'The Happy Prince' is good cheer!

 

I realise that the role and purpose of the media is to report news to the people, but am I alone in thinking that these days virtually everything considered newsworthy is 'bad' news, calculated to depress and spread fear and confusion to readers and viewers. The worldwide corona-19 virus with its apparently infinite number of possible mutations, but strangely coherent spread throughout the world, the uncertainty of the Brexit negotiations, the corruption endemic in the Presidential election in the USA with its fearful Godless consequences envisaged by those many good people who care but who are virtually helpless to prevent it; all these scenarios fit ideally into the strategy of those powerful interests planning the great Reset and intent on One-world government, with its design of universal control over all peoples. The strategy appears to have started according to plan, with nations falling over themselves to vaccinate everybody against covid-19, using vaccines which are not fully tested, many of which utilise foetal cells from aborted babies in their testing and/or manufacture, and the contents of which have not been fully revealed by the manufacturers, leading to great suspicion and distrust as to what is actually being injected into people's bodies. Control, control, control, is becoming more and more the mantra of the UK, Scottish, and other governments, who rigidly follow the advice given by their respective team of scientists and so-called medical experts, regardless of the increasingly evident signs that lockdowns, spacing and masks, whilst possibly effective in specific circumstances, as a general policy enacted on a mass population scale, combine to cause far more harm to people and society generally, than the disease itself. Recently I read an article by an eminent virologist, who stated that SAGE the UK advisory group of scientists and medical 'experts', did not have a fully qualified specialist and experienced virologist in its ranks, but did include four mathematicians! If this imbalance is true, then clearly the advice from SAGE on which the government acts, could have serious limitations, and could even be wrong. I also read recently that in at least two South American countries, I think maybe Chile and Peru, a medicine very cheap and simple to produce, had been found to be highly successful in the treatment of covid-19, particularly if taken in the early stages. Apparently this medicine is being more and more widely used, with a very high success rate, and I wonder why we in the UK do not seem to have shared this success, or even to have generally heard of it through the media. Is it because the vested interests behind our vaccination programmes, are profiting by perhaps millions if not billions of pounds, and would prefer that cheap, more effective and accessible alternatives to their vaccines, be kept out of sight and out of mind? Of course my understanding of events may be totally wrong, in which case I apologise and am quite prepared to take back what I say. On the other hand my understanding, though limited, may be somewhere near the truth! By the way, where does Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe and of all mankind, come into man's thinking? We should be on our knees begging God's forgiveness and mercy for the terrible sins of mankind, not least for the millions of unborn babies murdered annually in 'legalised' abortions throughout the world. The sheer hypocrisy of nations who casually allow abortion effectively on demand, yet impose personal and socially damaging lifestyles on whole societies, in order that relatively few (in comparison with the number of aborted babies) people do not become affected by the virus. No remorse for the aborted babies, but pull out all the stops to vaccinate everyone, at enormous cost to governments and enormous profits for the pharmaceutical companies. We should have a nationwide recourse to prayer, public prayer if possible, asking Almighty God to forgive us our sins, and begging His mercy on our country and the world.

I have felt the need to put some of my rather haphazard thoughts to paper, but the impetus for this was provided by an article in a recent edition of the Daily Telegraph, written by Tim Stanley, which I found quite moving. It provided the exact opposite effect to the normal negative and depressing fare served up daily by the media, and my immediate thought was to share it with others.

So here we go:-

"If you are looking for a good Christmas read, let me suggest Oscar Wilde's short story The Happy Prince. Wilde has not been served well by his posthumous reputation as an LGBTQ victim: it's one dimensional. He was also a father, a Christian and a socialist, the seriousness of these things softened with wit. Oscar was quite right to observe that socialism would never work because it takes up too many evenings.

In this marvellous children's story, a swallow on its way to Egypt for the winter stops to rest on the statue of a prince, decorated with jewels and gold. The statue is sad. From his great height he can see all the poverty in the city and he wants to fix it.

He persuades the bird to peck off his finery and donate it to the poor, which the bird does reluctantly at first but then takes joy in their mission and ignores the coming cold. Eventually the statue has lost all its colour; the swallow dies at its feet. The city elects to melt the prince down for scrap.

Wilde captures the agony and the ecstasy of Christianity. The agony is the fear that you have never done enough; the prince and the swallow give and give until they have literally given themselves. The ecstasy comes not in this life but the next. God asks one of His angels to bring Him the two most precious things in the city, and the angel makes for the dump, where he finds the body of the bird and the prince's lead heart. “You have rightly chosen,” says God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold, the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

W.H.Auden observed that human beings are taught life is “eat or be eaten”, but that in Christianity, the message is “eat and be eaten”, that we should present ourselves to each other as a gift, given freely. On Christmas Day, God gives us His Son and asks for what in return? Love."

Ack. Tim Stanley 'Daily Telegraph'

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

' WISHING ONE AND ALL A HOLY and HAPPY NEW YEAR'

'Sergeant O.K.'

 

'Sergeant O.K.'

Let me tell you the story as old Thompson told it, for he was present and I was not.

When the 'Westminsters' went up to the front line in January, 1918, they had with them in No, 2 Company a great, big, red-headed fellow called Sergeant O.K. His name was not really O.K., but Smithies, but he was known as Sergeant O.K. by everyone for miles around, from the Colonel down to passing units who had lost the way.

