life became! Then they felt they had power; then they would do any deed, brave any danger, without so much as giving it a thought; then they would ‘do all things in Him who strengthened them’. So it was on this occasion. Characteristically, with not a little noise and demonstration, they went out into the streets; pompously they bade the remnant of the people disperse. With their new-born authority they bustled about, and without more ado, without thought of further preparation, they escorted the Master to the shore.

‘And sending away the multitude

They take Him even as He was to the ship’.

There were several of their boats lying in. One was chosen for Him; they scrambled in after Him and put out into the lake.

Let it be remembered that the Lake of Galilee is about fourteen miles long from north to south, and about six miles across at its broadest part, which is opposite Genesareth and Magdala. It lies more than seven hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and is skirted on east and west by mountains, which shut it in as between two walls. On the north and south are open plains, though these too lie between mountain ridges. Through the plain on the north the Jordan flows into the lake, on the south it creeps out again, to make its way to the Dead Sea. From this it will be seen that a wind, especially a north wind, comes down upon the lake as through a tunnel, the mountains on either side confining it, the lower level of the lake’s surface giving the wind greater force. Even a slight breeze, as may be seen almost any evening, will soon raise a ripple; a gale, coming down this tunnel on a sudden, will stir a storm in a very short space of time.

The objective for the boatmen that night was Gerasa, a village, or rather valley, on the opposite shore. It lay somewhat south of Capharnaum, opposite Magdala, and therefore the trip would have been about six miles, in a south-easterly direction, but much more east than south. A wind coming down the tunnel from the north would have caught the boat almost broadside; hence, even without a storm, a sudden gust of wind might easily have brought danger with it.

These fishermen were accustomed to be out in their boats at night, therefore the darkness in itself had no fears for them. Nevertheless we have many indications, some of which prevail to this day, that they did not care to cross the lake at night; they feared the sudden winds that might catch them, especially in the springtide of the year. When the darkness came upon them they preferred to moor where they were and wait till morning.

It was a quiet hour when the little boat put out. As it left the shore the lamp swung at the prow, its light reflected on the water. From behind them as they rowed a few lights glimmered, marking the long line of habitations from Bethsaida to Capharnaum and beyond. Here and there a pariah dog barked, one answering another. At a distance, on the outskirts of the town, a band of foraging jackals could be heard, with the laugh of a hyena added to their shrill yelping. Once in a way a cock crew, and another replied, a striking feature of an eastern night. For the rest all was silence, a silence only the more emphasized by these cries. The boatmen submitted to the spell. They went about their work saying nothing; if they had to speak they spoke in low whispers. As soon as they had got away they put up their little sail, and nothing now was heard but the swish of the water around the vessel, and the creak of a mast as the sail yielded to the wind or the guiding rope. In the stern, on the boards between the sides of the ship, Jesus lay down. A rough cushion had been found for His head, and almost immediately He was fast asleep. This must have been so, from the very nature of the voyage. Jesus, the Son of God, was asleep, like any child, rocked in the cradle of the bark of Simon.

For a time all went well, and the boatmen settled down contented. The breeze from the north filled the sails, and before daybreak they would be at Gerasa. They relieved each other at the sheet and the rudder; for the rest they, too, settled themselves to sleep. But no sooner had they left the shelter of the shore than trouble began to arise; a mile out, or a little more, and they caught the full force of the wind coming down the upper valley. The wind grew stronger, the cold air falling on the lake following the heat of the day, provoked it to a gale. Rapidly it increased, the sail became difficult to control; the route they were taking, almost due east till they could come under the shelter of the mountains opposite, exposed them to the full force of the storm on their side; they were in imminent danger of capsizing. Presently the waters began to rise; first an ominous splash of spray flew across the deck, then a wave curved over the edge and a stream of water ran down to the stern. Wave followed wave and the ship began to fill.

Evidently there was serious danger, just the danger which none of the fishermen living on those shores ever cared to face. They had come on board without a thought; the excitement of the day had made them forget that at this spring season the lake was particularly treacherous. Besides He had asked them to take Him away by boat, and that had driven every objection from their minds. But now they were anxious; anxious for themselves, and anxious for Him. He was asleep and wholly in their keeping, so soundly asleep that neither the howling of the wind nor the splashing of the water nor the creaking of the vessel could awaken Him; they had only one another to consult and were in a dilemma. To put back to Capharnaum was now impossible; they dared not attempt to turn the boat round. Their only hope was to run down the lake before the wind, or to keep on their course trusting that they might yet reach shelter; in either case they knew their condition was perilous.

Still the storm increased. Soon the boat was utterly beyond control; neither sail nor rudder could be governed. It was filling fast, a little more and it must go down, even if it did not capsize. The men began to lose courage; presently they lost their nerve; in a few minutes they were as helpless little children, seeking succour anywhere. And yet through it all He was lying there, fast asleep. As they clung to the sides and the thwarts they looked at Him where He lay. They loved Him, that none could deny; still there began to creep over them the feeling that if He were awake, if He knew all the trouble around them, all would cease. There came a little resentment; while they were in such danger, while they were doing for Him all they could, and that at His own bidding, He was apparently indifferent, unconscious of it all. They could endure it no longer; they were at the last extreme; they dropped sheet and rudder, they let the vessel go where it would. In a panic they crept along the deck to where He lay, and began to cry in one voice:

‘Master

Does it not concern thee

That we perish?

Lord save us

We perish.’

Instantly the sleeping Jesus opened His eyes. Through the noise of the storm which drowned every sound, He nevertheless heard their appeal; what the clamour of the elements had failed to do, their cry succeeded in doing, and He awoke. At once He took in the scene; the howling wind above, the ship filling with water, the frightened men clinging to His feet. He made no delay; He made no show; He acted as though it were an affair of every day. These were His Twelve, His own, and for them there must be no terms, or formalities, or conditions. He stood up where He was; He stretched out His arm to the wind, looking at it, speaking to it, rebuking it, as if it were a thing of life. He turned to the water lashing round Him, as a master would turn to a barking hound.

‘Peace, be still,'

He said; no more.

The obedience was instantaneous. The wind ceased; there was a dead calm on the surface of the water. The battered sails hung listlessly above the masts; the boat rocked gently up and down, to and fro and from side to side, staying where it was, as if it rested after a heavy struggle. The men crouched still beside Him; for the moment they were paralysed. They had come to Him expecting succour. If only He were awake among them they had felt they would be safe, but they had never expected anything like this. They had feared the storm, but now fear of a new kind crept over them. They did not know what to say or think.

Meanwhile Jesus looked down upon them where He stood. They did not yet recognise what He had done. He had worked this wonder, not for the multitude, but for His own, His Twelve. He had worked it in their own vessel, where He was always with them. He had worked it under conditions which, by all the laws of nature, were hopeless. He had worked this wonder, and He had worked it for them; why did they not see? But the time would come when they would. If that day He had begun to speak to the people in parables, that night He had begun to act in parables to them. One day they would read its meaning and would know that so long as He was with them in the boat, not till the end of time would any storm, would the gates of hell itself, be able to prevail against them.

All this they would one day understand, but at present they were only little children. They had much yet to learn, and as little children He must continue to teach them, now drawing them gently on, now with seeming sternness urging them. He would seize this moment for the latter. True they had been in trouble and come to Him; true they had appealed to Him for help. All this showed faith, and He loved them and in His heart thanked them for it. But He wanted more, He for ever wanted more, and not till He got that more could He be content. So He would rebuke them; gently He would urge them; He would stir them to things yet greater, to faith that would ride over every storm. He said:

‘Why are ye fearful

O ye of little faith?

Have you not faith in you yet?

Where is your faith?’

The men awoke from their paralysis. The boat was still, and if they would reach Gerasa by morning they must take to their oars. He seemed not to need them any more, He wished them to return to their labour. They stepped down the deck and settled to their tasks, each man in his place. But as the boat began again to move forward, as the late moon rose above the hills and streaked the waves with silver, they would whisper in awe to one another:

‘What manner of man is this?

Who is this, think you,

That he commandeth both the winds and the sea

And they obey him?

It was indeed another discovery, a new revelation of this Man who had already won their hearts and their allegiance. It would not now be long before they would find for themselves a full answer to their question, even on the very spot where they were then sailing, and under not unlike conditions.’

From - ‘The Public Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ’ - An Interpretation. By Archbishop Goodier S.J. Published by Burns, Oates & Washbourne 1934

(‘The Storm at Sea’ – ref. Mathew VIII, 18, 23-27; Mark IV, 35-41; Luke VIII, 22-25.)

'Garden of the Soul' by Bishop R. Challoner - a Spiritual Gem

2011-07-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

My wife has in her possession a copy of the prayer book ‘Garden of the Soul’ -

‘a manual of Spiritual Exercises and Instructions for Christians who, living in the world, aspire to devotion‘ - written by Bishop Richard Challoner, first published in 1740, and reprinted without alteration in 1741.

This prayer book, published in 1945 by Burns Oates and Washbourne, reproduces the text of the 1741 impression almost in its entirety. In June 1953, a copy of this, in lieu of the standard King James Bible, was given to all Catholic children attending non-Catholic schools in the Nottingham diocese, to commemorate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. At the time my wife was one of a number of Catholic children attending Scunthorpe Grammar School.

This little prayer book is an absolute spiritual gem, containing all that a Catholic needs to know concerning the essence and practice of the Faith; which of course was the reason why Bishop Challoner wrote it.

Bishop Challoner was very devoted to St Francis de Sales, and reproduced in the ‘Garden of the Soul’, ten meditations from the latter’s famous ‘Introduction to a Devout Life’.

I take this opportunity to reproduce the meditations on ‘Hell’ and ‘Heaven’ which illustrate the simplicity and power of St Francis’ writing, and the pastoral concern of Bishop Challoner in choosing to include such guidance for his scattered and persecuted flock.

The Seventh Meditation - On Hell

Preparation

1.Place yourself in the presence of God.

2.Humble yourself and implore His assistance.

3. Represent to yourself a dark city, all burning, all stinking with pitch and brimstone, and full of inhabitants who cannot get out..

Considerations.

1. The damned are in the depth of hell, as within this woeful city, where they suffer unspeakable torments, in all their senses and members; because as they have employed all their senses and members in sinning, so shall they suffer in them all the punishments due to sin. The eyes for lascivious looks shall be afflicted with the horrid vision of hell and devils. The ears for delighting in vicious discourses shall hear nothing but wailings, lamentations, desperate howlings; and so of the rest.

2. Besides all these torments there is another greater, which is the loss and privation of God’s glory, from the sight of which they are excluded for ever. Now if Absolom found it more grievous to him to be denied the seeing the face of his father David, than to be banished; O God, what a grief it will be, to be for ever excluded from beholding thy most sweet and gracious countenance!

3. Consider above all the eternity of these pains, which above all things makes hell intolerable. Alas! if a flea in your ear, or if the heat of a little fever make one short night so long and tedious, how terrible will the night of eternity be, accompanied with so many torments? From this eternity proceeds eternal desperation, infinite rage, and blasphemy.

Affections and resolutions.

1. Terrify yourself with the words of the prophet Isaiah. ‘O my soul, art thou able to live for ever in everlasting flames, and amidst this devouring fire? Wilt thou forfeit the sight of thy God for ever?’

2. Confess that you have deserved hell, yea oftentimes. From henceforth I will take a new course; for why should I go down into this bottomless pit? I will therefore use this or that endeavour to avoid sin, which only can bring me to this eternal death.

Give thanks. Offer. Pray - Pater, Ave, Credo.

The Eighth Meditation - On Heaven

Preparation

1. Place yourself in the presence of God.

2. Beseech Him to inspire you with His grace.

Considerations

1. Consider a fair and clear night, and think how pleasant it is to behold the sky

all spangled with that multitude and variety of stars: join this now with the beauty of as clear a day, so as the brightness of the sun may no ways hinder the lustre of the stars nor moon; and then say boldly, that all this put together is nothing in comparison with the excellent beauty of the heavenly paradise. Oh! how this lovely place is to be desired! Oh! how precious is this city!

