Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVI

Tomb of Cardinal Pole in

Canterbury Cathedral

Well, let’s wrap up the reign of Queen Mary (aka “Bloody Mary”) and the Catholic Restoration.  I am anxious to get on to Elizabeth because it is in her Reformation of the English Church we see some of the ticklish questions that remain for us today, in particular the issue of Anglican Orders.
Mary had promised when she ascended the Throne that she would allow her subject to practice religion according to their consciences unimpeded.  In her first year or two, while the churches of her realm were restored to Catholic practice, altars rebuilt, roods re-erected, vestments and sacred vessels restored, she allowed her Protestant subjects to live in peace as long as they were discreet about their dissent.  As we have seen, however, she had some scores she wanted to settle—in particular with Archbishop Cranmer whom she was determined to put to death in the most cruel way imaginable even though—given his renunciation of heresy—canon law forbad his being executed.  She had also—and even before the martyrdom of Cranmer—executed several prominent Protestant bishops under the heresy laws which she directed Parliament to revive in 1554.  Unfortunately, this seems to have given the Queen a taste for blood and as her reign progressed more and more Protestants were arrested, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake.  All in all there were just less than 300 Protestant martyrs in her five year reign.  Another 800 prominent Protestants fled England for the continent where they were introduced to the far more radical religious ideas found in the Reformed Churches of Strasbourg, Geneva, Zurich and other Protestant capitals.  This was a huge mistake for Mary’s agenda of keeping England Catholic as it ultimately would have the dandelion effect of scattering the seeds of radical Protestantism throughout the realm.
Mary’s hope was to secure a Catholic succession.  Her marriage to Philip of Spain produced two false pregnancies, one in the autumn of 1554 and the other in the spring of 1558.  This second false pregnancy may have been the missed sign of something far more serious—perhaps uterine or ovarian cancer.  In any event, by the summer of 1558 Mary was clearly dying.  The heir to the throne but one was a Catholic—Mary, Queen of Scots.  The problem was how to bypass Elizabeth, Mary’s Protestant half-sister, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, the woman who had cause so much pain to Mary and her mother, Katherine of Aragon.
In the end, Mary was her father’s daughter, a Tudor through and through, and made the decision that better a Protestant Tudor on the throne than a Catholic Stuart.  Mary died in London on November 17^th 1558.  She was buried four weeks later in Westminster Abbey according to Catholic Rites.  Elizabeth did not attend the funeral, but—as I have stated in other postings—it was not the custom for the Sovereign to attend funerals, even of close family members.  Mary had not attended the funerals of either her brother or her father. 
Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, died of influenza in his residence at Lambeth later the same day as the Queen.  (There was an epidemic in London at the time.)  His body was taken to Canterbury Cathedral for burial in the Corona—the chapel immediately behind the spot where Becket’s tomb had once stood.  Elizabeth came to the throne with a clean slate—an opportunity to pick her own Archbishop and shape the Church to her tastes.  But she would find in Parliament some real challenges to her power over the Church.  More on that down the line. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXXI

Martyrdom of Bishop Hooper 

Back to the reign of Mary and the fate of the Reformers in that reign.  Mary was not the fanatical Catholic that John Foxe in his famous Actes and Monuments (aka “Foxe’s Book of Martyrs”)  and his literary heirs, the 19^th century Evangelical Anglican authors, would make her out to be.  But she was a tormented soul, and her torment caused pain—real pain—for countless of religious dissenters.

Remember that for the first seventeen years of her life she had been not only a royal princess, but the heir-apparent to the Throne of England.  On an even more important foundation, for the first ten years or so of her life she enjoyed the security of her parents having a reasonably loving marriage.  When she was bout thirteen that marriage was souring fast, and Mary found herself torn between the conflicting interests of her two parents.  At this period of life she began to experience severe menstrual issues that may have been—it is too late for an autopsy—due to the stress of seeing her parents’ marriage fall apart and her own future cast in doubt.  Her father, whom she adored, “didn’t want” her as Queen to succeed him.  He loved a yet-to-conceived son over a daughter whom he had fashioned into an elegant and learned woman.  When Archbishop Cranmer—and this key people, pay attention—annulled her parents’ marriage, Mary lost the Title “Royal Highness,”  and her status as a Princess.  She was now simply The Lady Mary, the King’s bastard.  This is a difficult comedown, and if so for an English Princess, even more for an Infanta of Spain, granddaughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the founders of the Spanish Empire and the most powerful (as well as the most blue-blooded) royalty of Europe.   All of a sudden her prospects for a marriage of rank and a life of privilege disappeared.   Her father appointed her a Lady-in-Waiting the little Boleyn baby that had taken her place in history.  That was humiliating, but what was far more painful is that he separated her from her mother in an attempt to force both Mary and Katherine to acknowledge the annulment, the Boleyn marriage, and the succession of the new Princess, Elizabeth. 

When Mary came to the throne she freely promised not to disturb the consciences of any of her subjects.  Moreover, as we have seen, bishops and clergy—even those who had supported Cranmer’s Reform—were allowed to remain in their Sees and Benefices (and many promoted) providing they were willing to give up their wives, and return to Catholic doctrine and practice.  One has to admit that the clergy of the Church of England were, for the most part, more committed to their having a job than having a wife.  But even today how many marriages falter on career vs. commitment? 

Remember:  Mary had a score that she was determined to settle and that was with Archbishop Cranmer, the man whose toadieness to her father, had broken her mother’s heart and taken away her own happiness for over twenty years.   Mary was going to make the Archbishop pay.  We will get to that in a future posting as Cranmer’s role in the reign of Queen Mary deserves an entry—at least one—of its own.