Some said that the Germans opposite were aware of his nickname, and that one of them, coming face to face with him on a night raid, had at once shouted “O.K.”, and put up his hands.

For Sergeant Smithies said O.K. to everyone and everything: it was “O.K. Chief”, or “O.K. by me”, or “O.K. to you”, or just “O.K.” when he was in a hurry. Jenkinson asserted that he answered O.K. on his wedding day, when asked if he would take Elizabeth Anne for his wedded wife.

Be that as it may, O.K. was his one expression, and by the amazing variation of tone and stress he could put into it, he made these two humble letters of the alphabet as expressive as twenty good lines from Hamlet. Scrambling in over the parapet after a wire cutting expedition, he would hiss O.K. in such a way that the second letter cocked itself up into a question mark. An answering grunt would bring another O.K. as eloquent as Deo Gratias. In a word it was his signature tune.

Sergeant O.K. was the life and soul of the entire Company. Everyone trusted him. When one of us was seized with a fit of panic he relied on Sergeant O.K. to put him right. He would come scrambling along the duck-boards, smiling and dishing out O.K.s on every side, and the shivering men about him at once felt a sense of rest. Sergeant O.K. was so robust and generous in his outlook. I remember once when young Jackson said something about trying to get resigned to the noise and the dirt and the fear of wounds, how Sergeant O.K. ticked him off for it.

“Not so much of your resignation here, lads,” he said, “What we want is cheerful acquiescence.”

“Gosh, what swell words you do use, Sergeant,” chipped in Williamson, from the door of the dug-out, “do tell us what they mean.”

Sergeant O.K. blew out his lips.

“Mean?” he asked. “O.K., I'll tell you what they mean. They mean that you must go out to meet your troubles, and not just sit down with them all heaped on top of you. Pagans do that, pagans are resigned. But you are Christians, aren't you? Well, put your backs into whatever comes, unless it's a shell; co-operate with God as you might say. After all He loves you, doesn't He?”

Some of the men used to envy Sergeant O.K.

“It's all right for blokes like him to talk about acquiescence, he hasn't got a nerve in his body; he hasn't got a wife and kids at home to dream about; he hasn't got sore feet. It's alright for him to jaw away about God, just because he's a blooming Papist and believes in God, but what do we know about God?”

Sergeant O.K. was always roused to eloquence when he heard such remarks.

“O.K.,” he'd say, pulling at his eyebrows, “just you listen to me. I've got as pretty a wife as any of you, and two little girls and a motor bike as well, and I dream of them all. And if I have not got sore feet, I've got a mighty tired jaw from arguing with you blancmanges; forgive my accent. As to God, I'm not for monopolising Him, for He made and loves you all, though why He did the one and still does the other beats me. But I'll say this, that to my mind it is a proof that there is a God, that those who trust in Him can go through this beastly war without sulking, as you pagan chappies do. Bless you, many a time I've felt like running away or pretending illness; many a time I've had twinges of pain in my tummy, which were not caused by bully beef. But I say to myself: 'Smithies, if God wants you, He'll find you even if you are under twelve layers of sandbags, and if He does not want you then the Bosch will miss you point blank with an 18-pounder.' You and I do not judge this war so very differently, save that you can't see the love for all the hate. For you we are slaves of a hard fate, but I remember something about Christ not calling us servants but friends.

Besides you are not so certain that you aren't wrong, whereas I know I'm O.K.”

I have no doubt now, looking back after thirty years, that Sergeant O.K. was the greatest influence for good that I have ever seen. We Catholics felt his faith driving out our fear as we watched him going about the lines. He was just normal, not foolhardy not strung up, but a little piece of normal civilisation introduced into the chaos of Flanders. Even the pagan fellows all around us began to wonder if there was not a God of love after all. A man does not laugh and joke and carry the fears of grown men for them unless he is pretty sure that all is O.K.

Well, the day came when we had to fall back before the great German offensive, and in the bustle of the retreat with its panic and heroism, explosions and groans, no one noticed that Sergeant O.K. had been hit. He'd been seen at noon by Corporal Wilson, carrying a wounded Tommy to shelter, but, since then, no-one had laid eyes on him. Only in the evening, when we were resting wearily in our new positions, did we see a stretcher being carried back through our lines. The Padre went to see him as he passed his old Company, and we all saw him too with the blood soaking through his uniform, and the shadow of death upon his face.

“Am I going to die, Father?” he muttered in his agony, and when the priest did not reply at once he smiled feebly and said:

“It's O.K. by me, Father, but Lord, how I do love my wife.”

We never saw Sergeant O.K. again, for he died outside the dressing station, being too ill to make the journey to the base. The stretcher-bearers told us that he never regained consciousness after his arrival there, but this is not quite true, for the Padre who went back to see him, had another tale to tell. After he had lain delirious for some time, talking to his wife, and saying O.K. to imaginary officers, he suddenly became very quiet, and his poor haggard face lit up with a wonderful smile of recognition. He gazed thus smilingly before him for nearly a minute, then pulled himself half up on his stretcher with a last great effort, raised his trembling hand to his forehead in salute, and said quite audibly: “O.K., Lord.”

On Armistice Day each year, when everyone is silent, I always say a De Profundis for Sergeant O.K., and many a time in the face of difficulties I have remembered the cheerful acquiescence he so eloquently preached. I am sure that few of us who were privileged to meet him in the trenches will ever forget his example and his last “O.K., Lord”; for in it he translated the message of Gethsemane into the humble language of the Sergeant's Mess.

( Taken from 'The Seven Deadly Virtues and Other Stories' by Bernard Bassett S.J, published by Sands & Co.. These stories appeared first in Stella Maris and in the Southwark Record)

'The End of the World'

 

 

'The End of the World' 

For some time I had been wandering in quiet streets in the curious town of Besancon, which stands like a sort of peninsular in a horse-shoe of river. You may learn from the guide books that it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, and that it is a military Station with many forts, near the French frontier.  But you will not learn from guide books that the very tiles on the roofs seem to be of some quainter and more delicate colour than the tiles of all the other towns of the world, that the tiles look like the little clouds of some strange sunset, or like the lustrous scalers of some strange fish.  They will not tell you that in this town the eye cannot rest on anything without finding it in some way attractive and even elvish, a carved face at a street corner, a gleam of green fields through a stunted arch, or some unexpected colour for the enamel of a spire or dome. 

Evening was coming on and in the light of it all these colours so simple and yet so subtle seemed more and more to fit together and make a fairy tale.  I sat down for a little outside a café with a row of little toy trees in front of it, and presently the driver of a fly (as we should call it) came to the same place. He was one of those very large and dark Frenchmen, a type not common  but yet typical of France; the Rabelaisian French man, huge, swarthy, purple-faced, a walking wine-barrel; he was a sort of Southern Falstaff, if one can imagine Falstaff anything  but English. And, indeed, there was a vital difference, typical of two nations. For while Falstaff would have been shaking with hilarity like a huge jelly, full of the broad farce of the London streets, this Frenchman was rather solemn and dignified than otherwise – as if pleasure were a kind of pagan religion.  After some talk which was full of the admirable civility and equality of French civilisation, he suggested without either eagerness or embarrassment that he should take me in his fly for an hours ride in the hills beyond the town.  And though it was growing late I consented; for there was one long white road under an archway and round a hill that dragged me like a long white cord. We drove through the strong, squat gateway that was made by the Romans, and I remember the coincidence like a sort of omen that as we passed out of the city I heard simultaneously the three sounds which are the trinity of France.  They make what some poet calls ‘a tangled trinity,’ and I am not going to disentangle it. Whatever those three things mean, how or why they co-exist; whether they can be reconciled or perhaps are reconciled already; the three sounds I heard then by an accident all at once make up the French mystery.  For the brass band in the Casino gardens behind me was playing with a sort of passionate levity some ramping tune from a Parisian comic opera, and while this was going on I heard also the bugles on the hills above, that told of terrible loyalties and men always arming in the gate of France, and I heard also, fainter than these sounds and through them all, the Angelus.

After this coincidence of symbols I had a curious sense of having left France behind me, or, perhaps ,even the civilised world. And, indeed, there was something in the landscape wild enough to encourage such a fancy. I have seen perhaps higher mountains, but I have never seen higher rocks; I have never seen height so near, so abrupt and sensational, splinters of rock that stood up like the spires of churches, cliffs that fell sudden and straight as Satan fell from heaven.  There was also a quality in the ride which was not only astonishing, but rather bewildering; a quality which  many must have noticed if they have driven or ridden rapidly up mountain roads. I mean a sense of gigantic gyration, as of the whole earth turning about one’s head. It is quite inadequate to say that the hills rose and fell like enormous waves. Rather the hills seemed to turn about me like the enormous sails of a windmill, a vast wheel of monstrous archangelic wings.  As we drove on and up into the gathering purple of the sunset this dizziness increased, confounding things above with things below.  Wide walls of wooded rock stood out above my head like a roof.  I stared at them until I fancied that I was staring down at a wooded plain.  Below me steeps of green swept down to the river.  I stared at them until I fancied that they swept up to the sky. The purple darkened, night drew nearer; it seemed only to cut clearer the chasms and draw higher the spires of that nightmare landscape.  Above me in the twilight was the huge black hulk of the driver, and his broad, blank back was as mysterious as the back of Death in Watts’ picture. I felt that I was growing too fantastic, and I sought to speak of ordinary things.. I called out to the driver in French, “Where are you taking me?”, and it is a literal and solemn fact that he answered me in the same language without turning around, “To the end of the world.”

I did not answer. I let him drag the vehicle up dark and steep ways, until I saw lights under a low roof of little trees and two children, one oddly beautiful, playing at ball. Then we found ourselves filling up the strict main street of a tiny hamlet, and across the wall of its inn was  written in large letters, ‘LE BOUT DU MONDE’  –  'the end of the world’.

The driver and I sat down outside that inn without a word, as if all ceremonies were natural and understood in that ultimate place. I ordered bread for both of us, and red wine, that was good but had no name. On the other side of the road was a little plain church with a cross on top of it and a cock on top of the cross. This seemed to me a very good end of the world; if the story of the end of the world ended here, it ended well.  Then I wondered whether I myself should really be content to end here, where most certainly there were the best things of Christendom – a church and children’s games and decent soil and a tavern for men to talk with men. But as I thought, a singular doubt and desire grew slowly in me, and at last I started up.

“Are you not satisfied?” asked my companion. “No” I said, “I am not satisfied even at the end of the world.”

Then after a silence, I said, “Because you see there are two ends of the world. And this is the wrong end of the world, at least the wrong one for me. This is the French end of the world. I want the other end of the world. Drive me to the other end of the world.”

“The other end of the world?” he asked. “Where is that?”

“It is in Walham Green,” I whispered hoarsely. “You see it on the London omnibuses. ‘World’s  End and Walham Green.’ Oh, I know how good this is; I love your vineyards and your free peasantry, but I want the English end of the world. I love you like a brother, but I want an English cabman, who will be funny and ask me what his fare ‘is’. Your bugles stir my blood, but I  want to see a London policeman. Take, oh, take me to see a London policeman.”

He stood quite dark and still against the end of the sunset, and I could not tell whether he understood or not.  I got back into his carriage. “You will understand,” I said, “if ever you are an exile even for pleasure. The child to his mother, the man to his country, as a countryman of yours once said. But since, perhaps, it is rather too long a drive to the English end of the world, we may as well drive back to Besancon.”

Only as the stars came out among those immortal hills,  I wept for Walham Green.

G.K.Chesterton  (from 'Tremendous Trifles' - 1909)

 

G.K.Chesterton at Brighton seafront, October 1935.

N.B. For those who are curious, 'Worlds End (England)' is a residential area  in South West London, at the end of the Kings Road, Chelsea. In the 1970s a number of high-rise 'affordable' flats were built, described by some as epitomizing the ugliest architecture of that 'progressive' era. These are in stark contrast to many older properties in the Borough of Chelsea, which are very expensive to buy but for which there is always a demand.

There is in fact, a Public House in Kings Road, called 'The End of the World'.

One other claim to fame of that area, is that Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea Football Club is close by!!

'Yet another small step for Life ................

Our Lady of Walsingham - pray for us

 For a very long time I have wondered whether it would be possible to ensure that  money taken from  National Insurance contributions and paid into NHS Funds, would not be used to fund 'legalised' abortions. When the National Health Service was created in 1948, there was no such thing as 'legalised' abortion. Abortion was a criminal offence, and remained so until 1967 when the Abortion Act,  introduced by David Steel, Liberal M.P. became law, with the National Health Service assuming  responsibility for its' administration and funding. In the early years the number of abortions carried out was a fraction of those performed today; in 1968 there were approximately 25,000, in 1970 about 97,000, and in 2019 more than 209,000. Abortion is a crime against humanity - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, and is abhorrent to many, many people, who under the present arrangement of National Insurance payments, and through no fault of their own, find themselves supporting a practice which they totally oppose.

This should not, indeed must not, be allowed to continue, and as a suggestion I propose that all working people who are liable for National Insurance contributions, be given the option that their money going to the NHS, not  be used for Abortion services, but instead go to say Mental Health. I believe that such a choice could be set up at relatively low cost within the system. Perhaps as simple as providing an appropriate ‘tick-box’ when a tax return is made, which can apply to both employed and self-employed.

I intend to write to the appropriate Government department regarding this, but before doing so have decided to post a petition online, to measure support for my proposals. I truly believe that given the support and the will,  the system could accommodate my proposal or one like it, as a matter of justice and good government.

The link to the Citizen Go Petition is:-    https://citizengo.org/en-gb/182029-choice-opt-out-funding-abortions-trhronat-ins-contributions       

Please support this Petition. It is but a small step, but it is perhaps, a start to greater things. AMDG - 'To the greater glory of God.'  I am aware that my proposal leaves much to be desired, but I see at as a start. I'm sure that there are many people out there who could improve on my suggestion, and I would very much like them to contact me through the 'Comment' box. Thank you.

Below is copy of proposed letter to Rt. Hon. Matt Hancock M.P.  Secretary of State for Health and Care.

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

Rt.Hon. Matt Hancock  M.P.

Secretary of State for Health and Care

Dear Sir,

We all appreciate the need for and value of our National Health Service, to which virtually everyone owes so much. To enable the NHS to function, it has to be funded which is largely provided by National Insurance contributions paid by all working citizens within the UK. Over the years this has generally proved a workable and successful system, but it has its failings. One aspect, which is of considerable concern to many people, but about which they have probably felt that they could do nothing, concerns the question of ‘legalised’ abortions financed by the NHS.

When National Insurance contributions were first introduced in 1948, ‘legalised’ abortion did not exist. Abortion was a criminal offence, and until 1967 there was no question of funding it. Abortion is not an illness or medical condition, and it is a matter of dispute as to whether it should be included within the National Health Service. It involves the killing of the foetus or unborn baby in the womb, and is largely funded by the NHS with money received through National Insurance contributions.

  The latest official figures reveal that in 2019 in England and Wales, a total of 209,519 abortions were carried out.

Abortion is essentially a crime against humanity, (Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948), and I, and I’m sure many others who share my views, strongly object to financing it through National Insurance contributions. I  propose that the system should allow a simple choice as regards the beneficiary of National Insurance contributions to the NHS, in other words, an alternative to funding abortion, for example mental health needs. I believe that such a choice could be set up at relatively low cost within the system. Perhaps as simple as providing an appropriate ‘tick-box’ when a tax return is made, which can apply to both employed and self-employed.

 As a matter of urgency and of justice, I respectfully ask that serious consideration be given to implementing the above proposal.

Yours faithfully,

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

 

 

 

'Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation' (St Thomas More)

'A consideration of the degrees of responsibility and guilt of the various classes who engaged in the overthrow of our Lady’s Dowry.'   

 Taken from ‘Our Lady’s Dowry’ by Father Bridgett CSsR

The Clergy

I have just said that Catholics, in looking back to the history of devotion to our Lady in England, have nothing of which to be ashamed. In one sense this is most true. The Dowry was the creation of saints, and its effects were sanctity; and the men who overthrew it did so only when they ceased to be Catholics, and by means the most base and unworthy. And yet I cannot forget that our Lady’s Dowry in England was not destroyed by an incursion of unbaptised heathens, nor by Protestants brought up from infancy in anti-Catholic prejudice, and taught to connect the honour of the Son in some strange fashion with the dishonour or neglect of the Mother.  No, alas! The enemies of our Lady had been children of the Catholic Church; they had lisped the name of Mary in infancy, and been taught by pious mothers to kneel before her statues. They were even priests of her Divine Son; and they were monks, who had made a special profession of love and veneration towards her that they might more closely and efficaciously resemble Him.  The Blessed Virgin could indeed complain, as Jesus Christ had done, by the mouth of the Psalmist; ‘Even the man of my peace, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, hath greatly supplanted me’ (Ps. xI. 10)

About 150 years before the destruction came, an English Dominican, Father Bromyard, writing on the sins of the clergy, had ventured to foretell the result; and he uses a comparison curiously in harmony with the subject of this work. ‘The state of the modern Church,’ he wrote, ‘is well figured in the following history.  A man had been long pondering over and wondering at the state of Christendom, when he fell asleep, and in a dream a statue, as of a most beautiful lady, appeared to him; and while he was lost in admiration, a voice asked him whose image it was. He replied that he thought it must be the image of the most Blessed Virgin.  Whereupon the statue was turned round, so that its’ back appeared to him, and that was all decayed and rotten.  And again the voice said, “What do you now think?” “It is not the Virgin Mary,” he said, “for of her it is written that she is ‘all fair’.” When, then, he wished to know who it was, the voice said, “It is the image of Christendom, which in the beginning was very beautiful, but in the latter end is shamefully destroyed.” ‘All this being considered,’ continued Bromyard, ‘it will be no wonder if the spiritual ruin of all Christendom shall follow, first in the corruption of morals, and even perhaps in external chastisements.  Even now we often see and hear of such, and we fear that more will come; for as by reason of such sins the temple and kingdom of the Jews were overthrown, as we behold them, so is it to be feared that it may happen to Christians.  And we seem to have a foretaste of what will happen in what we now see, for a great part of the world which was formerly Christian is now occupied by the Saracens.

When the calamity was still more imminent, one of those who had taken a leading part in resisting the new doctrines, Sir Thomas More, was waiting in prison the death that he knew was certain. With a piece of coal – for pen and ink were refused him- he wrote his ‘Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation’. He supposes the dialogue to take place between two Hungarians; and under cover of discussing a threatened invasion of the Turks, he foretells what he sees is coming upon England from the tyranny of Henry. ‘But now, cousin, this tribulation of the Turk, if he so persecute us for the faith, that those that will forsake their faith shall keep their goods, and those shall lose their goods that will not leave their faith – this manner of persecution, lo, shall like a touchstone try them, and show the feigned from the true-minded.’

Alas, the Turk came, and the souls of men were tried. Among the rich and noble, among even the priests of the sanctuary, but few comparatively were found with Fisher and More, ready to sacrifice all for the faith of Christ.

The nobles and Gentry.

 

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas was a shrewd observer of the times. He did not expect to find much heroic virtue in England in the sixteenth century.

‘In the ease,’ says one of the speakers in his dialogue, ‘where they have yet their substance untouched in their own hands, and that the keeping or losing shall hang both in their own hands by the Turk’s (Henry’s) offer, upon the retaining or renouncing of the Christian faith; here, uncle, I find it that this temptation is most sore and most perilous.  For I fear me that we shall find few of such as have much to lose that shall find in their hearts so suddenly to forsake their goods.

‘Antony. That fear I much, cousin, too.  But thereby shall it well appear that, seemed they never so good and virtuous before, yet were their hearts inwardly, in the deep sight of God, not sound and sure.’

Things were even worse than Sir Thomas thought.  Many were not tried by the fear of losing their goods, but by the hope of gaining those of others.  Mr Froude has attempted to vindicate the reign of Henry from the charge of having been a reign of terror, and the conduct of Lords and Commons from the accusation of cowardice and servility.  ‘What means’, he asks triumphantly, ‘had Henry VIII at his disposal to compel their compliance or punish their disobedience? He had a mere handful of men, whose number he never attempted to increase. The complications of this reign,’ he continues, ‘require far subtler and more delicate explanation.  Cruel deeds were done, but they were done by the alternating influences of the two great parties in the State, to whom nothing was wrong which furthered their separate objects.’