2. Consider the glory, beauty, and multitude of the inhabitants in this blessed country; those millions of millions of angels, cherubim, and seraphims! Those troops of apostles, prophets, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and holy matrons. The number is innumerable. O how blessed is this company! The meanest of them is more beautiful to behold than all this world: what a sight then will it be to see them all! But, O my God, how happy are they! They sing continually harmonious songs of eternal love; they always enjoy a constant mirth; they interchange one with another unspeakable contentments, and live in the comfort of a happy and indissoluble society.

3. In fine, consider how blessed they are to enjoy God, who rewards them forever with his lovely aspect, and by the same infuses into their hearts a treasure of delights: how great a happiness it is to be united everlastingly to the sovereign good. They are there like happy birds flying and singing perpetually in the air of his divinity, which encompasses them on all sides with incredible pleasure. There everyone does his best, and without envy sings the Creator’s praise. Blessed be thou forever, O sweet and sovereign creator and redeemer, who art so bountiful to us, and dost communicate to us so liberally the everlasting treasures of thy glory: blessed be you for ever, says He, my beloved creatures, who have so faithfully served me, and who now shall praise me everlastingly, with so great love and courage.

Affections and Resolutions

1. Admire and praise this heavenly country. O how beautiful art thou, my dear Jerusalem! and how happy are thy inhabitants.!

2. Reproach your heart with the little courage it has had hitherto, in wandering so far from the way of this glorious habitation. O why have I strayed so far from my sovereign good? Ah! wretch that I am, for these foolish and trivial pleasures have I a thousand times forsaken eternal and infinite delights! Was I not mad, to despise such precious blessings for so vain and contemptible affections?

3. Aspire now with fervour to this delightful habitation. O my gracious God, since it has pleased Thee at length to direct my wandering steps into the right way, never hereafter will I turn back. Let us go, my dear soul, let us go to this eternal repose: let us walk towards this blessed land that is promised us: what have we to do in this Egypt? I will therefore, disburthen myself of all such things as may divert or retard me in so happy a journey: I will perform such and such things as may conduct me to it.

Give thanks. Offer. Pray- Pater, Ave, Credo.

**************

I have found it surprisingly difficult to obtain an acceptable copy of ‘Garden of the Soul’, although presumably many editions were published. I have tried the major booksellers on the internet but so far, apart from contemporary re-print editions, without success. Although it is essentially a ‘prayer-book’, it has unique historical and socio-religious implications due to its role in ensuring the very survival of the Catholic faith in England in the 18th century. For this reason particularly, I will continue to search for a suitable, preferably older copy, to remind myself of the great debt that we owe to Bishop Challoner and other courageous and caring Catholic pastors in an aggressively Protestant 18th century Britain.

**************

Of your charity please pray for the repose of the soul of Mrs Edna Farrell, of Dawlish, Devon, who died recently aged 92 years. Fortified by the Rites of Holy Church. May she rest in peace.

'Pro-life' government appointments - very good news.

2011-05-31T15:22:00.000-07:00

It is very good news to learn that ‘Life’ has been invited by the government to join its ‘Expert Advisory Group on Sexual Health’, and also that ‘Life’ and other pro traditional-family organisations are included as founder members of the government’s new ‘Sex and Relationships Education Council’. Warmest congratulations to, and prayers for, these pro-life and pro-family organisations, and indeed all those engaged in the pro-life cause.

LIFE - in safe hands

Whilst investigating this good news, I found myself on an unfamiliar web-site entitled ‘leftfootforward.org’, which describes itself as a ‘political blog for progressives’, and ‘Britain’s no.1 left-wing blog’.

The date was May 25th and there was a post by Dianne Abbott, Labour MP (Hackney North and Stoke Newington), the shadow Health Minister, with the somewhat dire heading:-

‘Government leaning dangerously towards anti-abortion groups’.

The tenor and intent of the article was immediately obvious, for in the words of Dianne Abbott:-

"We must not underestimate the chilling news that the government has appointed anti-abortion group ‘Life’ to their expert advisory group on sexual health. This appointment, coupled with the retraction of an invite to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, one of the UK’s leading abortion providers, signals a dangerous move"

"This news has broken in the same week that Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, pledged his support for the newly-formed ‘Sex and Relationships Education Council’ whose founding members include a deadly medley of abstinence promoters and anti-abortionists, including Life, Silver RingThing, and the Family Education Trust."

Dianne Abbott, Labour MP (Shadow Health Minister)

Then followed somewhat wild allegations, some would say lies, but judge for yourself:-

"Life has perpetrated many scare stories …. anti-abortionists, including members of Life, can be seen on a daily basis outside the UK’s abortion clinics, shouting abuse at women going inside, and displaying grotesque posters of mutilated foetuses of an advanced gestation. They have no qualms about totally distorting the reality of abortions ……." (what hypocrisy! – my quote)

The article is fulsome in its praise for the previous members of the Department of Health ‘Sexual Health Forum’, which "until now included some of the UK’s best sexual health professionals, experts in their field who have a track record of delivering and commissioning the highest levels of care."

'A track record of delivering and commissioning the highest levels of care'?

The reality is that in 2010 alone, in England and Wales, there were 189,574 abortions, i.e. 539 every day, 1 abortion every 3 minutes; representing a 10% increase in abortions over the last decade.

More than 20,000 women under 21 years of age, had a 2nd abortion, and 16,000 abortions were on girls under 18 years of age.

The record of ‘Sexually Transmitted Infections’ (STIs) show 100% increase between the years 1991-2001, viz. from 669,000 to 1,332,000, the vast majority of cases being young people. I believe that over the past decade these figures have multiplied.

In the light of these ever worsening statistics, each case a personal human tragedy, the truth speaks for itself. Previous government’s pro-abortion, anti-parent and anti-family legislation, urged on by the ‘experts’ from BPAS, the Brook Institute, and the Family Planning Association, with government promoted sex-education for children as young as six, and young adolescents ‘educated’ in the facts of immoral and un-natural sexual practices, has been an unmitigated moral and social disaster.

We humbly thank God for the pro-life organisations and individuals, who have fought incessantly for so many years against the ‘death brigades’ of abortion, euthanasia, and similar evils. The war is not yet won, but at last the value of life and the family has a recognised place on the political agenda, with its own experienced and dedicated standard-bearers, ensuring and promoting pro-life and pro-family ideals in our secular, confused, and suffering society.

In one of several comments on ‘Life’, Dianne Abbott has this to say:-

"Life’s response to birth control is encompassed in a single word, abstinence, and we all know how unsuccessful those programmes have been in the USA, resulting in higher rates of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections than in groups using normal, modern, 21st century methods of family planning."

"And we all know how unsuccessful those programmes have been in the USA"...(but do we?). From the study of numerous websites dealing with this question, it is clear that there is no definitive answer to this question. Different commentators hold opposing views, some genuine but others no-doubt influenced by prejudice or their own agenda. There is no evidence to support Dianne Abbott’s supposition, but there is evidence that the ‘abstinence’ programme enjoyed a measurable degree of success, and is still doing so. Her unsubstantiated and rash conclusion appears unsupported by any credible evidence.

Sadly, Dianne Abbott appears blind to the real tragedy of abortion, which above all is the killing of the defenceless, unborn child. She also seems unable or unwilling to admit the failure of past government’s ‘condoms-cure for all’ philosophy.

She concludes on a defiant note:-

"We will monitor and oppose any attempts by the government to erode or undermine this country’s sexual health professionalism and expertise, and I have called for Life’s appointment to the sexual health forum to be retracted."

It is always a sobering thought to reflect, that one day, we must stand before the throne of God to give an account of our lives. But how will those who have spent their lives promoting and encouraging the killing of the unborn child, explain themselves? From the moment of conception, every human life is unique, with individual body and soul, created by God in His own image and likeness.

*******

The following day, an article by humanist Jennie Bristow, British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), appeared on the same website. She writes:-

"We at BPAS have no objection to LIFE campaigning against abortion, and no problem with engaging in discussion about what is appropriate pregnancy counselling."

"Our interest is in supporting women’s choice. Life’s interest, on the other hand, is in opposing abortion – a position that necessarily skews any attempt to engage with a sexual health strategy that very clearly sees a role for abortion as a part of
family planning."

Jennie Bristow - editor BPAS Journal 'Abortion Review'

When abortion was legalised, it was never intended as part of a ‘family planning’ strategy. Over the years, the sanctity of life has been de-valued and cheapened; secularism, materialism, and humanism, has so deadened the social conscience, that now, as Jennie Bristow admits, abortion is regarded as just another part of the ‘family planning’ armoury, with no regard for the human rights of the unborn child, human rights which are still written into the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

In her article Jennie Bristow criticises Nadine Dorries MP, who recently proposed a series of initiatives in the House of Commons, designed to protect the rights of pregnant women and the unborn child in Britain. She dismisses the value of sexual abstinence, pregnancy counselling, and a woman’s ‘right to know’ laws, which have "plagued many states in the USA for a few years now, where it is a tried and tested tactic for social conservatives to dress themselves up as advocates for women, expressing concern about abortion harming health, and women being denied support for other options".

She considers that such initiatives in Britain will have limited effect, primarily because abortion has been enshrined in national law and policies, with 96% of abortions funded by the NHS, and 59% carried out by BPAS, Marie Stopes International, and like ‘charities’.

As part of the ‘Big Society’ agenda, she considers that organisations with a ‘vested interest in curbing abortion rights’ may have increased impact on the service provided, with opponents of abortion seeking to put ‘politically motivated and clinically unethical hurdles’ in the way of women seeking abortion.

She then concludes:- "That is why we need to continue talking loudly about abortion, and providing it proudly"

Her remarks clearly show the contempt for the pro-life cause, so evident in public statements of the pro-choice, pro-abortion lobby.

A ‘vested interest’ in curbing abortion rights’? Well yes, if by ‘vested interest’ is meant the protection of the unborn.

If by ‘politically motivated and clinically unethical hurdles’,is meant the establishment in law of a woman’s right to choose the fate of her unborn child without coercion, and with full knowledge of the issues involved, with time to reflect and seek help, with the well-being of mother and her unborn child paramount; yes, this is what Nadine Dorries seeks to achieve.

Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP

‘Political motivation or clinically unethical practices’ is perhaps a more accurate description of the methodology of the pro-abortion lobby!

Some final questions that beg an answer :-

a) Why are 96% of today's abortions funded by the NHS, compared with 47% in the years before 1990? Was the motive behind this increase based on politically 'ideological' grounds, and if so, is there any reason now why this figure could not be substantially reduced?

b) What is the actual cost involved?

c) Why should taxpayers who are opposed to ‘legalised abortions’ on moral grounds, be obliged to finance them?

d) Could not some scheme be arranged whereby such objectors could opt for their money to go to alternative medical needs?

As with Dianne Abbott MP, Jennie Bristow seems blind to the inhumanity of legalised abortion, with no mention of the killing of the unborn child, no mention of the proven connection between abortion and major cancers, and no mention of the proven psychological damage suffered by so many women and indeed men, as a result of abortion. Not to mention the ‘brutalisation’ of our 'social' conscience, with the ‘normalisation’ of abortion surely a contributory factor in the increasingly violent and immoral society of which we are all part.

We pray for all those working for the pro-life cause, in whatever capacity, to the glory of God and His Creation, and for the good of mankind; we pray that God will bless their work, themselves and their families.

We pray also for the conversion of those in the pro-abortion, anti-life lobby, that their minds and hearts will

recognise and respond to God's love and the sanctity of life.

Our Lady of Victories, pray for us.

'Poems' by Betty L.Robertson - gentle simplicity and integrity

2011-05-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Some years ago from a book-shop in Devon, I acquired a second-hand book of poems by Betty L.Robertson, published in the early 1930s by Whitby, Light, and Lane Ltd, Printers, of Bridgwater.
Every so often, when in contemplative mood, I browse through this little book, never failing to be moved by these poems. This little known and clearly sensitive lady, who so obviously loved God’s natural world, also suffered deep personal sorrow from the loss of a loved one, yet never failed to proclaim through her poetry, her ultimate trust and faith in God, the source of all love.

Here is a small selection of her poems:-

From a Hunted Deer

Did you men know the anguish of my mind,
Could you but hear the thumping in my breast,
Or see the tears of pain which drive one blind,
Or feel the sharp strained pain across the chest.