In 1554, as part of the negotiations to readmit the Church of England to the Roman Communion, the old Heresy Acts were revived.  Mary had already arrested the handful of Protestant bishops who would not back down on Cranmer’s Reforms.  She now prosecuted them and had them executed.  As the reign went on—and we will look at this—Mary seems to have become more and more impassioned against the religious changed that had taken place in England.  There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the leading reasons undoubtedly was her increasing anxiety that she would not be able to provide a heir to the throne and the Crown would go to her Protestant sister Elizabeth who would restore the Protestant faith.  Mary was determined to keep England Catholic, even after she died.

It was only in 1555, two years after her coming to the throne, that persecution of Protestants broke out in force.  In the remaining three and a half years of her reign, about 300 ordinary Englishmen died in defense of their Protestant faith, most very cruelly by being burned “at the stake.”  In the big picture Mary was no more “bloody” than had been her father or would be her sister in the days of their having worn the crown.  But the memory of the “Marian Martyrs” long provided grist for the mill of anti-papalism in England.   

Protestant Martyrs and Catholic "Liberty"

The burning of Archbishop Thomas Cramner
in the reign of Bloody Mary

I recently was shown this slide-and-music presentation regarding the Fortnight For Freedom and the challenges facing the Catholic Church in the United States to preserve its religious freedom in face of the threats to it by liberal secularism represented by Democratic Party and the Obama administration.  This video is a stirring presentation designed by one Margie Sindelar to make it clear to the viewer that we must make a choice between our Catholic faith and the Affordable Care Act sponsored by President Obama—there is no middle ground; there is no compromise.  Ms. Sindelar shows us images of Pope Benedict representing truth and  President Obama incarnating falsehood.  The former is the good side, of course; the latter, as we all know, the evil side.  The one, in the words of the soundtrack hymn, “Once to Every Man and Nation,” represents bloom and light; the other darkness and blight.  It is very simple really.  Doesn’t require one to think much about the issues—just watch the video and run out and vote against the Reign of Evil currently occupying the White House.  Here is the link to Ms. Sindelar’s video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YIJ-G3gu9JQ

And below are the lyrics of its soundtrack—James Russell Lowell’s poem “Once to Every Man and Nation” put to the music of Thomas J. Williams. (An alternative melody sung in some churches is Haydn’s “Austria”—you would recognize it: it is the melody to Deutschland Deutschland Über Alles, the anthem associated with Hitler’s Germany.)   

Once to Every Man and Nation

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, ’twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and ’tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

Lowell wrote the poem as a young man in 1845, the year after his marriage and it was published in The Boston Courier in December of that year.  Though his student-days reputation at Harvard had been one of a troublemaker Lowell went on to make a name for himself as a poet, critic, and editor.  He was active in the movement to abolish slavery and he saw the role of the poet was to be a prophet who called society to account.  He had that Whig optimism that characterized 19^th century liberalism. 

But here is the irony.  Lowell came from a Church family—his father was a Unitarian minister.  Now 19^th century Unitarians were not the vague humanists of today but were still well within the Christian orbit.  They were more Arians—Christians who reserved the fullness of Divinity to the Father but seeing Jesus as his Son come to the world to teach us through the scriptures an enlightened path that would lead us to a better world.  Like most New England Protestants, the standard pieces of religious literature in the Lowell home were the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, sometimes known as The Acts and Monuments.  This book, first published in 1563 by Anglican clergyman and polemicist John Foxe, recounted a long history of martyrdoms and persecutions stretching back into antiquity in which Foxe managed to make every victim a Protestant—even those long before Luther—and every tyrant an agent of the Pope. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs was standard reading in every English (and New England) home from Puritan times down to the 20^th century and it was one of the strongest—if not the strongest—factor in creating an anti-Catholicism that portrayed the Pope as the evil enemy of Christ and his faithful, the Anti-Christ, desirous of forcing his false doctrines on them to the cost of their religious liberty.   The “burning martyrs” to whom Lowell referred in this poem-turned-hymn were the Anglican Divines put to death by burning at the stake under the reign of the Catholic Queen “Bloody” Mary.  The “cause of evil” of which Lowell wrote was Catholicism; the “truth” contrasted with it was Protestantism.  Lowell tells us that innocent and pure Protestant Truth was given the portion of the scaffold by the Catholic Queen—in the wrong—on the throne.  All this makes it a bit ironic that Ms. Sindelar uses this particular hymn as the stirring motivation to win people to the Catholic cause against that evil heir of Bloody Mary, President Obama.  But that is what happens when people don’t know their history. Tut, tut. 

In the Protestant mind of James Russell Lowell, Catholicism with its desire to force its doctrines on good bible-believing Christians is what had threatened religious freedom from the days of those first Protestants—the Apostles—down to his own day.  Lowell saw Protestantism as standing for that freedom of conscience against the tyranny of Catholic Doctrine.  It should make us think for a moment or two. 

Is the freedom that some are seeking in our name the prerogative to impose Catholic doctrine on the larger society—this is the very thing and Lowell and American Protestants had feared from the colonial days of Puritan New England until Vatican II and the Declaration Dignitatis Humanae  that made freedom of conscience a principle of Catholic Doctrine.  There is nothing wrong with winning our countrymen and women to our Catholic faith and its moral principles—indeed to enter into a dialogue leading towards truth is part of our mission as Christ’s Church—but do we truly want to impose unilaterally our principles on others before they come to the truth of the Catholic faith?  Would this not be the true threat to religious liberty when the doctrines and morals of one religious tradition become the standards of the civil and criminal law applicable to all?   As I said in yesterday’s blog, I have my concerns about the Obama Administration’s understanding about the mission of the Church but I am not afraid that my religious liberty is in jeopardy.  To be frank, I am concerned that the religious liberty of others may be in jeopardy due to the extremism of some of my coreligionists.