Without any sympathy with Mr Froude’s attempt to justify Henry, I cannot but concur to a great extent in his estimate of the nobility and gentry of England in the sixteenth century.  They were indeed fallen from the spirit of the great warriors and statesmen, the noble gentlemen and bold citizens, in whom devotion to our Lady had been linked with true chivalry. Henry had subtler means at his command than the terror of the sword. His nobles and gentry were men who could be bought by money; and the plunder of the shrines and monasteries gave him the means of buying their allegiance.

The unblushing avarice which made them become reformers may be seen in the following letter of Sir Thomas Elyot to Cromwell. ‘This Elyot was’, says Mr Wright, ‘a distinguished diplomatist, a man of great learning, and had been an intimate friend of Sir Thomas More.’  It must have been such friends that More had in mind when he doubted their resistance of temptation:

‘My Lord,’ writes Elyot to Cromwell two years after the death of his friend Sir Thomas More,

‘forasmuch as I suppose that the king’s most gentle communication with me, and also his most comfortable report unto the lords of me, proceeded at your afore-remembered recommendations, I am animate to importune your good lordship, with most hearty desires, to continue my good lord, in augmenting the king’s good estimation of me; whereof I promise you before God your lordship shall never have cause to repent.

‘And where’ (whereas) ‘I perceive that ye suspect that I favour not truly Holy Scripture, I would God that the king and you might see the most secret thoughts of my heart; surely ye should then perceive that, the order of charity saved, I have in as much detestation as any man living all vain superstitions, superfluous ceremonies, slanderous jugglings, counterfeit miracles, arrogant usurpations of men called spiritual and masking religious, and all other abusions of Christ’s holy doctrine and laws.  And as much I enjoy’ (rejoice) ‘at the king’s godly proceeding to the due reformation of the said enormities as any his grace’s poor subject living.'

‘I therefore beseech your good lordship now to lay apart the remembrance of the amity between me and Sir Thomas More, which was but usque ad aras, as is the proverb, considering that I was never so much addict unto him as I was unto truth and fidelity toward my sovereign lord, as God is my judge.’

Having approved of the king’s godly proceeding, and professed his love of pure and reformed religion according to the Gospel of Cranmer and Cromwell, and repudiated the friendship of the glorious martyr now in heaven, he comes at last to the end and purpose of his letter: ‘And whereas my special trust and only expectation is to be holpen by the means of your lordship, and natural shamefastness more reigneth in me than is necessary (!), so that I would not press to the king’s majesty without your lordship’s assistance, with whom I have sundry times declared my indigence, and whereof it hath happened, I therefore most humbly desire you, my special good lord, so to bring me unto the king’s most noble remembrance, that of his most bounteous liberality it may like his highness to reward me with some convenient portion of his suppressed lands, whereby I may be able to continue my life according to that honest degree whereunto his grace hath called me…….

And whatever portion of land that I shall attain by the king’s gift, I promise to give to your lordship, the first year’s fruits, with mine assured and faithful heart and service.’  (ack. ‘Letters on the Suppression of the Monasteries’ letter Ixv.)

Such were the men on whose word Englishmen have learnt to believe in the ‘slanderous jugglings and counterfeit miracles’ of the monks. These beggars for plunder, these givers and receivers of bribes, are the men who set themselves to reform ‘the abusions of Christ’s holy doctrines and laws.’ Such were many of the Catholic gentry of that day. They fawned on Henry VIII, and renounced the authority of the Pope in order to enjoy prosperity and to increase their riches; and they were willing to be reconciled to the Pope again under Mary, provided they could still keep their sacrilegious spoils. Their plan was, as Sir Thomas More put it, ‘not to be compelled utterly to forsake Christ nor all the whole Christian faith, but only some such parts thereof as may not stand with Mahomet’s law.’ Sir Thomas answered this theory as follows: ‘Break one of Christ’s commandments and break all.  Forsake one point of His faith, and forsake all, as for any thank you get for the remnant …..  Christ will not take your service to halves, but will that you should love Him with all your heart.  And because that while He was living here fifteen hundred years ago, He foresaw this mind of yours that you have now, with which you would fain serve Him in some such fashion, as you might keep your worldly substance still and rather forsake His service than put all your substance from you,  He telleth you plain, fifteen hundred years ago, by His own mouth, that He will no such service from you, saying, “Non potestis Deo servire et Mammonae,  ----You cannot serve both God and your riches together.”

But men like Sir Thomas Elyot learnt their morality from other teachers than Jesus Christ, and went along with Sir Thomas More, as they well said, only usque ad aras – to the church door, or to the door of heaven; there they let him go in alone, since there was a chance of passing to it only through the Tower.         (to be continued)

***********

Father Bridgett wrote this book from which the above article is taken, about one hundred years ago. He quotes a letter from Sir Thomas Elyot to Cromwell as an example of the moral cowardice and personal greed so often evident in the behaviour of the English nobles and gentry of that period. I was keen to find out more about Sir Thomas Elyot, which I was able to do courtesy of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica. Certainly Elyot's letter to Cromwell suggested a man to whom personal friendship and loyalty meant little or nothing, but according to Wikipedia he did not obtain any share in the spoils acquired from the dissolution of the monasteries,  although he undoubtedly had major financial pressures. Also Sir Thomas More had been dead for two years when Elyot wrote the letter. It may just be that Elyot's

obsequious request to Cromwell was related more to solving his financial difficulties, than anything else. He was certainly an intellectual of high repute, but there is nothing in Wikipedia to suggest that he was a Catholic. This does not of course, make any more acceptable, the request for 'some of the king's repressed lands' nor the promise to Cromwell of 'the first year's fruits of the land'. But it does perhaps, shed a slightly different and perhaps clearer light, on the purpose of the letter. 