Did you but know how when so close to death
The aching legs go slower as they run,
And comes a hard, cold stab with every breath,
A scorching dryness of the thirsty tongue.

Ah! Then indeed you’d know what real fear was,
The terror of a deer hunted by hounds,
All wildly mad with hunger, and as us
You’d feel them tear the flesh, with leaps and bounds.

What have we done to meet this shameful end?
That you men revel in our banishment?
What have we done so greatly to offend?
Almighty knows that we are innocent.

Because we’re dumb think you we feel no pain?
We are not cowards, tho’ God knows we are wild.
Think you we do not grieve when we have seen
This sudden ending of a mate, or child?

But you rejoice to see us sweat and bleed,
Dying on the ground He made for living things,
And you are proud of having done this deed,
And what is more, you call it “sport of kings”.
                                                 September 1926

Destruction

O man where is your soul?
This hedge so beautiful,
Those twigs so brown,
These leaves which held the dew,
Those splendid ferns which grew,
Are all cut down.

Tidy you say? Ah yes
But wild unrulyness
Is nature’s charm.
Those tender buds were such
That fairies would not touch,
Lest they might harm.

Lighter! And what of light?
The willows were so slight,
The moss so green.
Why angels fear to tread
Across that violet bed
Where you have been.

It is your job, you say?
To chop this hedge away?
‘Twas beautiful,
Those gentle joys spring planned,
Die ‘neath your ruthless hand.
Where is your soul?

The Moth

Flickering is the candlelight,
Wavering, for the breeze is slight,
Out of the sleeping summer night
Flies a moth.

Out of the lane where flowers grow,
Darting towards the candle glow,
Fluttering wings, as white as snow
Has the moth.

Little moth, go back to the lane,
See, I’ve opened the window pane,
Fly back to the darkness again
Little moth.
                                   August 1929

Sing On, Sweet Bird

Sing on, sweet bird, the day has nigh
Come to a close, the dark’ning sky
Hangs low, night sounds are heard.
Time is so short, and life so dear
Fades as the daylight, for how near
Is Heaven to earth, sweet bird?

Sing on, sweet bird, nor heed the night,
Thy soul is seeking for some height
Where other souls have gone.
This aching heart which is my own,
Finds comfort in thy powers alone,
Sing on, sweet bird, sing on.

Sing on, sweet bird, and never cease,
The darkness brings a tranquil peace,
One star shines through above.
Across the hill the wind’s soft breath
Whispers to us “there is no death,
And God alone is love”.

And finally – possibly my favourite from this little known and gracious lady;

Children

What should they know of life, these little ones?
Who weep, and then forget why they were sad,
Who crown their lives with golden dreams, ambitions,
And never doubt that they will come to pass.
What should they know of life? Its sordidness
To children is a thing of nothingness.
The earth to them was made for work and play,
With new found joys in every endless day.
What should they fear from life, these little ones?

What should they know of love, these little ones?
Who worship from the depth of heart and soul
More faithfully than older ones can tell,
A simple toy, battered or torn, or broken.
And from the angels comes the love for mother,
Kept sacredly aloof from any other,
A love, deep rooted in the little heart,
That nought, not even death, could wrench apart.
What should they fear from love, these little ones?

What should they know of death, these little ones?
Death, fearful in its great uncertainty,
A promised peaceful sleep, yet how we tremble
To leave this world of ours, and walk with God.
But children do not doubt, Heaven must lie
Beyond the twinkling stars, the tranquil sky,
For mother said that dark was safe as light,
And Jesus watches thro’ the longest night.
What should they fear from death, these little ones?
                                                                                   1930.

Biotech company using aborted foetal cell-lines to test flavour enhancers

2011-04-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

‘Children of God for Life’, United States based pro-life group - ‘World Leaders of The Campaign for Ethical Vaccines, Medicines and Consumer Products’ is calling on the public to boycott products of major food companies that are collaborating with Senomyx, a biotech company that produces artificial flavour enhancers, using aborted foetal cell-lines to test their products.

Senomyx claims that 'collaborating companies' provide them with research and development funding, plus royalties on sales of products using their flavour ingredients.

“What they do not tell the public is that they are using HEK 293 – human embryonic kidney cells taken from an electively aborted baby to produce those receptors”, stated Debi Vinnedge, executive Director of ‘Children of God for Life’. “They could have easily chosen COS (monkey) cells, Chinese Hamster Ovary cells, insect cells or other morally obtained human cells expressing the G protein for taste receptors”.

Food giants Pepsico/Walker’s Crisps, Kraft Foods/Cadbury’s Chocolate, Campbell Soup, Solae and Nestlé, together with other international companies, are listed on the Senomyx website as ‘collaborating’ partners

“If enough people voice their outrage and intent to boycott these consumer products, it can be highly effective in convincing Senomyx to change their methods”, said Vinnedge.

In fact within a few days of this public disclosure, Campbell Soups cancelled their partnership arrangement with Senomyx, citing customer trust and satisfaction as more important than profitability.
(H/T) http://www.cogforlife.org/senomyxalert.htm

To contact Cadbury’s, UK, (consumer enquiries and comments)
tel. 0121 451 4444 (Excluding Cadbury World)
Write: Consumer Relations Department
Cadbury
PO Box 12, Bournville
Birmingham B30 2LU

To contact Nestle,

Free Careline service on 00800 63785385 (UK and ROI)

Write: Nestle Consumer Services, PO Box 207, York, YO911X

PepsiCo contact:

Consumer Care Team on 0800 980 8235 (freephone) between 9am and 4pm Monday - Friday

Write Consumer Services dept.

FREEPOST LE4 918

Leicester

LE4 5ZY (Can also be contacted via email through their website)

It only takes a minute to call, and you speak to a pleasant person, explain your concerns and ask for your comments to be recorded.

(H/T) Tim’s Comment on http://protectthepope.com

'CAMPION'S BRAGGE' -' to the end we may at last be friends in heaven'

2011-03-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

Fr Michael Mary F.SS.R very kindly allows me to borrow the occasional book from the Transalpine Redemptorist main library, sited temporarily on Stronsay, pending completion of the new library on Papa Stronsay. Recently I selected a book for my Lenten reading, entitled - 'Henry Garnet (1555-1606) and the Gunpowder Plot' by Philip Caraman S.J. I have read other books by this author, most if not all based on the lives of the English Martyrs in Elizabethan times,which without exception have made compelling reading.Tucked in this book I found a loose sheet of folded paper, with on one side a printed article entitled 'Campion Bragge', with 'Catholic Broadsheets No.1. Published by Michael White at 15 Broad Street Place, London, E.C.2. Price 2d'.- along the bottom of the page, and on the other blank side, an address and postmark dated 17 July 1951. The whole sheet had originally been folded and sent through the post. I found this article extremely interesting and moving, and it may be that you will also.

Queen Elizabeth 1st (Armada Portrait) 1588

"At the time of the Reformation in England, the fate of Catholic and Protestant alike hung for some time in the balance; but with the accession of Queen Elizabeth the tide turned finally against the Catholics. They were at first allowed to continue to exist, and there was every reason to suppose that without a hierarchy and without priests, they would die out in a generation. One man, Cardinal Allen, prevented this by his establishment of a seminary at Douai in Flanders. To Douai came Edmund Campion, the brilliant scholar of Oxford – “one of the diamonds of England” he is called by a contemporary, and from Douai to Rome to join the newly founded Jesuits.

Pope St Pius Vth

In 1570, Pope Pius V issued a Bull of Excommunication against Elizabeth, and with that the laws against Catholics were increased. The Catholics were to be wiped out rather than allowed to die. It was treason to be a priest or to harbour a priest. Non-attendance at the Protestant church was fined so heavily that the well-to-do were ruined, the poor destitute. Hopelessness ruled over the English Catholics.

And then, on June 24th,1580, Edmund Campion, with Fr Robert Persons arrived in England. The first night they lay hidden at a house in Chancery Lane, the next at Hoxton. To see them at Hoxton came a friend Thomas Pounde. Campion, fearing that he would be misrepresented if he should fall into the hands of the State authorities, produced a statement that was to be kept until he should be in prison and then published. He sat down there and then at a table, and wrote it in half an hour. It was entrusted to Pounde but he was so excited and impressed by it that he forgot his orders and published it immediately. Manuscript copies were circulated through the country.

Campion became immediately famous. To the Catholics he became a great rallying point. New life was breathed into the down-hearted. To the Protestants he was a man to be tracked down and sent to his death - which he was. But for rather more than a year he travelled throughout England bringing the Mass and the Sacraments and new hope to the hidden Catholics; always on the move, never dwelling two nights at the same house. The end was inevitable and he was taken at Lyford Grange in Berkshire. He was paraded through the streets of London as a prize capture, cast into the Tower, tortured, tried (a mockery of a trial), and condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered, with sentence carried out at Tyburn gallows on December 1st, 1581.

Sir Francis Walsingham, Priest Hunter and Spy-Master

Campion's document is a model of lucidity at a time when so much writing was involved and obscure. But more than that, it is a voice of a saint and a document of heroic courage. He speaks for all the English martyrs; he speaks for all English Catholics, then and now. As he said at his trial, “in condemning us you condemn all your own ancestors, all the ancient priests, bishops and kings, for what have we taught that they did not teach?”

St Edmund Campion SJ

CAMPION’S BRAGGE

To the Right Honourable Lords of Her Majestie’s Privy Council

Right Honourable

Whereas I have come out of Germanie and Boemeland, being sent by my Superiours, and adventured myself into this noble Realm, my deare Countrie, for the glorie of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busie, watchful and suspicious worlde, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course. Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertaine what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this writing in a readiness, desiringe your good Lordships to give it ye reading, for to know my cause. This doing I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plaine confession. And to ye intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these ix points or articles, directly, truly, and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

i. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of ye Catholike Church, and through ye great mercie of God vowed now these viii years into the Religion of the Societie of Jhesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and eke resigned all my interest or possibilitie of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldlie felicitie.

ii. At the voice of our General Provost, which is to me a warrant from heaven, and Oracle of Christ, I tooke my voyage from Prage to Rome (where our said General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendome or Heathenesse, had I been thereto assigned.

iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reforme sinners, to confute errors – in brief, to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance wherewith many my dear Countrymen are abused.

iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of State or Policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I do gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, iii sortes of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it touches the common weale and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both Universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholike Church by proofs innumerable, Scriptures, Councils, Fathers, History, natural and moral reasons: the third before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

vi. I would be loth to speak anything, that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man’s foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet have I such a courage in avouching the Majesty of Jhesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for the combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

vii. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Ladye with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that – if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the ii part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter,- such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equitie.

viii. Moreover I doubt not but you her Highness’ Council being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholike Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed, and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posteritie shall never die, which beyond seas gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Societie be it known to you that we have made a league – all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England – cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun, it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted, so it must be restored.

ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us His grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter (Perugino)

We pray to the holy English Martyrs, for the conversion of our Country.

1778 Catholic Relief Act, 1780 Gordon Riots, 1781 Bishop Challoner dies.

2011-02-19T16:39:00.000-08:00

(Continuation and final post on the life of Bishop Challoner)

In 1772, Challoner now aged 82 years, prepared a general report for Rome on the state of the London District. The number of Catholics was slightly lower than had been the case 30 years earlier, but many of the small centres of Catholic life had now gone. London itself accounted for 20,000 Catholics out of a total of less than 25,000 for the whole district. There were some 120 priests in all, of which about 80 were diocesan priests. The effective use of these priests was extremely difficult with relatively few Catholics scattered throughout the counties of Hampshire, Essex, Sussex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, yet all requiring pastoral care. Challoner’s report paid special tribute to the London clergy stating that they had been responsible for many conversions to the Faith, and he reminded the Pope of the unbroken fidelity of the laity during two centuries of persecution.

