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October 9, 2022: Faith of our Fathers
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Happy Columbus Day weekend. The Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. And I didn’t have to look up their names. The three ships of Christopher Columbus were learned in 5th or 6th grade history, when history was taught with accuracy and not with an agenda, and for some reason I have not forgotten their names. I can’t remember anything else I learned in school in those grades, except for some basic math and a few religious teachings. But American history has always come naturally and with great interest. And religious history is even more exciting, now that God has called yours truly to priesthood. In my personal estimation, religious history makes for the most interesting type of history. It involves both this world and the next.
And speaking of religious history, I’m about halfway through reading a recently published popular book titled Faith of Our Fathers. It’s written by the British author Joseph Pearce. The last Pearce I knew was Boston Red Sox player Steve Pearce, who I remember with great joy hitting three home runs against the New York Yankees during a Sunday night game with a national audience. Maybe he and Joseph are long, distant cousins. Anyway, the book written by Joseph Pearce is religious history at its best and its worst. Best because of how interesting it is as a topic, it’s easy to read, and it keeps the attention of the reader throughout thus far. The worst flows from the level of violence in the book which occurred at the time of the Reformation in the early 16th century, long thereafter, and into the next century. Faith of Our Fathers is a historical book on the Catholic history of England. Let’s not forget this includes King Henry VIII and his full-on assault on the Catholic Church during his reign, not to mention the number of martyrs who won the ultimate prize at the behest of his orders, and later on the reign of his “illegitimate” daughter Elizabeth, also known as Bloody Bess.
Prior to Henry VIII taking the throne in early 16th century England, Great Britain was a mighty strong Catholic country. Very, very strong and faithful. If St. Paul (1st century), the Apostle to the Gentiles, had visited the British and converted some of them during his travels, establishing a Church in their midst, and after sailing away over the English Channel to bring the Gospel elsewhere, he would have sent them epistles expressing his deep love and pleasure in their faithfulness to Jesus as Lord and Savior. Just like he did to the Philippians. The Catholic faith of the British people was lived openly each day; the number of monasteries built throughout the land approached 1000 or more; the priesthood was numerous and vibrant; Religious Orders of women and men were flourishing throughout the land, and the British way of life was Catholic through and through.
For a number of centuries this was the setting, until Henry decided he didn’t like the answer coming from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Rome regarding his marital troubles. Instead, the beast of kings decided to take matters into his own hands and become his own pope who would go on to make his own rules and regulations. The rest is history. A very bloody, murderous history when the number of martyrs in the Church increased exponentially, planting their red seed into the sod of England for the life of the Church. Between Henry and his daughter Elizabeth, the number of English martyrs easily reached four figures.
Those martyred under Henry, of course, were all Catholics who stood against the idea of Henry VIII being their religious leader. Why wouldn’t they reject an attempted papal coup? Henry VIII being the religious leader of a nation would be akin to Tom Brady becoming the head coach of the Boston Bruins. He knows much about football, and little about hockey. He probably met Bobby Orr once or twice in his New England time, but this does not qualify him for head coach status for a professional hockey team in a professional hockey league. Maybe this is a poor comparison, but I’m sure you get the point. Henry VIII was out of place by placing himself as the religious leader of England. He would have been better off naming himself the head maintenance guy in the palace he lived. And England as a nation would have been better off also.
But in fairness, the blood was spilled both ways. Meaning, in between Henry’s reign and that of his daughter Elizabeth was the reign of Henry’s other daughter Mary, known as Bloody Mary Tudor. Henry VIII’s apple did not fall far from the tree with either one of his daughters. Don’t bother asking me what happened to their feminine touch. While Elizabeth copied her father in working against Catholicism, Mary denied her father in her staunch Catholicism immediately after his death. Staunch to the point of martyring many Protestants and causing other “reformers” to flee across the English Channel during her short reign. What Henry began, the daughters continued, just on opposite sides of the religious aisle. Faith of Our Fathers touches on, but lays low somewhat the murderous actions of Mary, maybe because she was Catholic. Who knows? I’d have to have a discussion with the author. But either way, Henry began a reign of terror in England against beautiful people in love with their faith that lasted over many decades. It is easily the worst time and the largest blot in that great nation’s history.