Sir Thomas Elyot  (Holbein)

 ' As ambassador, Elyot had been involved in ruinous expense, and on his return he wrote to Thomas Cromwell, begging to be excused from serving as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, on the score of his poverty. The request was not granted. He was one of the commissioners in the inquiry instituted by Cromwell prior to the suppression of the monasteries, but he did not obtain any share of the spoils. There is little doubt that his known friendship for Thomas More militated against his chances of success, for in a letter addressed to Cromwell he admitted his friendship for More, but protested that he rated higher his duty to the king.' 

                                                                                                    (ack. Wikipedia)

'Saint Joseph and the Word'

                                 

Saint Joseph and the Word

Saint Joseph was the most silent saint of all.

No one has written down one word of his

for our edification. Not one small

word of his was saved unless it is

the Word that was the sum of all his life,

the precious Word he saved for everyone

that It might speak the cross and not the knife,

long, long after he was dead and gone

and gathered to his fathers, and never again

could he spirit the Child and the young girl, his mother,

out of the dangerous city.  From all men

of all times he was chosen and no other –

not one from among the prophets – but this rarely heard

and wordless man, to save God’s mighty Word.

                                                                        Sister Maris Stella

                                          (ack. ‘The Mary Book’. Sheed & Ward. 1950)

                                                    *************
   'A Carpenter's Son'


He was a carpenter’s son, from Nazareth.

            I wish to begin with the utmost simplicity, and by saying that this was true.  True in the sense that Our Lord was truly man and, legally, the son of Joseph.

            When a Jewish girl was solemnly betrothed to a Jew, she became legally under his protection and passed out of her father’s control, even if she did not leave her father’s house.  When Our Lady was betrothed to St. Joseph by law she was responsible to him, and he for her.  I will ask you, though, only for one moment, to consider the appalling hour during which St. Joseph perceived that she would be the mother of a child who was not his own.  Strictly speaking, it was his duty to hand her over to the law, and it was the duty of the terrible Jewish authorities to cause her to be stoned.  Such was the agonising preface to the history of Our Lord, agonising, need I say, not only to St. Joseph but to the immaculate Virgin Mother of God.  But the incredible purity of Mary had diffused its fragrance around herself:  Joseph was, the Gospel says, a ‘just’ man, he knew by instinct that, whatever had happened, there could be no imaginable taint in her whom by now he appreciated sufficiently to know that at least, and he was making arrangements to send her quietly away, so that no-one should hear about what had happened.  Then it was that God Himself let the mind of this simple working man know that he need have no fear;  he kept Mary with him and he assumed full paternity, in the eyes of the world, of the child that was born; and legally, and in every way that human society could perceive and accept, he ranked himself as father of her child, and never did Jesus, during His childhood, adolescence, or afterwards, do anything which could humiliate or disconcert St. Joseph.  I beg of you to delve into this episode so little spoken of, and to venerate the persons who went through so really dreadful an experience.  But it is not of the legal and social parenthood or humanity of Christ that I wish now to speak.

            Jesus Christ could not in any sense have been called son of Joseph had He not been truly man.  It would have been an illegitimate fiction, a wanton delusion, so to call Him, had He been anything short of it. But to be a man involves at least your being partly body.  A body is not a thing you  ‘have’, but a thing you are.  We are not body plus soul, soul in spite of body, soul inside a body, but persons, body-souls.  Our Lord grew.  He  ‘increased in stature’ say the Evangelists.

            He was a baby, Christmas does not allow us to forget that; if you had met Him then, you would not have been able to do towards Him more than you can towards any lovable little baby that looks at you with its blue whites to its eyes and catches hold of your thumb with its incredibly strong miniscule fingers ending in pink nails so tiny as to be almost laughable.  You cannot say anything to such a baby; you can do nothing but love it; but it always knows if you do. He was a little boy, and you know how very little boys will trust you, take you for granted, never begin to dream that you are going to be unkind to them, instinctively sheer away from you if you begin taking airs or putting on affectations towards them, are very hurt if you do not accept their views of things exactly in the way they accept them. Little boys can be made very lonely if you act the aloof grown-up, but far more  lonely if you act as a child, which they know very well you are not.  Jesus was next a growing lad, and only for one moment is the curtain lifted upon those years, during an episode of three days, when, upon the occasion of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, He stayed behind and was lost to Mary and to Joseph. They found Him, and thereafter, His history relates, He stayed at Nazareth, being ‘subject unto them’.  He learned and gradually performed His work as smith and carpenter in a town which, though small, was a very active one. Nazareth lay near two roads, up and down which trade flowed continuously and also the Roman soldiery, and also the caravans taking people to and from the summer-court of Herod Antipas at Sephoris.  When Our Lord was about ten, He, and all the folk of Nazareth, watched that town on its hill four miles away going up in smoke when the Romans, because of an abortive insurrection, burnt it; those Romans crucified two thousand men of the neighbourhood as an object lesson.  Mary could not go to her well, nor Jesus to the social meeting place of any oriental town, the Gate, without seeing, or trying not to see, poor human corpses rotting upon crosses.  He knew, perhaps  she dreamed what was to happen after twenty years, not away in Galilee, but in Jerusalem, the holy city, the dear city, which yet should crucify its Lord.