Unexpectedly, in 1778 things began to change for the English church. The war in America was going badly, and English prestige was falling so rapidly that there was real fear that France and Spain would declare war to aid the American colonial revolt. There were also fears of armed landings in those parts of this country where Catholic loyalty had been stretched to breaking point by the harsh and unjust anti-Catholic laws, particularly in Scotland and Ireland. The government believed that new legislation granting relief to Catholics would be politically expedient, for recruits for the hard-pressed British army were desperately needed, and the Catholic Scottish highlanders, a potentially rich source of recruitment, would respond positively to the call once the government had enacted legislation which would allow them to freely practice their religion, and thus much improve their lives

Early in 1778, Sir John Dalrymple, a government minister and one of the Barons of the Scottish Exchequer, called on Bishop Hay in Edinburgh to discuss this proposal. Ideally, from a Catholic viewpoint, the whole of the anti-Catholic penal code needed to be repealed, but Bishop Hay considered that such precipitate action would pose real danger from violent anti-Catholic groups. He suggested three definite measures;

1) that the laws against saying and hearing Mass should be repealed;

2) the repeal of those laws which allowed a Protestant who sold an estate to a Catholic to take it back without returning the price, and those under which a Protestant heir could take an estate from its Catholic owner;

3) the abolition of that part of the military oath which required recruits to forswear the Catholic religion whilst swearing fidelity to the king and to the law.

Bishop Hay also recommended that Dalrymple discuss matters with Bishop Challoner. A meeting was accordingly arranged but did not go well, for Challoner, perhaps not surprisingly, appeared to distrust Dalrymple, and expressed concerns about his proposals. Dalrymple subsequently dismissed Challoner as ‘old and timid, and using twenty difficulties’, and decided to approach the younger generation of influential lay Catholics in the person of William Sheldon, a lawyer, a capable and decisive man with considerable influence among his peers. The government was desperate to enact the proposed Catholic Relief Bill before Parliament rose for the summer recess, and Sheldon was keen to support this.

A committee of influential Catholic laymen, the 'Catholic Committee', was formed, and the terms of the new Bill were effectively agreed between them and the government, with the Bishops deliberately excluded from the discussions, on the basis that ‘English Roman Catholic gentlemen are quite able to judge and act for themselves in these matters’. In fact, Challoner and the other Bishops were not even consulted on the terms of the Bill, and instead of pressing boldly for an overall general relief, as Challoner and Hay had earlier suggested, the committee concentrated on the repeal of parts of one particular statute, the ‘Acts of William IV’, which:-

1) entitled informers to a reward,

2) made every Catholic Bishop, priest, and schoolteacher liable to imprisonment for life, and

3) prevented Catholics from inheriting and buying land.

The wording of the oath of allegiance to the Crown, included in the new Bill, was initially questioned but subsequently approved by Bishop Challoner, facilitating the speedy enactment of the Bill through Parliament.

It seemed clear to Bishop Challoner and his fellow bishops, that the ‘Catholic Committee’ nurtured a real anti-clerical bias, and for this Lord Petre, its Chairman and chief spokesman , may well have been considered largely responsible. Lord Petre came from a distinguished Catholic family, and was connected by marriage with many other such families, He was extremely rich having inherited an immense fortune from his father, but due to anti-Catholic laws he could not take his seat in the House of Lords, neither could he obtain a commission in the army or navy, nor hold any honourable appointments which men of his social status were normally given. However he was proposed by a family friend, the Duke of Beaufort, the Grand Master of the English Freemasons, for membership of the Freemasons, and in March 1771 he became a member of the Lodge of Friendship. Within twelve months he had been elected as new Grand Master.

English Catholics were almost certainly well aware of the Church’s prohibition on Freemasonry, with a Papal Bull in 1738 by Pope Clement XII and a later one in 1751 by Pope Benedict XIV, both condemning Freemasonry and excommunicating Catholics who participated in Masonic meetings. Challoner would surely have advised Lord Petre of the scandal that his Masonic activities caused, but to no effect. In Lord Petre's defence it has been suggested that one reason for his acceptance was the perceived benefit of this appointment to the Catholic cause; another being that it showed his Protestant friends that he was not answerable to the Pope in 'non-spiritual' matters, which he considered this to be; and finally it has been suggested that by a quirk of Canon Law, Lord Petre's apparent defiance of the Pope's ruling was merely a gesture, since as there was then no official Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, the Bulls could not be formally proclaimed and were not therefore binding. In any event, things went from bad to worse when Lord Petre installed the Rev Alexander Geddes as personal chaplain at his Thorndon estate. The Rev Geddes was a priest who had been deprived of his faculties by Bishop Hay due to his insistence on taking part in services in Protestant churches. His salary from Lord Petre would have sufficed for ten of Challoner’s missionary priests, added to which Lord Petre guaranteed to meet the substantial costs of a new translation of the Bible by Geddes, which the latter declared necessary to correct the ‘shameful distortions of the Catholic version’. In later years, Geddes virtually ceased to call himself a Catholic, greatly antagonistic to Papal authority, and continuing to support Lord Petre in his defiance of the Pope’s condemnation of Masonry, and viewing with apparent approval his many compromising gestures with the established Church.

Such was the leader of the ‘Catholic Committee’, who had succeeded in carrying a Bill through Parliament requiring the bishops and clergy to take an oath on religious matters, although they had not even been consulted in framing its terms. Shortly after the Catholic Relief Act was passed, the King and Queen were guests of Lord Petre at ‘Thorndon’ his palatial residence in Essex, perhaps raising high hopes among many of the Catholic gentry, that the King’s personal influence on their behalf would soon result in wider relief from their material burdens. For some perhaps, it may have seemed that these burdens were more important than those matters of faith, for which many of their Catholic ancestors, laymen and clerics, had suffered torture and death.

Thorndon Hall, Essex. Home of Lord Petre

Far removed from the world of Lord Petre, Challoner and his scattered congregations, were more concerned with the rising tide of anti-Catholic agitation increasingly evident since the Catholic Relief Act became law. Particularly outspoken and hostile were the ‘field preachers’ led by John Wesley, who himself issued an inflammatory document, ‘Defence of the Protestant Association’, which revealed a Cromwellian hatred of Catholicism, ‘that soul-deceiving and all enslaving superstition which threatens to overspread this land’.

The poor quarters of London where Challoner and his clergy had laboured for years, were suddenly exposed to the ugly threats and violence of the common mob, which included many criminal elements, and which in 1778, attacked and sacked the house of Admiral Palliser.

Scotland had been the first to feel the full violence of the anti -Catholic brigade, when in February 1779 an Edinburgh chapel house was looted and burnt down, followed by attacks on the homes of known Catholics. Bishop Hay himself narrowly escaped capture by the mob, and peace was only restored in the city, after the provost of Edinburgh announced that the Catholic Relief Bill (Scotland) had been withdrawn.

The Scottish Protestants collaborated with the English to set up the ‘Protestant Association’ with the avowed purpose of ‘rousing the whole country to the dangers of a Popish conspiracy’, with their objective the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act. At the end of the year Lord George Gordon was elected President. Not yet thirty years of age, he was the member of Parliament for a small Wiltshire borough, notorious for warning Parliament at every opportunity of the growing danger of popery. He belonged to a famous family which until recent years had been staunchly Catholic. His father, the third Duke of Gordon, had been brought up as a Catholic, and lived in a Catholic part of Scotland; and his aunt the Duchess of Perth, had been a mainstay of Scottish Catholicism.

Lord George Gordon

Described as eccentric, Lord George Gordon certainly bordered on the unstable. However this very instability made him a reckless and formidable leader. In January 1780 he asked the Prime Minister, Lord North, to present to Parliament a petition from the ‘Protestant Association’, a request which was refused. Lord George then applied directly to the King, who was obliged to receive him for to ignore him could be interpreted as showing disloyalty to the Protestant cause. In support of the aim of the ‘Association’, arrangements were put in hand to collect a vast number of signatures to present to Parliament. Lord Petre tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Lord George from his planned course of action, and on June 2nd a large concourse assembled at St George’s Fields to accompany Lord George to the House of Commons to deliver the Protestant petition. In his address to supporters, Lord George promised to share himself in every danger that might lie ahead, protesting that ‘the only way is to go in a bold manner, and show that we are resolved to defend Protestantism with our lives’, and ‘to remember the Scotch carried their point by their firmness’. Blue cockades, the insignia of the Protestant Association, were worn by all, also by many thousands of onlookers who soon saw the wisdom of complying with the truculent demands of the demonstrators. The marchers converged on the Houses of Parliament, and took control of all the roads leading thereto. As members of both Houses arrived they were forced out of their carriages, ordered to wear the blue cockade and shout ‘no Popery’. Those members known to have supported the Bill, were forced to run the ‘gauntlet’ to enter the House, at risk of their lives.

When the Commons went into Session, with the mob rioting outside, Lord George, from the Gallery staircase, delivered a commentary of proceedings to those in earshot. The Prime Minister, Lord North, sent for the Guards, and the crowds dispersed, but in a clearly pre-arranged manner, with part going immediately to the Bavarian chapel in Golden Square, and part to the recently rebuilt Sardinian chapel in Lincoln Inn’s Fields. Both chapels were then looted, wrecked, and set on fire.

The Gordon Riots - John S. Lucas

At the time, Bishop Challoner was in his bed in lodgings about one mile away. He was warned to escape whilst there was still time as the mob were on their way to capture him, and he took temporary shelter with his friend Mr Mawhood, an army clothier, who had business premises in Smithfield and a country house in Finchley, where Challoner was taken to stay until the danger had passed. Meanwhile houses and factories belonging to Catholics were systematically attacked and set on fire, and it was apparent that detailed advance planning had been undertaken to identify Catholic targets. Newgate Prison was attacked, the prisoners were released and the building set alight. A large distillery at Holborn Hill was attacked, looted and set on fire, visible for miles around. Other buildings attacked and damaged included the Bank of England, Kings Bench Prison and Fleet Prison. From fear of the rioters, blue cockades were displayed on every house. Troops were stationed in public parks, but magistrates were afraid to call them out, until eventually at the King’s instigation, they were ordered onto the streets and relative peace was restored.

A few days later Challoner returned to London, only to find that every chapel of any size, including the Embassy chapels, had been destroyed. This was a particularly bitter blow, for there was nowhere for the Catholic laity to hear Mass, and nowhere for Challoner to meet them and support them in their distress. He was personally penniless, nearly all his old friends, Bishops, clergy, and laity, had died, and as he approached his 90th birthday, there was little that he could do to help his demoralised flock.

The ‘Political Magazine’ of Wednesday, 3rd June 1780, printed the following:-

'This morning, horror was painted on the face of every peaceable citizen. Besides the fury and malignity of the original insurgents, party men and individuals taking advantage of the insurrection had begun to wreak their vengeance on all they disliked; and to all the former insurgents were now added at least 1000 felons, composed of robbers, highwaymen, housebreakers and thieves of every denomination. Blue cockades now became universal; blue flags were hung out at the doors and windows of almost every house in and about the metropolis, and there was hardly a house to be seen that had not written in different parts of it, the watchword of the insurgents, ‘No Popery’.

The Riots resulted in a total of 285 rioters killed, with 173 wounded, and 139 arrested. 25 were ultimately tried and hanged, with 12 imprisoned, and an estimated £180,000 worth of property was destroyed.

Outside London there had been spasmodic demonstrations, but with no serious damage except at Hull and in Bath where the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District had his residence, together with the entire archives of the Western District, completely destroyed by fire.

After the riots, Lord George Gordon was arrested, tried for 'High Treason', and was acquitted. He then seems to have lost his enthusiasm for the Protestant religion, moving to France where he abjured Protestantism and adopted the Jewish religion, growing a long beard and denouncing all Jews who did not do likewise. He became involved in politic disputes, leading him to be charged with libelling both Queen Marie Antoinette and the French ambassador in London. The libels resulted in his imprisonment for five years in Newgate, where he died in his early forties, from typhoid. It would appear that whilst in prison, he was conscientious in the practice of his new faith, was popular among the Jewish community, and was generous and charitable towards other prisoners.

Lord George Gordon - Convert to Judaism

It was some consolation that the government soon recognised the claim to compensation for all those whose property had suffered in the riots, but those days and nights of terror had left an indelible mark on many who endured them. Bishop Challoner still attended his weekly clergy conferences, but it was noted that ‘he dwelt much on the subject of death, intimating that his own dissolution was at hand, and lamenting with unfeigned sentiments of contrition and humility, that he had not served God better’.

On January 10th, 1781, at 25 Gloucester Street, London, Bishop Challoner suffered a stroke, and two days later he died, with his chaplains in attendance. He was buried in the family vault of a friend Mr Bryan Barrett, at Milton, Berkshire, where according to the legal requirements of the time, the parson had to read the Anglican burial service.

The plate on the coffin was inscribed “Right Revd. Doctor Richard Challoner, Bishop of Debra”, and in the Parish Register, the presiding clergyman wrote,

“Anno Domini 1781, January 22. Buried the Reverend Richard Challoner, a Popish Priest and Titular Bishop of London and Salisbury, a very pious and good man, of great learning and extensive abilities”.

N.B. .The reference to Salisbury indicated uncertainty on the clergyman’s part, for his own diocese was Salisbury, and he presumed that Catholics had the same Bishop for both London and Salisbury.
In 1946, the body of Bishop Challoner was interred and removed to Westminster Cathedral.

In many ways the great revival of the English Catholic Church in the 19th century, owed much to the apostolic zeal for souls and the pastoral care of this holy Bishop. His writings particularly, kept the flame of Catholicism burning in an England steeped in Protestantism; writings which provided spiritual counsel, encouragement, and learning, on all matters Catholic, a constant source of sound spiritual direction for those of his own time and generations to come. He and his fellow Bishops and Priests laboured in rocky soil, but not in vain. By their labours and prayers and with the grace of God, the Catholic religion survived in England, enabling others to later reap the rich rewards of Catholic emancipation and the full re-establishment of the Church in the 19th century. The cause for the beatification of Bishop Challoner has been rumbling on for many years, and some four years ago the Dean of Birmingham Cathedral expressed an interest in reviving it.

Tomb of Bishop Challoner in Westminster Cathedral

Prayer for the Beatification of Bishop Challoner

O God, who didst make thy servant Richard a true and faithful pastor of thy little flock in England, deign to place him among the blessed in thy Church, so that we who profit by his word and example, may beg his help in Heaven, for the return of this land to the ancient faith, and to the fold of the one true Shepherd, Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

(Ack to 'Bishop Challoner' by Denis Gwynn
published by Douglas Organ 1946.)

Bishop Challoner (Part 4) - the Indefatigable Pastor (1753 - 1773)

2011-01-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

In 1752, England changed from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, which involved 'losing' eleven days in the month of September, viz. 3rd to 13th inclusive. Thus the day following Wednesday, 2nd September, was Thursday, 14th September. Additionally the date of Christmas was changed, as were the dates on which the year began and ended. This resulted in the year 1751 having only 282 days i.e. from 25th March to 31st December. This event caused resentment, particularly among the common people, who blamed the Pope and the ruling politicians of the day, for 'depriving' them of eleven days of their lives!! Illogical of course, but such was the irrational anti-Catholic sentiment of many common folk, which ultimately exploded in the terrifying 'Gordon Riots' experienced by Challoner in his extreme old age. William Hogarth produced a famous painting on this subject entitled 'An Election Entertainment' which featured the anti-Gregorian election banner, 'Give us our eleven days'.

WILLIAM HOGARTH - SELF PORTRAIT 1745

In 1753, Bishop Challoner completed and published his ‘Meditations for Every Day in the Year’, which together with his ‘Garden of the Soul’, was to be probably the principle spiritual reading matter for the Catholic faithful for many years.

In 1758 Bishop Petrie died, and Bishop Challoner, now nearly 70 years of age, automatically assumed the role of Vicar Apostolic of the London District. At this time he became seriously ill and confined to his bed. Unable to carry out his pastoral duties, it became a matter of urgency that a co-adjutor be appointed for the London district. His choice was James Talbot, previously professor of theology at Douay, and well known to him, and accordingly in August 1759 he was consecrated Bishop

Bishop Challoner maintained a humble life-style, residing in lodgings in the Holborn area, and finding many advantages in this way of life. Freed from the responsibility of running a household, with its attendant administrative duties and expense, he had more time for writing and prayer, both integral to his daily routine, and for pastoral visitations to those in prison, the sick and the dying, the poor and the homeless, and saying Mass and providing the Sacraments for the faithful wherever and whenever possible.

In 1762 he compiled a full statement of funds for the London District, which revealed that the usual income for priests was £20.00 per annum, with an absolute maximum in special cases of £40.00. Challoner recognised the advantages of private means and social position for any Vicar Apostolic, for he himself had been obliged to perform his duties at a considerable disadvantage through being both extremely poor and of humble origins. Clearly personal virtue and suitability were paramount qualities, but material considerations almost certainly had some influence in his choice of James Talbot and Thomas Talbot, brothers of the Earl of Shrewsbury, as co-adjutor Bishops. The benefit of influence in ‘high places’ was particularly useful in London where the faithful depended so much on the use of foreign embassy chapels, and where differences between Ambassadors of State and Vicars Apostolic were not uncommon, usually concerning inappropriate behaviour by Embassy chaplains over whom the Bishop had no direct authority.

In 1759, the Sardinian Chapel, the largest and most frequented chapel for London Catholics, was destroyed by fire. A major disagreement arose between Bishop Challoner and the Sardinian Ambassador, concerning the site of the replacement chapel. The Ambassador wanted the new chapel to be built in a different part of London, whereas the Bishop wished it to be re-built on the same site as before. In his words, “this chapel has been for above these fifty years, the chief support of religion in London. Its removal would almost ruin religion in the capital”. Ultimately it was through the direct influence of the Vatican with the King of Sardinia, that the chapel was rebuilt on its original site.

CHARLES EMMANUEL III - KING OF SARDINIA 1730-1773

In 1760, Challoner founded a school for ‘poor girls’ at Hammersmith. At about the same time, and acting on his own initiative and in the face of opposition from the Catholic gentry who were afraid of provoking a Protestant backlash, he founded Sedgeley Park School, near Wolverhampton, later to become Cotton College.

In France the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1762 created a particular problem in the field of Catholic education. An important aspect of their work had been the establishment of various schools and colleges on the Continent. Among these, one of the better known was at St Omer, to which the sons of many leading Catholic families had been sent for generations. The French government wanted the school to continue under the control of the secular diocesan clergy, and it was offered to the English Vicars Apostolic for this to be undertaken. This created considerable tension between the Society of Jesus, who owned the building and were decidedly unhappy that it would be taken from them, and the secular clergy many of whom were not enamoured of the Jesuits, and considered it imperative that the school be taken over by them at the earliest opportunity in case the French government should change its mind, and the school be subsequently lost to the Church, and in particular to the service of the English mission.

Bishop Challoner supported the Jesuits in this matter, declaring that their expulsion from the College was unjustifiable, and that no one in good conscience could accept their premises, unjustly confiscated, unless with the intention of restoring them to the Jesuits as soon as this could safely be done. Eventually the College was re-organised with Thomas Talbot, the brother of Challoner’s coadjutor James Talbot, established as temporary President. Within a few years the controversy ceased to have any relevance when the Jesuit Order was suppressed throughout the universal Church in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV. Little was it known then that the Jesuits would be re-instated by Pope Pius VII in 1814 some 40 years later, during which period the French Revolution would have intervened, resulting in the closure of both St Omer and Douay, and their re-establishment in England.

POPE CLEMENT XIV - SUPPRESSED THE JESUITS IN 1773

Challoner had to deal with similar problems in Spain, for when the Jesuits were expelled from that country in 1767 there were three English Colleges then under their direction, Valladolid and Seville, founded by the English Jesuit, Fr Persons in the last years of the 16th century, and Madrid, founded in 1612 by another English Jesuit, Fr Cresswell. They had been set up for the express purpose of training priests for the English Mission, and were endowed by generous Spaniards, including the King of Spain. Over time the numbers of missionaries to England from the Colleges dwindled, until by Challoner’s time there were virtually none. The Jesuits still ran the Colleges, but the priests trained there were not sent to England, and in spite of considerable effort by the English Vicars Apostolic over many years, this did not change. When the Jesuits were expelled, there were neither funds nor staff to continue to maintain three colleges in Spain, and Challoner proposed that they should combine as one. Of the three he proposed to preserve Valladolid, as being the most suitable in climate and also because it had recently been rebuilt. Its religious tradition was moreover most inspiring, and some twenty of the English martyred priests had been trained there. Challoner insisted that the Rector should always be English with experience of working in England, and that the teaching staff should be similarly qualified.. He obtained a promise from the Spanish King to transfer the existing endowments to Valladolid, and he arranged for students to be sent from Douay under the charge of a young priest there, John Douglass, who unbeknown to either, was himself destined to be a future Vicar Apostolic in London.

Challoner also arranged for a new President at Douay, to replace Dr Green, President for the past 20 years, whose advancing age and ailing health, were taking their toll.

Finally he set himself the task of restoring the English College at Lisbon, the Alma Mater of Fr John Gother who had received him into the Church some 70 years previously. The college was without money due to misguided investment of funds over many years, and the earthquake of 1755 had extensively damaged the College buildings, and also caused the President’s death. Discipline had gone to pieces, with ‘no public devotions for many years’ and ‘for these twenty-five years no course hath been completed, no masters bred up, no missioners sent over, and yet an immense sum of money consumed’. Bishop Challoner was now 84 years old, and yet he set himself the task of raising sufficient funds to restore both the temporal and spiritual welfare of the College to its former prosperity. Donations exceeded his expectations, and it only remained for him to appoint a new President to relieve the existing incumbent ‘from that burden which his age and infirmity will scarce allow him to bear any longer’.The new President of his choice was a convert like himself, James Barnard, who within ten years was to write the first contemporary biography of Bishop Challoner

POPE PIUS VII - RESTORED THE JESUITS IN 1814

In 1760 King George II died, and his reign from 1727 to 1760 was remarkable for being the first, after the Reformation, in which no new law was enacted against Roman Catholics. Nevertheless in spite of increasing toleration and benevolence towards Catholics, the long-standing anti-Catholic laws were still on the Statute Book, and could be enforced at any time. Shortly after the accession of George III, a certain William Payne systematically ‘used’ the legislation in a concerted campaign of denunciation of a large number of Catholic priests in the London area. He tried on several occasions to prosecute Challoner’s coadjutor Bishop James Talbot, and at least once instigated proceedings against Challoner himself, all of which were unsuccessful. His one most notable ‘success’ was in 1767 at Croydon, against the Reverend John Baptist Maloney whom he had brought to Court on the charge of officiating as a priest. Maloney rashly admitted in Court that he was a priest, believing that the law would not be enforced against him, but it was and he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, serving 4 years in Southwark gaol before being released and sentenced to deportation for life.. Encouraged by his success, Payne pursued his ‘career’ quite recklessly, appearing before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield a year later, to prosecute four of Challoner’s priests. Privately Lord Mansfield had many Catholic friends, and had been horrified by Payne’s success in securing the conviction of the Irish priest Maloney at Croydon. He had spoken openly in the House of Lords in favour of the Dissenters, declaring that “there is nothing certainly more unreasonable, more inconsistent with the rights of human nature, more contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion, more iniquitous and unjust, more impolitic, than persecution. It is against nature, revealed religion, and sound policy”. Prior to hearing the case against the four priests, Lord Mansfield had taken the unusual step of summoning the other judges to discuss the general legal position. The result of their deliberations was to clarify the Act of William II, which clearly stated, ‘Whosoever shall apprehend a Popish Bishop, Priest, or Jesuit and convict…..’, and it was on this point that defence counsel submitted that ‘it was to no purpose what they have seen him do or heard him say, so long as there are no evident proofs of his being a priest’- the actions of the defendants were not proof in themselves. Lord Manfield’s reply to this was startling in that he admitted that prior to the conviction of the priest Maloney, he had not thoroughly examined the statutes. “But since that time all the twelve judges have consulted upon them, and we have all agreed in Opinion are so worded that in order to convict a man on those Statutes, it is necessary that he be first proved to be a Priest; and secondly that it be proved he has said Mass.” The Chief Justice then dealt mercilessly with the evidence of Payne, questioning his reliability and motives, then addressing the jury to the effect that the reasons for which the anti-Catholic laws were passed had long ceased to operate, so that there was now “no necessity of enforcing these laws”. He asserted openly that ,”Neither was it ever the design of the legislators to have these laws enforced by every common informer: but only at proper times and seasons, when they saw a necessity for it, and by proper persons appointed by themselves for that purpose. And, yet more properly speaking, they were never designed to be enforced at all, but were only made ‘in terrorem’". The defendants were immediately acquitted, yet it did not prevent the informer Payne from continuing his disreputable trade for many more years.The statutory reward for informants was £100, a considerable sum of money, particularly when we remember that the average income for priests was £20 per annum. Payne's success in suppressing Mass houses, apart from his undoubted success in disturbing missionary work, was quite formidable. Charles Butler, in his short ‘Life of Challoner’, writes, ’In all these transactions Dr Challoner conducted himself with great prudence and firmness. Scanty as was his income, he was the chief refuge of persecuted priests. The expenses attending the prosecutions of them, their imprisonments, removals, concealments and other vexations were almost always discharged by him; he defrayed them with kindness, and in a manner that showed how greatly he honoured the sufferers in their sufferings and wants’ He was in his seventies when Payne began his campaign of persecution, and he was well into his eighties when it ceased.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE MANSFIELD

A spirit of worldliness pervaded the whole of the 18^th century, inevitably casting its shadow on all Catholics, particularly those who, due to circumstances, had little opportunity to practise their faith. Challoner himself, in spite of constant endeavours to sustain the faithful, was not immune to a sense of helplessness and even failure, in the ceaseless struggle against the tide. In a letter he wrote to his friend Bishop Hornyhold just before Christmas 1769, thanking him for his kindness and good wishes, he continues,’O dear brother, for Our Lord’s sake, earnestly pray that in His great mercy he would forgive me my innumerable sins, and prepare me for that great appearance, in which I have reason to dread the account I must give not only for myself but for so many others who through my fault or neglect, are walking on in the way of perdition. Oh! ‘tis a melancholy thing to see the great decay of piety and religion amongst a great part of our Catholics, and God grant this may not be imputed to me by reason of my sins and negligences’.

In the same year Bishop George Hay, co-adjutor Bishop in Scotland, approached Bishop Challoner, a friend of long-standing, with an urgent request for financial help for the desperate needs of the Church in Scotland. Challoner promised to speak to a few friends, and quite unexpectedly he was visited very soon after by ‘a person of great honour and virtue’ who had come to offer him £1000 for Masses for the repose of the soul of a near kinsman. This money was immediately forwarded to Bishop Hay to alleviate the plight of Scottish Catholics in their acute distress. Thus was the friendship between the two Bishops strengthened, to the extent that when they met in London in 1773, they made a promise that when either of them died, the other would celebrate Mass three times a week for the repose of his soul so long as he was able to do so. Both men lived to a great age, and Bishop Hay’s biographer records that he kept his promise unfailingly for more than twenty years after Challoner’s death.

As Vicar Apostolic of the London District, Bishop Challoner was traditionally responsible for the administration of those Catholic priests and congregations in the American colonies and in the West Indies. The number of Catholics was multiplying, and Challoner felt himself unable to exercise the necessary pastoral authority from his base in London. This situation worsened over the years, with Challoner requesting that Rome relieve him of this responsibility which he felt unable to fulfil properly due to distance and ignorance of the native people and their countries, and also because of his own declining health and his age.

In 1773, the Society of Jesus, who supplied most of the missionaries abroad, was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV. Paradoxically this eased matters for the Vicar Apostolic, as the Jesuit clergy were obliged to adopt the status of ‘secular’ clergy, and thus were directly subject to Episcopal authority, whereas previously, although Challoner always had a good personal relationship with the Regulars, there had been difficulties when the question of authority arose. At this time the War of Independence in America was breaking, the result of which was ultimately to lead to religious freedom across the nation, compelling the setting up of an American Catholic hierarchy and the relinquishing of English responsibility, although this was not to happen in Challoner’s lifetime.

In the West Indies, there were many Catholics in the indigenous community, descendants of the Irish labourers whom Cromwell had forcibly deported into slavery and who had married native women. There were a number of Irish missionaries , and some French missionaries in those islands previously belonging to France. The situation was disorganised if not disastrous, for with no Bishop available for visitations, many Catholics were never confirmed. At Bishop Challoner’s instigation and as a temporary measure, a French Capuchin, Fr Benjamin, was appointed Vicar General for a period of six years. Unfortunately he died whilst in office, leaving the situation as before, with Bishop Challoner pleading yet again for Rome to relieve him of this responsibility.

Now in his early eighties. yet always seeking ways of instructing and encouraging his suffering and scattered flock, Challoner turned his attention to the Douay Catechism which had been in use by Catholic children for over a century. He decided to make certain revisions, and to enlarge it, and in 1772 his revised popular catechism was published at St Omer, entitled ’Abridgement of Christian Doctrine: Revised and enlarged by R.C.’ This updated work was to be the standard work for English Catholics for generations to come. (to be continued)

'Bishop Challoner' by Denis Gwynn.

published by
Douglas Organ 1946

Bishop Challoner (Part 3) - Difficult Times 1745-53

2010-12-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

(Continued from previous post)

Following their defeat at the Battle of Dettingen (1743), the French planned to invade England and utilising support from English Jacobite sympathisers, facilitate the restoration of the House of Stuart to the English throne. Unfortunately for the French, in February 1745, much of their fleet was sunk in a storm just prior to sailing, resulting in the invasion being called off. The Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart (Bonny Prince Charlie) decided to carry on, landing one ship at Moidart in July 1745 with just 7 men. However within 2 months he had assembled a force of some 3000 men, defeated the forces of George II at Prestonpans, and entered Edinburgh.

The Young Pretender-Charles Edward Stuart (1720-1788)

On the last day of October he left Edinburgh, leading his troops south and reaching Carlisle on 14th November, Preston on the 27th November, and Manchester the following day, continuing shortly after to Derby, just 140 miles from London. The country was placed on a war footing, with Catholics generally being viewed with great suspicion, although in fact relatively few joined the Pretender’s army, with the Government issuing a proclamation ordering “all known Papists” in London to leave the capital. Challoner, whilst privately sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, publicly and personally opposed participation by Catholics, as he could foresee ultimately tragic consequences for the Church in England and for the Catholic laity. He was right to be prudent, for in the event the Pretender, having reached Derby, failed to raise the support that he expected and needed, turned his troops around to return to Scotland, and was ultimately defeated at Culloden Moor in 1746.

The Battle of Culloden 1746

The prisons were filled with Catholic prisoners; Lord Derwentwater and other Jacobite peers were executed; and the aftermath of Culloden brought much brutality, with many Highlanders massacred by the King’s forces, under the command of the Duke of Cumberland, known as ‘The Butcher’. For a period Catholics were put under considerable pressure by Government and local authorities, with Catholic houses constantly searched for arms, horses confiscated, and churches and chapels closed, including the embassy chapels in London with the exception of the Bavarian embassy.

'Rebel Hunting' by J.S.Lucas (1884)

Fortunately for Catholics, no new punitive laws were enacted, and gradually their lives settled down into much the same state as before the Rising, with their loyalties transferring imperceptibly but surely, from the House of Stuart to the Hanoverian dynasty. Challoner himself was fully occupied in that pastoral work with which he was so familiar, visiting prisoners, the sick and the poor, and providing spiritual consolation and grace in the form of the Mass whenever possible, the Sacraments, and material help in the form of food, clothing and money. This itself was dangerous work and carried its own risks, for those consorting with enemies of the state were themselves considered highly suspect, and were closely watched

The beheading of the Rebel (Jacobite) Lords on Great Tower Hill

At about this time serious internal dissensions broke out within the Church in England, between the secular and regular clergy. The basis for this was the question of ‘faculties’, specifically the 'authority' for priests to hear Confessions, which in normal times and societies, would be granted by the Bishop of the diocese in which the priests would be working. In England since the advent of Protestantism, the Catholic hierarchy had been non-existent, and the understanding was that those priests working in the English mission had their ‘faculties’ granted automatically as it were, by the Pope who had overall responsibility for the English mission, or in the case of religious by the Superior of their particular Order. With the establishment of the four Vicariates in England, with a Bishop in charge of each, for practical and other reasons it made sense that responsibility for granting faculties be vested with the Bishop of that Vicariate. Bishop Challoner applied to Rome for this to be officially sanctioned, thus arousing the ire of the Regular Orders viz. Dominicans, Benedictines, Jesuits, Franciscans, and Carmelites, who were most unhappy, considering it a usurpation of their authority and an unacceptable intrusion into the management of their affairs. Disagreement and dissension continued for several years, with appeals and counter appeals to Rome, with the matter finally settled in 1753 with the papal brief ‘Apostolicum Ministerium’ which laid out the Rules of Mission, pronouncing firmly on the side of the Bishops.

Pope Benedict XIV - Papal Brief 'Apostolicum Ministerium' 1753

Throughout his life, Challoner showed an immense capacity for work and a clear judgement of priorities, particularly in his writings which included prayer-books, catechisms, saints’ lives, martyrologies, controversy or ascetical writings, whatever he considered would best serve the salvation of souls. The result might not be the absolute best, but it would be the best that he could do at the time. For him the priority was that well or less well, the work should be done when it was needed. Those who knew him spoke of "his tender compassion for the weakness and frailties of mankind; that sweetness of speech and behaviour which gained the affection of all who knew him, and by which he led them to the love of God." They spoke of the "sweetness and affability of his discouse", and say how "the mildness and modesty, which were the distinctive marks of Dr. Challoner's character, were visible in his countenance and attracted every heart to him". He was devout and prayerful in his habits, and "he made it his constant and invariable practice (which all his acquaintances observed) to renew the love of God in his heart whenever he heard the clock strike, by signing himself with the sign of the Cross, and saying, 'O my God, teach me to love Thee in Time and Eternity ' - which practice he also recommended to all the faithful, and for that reason inserted it in the Catechism which he published for the instruction of children"

'Gin Lane, 1751' by Hogarth- the London of Bishop Challenor

Between 1749-1752 from his modest Holborn lodgings, Challoner combined a life of recollection and prayer, with one of unending pastoral activity in his work for the poor, the sick and those in prison, especially Catholics to whom he was the good shepherd. He was harassed by the troubles ensuing from the unsuccessful Jacobite revolt of 1745, added to which was his involvement in the vexatious dissensions between secular and regular clergy; yet in spite of these and other difficulties, he found the time to edit and produce a revised edition of the Douai-Rheims Bible. The only available Catholic version in English was 150 years old, difficult to find, and hard to understand by reason of obscurities of style and the fact that it was not designed for popular use.

There had long existed a need for a new English edition of the Douai Bible, in which current expressions would replace obsolete and archaic forms, at the same time preserving the original sense. It was a project beset with difficulties, demanding considerable time, labour, and patience, as well as linguistic ability and wide and detailed knowledge, theological as well as exegetical. Ideally it was a work for numerous scholars working together over a period of years, but in 18th century England, such a committee of Catholic scholars was an impossibility. To Challoner this meant that he must take on the responsibility himself, for he considered it a work that had to be done as a matter of urgency for the salvation of souls. He set out to revise the Douai text according to the Clementine edition of the Vulgate, and to rewrite it in such English as could be understood by the people of his day. In effect he produced what was practically a new translation which was to serve not only as the basis but also the substance of later versions. Challoner’s method was simple and effective, for he took the Douai Bible as his text and checked the translation by the Clementine Vulgate, and when he found a word or phrase which needed simplifying, had recourse to the Authorized Version. The New Testament was completed first, and after approval by two theologians at Douai, was published in 1749, with the Old Testament following a year later.

*********************

A comparison of the Challoner-Rheims with the original Rheims and the King James Version shows how much influence the latter had in Challoner's revision:

Rheims, 1582

1 Diversely and many ways in times past God speaking to the fathers in the prophets,
2 last of all in these days hath spoken to us in his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all, by whom he made also the worlds.
3 Who, being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance, and carrying all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the Majesty in the high places;
4 being made so much better than angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent name above them.

King James, 1611

1 God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds,
3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,
4 Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.

Challoner, 1752

1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets,
2 last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world.
3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high,
4 being made so much better than the Angels, as he hath inherited a more excellent name than they.

