On this day, in 1608, St. Thomas Garnet was martyred at Tyburn. Here's more about him:
Protomartyr of St. Omer and therefore of Stonyhurst College; b. at Southwark, c. 1575; executed at Tyburn, 23 June, 1608. Richard Garnet, Thomas's father, was at Balliol College, Oxford, at the time when greater severity began to be used against Catholics, in 1569, and by his constancy gave great edification to the generation of Oxford men which was to produce Campion, Persons and so many other champions of Catholicism. Thomas attended the Horsham grammar school and was afterwards a page to one of the half-brothers of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who were, however, conformists. At the opening of St. Omer's College in 1592, Thomas was sent there. By 1595 he was considered fit for the new English theological seminary at Valladolid, and started in January, with five others, John Copley, William Worthington, John Ivreson, James Thomson, and Henry Mompesson, from Calais. They were lucky in finding, as a travelling companion, a Jesuit Father, William Baldwin, who was going to Spain in disguise under the alias Ottavio Fuscinelli, but misfortunes soon began. After severe weather in the Channel, they found themselves obliged to run for shelter to the Downs, where their vessel was searched by some of Queen Elizabeth's ships, and they were discovered hiding in the hold. They were immediately made prisoners and treated very roughly. They were sent round the Nore up to London, and were examined by Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, the lord admiral. After this Father Baldwin was sent to Bridewell prison, where he helped the confessorJames Atkinson to obtain his crown. Meantime his young companions had been handed over to Whitgift, theArchbishop of Canterbury, who, having found that they encouraged one another, sent them one by one to different Protestant bishops or doctors. Only the youngest, Mompesson, conformed; the rest eventually escaped and returned to their colleges beyond seas after many adventures. We are not told specifically what befell young Garnet, but it seems likely that he was the youth confined to the house of Dr. Richard Edes (Dict. Nat. Biog., XVI, 364). He fell ill and was sent home under bond to return to custody atOxford by a certain day. But his jailer not appearing in time, the boy escaped, and to avoid trouble had then to keep away even from his own father. At last he reached St-Omer again, and thence went to Valladolid, 7 March, 1596, having started on that journey no less than ten times.
After ordination in 1599, "returning to England I wandered", he says, "from place to place, to reduce souls which went astray and were in error as to the knowledge of the true Catholic Church". During the excitement caused by the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 he was arrested near Warwick, going under the name Thomas Rokewood, which he had no doubt assumed from Ambrose Rokewood of Coldham Hall, whose chaplain he then was, and who had unfortunately been implicated in the plot. Father Garnet was now imprisoned first in the Gatehouse, then in the Tower, where he was very severely handled in order to make him give evidence against Henry Garnet, his uncle, superior of the English Jesuits, who had lately admitted him into the Society. Though no connection with the conspiracy could be proved, he was kept in the Tower for seven months, at the end of which time he was suddenly put on board ship with forty-six other priests, and a royal proclamation, dated 10 July, 1606, was read to them, threatening death if they returned. They were then carried across the Channel and set ashore in Flanders.
Father Garnet now went to his old school at St-Omer, thence to Brussels to see the superior of the Jesuits, Father Baldwin, his companion in the adventures of 1595, who sent him to the English Jesuitnovitiate, St. John's, Louvain, in which he was the first novice received. In September, 1607, he was sent back to England, but was arrested six weeks later by an apostate priest called Rouse. This was the timeJames's controversy with Bellarmine about the Oath of Allegiance. Garnet was offered his life if he would take it, but steadfastly refused, and was executed at Tyburn, protesting that he was "the happiestman this day alive". His relics, which were preserved at St-Omer, were lost during the French Revolution.
Today is also, FWIW, the birthday of my son, Thomas Garnett. Pretty cool.
Yesterday, we celebrated the feast day of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, two Catholic heroes who refused to go along, merely "for friendship's sake", with Henry VIII's power-and-money grab.