                                                                                                                                                                                      C.C.Martindale,  S.J.
                 
        (ack.  ‘The Book of the Saviour’.  Sheed & Ward.  1952.)

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

 ‘Thoughts on St. Joseph’

            Dear Friend,

            You ask me to talk to you from time to time and tell you what my mind is full of.  Well, what fills it at the moment is that great and rather mysterious figure, St. Joseph, whose very name provokes a smile from superior persons. He was at once a workman and a gentleman. He was cheerful and silent, with a big noble nose, muscular arms and hands, with one finger often wrapped in rag, as is the way with those who labour in wood. He was not popular with Nazareth folk, they scarcely are who follow a peculiar calling.

            And  what more singular for a man than virginity, especially at that period?  Why had he taken it on himself? How patient he must have been and strong against boredom, like the sun beginning the same round every morning

without weariness.

            I see him on an autumn day coming back from Caiffa  where he went to fetch timber in a broken-down cart. I see him crossing the Sizon at the spot where the plain of Esdraelon unfolds before you, up to the trans-Jordanian mountains, the territory of six of the tribes.  The cart sinks to its axles in the mud.

            Then I see him in his workshop on a sunny morning. I hear the saw and hollow noise of balks of timber, and a child coming to look for him and calling  “Joseph, Joseph” (perhaps that has some bearing one way or another on his departure for Jerusalem).  His workshop must have been dear to children, as joiner’s workshops always are.

            Next I see him coming back from Jerusalem with his Bride so young and gentle (not much more than he beloved by the townfolk):  I see them landing at home, and the obliging neighbour who had been getting the household ready; the remarks about it all at the well that evening.

            Joseph is the pattern of the hidden life, Scripture does not report a single word of his, it is silence who is father to the Word. What contrasts are in him! He is the patron of bachelors and of fathers of families, of laymen and contemplatives, of priests and business men!  For Joseph was a carpenter. He had to argue with customers and sign small contracts; to follow up bad debts, to plead, to compromise, to buy his goods cheapest while ruminating on the second-hand, and so on.

            How touching must have been his last days of failing health, between Jesus and Mary, when he could no longer work! I see the coachman of one of those fine ladies who went to the waters at Tiberias,  drawing up at the sick carpenter’s to get the carriage mended.  Jesus Himself takes it over and takes the tools from his hands.

            All this goes on without a word when the Roman Empire was at its zenith, full of pride and crime like our present civilisation. It is neither Caesar nor Plato. Here are only three poor folk loving one another, and they are going to change the face of the world. It all goes on at the foot of a round mountain called Tabor; and in the distance is seen the long summit of Carmel. The villages nearby are called Cana, Nahum, Endor, Mageddo.  In three hours you get the brilliant country round the Lake of Genezareth, which was then what Aix-les-Bains is today, but now lonely and unpeopled!



                                   Paul Claudel,  Prague 1932.

                       (ack. ‘The Mary Book’. Sheed & Ward.1950)

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

                                  The Crucifixion    -   Mathias Grunewald


‘Through Thy Cross and Passion’



 O Christ my Lord which for my sins didst hang upon a tree,

grant that thy grace in me poor wretch, may still engrafted be.



Grant that thy naked hanging there, may kill in me all pride

and care of wealth, sith thou didst then in such poor state abide.



Grant that thy Crown of pricking thorns which thou for me didst wear,

may make me willing for thy sake all shame and pain to bear.



Grant that those scorns and taunts which thou didst on the cross endure,

may humble me, and in my heart all patience still procure.



Grant that thy praying for thy foes may plant within my breast,

such charity as from my heart  I malice may detest.  



Grant that thy pierced hands which did of nothing all things frame,

may move me to lift up my hands, and ever praise thy name.



Grant that thy wounded feet  whose steps were perfect evermore,

may learn my feet to tread those paths which thou hast gone before.



Grant that thy bitter gall which did thy empty body fill,

may teach me to subdue myself and to perform thy will.



Grant that thy wounds may cure the sores which sin in me hath wrought,

grant that thy death may save the soul which with thy blood was bought.



Grant that those drops of blood which ran out from thy heart amain,

may meek my heart into salt tears to see thy grievous pain.



Grant that thy blessed grave wherein thy body lay awhile,

may bury all such vain delights as may my mind defile.



Grant that thy going down to them which did thy sight desire,

may keep my soul when I am dead, clean from the purging fire.



Grant that thy rising up from death, may raise my thoughts from sin,

grant that thy parting from this earth, from earth my heart may win.



Grant Lord that thy ascending then, may lift my mind to thee,

that there my heart and joy may rest, though here in flesh I be.



                                        Blessed Philip Howard

                                           
       (ack. ‘The Book of the Saviour’, Sheed & Ward, 1952.)