(with ack. www.Bible Researcher)

*************************

At this same time, Challoner was urgently seeking a suitable location for a Catholic boy’s school within convenient distance of London, the original school at Twyford having been forced to close as a result of the civic unrest following the 1745 rising. Lord Aston’s manor house of Standon Lordship in Hertfordshire, was eventually chosen, and after some local objections had been overcome, the school opened in the autumn of 1749, which as St Edmund’s, Old Hall, Ware, was later to become the diocesan college for the see of Westminster.

St Edmunds, Old Hall, Ware

During this time, Bishop Challoner maintained his episcopal visitations on a regular basis. As has been said, usually the Catholic laity were centred around the estates of Catholic gentry, with a chapel and resident priest available to them. Over time and for different reasons, these estates passed to new owners often unsympathetic to the Catholic faith, resulting in the departure of the priest and the closing of the chapel. With the exception of Winchester, Langston and Havant, in Hampshire, and in the county of Berkshire, Challoner found a general diminution in the numbers of missions and the numbers of Catholics, thus confirming what he had feared for some time.

On 8th February 1750, the day before Challoner was due to return home, “London experienced an earthquake which not only caused chimneys to collapse, but made the judges and barristers flee from Westminster Hall lest the building fall upon them. A month later alarm turned to panic when a second and more violent shock, accompanied by lightning, set the bells ringing in the steeples and brought masses of stonework crashing from the towers of Westminster Abbey. Pulpit and Press had already published the view that the occurrence was a warning against sin, and it was widely rumoured that London and Westminster were to be utterly destroyed on the 8th April, with the result that the greater part of the population is said to have spent the night of the 7th in the open air”

A pastoral letter was issued by Challoner entitled, ‘Instructions and advice to Catholicks upon occasion of the late earthquakes’ in which Catholics were reminded that earthquakes may justly be regarded as tokens that God is angry with us, calling on Catholics to prayer and penance, and ordering the priests to insert the Collects against earthquakes in the Mass, until the end of May, while the ‘Miserere’ was to be sung in all public chapels after Compline or Benediction on week-days.

'The Great Day of His Wrath' by John Martin

In 1751 Challoner published his ‘Instructions and Meditations on the Jubilee’ which had been proclaimed in 1750 by Pope Benedict XIV. This was a relatively short work explaining the Church’s intention in granting indulgences and the conditions for gaining them, thirty meditations, and some suitable prayers. This publication though short, is important as showing the zeal for souls which inspired him, and his power as a preacher. The never ending struggle between good and evil, with its final issue for each individual soul, was so intensely real to him, and the presence of God so actual a reality, that his words in direct exhortation take on a force and directness in marked contrast to his usual style. He writes as though he were speaking, in short insistent phrases, questioning, exclaiming, and exhorting. There is sometimes a sense of spiritual exaltation, and sometimes personal pain in his hurrying sentences.
In one passage he is contemplating the loss of God which is the chief horror of hell, and writes;

“They have lost Him totally: they have lost Him irrecoverably: they have lost Him eternally. They have lost Him in Himself: they have lost Him in themselves: they have lost Him in all His creatures. The lively sense of this irreparable loss, and of all the consequences of it, continually racks their despairing souls: they cannot turn away their thought one moment from it: it grips them with inexpressible torments. Whichever way they turn to seek any one drop of ease or comfort, in Him or from Him, they meet with none: all things conspire against them: all things tell them they have lost their God.”

'Satan' by Gustave Dore-Illustration for Paradise Lost (Milton)

*******************

When considering the perfections of God, he talks of - “His truth is infinitely charming”, and “What a joy it is to a true lover of God, to think that whatsoever may come to himself or to anything in the world, his Love at least, whom he loves without comparison more than himself and all things else, will always be infinitely glorious, infinitely rich and infinitely happy.”

At about this time a major problem arose for the English Catholics, concerning the Sacrament of Marriage, a problem which was to remain a source of scandal and controversy for more than eighty years. The facts were that for a long time it was legal for marriages to be celebrated without banns in any church not subject to the jurisdiction of a bishop, and such places as St James’s, Duke’s Place, the Savoy Chapel, and the prison chapels in the Marshalsea, Fleet, and Kings Bench, had long had a flourishing and disreputable trade in such marriages. In 1686 an attempt was made to legislate against these clandestine marriages, but this was unsuccessful, and by 1704 marriages were being performed in the Fleet at around 600 per month. In 1712 an Act was eventually passed prohibiting the use of these chapels for marriages. This again proved ineffective, for the disreputable clergy or pseudo clergy, merely fitted up local shops or rooms as chapels, and touted for business in the streets, with extremely successful and profitable results. London effectively became a grand ‘Gretna Green’, initially without even the need for residential qualification. Not surprisingly the evil and misery that ensued was immense.

Eventually in 1753, Lord Hardwicke introduced a Bill intended to stop this scandal, whereby every marriage was to be solemnized according to the requirements of the Church of England, including banns or licence and the full Anglican ritual, the only exceptions being in favour of Quakers and Jews.

This was a great grievance to Dissenters, but even more so to Catholics, who hitherto had been able to be married as and where they pleased, and to whom it was a matter of grave religious principle that they should under no circumstances take part in the worship or religious rites of other denominations. Challoner immediately pressed for Catholics to be included in the exceptions, using the services of an eminent Catholic lawyer named Booth, also enlisting the support of the Duke of Norfolk and his brother the Duke of Newcastle. Unfortunately, in spite of strong objections, the Bill passed both Houses, becoming law in June 1753.

Thus Catholics now found themselves in a truly invidious position, for if they obeyed the law and married in an Anglican church, they were acting against their conscience; whereas if they disobeyed it and were content with a marriage solemnized as of old by one of their own priests, the marriage was held to be void in law, their future children were made illegitimate, they themselves might be convicted as felons, and the officiating priest was liable to 14 years transportation. The best that Catholics could obtain from the Government was an assurance that the attendance of Catholics in Protestant churches on these occasions, was to be considered, not as an act of religious conformity, but as “a ceremony prescribed by the law of the land for the civil legality of the marriage.” Many priests took the view that marriage under the prescribed circumstances, had become merely a civil ceremony with the prayers of the officiating minister regarded rather as the good wishes of a civil official. Others including Bishop Challoner, could not accept this broad interpretation, regarding marriage in these circumstances, as a religious service conducted by a minister in an heretical church. Agreement could not be reached, and after some weeks the question was referred by Bishop Challoner to Rome, with copies of the Act of Parliament and the Anglican Marriage Services duly forwarded.

A reply was subsequently received from the Pope’s secretary in Rome, disallowing Catholics to be married in accordance with the new Act, as it would constitute ‘communicatio in sacris’; which reply was felt by Challoner to be inadequate and not particularly helpful, bearing in mind the prevailing circumstances.

Bishop Challoner was acutely aware of the implications and practical difficulties for his flock, and chose to:-

“tolerate, where necessity may require it, our peoples going to Church (out of the time of the service) and there making or renewing their marriage contract, in the usual form of words before the minister, and witnesses: putting on also the ring, if they please, and paying the dues; but excusing themselves from kneeling and praying. But then, I think in this case, they should first be married by a priest. As for our countenancing marriages, absolutely clandestine, which the Church has always detested, (it) is what should not be thought of……”

By adopting this practice the marriages of Catholics would be valid under English law, and the children of such marriages would be legitimate, but equally by the same law the earlier celebration of the marriage by a priest was a felony punishable in the case of the celebrant, by transportation for 14 years.

The danger was real and there were some priests who felt it better that the parties go first to the Protestant church, which while keeping everything within the law of the land, meant that the Sacrament was conferred without the blessing of the Church and amid surroundings of an alien worship. Some London clergy considered that this could be evaded by the expedient of withholding true internal consent, so that once before the Catholic priest, the parties could give full consent for the first time, and thus receive the Sacrament of Matrimony. Another view was that the contract expressed before the priest operated as a second expression of one continuing consent, beginning before one minister and finishing before another.

'Christ Crowned With Thorns' by Mathias Stom (1633/9)

Thus there arose a considerable divergency of practice, and even though Challoner preferred that Catholics should not go to the Protestant church at all, his view was not shared by all, and thus he tolerated their going to an Anglican church but only after their marriage by a Catholic priest. Challenor had not received a clear and 'fully considered' reply from Rome, and thus felt it prudent to ‘tread softly’ on this question. Yet the operation of the Act led to many difficulties, for in practice it was found almost impossible to prevent couples from kneeling to receive the clergyman’s blessing, or from joining in his prayers when once they were within the walls of the Protestant church. In the case of those who went first to the Anglican church, the majority of priests considered it sacrilegious in so contracting the Sacrament. Yet over time this practice became so widespread that it was described as the ‘accepted modern practice’(Rev F C Husenbeth 1834), yet it could not have happened without much trouble of conscience to clergy and laity alike.

         In this instance Bishop Challenor’s authority, great as it was among Catholics, did not prevail, for in spite of his views and his directions to the clergy, the more usual practice was for Catholic marriages to be celebrated first in the Anglican church, and then before a priest. This unsatisfactory situation continued for more than 80 years, until the Marriage Act of 1836 placed all Dissenters, including Catholics, on the same footing as the Quakers and the Jews.
(to be continued)                 ( Ack. 'Bishop Challoner' by
                                                  M. Trappes-Lomax
pub. Longman's Green & Co. 1936)

Bishop Challoner (Part 2) - the English Mission 1730 - 1742

2010-10-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

(Continuation of previous post)

KING GEORGE II (1683-1760)

When Challoner returned to England in the late summer of 1730, he found a Church silenced and generally alienated from society, with Catholics effectively barred from much community life. Apprehension, frustration and loneliness, arising from the cumulative effect of perpetual ostracism and incessant injustice and oppression, had replaced physical martyrdom. In 1723, for instance, £100,000 was automatically assessed on Catholic landowners above 18 years of age, Catholic gentry were debarred from sitting or voting in either House of Parliament; they were incapable of inheriting land so that family estates passed to Protestant next-of-kin should they so choose; they were unable to purchase land but were required to pay double land tax on such real property as they owned; they were forbidden to keep arms and were liable to be deprived of any horse above the value of £5. They were disqualified from holding any office in the army or the navy; nor could they practise as a barrister, doctor, or schoolmaster. They could not send their children to be educated abroad without a fine; and in order that due check might be kept on them and their property they were bound to register their name and estate under penalty of forfeiture, and to enrol all deeds. Although some laws were rarely enforced, they could be and occasionally were, on individual Catholics.

The situation for the clergy was even worse, with their very presence in the country illegal. Between 1700-1778 the law was summed up as follows:-

“By the statute of Queen Elizabeth, 27, c.2, it is High Treason for any man who is proved to be a priest, to breathe in this kingdom.”

Later a 'less severe statute' was added, which authorised a fine and short imprisonment. However to somewhat redress the 'status quo', a statute of King William III condemned any priest convicted of exercising his functions, to perpetual punishment.

It may here be remarked that the 'less severe statute' did not supersede the statute of Elizabeth, 27, and that the act of William III was so far from being a dead letter, that a priest, Fr.John Baptist Maloney, was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, under its provisions, as late as 1767.

THE BENCH - by W.Hogarth

During three-quarters of the 18th century there was intermittent application of the penal code which ensured that the possibility of enforcement was an ever present threat. In 1730 the political situation was hostile to Catholics, and throughout the country the Faith was maintained almost wholly through the efforts of those gentry who, by supporting private chaplains, and giving employment, maintained as it were, tiny oases of Catholicism. Should these families apostatize, or die out, or suffer financial exhaustion, both the source of Catholic teaching and the support which their poorer neighbours received, would automatically end. Each such failure was like the loss of an important outpost in a hostile land, with no possibility of recapture. Eventually and logically, the extinction of the Faith outside London seemed to be only a question of time.

In London, the several embassy chapels protected by diplomatic immunity, ensured that the Mass and the Sacraments were at least available to the laity. Even so there was no expansion of the faith in these quarters, for which Bishop Petre, in his letter to Rome of 1737, blamed some of the clergy, "Several of the missioners, as we behold, not without deep grief of mind, are inflamed with no zeal for souls, but seek the things which are their own and not the things of Jesus Christ. Not a few of them, even, either entirely rough and ignorant, or being men of bad character, give scandal both to Catholics and others.”

THINK WELL ON'T (1728) - by Richard Challoner

In stark contrast, Charles Butler in his biography of Richard Challoner, had this to say:-

"From his arrival in London till he was consecrated Bishop, he was a perfect model of a Missionary Priest. He avoided more intercourse with the world than was absolutely necessary, assiduous in the discharge of his duties, with daily meditation, celebration of Mass, and reading of office; frequently visiting his flock carrying piety and recollection wherever he went; he was cheerful, and the cause of cheerfulness in others; always serene, affable, unaffected, prudent and charitable, never said anything which tended, even remotely, to his own advantage. He reproved with the greatest gentleness, his conduct abundantly verifying the golden maxim of St Francis de Sales, ‘that a good man is never outdone in good manner’. His visits were always short, and nothing, except the most urgent necessity, ever kept him from returning to his abode at a very early hour, that he might be in the way to hear confessions, to give advice, to catechise, to attend to the calls of the sick or dying, or to exercise any other missionary duty, for which it should be necessary or expedient that he should then be found at home…….he considered himself as particularly commissioned to preach the gospel to the poor, whose cellars, garrets, hospitals, workhouses and prisons were much more agreeable, as well as familiar, to him than the splendid habitations of the great and opulent …..”

BISHOP CHALLONER

Little is known of the details of his early years in London, but it is believed that he lived north of Holborn, and worked in that area, always in disguise. He seems to have been successful in reclaiming bad Catholics and making converts. His subsequent catechetical and controversial works illustrate his method, which was to lay a solid foundation of instruction on which to base his exhortations. To touch the will through the intelligence was his objective. His first appeal was always to authority; to the authority of the Church if he is addressing Catholics, to that of Scripture if he is arguing with others. His presentation was always orderly and methodical, and confined strictly to the matter in hand; citations from Scripture, dogmatic truths, theological arguments, historical facts, are all gathered together in the closest compass. When this task had been accomplished he made what may be regarded as the personal appeal, and, if necessary, pleaded, encouraged and exhorted with deep conviction and earnestness. But all his efforts in this direction were immediately based on the truths which he had been at pains to establish.

In 1732 he published two works ‘The Unerring Authority of the Catholic Church in matters of Faith…..’ and ‘The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrine contained in the Profession of Faith, published by Pope Pius IV, by way of question and answer’

In 1734, Bishop Giffard died, aged 92 years, and was succeeded by Bishop Benjamin Petre who immediately appointed Challoner his Vicar General.

Between 1734 and 1737, in spite of his additional responsibilities, Challoner wrote five more controversial works, as well as editing a new edition of Gother’s ‘Essay on the Change and Choice of Religion’ and providing a new translation of the ‘Imitation of Christ’. His final book of this period was entitled ‘The Catholic Christian instructed in the Sacraments, Sacrifice, Ceremonies and Observances of the Church’ which for more than a century was to remain the standard work of instruction on these points.

It contained more than its name implied, however, for its preface was devoted to refuting the main contentions of the ‘Letter from Rome showing an exact conformity between Popery and Paganism: or the Religion of the present Romans derived from that of their heathen ancestors’, by the Protestant writer Dr Conyers Middleton.

In his refutation Challoner added light humour to his usual framework of logic and erudition, and from his secret lodging in the slums of Holborn, fighting an apparently losing battle and himself an outlaw, Challoner made gentle fun of Dr Middleton. The latter was not amused, and seizing on Challoner’s references to the Anglican Church, used these as evidence of the author’s disaffection to his sovereign – an offence under the existing penal code.

Dr CONYERS MIDDLETON - Protestant writer and theologian

“It was not in the power of Dr Middleton, with all his store of ancient learning and all his powers of language, to give anything like an answer to the arguments above stated: but in return he was enabled to bring in the penal laws to the aid of his defective logic and theology. In short, the situation of Dr Challoner, after the publication of this ‘Catholic Christian Instructed’, with the preface to it, became so much exposed to danger, which others shared together with him, that he was advised to retire out of the kingdom for a certain space of time’ (Rev. Milner in his ‘Brief Account’).

Thus in mid September 1737, Challoner returned to Douai, but it was not to be a time of rest, for the ailing President, Dr Witham, took the opportunity to nominate Challoner as his successor. In May 1738 Dr Witham died, and Challoner succeeded him as head of the College.

Challoner now found himself in an awkward situation, for he was highly regarded by Bishop Petre, who flatly refused to agree to his taking the post at Douai. Furthermore in writing to Rome in April 1739, the former was full of praise for Challoner’s “many remarkable gifts of mind, his great humility and gentleness, by his assiduous fidelity in reclaiming sinners to the way of life taught by the Gospel and to the truths of our religion; by his marvellous power in preaching, in instructing the ignorant and in writing books both spiritual and controversial, he has won not only the esteem but the veneration of all who have either heard him preach or who have read his books.” Bishop Petre then expressed his wish for Challoner to be his Coadjutor.

POPE CLEMENT XII (1730-1740)

Thus it was that with Papal approval, in September 1739, Challoner was appointed titular Bishop of Debra, also Coadjutor to Bishop Petre with right of succession to the London District. Initially Challoner begged to be excused from accepting these appointments, alleging that he was an improper person to be made Bishop, being born of parents who were not members of the Catholic Church; and that he himself had professed the erroneous opinions of his parents. This purely technical objection was overcome after some delay, and on 29 January 1741, the feast of St Francis de Sales, Bishop Petre consecrated his coadjutor. There is no record of the details of the consecration except that it was in a small, hidden convent in Hammersmith, where Bishop Giffard had died, and where a community established by Queen Catherine of Braganza, had preserved the secret of its religious life.

In 1740 was published possibly Challoner’s most famous work, namely ‘The Garden of the Soul: or a Manual of Spiritual Exercises and Instructions for Christians, who living in the World, aspire to devotion.’ This small and inexpensive work combined the functions of a prayer book with information, instructions and practical advice, and it proved so popular that seven editions were printed in seventeen years. The difference between the ‘Garden of the Soul’ and its predecessors was that it gave, as it were, the theory as well as the practice: it was a treatise on the spiritual life, as well as a collection of exercises therein.

The London District included Kent, Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Sussex, Berkshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, and Jersey and Guernsey; also Maryland and Pennsylvania in the American colonies, and certain islands in the West Indies. There were about 20,000 Catholics in London itself, and in the counties which formed the London Vicariate were an additional 4/5000 souls. Early in June 1741, Challoner set off on his first visitation which was to take two years in all, when combined with the ordinary work of the vicariate. Today it is normal to find a Catholic church in most large towns, with perhaps the occasional country chapel. In the 18th century the situation was reversed and in the ten counties forming the London Vicariate almost all the centres of Catholic life were found in the country seats of the nobility and gentry. Every Catholic estate had a priest and a congregation. The clergy themselves were in an anomalous position for as private chaplains they could be employed or dismissed at will, and as such were not at the effective disposition of their Bishop. Additionally the situation was complicated by many Catholics preferring to have chaplains belonging to a religious order over whom the Bishop had less control than ever, for it was for many years contended that he had no right either to give or withdraw faculties, and all that he could reasonably expect was that they should intimate to him the faculties they had received from their own superiors.

Challoner returned to London on 19 July 1741 on completion of the first part of his visitation, having visited twenty congregations and confirmed over 800 persons. He then immediately commenced work on a new book, ‘Memoirs of Missionary Priests, as well Secular as Regular and of other Catholics of both sexes, that have suffered death in England, on Religious Accounts, from the Year of Our Lord 1577 to1684’. This was published in 1742 in two volumes and won itself a place with his ‘Garden of the Soul’ and ‘Meditations’ in the affections of Catholics. “We pretend not to make Panegyrics of any of these brave men,” he wrote, “but merely to deliver short memoirs of what we found most remarkable in their lives and particularly in their deaths.”

St JOHN SOUTHWORTH (1592-1654)

His purpose in writing this book was to enable and encourage the English Catholics of the day - who had little going for them and no expectation of better things to come, to find spiritual consolation and strength from the lives of their faithful predecessors. Up to this time there was no recorded English version of their lives. There were some individual biographies in French, Spanish and Italian, and probably more in Latin in rare and ancient works and in inaccessible archives. Challoner’s task was to collect, examine and arrange, to translate and abridge, and finally to present in suitable form, material from manuscripts, books and records, scattered widely throughout Britain and the Continent. He was assisted by Rev.Alban Butler at Douai, who transcribed many of the original documents, amounting to some four hundred memoirs. Challoner’s account is written in the way of an ancient chronicler, setting down without comment, deeds which speak for themselves, and telling it simply and straightforwardly, without pause, protest or debate, and as though present at the scene. It concerned people of whom he would write, “there was not a man of them all, but might have saved his life, if he would but have conformed in matters of religion.”

For those of his flock for whom he wrote, conformity would have brought all that made life in their world worth living. Their temptation was one of despair in an hostile environment, and this book and others like it, provided the spiritual sustenance and encouragement so desperately needed for their faith to survive.

In the autumn of 1741 Challoner resumed his visitation through the counties of Surrey, Middlesex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, and into Hampshire, eventually reaching Winchester with its sizeable Catholic community of some 300 souls, plus an additional 400 from surrounding congregations. On route he visited East Hendred where the Eyston family maintained an unbroken tradition of Catholicity, and where in their 13th century private chapel of St Amand he celebrated Mass and confirmed some twenty-five parishioners. Winchester had its own resident priest, occupying St Peter’s House, where apparently the Catholic Church and presbytery still stands to this day. A feature peculiar to Winchester, was that the Catholics had retained the use of the ancient Catholic cemetery of St James, where Dr Challoner’s mother had been buried. Challoner remained at Winchester for two or three days, confirming some 100 people, and leaving on the 26th October to ensure his return to London by 1st November, the feast of All Saints.

St AMANDS 13th century Chapel, East Hendred, Oxon.

Challoner now completed a new work entitled ‘The Grounds of the Old Religion’, his longest apologetical work, being the practical outcome of his method of bringing before all men the claims of the Catholic Church to be the only “pillar and ground of truth”, the one divinely appointed authority in regard to revelation.

He wrote “the things of this world all seem to stand against the Old Religion in this Nation: the general prejudice of the people, the penal laws, the authority of the magistrate, the interest of the clergy, the eloquence of the pulpit, the learning of the Universities, the favour of men in power, the influence of education; in a word, all temporal considerations of honour, profit and pleasure are visibly on the Protestant side.” Against this, he adds that he presents “a set of motives of a superior nature” which will satisfy his reader “that if he has the World against him, he has at least God and His truth on his side”.

' TU ES PETRUS .......'

The ‘superior motives’ were simply the arguments in favour of the divine authority of the Catholic Church, which he insisted on as the basis of his position. One particular line of argument he used, was directed against the reformers of the XVI century, both Continental heresiarchs and the first prelates intruded by Elizabeth into the English sees. He offers an historical examination of their lives and writings, with a view to showing that such men were unworthy of being accepted as religious guides, or as witnesses against the traditions of the Church., asserting both the novelty of the reformed doctrines and the unsatisfactory characters of the reformers.

KING HENRY VIII (1539) - by Holbein

"Nothing,"he writes, "makes more for the old Religion, than an impartial view of the first origin of all these new sects of pretenders to Reformation. Every circumstance that attended the change of Religion introduced by these Reformers, demonstrates that God had no hand in their work ...... The motives which set these men to work were visibly bad: the means they employed to compass their ends were illegal and unchristian; and the fruits that ensued both in Church and State, and in the lives and manners of particulars, were such as a good tree could never have produced. All which things, as they are undeniably plain from History, clearly show that none of these new sects have any share in the Church of Christ; which therefore must be sought for elsewhere, viz. amongst the followers of the old Religion: there Christ left it and there alone we shall find it."

St MICHAEL - Crushing Lucifer

This was Challoner's first controversial book since his 'Catholic Christian Instructed', and to forestall any repetition of legal action, he included in the preface a request that any writer undertaking an answer should do so on the basis of solid argument, rather than resort to legal violence to 'stop the mouth of truth and suppress its light'. There were no repercussions. (To be continued)

Ack. 'Bishop Challoner' by M.Trappes-Lomax
Pub. Longman's, Green & Co. 1936