Here is a powerful clip from Showtimes' "The Tudors," depicting the execution of Fisher. And here is the execution of More, from the same series.
I realize that, in some quarters, it is thought to be an overreaction to worry about the coming (quickly) grave challenges to religious freedom. It is thought, or hoped, that we can and should leave "culture wars" behind, and that the optimism, joy, and popularity of Pope Francis make worries and concerns about religious freedom something only for the pinched, crabbed, overly litigious or "obsessed." But, unfortunately, the challenges and threats are real and the worries and concerns are well founded. The Pope's popularity and the fact that some who are not ordinarily all that interested in the Church's moral anthropology or account of the world like a few sentences in the new encyclical do not change the fact that it is increasingly mainstream in developed, western countries to think the logic of congruence should be applied to religious institutions and agencies and that it is enough, for religious liberty, to allow people to believe and worship as they like.
It's worth remembering, when we think of Saints Thomas More and John Fisher, that England was chock-full of Catholic bishops and lawyers like them right before the Act of Supremacy . . . and the Sovereign was able to get them on board.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Walter Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is one of those books that I've seen on lots and lots of "novels that Catholic readers should read" lists (along with, you know, "The Moviegoer," "The Power and the Glory," "A Confederacy of Dunces," etc.) but never got around to reading. Well, I just finished it. Fascinating (especially in light of what seems to be the trend -- especially in so-called "Young Adult" fiction -- of post-apocalyptic-dystopian stuff). If you are looking for a summer read, check it out. (For a bit more -- and I don't think the piece really "gets" the book, but that's alright -- here's a New Yorker article on the book's legacy that ran a few years ago.)
Friday, June 19, 2015
A friend passed this along -- almost 110 years old (the piece, not the friend), but very much on-point:
What ails our much-vaunted public school system? Why do our common schools fail to attain the ends for which they were established ? To the many firm believers in the Public Schools, infallibility of our national institutions, these questions, may appear impious, but the facts are concrete. We are "up against it" on the public school question. From far and near comes the cry, give us a school system which will not only thoroughly train the child in the essential elements of knowledge, but so mold the varied and cosmopolitan offspring of our population that they will develop into active, patriotic and morally responsible citizens with the welfare of their country at heart.
How, it is asked, is this to be done? By the unanimous opinion of thinkers, it can only be done by giving to our youth not only mental but moral training. An education which develops the mind and ignores the heart cannot fail to rear a godless, conscienceless, irresponsible class of men, fit for anarchy, socialism, individualism or any of the flagrant isms that are now flourishing.
The Catholic Church by her system of parochial schools is avoiding this great mistake. She is solving the problems of our country, as educators and moralists say it must be solved. In doing so, however, she is not only doing her share to support the State schools, but bearing voluntarily the enormous burden ofher own schools. The injustice of the situation is obvious to every true disciple of justice and right. The time must come in the immediate future, when the country will realize that the training of the heart and the mind go hand in hand. Those who have at heart the perpetuation of our nation as a world-power realize that they must have behind all else an enduring moral code.
With the youth of our country trained to ideals of morality, of civic virtue and an all-abiding belief in God, there will be no doubt that our government shall live on untouched by the evils which have befallen so many of the nations that have been great, to worldly seeming.
Where did the above essay come from? The student Board of Editors, of the Notre Dame Scholastic, October, 1908.
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Here:
This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings. But one cannot prescind from humanity. There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself. There can be no ecology without an adequate anthropology. When the human person is considered as simply one being among others, the product of chance or physical determinism, then “our overall sense of responsibility wanes”.96 A misguided anthropocentrism need not necessarily yield to “biocentrism”, for that would entail adding yet another imbalance, failing to solve present problems and adding new ones. Human beings cannot be expected to feel responsibility for the world unless, at the same time, their unique capacities of knowledge, will, freedom and responsibility are recognized and valued. 95 John Paul