In reading this book, I’m fascinated by the depth of England’s Catholicism both prior to and after Henry’s monarchical reign of brutality. This is something I never previously considered. When we think of Great Britain toady, they are predominantly seen as a Protestant, Anglican country, which they are. Yes, I know they refer to themselves as the catholic church, but it was Henry, a monarch with little or no religious training, holding a secular position of leadership, who forcibly took over the reigns of the church in his country and no other. This is not exactly “catholic,” which means universal. Sound familiar, America? We have a present government doing the same incrementally. This would explain the numerous and continuous attacks on religious liberty and religious institutions. Anyway, Henry VIII does not qualify for a religious leader anywhere, especially a Christian one. He was a monarch, not an apostle.
Despite Henry’s reign of terror, which included removing all religious people from all monasteries in England (about 1000), who were all Catholic of course, and giving their land to the already well-off folks in England, making them even richer, as well as having many of the monasteries destroyed, the Catholic Church remained strong with faithful followers throughout his time in charge. As always seems to be the case for those who are steadfast in their faith under conditions of persecution, many British went underground like modern day China, which allowed the faith to be kept alive despite the lack of Churches and articles connected to the faith that were thrown out and burned, and they worshipped God despite the threat of death if caught worshipping God. As bad as things may be in our nation that grows more and more secular, a nation in desperate need of a religious revival, we cannot approach (not yet) the circumstances in which so many faithful Catholics lived their love for Christ Jesus in a climate of dying for the faith. These are the true heroes of England in not only its religious history, but overall history.
In last week’s second reading of Paul to Timothy, and in last week’s bulletin piece, was mentioned Paul’s words of our “bearing hardship for the gospel.” St. Paul’s proclamation to Timothy spoke to the prevalent persecution that Jesus warned his disciples would be thrust upon them when bringing the Good News to the world. For some, the Good News is actually bad news because it challenges, for the most part, selfish motives. Like those of King Henry VIII and his marriage squabble with the Church. In reading Faith of Our Fathers, what the reader learns is the degree of hardship for the Gospel that British Catholics endured. Not quite the Roman Empire in the first three centuries of the Church until Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of the Empire in 313. But very hard persecution nonetheless was upon them.
Persecution can be short-lived if addressed at its source. Or, like most persecutions over the centuries, religious or secular, they can last a much longer time, such as centuries. Bearing hardship for the Gospel, for us in this area of the world, is realized more with pain and suffering, with disease and relationships, than it is being persecuted by some human authority or party who plays God. Of course, the many in England who chose not to deny their Lord in their Catholic faith, making the ultimate sacrifice of choosing death rather than live falsely for a raging King or his daughter, makes our situation look small. Even though our challenges are not small, they do remain so when placed aside of England’s martyrs. They bore hardship for the Gospel by spilling their blood after some of the worst torture imaginable. It is only right that many of them have been canonized into the Communion of Saints for their witness to Christ.
With this said, we pray for peace always. This should be part of the daily prayer life of every Catholic in the world. We have a long history of both giving and receiving on the topic of killing or being killed. All of it, whether giving or receiving, contradicts the Fifth Commandment as well as the teachings of the Prince of Peace.
HOLINESS
Words like holy and holiness have a certain pejorative ring to them in contemporary demotic speech, as phrases like “holier than thou,” or “holy roller” attest. To recover the authentic notion of holiness, one must begin with the fundamental notion that holiness belongs, in the first instance, to God or, to put it more plainly, God as God is holy by definition. To affirm the holiness (i.e. the Otherness) of God does not mean that one so exalts God that God's reality becomes beyond a human ken (this would contradict the biblical notion of God as Abba). It is to say that the truly religious person does not fall into any form of idolatry: “You shall not have other gods besides me.”
A person is holy (or seeks holiness) in the most radically authentic sense of the term when that person affirms, by commitment, the reality of God. To be holy means to be nonautonomous; to be holy means to be in relation. While the older, more restrictive notion of holiness as cultic separation/purity is helpful as a phenomenological category, it does not do justice to the broader theological concept of holiness as the term is used both in magisterial statements and in the tradition of Christian spirituality.
Holiness must not be understood as the single province of those committed by vow to the regular life as it exists within the Church. It would be a deformation to posit a “two-tiered” canon of holiness, with one being superior or open to only an elite few. While the Church has always recognized the special way of the evangelical councils of poverty, chastity, and obedience, it would be overly restrictive to think that these councils are available only within the regular life of the vowed religious.
Nor is it possible to think of the call of holiness as being restricted to those who are ex professo (by profession) members of the Church. Not only did Vatican II accept the reality of holiness outside the visible bonds of the Church, but it argued that such holiness could be a source of verification for the Church. Indeed, it forthrightly noted that in the non-Christian religious traditions one can find “people with a profound religious sense” and, further, that “the Church rejects nothing which is true and holy” in these traditions (Nostra Aetate 2). From The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality