The Enlightenment, Catholics, Jesuits, Freemasons, and Revolutionaries

Washington in his Masonic Apron

An important aspect of the Enlightenment that needs to be looked at before we can return to our series on the history of the Church of England is Freemasonry.  Freemasonry is a system of lodges to which men belong in fraternal organization for purposes of business and social alliance, charitable works, and political activity.  Historically it also had much to do with intellectual discussion and exchange of knowledge.

According to Masonic myth and legend, Freemasonry has an ancient history going back to the geometer Euclid, the construction of the monuments of ancient Egypt, the building of the temple of Solomon, the construction of the medieval cathedrals etc.  Historical data is far more mundane however.

The medieval craft system of guilds organized professionals by craft for the training of new members for that craft as well as for charitable outreach, pious devotion, the regulation of the craft and its business practices, and socialization.  One such guild was the stonemason’s guild.  In Britain the guild system survived the Reformation and, in fact, the professional classes which the guilds represented were overwhelmingly in favor of the new Protestantism.  Being of the professional classes and able to send their male progeny to universities, the guilds were composed of men of above average education who were very much alive to the scientific developments and philosophical/theological currents of the day.  In Tudor and Stuart England, guildhalls were often the scene of lively conversations and political intrigue.  They were as much gentlemen’s clubs as they were professional fraternities. 

A stonemasons’ guild “lodge” in Edinburgh, Scotland –the Ancient Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary’s Chapel (so named because it met in Mary’s Chapel, Niddry’s Wind, Edinburgh) –was the first of these lodges that took in members who were not, in fact, stone masons.   The minutes of the lodge show that in 1634 Lord Alexander, Sir Anthony Alexander, and Sir Alexander Strachan were admitted to the lodge as “speculative” members (as differentiated from “operative” members who were actual stone masons).  Some claim that this lodge had been accepting these sort of honorary members since at least 1600.  It is notable that these recorded members are from the aristocracy as it shows both a desire to participate in the intellectual and charitable life of the lodge on the part of men whose own social class lacked this sort of cohesion, and a certain liberality of mind in these nobility being willing to participate in activities with men of wealth but without title. Incidentally, Sir Alexander Strachan, one of these speculative members, was closely connected to King Charles I, which certainly made his membership politically advantageous to the lodge, at least until the Civil War. 

It is difficult to say exactly why the Stone Mason’s guild became the nucleus of these new associations.  There could be a number of factors.  Stone Masons were a more mobile profession than most other guilds with masons moving around the country—indeed around Europe—wherever work was to be found and thus they had a stronger tradition of welcoming new members than the more settled guilds such as goldsmiths or furriers.  Also, because they worked for contract rather than owning their own business, they were not so much in competition with one another as members of those guilds whose businesses in the same town encouraged a certain rivalry and mistrust.  For whatever reason, through the seventeenth and certainly in the eighteenth century, there were fewer and fewer “operative” stonemasons and more and more “speculative” masons admitted to membership in English lodges.

And perhaps because masonry involved the sciences—mathematics, geometry, physics, and even a basic knowledge of geology and the different qualities of stone, the lodges drew men of scientific inquiry.  During the years of the English Civil War and the religious chaos that came with the breakdown of English religion into dozens of sects from the orthodox Presbyterians and Congregationalists to the far more outré groups such as the Quakers, and even more the Diggers, Ranters, and Fifth Monarchy Men, many of your more educated and professional men began to question Christian doctrines such as the Trinity which they perceived to be irrational.  We see by the end of the period the rise of Unitarianism and then the jump to Deism which posited belief in a Supreme Being but One who set the “clockwork” of the universe into an eternal motion and then abandoned it to itself. 

Freemasonry spread from England to France in the early eighteenth century, aided by both the partisans of the exiled Stuarts and the commercial and intellectual ties that developed with France despite the political tensions between the two countries.  The French Lodges tended to draw political liberals (as well as scientists and philosophes) and were in many ways the incubators for democratic ideas that would set in motion the French Revolution.  Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot were all Freemasons.  Freemasonry established itself among the American colonists as well and George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe, John Hancock, Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and Elbridge Gerry were all Freemasons. 

In Europe Freemasonry became associated with opposition to the Catholic Church as part of the ancien regime.  The alliance of “Throne and Altar” which characterized pre-revolutionary France proved all but fatal to the Catholic Church.  While Freemasons are not associated with the Jacobins and the extremes of the Terror, the French lodges had long served as breeding grounds of democratic ideals.  The intellectual curiosity characteristic of Freemasonry also made the Masons question many Catholic beliefs and practices that represented the medieval world and had grown into an outdated ridiculousness by the Enlightenment.  The papal bulls of Clement XII and Benedict XIV proscribing membership in the Freemasons had never been ratified by the French Crown and consequently many French clergy belonged to the Freemasons.  Some lodges were exclusively clerical. 

Freemasons, who found the rigid intellectualism of the Jesuits to be opposed to their own spirit of intellectual inquiry, played critical roles in having the Jesuits expelled from Portugal (1759), France (1764), the Spanish Empire (1767) and Malta (1769) leading up to the suppression of the Order in 1773.  By no means,  however, should they be credited (or blamed) entirely for the downfall of the Society of Jesus as the Jesuits had entire coalitions of enemies working against them. 

In the nineteenth century, Italian Freemasons were very active in both the revolutions against the papacy in the Papal States and the move for Italian unification and the ending of temporal power for the Popes.  Giuseppe Garibaldi, the “George Washington of Italy” whose military genius was able to bring down the power of the various Italian princes—including the papacy—was a vehement Freemason.  All in all, the relationship between Freemasonry and Catholicism has not been a happy one.  

Papal Transitions 2

The change in papal administrations has drawn out a journalistic increase in stories about clerical sex abuse—not that there are new charges of misbehavior but as the old stories, especially those of how charges were mishandled—are revived and rehashed.  The records of various Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops are examined and reexamined for everything from criminal malfeasance to simple incompetence.  And I think we have to expect this—not only because these are the stories that “sell” newspapers, but because the person-in-the-pews is not yet convinced that sufficient reforms are in place.  But what triggers my concern is several articles that have appeared recently with scathing critiques of Mother Theresa of Calcutta.  The journalists claim that given the amount of donations the saint received she could have given a much higher level of care to patients in her “houses for the dying.”
Mother Theresa didn’t have an American understanding of her mission.  She was more interested in surrounding her dying patients with love and support, alleviating their loneliness and fear, than she was in offering high-tech treatments that would have prolonged life but at the cost of removing the human care and treatment her nuns and volunteers offer.  The American approach to death has long been to see it as an adversary that must be fought no matter what the price—price both in fiduciary and humane terms.  Fortunately the hospice movement is starting to change our perception of death and we are coming to see it as the closing part of the process of life and, like Mother Theresa, understand that what is really needed is to provide people with an environment of spiritual, emotional, and humane security. 
The motives beneath the attack on Mother Theresa’s work is, like the other articles “exposing” the Church, that these are the stories that sell newspapers.  But there are more baleful reasons.  There are those who realize that shining a spotlight on the Church, and indeed on religion in general, could—were it not for their mudslinging—be an opportunity for others to give consideration to the positive roles that religion plays in society.  Not only Catholicism but organized religion is at an all-time low in its standing in western culture.  One of Benedict’s goals in becoming pope was to reverse that trend.  He had no success whatsoever in reaching this goal.  It will remain to his successor who will first have to shovel the church out from beneath the avalanche of offal that has not so much fallen upon it as has been drawn down upon the Church by its own prelates who just never “got it.”   This papal election is perhaps the most critical of the last five hundred years as the direction in which this pope sets the Church could be its call for revival or its death-knell. 

And On A Sour Note....

My last posting was about the new peal of 10 bells for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  It is an opportunity to talk about  both a current event that is making history—the installation of the new peal of bells that is far more melodious  than the previous set of bells that were cast in the nineteenth century to replace the medieval bells that had—with one exception—been destroyed in the French Revolution.  It also gave us the opportunity to look at the past—the medieval bells and the ruinous state of the Cathedral at the time it was restored to Catholic Worship by Napoleon at the time of the 1801 concordat with the Holy See.  But the reason I posted the story was actually to lay the ground for this sequel about just how nasty some people are.  Below are some of the internet comments responding to the story of the new peal. 

It's a better use of a couple million euros than wasting it on the millions of homeless, hungry, ill, downtrodden, etc., Catholics in poor nations around the planet. Enjoy, your holiness.

When you hear the bells ringing, that means that the pedophiles are entering the Catholic church!

The arrogance and the opulence make me want to throw up

The Catholic Church is responsible for the murder of millions of Jews, Protestants, free-thinkers, women and gays. 

Dumb superstition is nothing to be proud of

Catholicism is a religion of hatred—the world would be better without it. 

How can people possibly believe the things that Christianity teaches in our scientific world?  We have sent spaceships above the clouds and know there is no heaven.  We have explored into the depths of the earth and know there is no hell.  Yet religion keeps its hold over the minds of simple people.   

This should  be something of good news for people regardless of their religious opinions—these bells are things of beauty and will lift the hearts of all who hear them. My question is why do some people have to be so sour about other peoples’ good news?  Why does religion trigger such negativity?  Christians in general and Catholics in particular are increasingly seen as exercising a negative influence on society.  How has this come about and what must we do to change the perception?     

Catholic amd Democrat--The Roots Are Deep

When a Methodist gets money, he becomes an Episcopalian

When a Baptist gets money, he joins the Presbyterian Church.

The Rev, Samuel D.

Burdhard whose quip

that the Democrats

were the party of Rum,

Romanism and Rebellion

sealed the deal between
Catholics and the
Democratic Party

When a Catholic Priest is named a bishop

He becomes a Republican. 

Catholics have traditionally been Democrats—after all, the Democrats are the party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. (See entry for March 7, 2011.) What has caused our hierarchy to shift to the Republicans?  And why is our laity not following?

I was shocked to see that according to a recent Pew survey, President Obama leads Governor Romney among Catholics 54% to 39%.   While the majority of African-American Catholics and Hispanic Catholics are strongly pro-Obama, a slight majority of White Catholics are now sliding into the Obama camp.  A clue to this surge might be found in the surveys that indicate that the one faction of the Catholic vote that is not weighted toward the President are the White Catholic weekly Mass-goers among whom Romney has a slight edge.  Some attribute this to weekly Mass-attendees being “more faithful” Catholics who are inclined to follow the leadership of their bishops.  While that may be true, the converse conclusion must then also be true: that there is a majority of White Catholics, including both those who attend Mass weekly and those who have stopped attending regularly, who have lost their confidence in the leadership of the bishops.    
What shocked me about the Pew Survey results is not that the majority of Catholics are not following the bishops’ lead, but that I would have thought that since the majority of (white) Catholics in this country have gradually slipped up into the better-off classes and are no longer among the working (labor union) class, that their politics would have turned as well from the traditional alliance between the Catholic Church and the Democratic party.  But they haven’t.  What are the reasons that they are staying locked in the Democratic Party?
It may be that despite their newly acquired relative affluence Middle and Upper Class Catholics are still convinced of the basic Catholic view of society as a cooperative unit in which those who have more have responsibility for those who have less. Catholic social teaching over the 120 years or so since Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum has embraced the idea that not only are individuals responsible for works of charity but that society itself has an obligation from each of its members towards all of its members.   This corporate view is at odds with Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand views of a world in which each person must look out for his or her own interest first rather than for the “common good.”   It may be that the boomer generation of Catholics gratefully remember their parents’ stories of  the Church’s support for organized Labor in the years of the great depression and realize that without the boost that Catholic Social teaching—along with the Democratic New Deal and the G.I. Bill—gave their parents, they—the boomers—would not have had the social and educational opportunities that empowered them to make the jump into the Professional and Managerial classes.   It may also be—and given that the Catholic boost in the Obama ratings comes because of the non-weekly attendees—a sign that not only have the bishops become irrelevant to many of the Catholics-in-the-pews but there is actually a backlash against their leadership among those whose disaffection with the leadership of the last twenty years or so has made them indifferent towards formal Catholicism.  Given the recent scandals and the poor quality of Episcopal leadership this factor cannot be discounted.  As hard as the Timothy Dolans and Sean O’Malleys try to pedal forward the bike of American Catholicism, the number of foot-draggers on the bishops bicycle built for 450 (or whatever the number of American bishops) is holding back the advance of the Institutional Church.  O well, there may be grace in that too. 

Cry Wolf!

 What danger does the Patient Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 offer to the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution? 

  First—let’s look at the text. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

Our concern here is the first two clauses.. There shall be no law respecting an establishing of religion.  There shall be no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.    
       As I understand it the Catholic Church and its institutions will neither have to provide nor pay for there to be provided to their employees and their dependents, any procedure such as sterilization, abortifacients, or  contraceptives that violate Catholic moral teaching.  On the other hand, their employees and their dependents will be given access to these services at the expense of the insurance companies.  While one might expect that the companies would pass the cost of such services along to those who pay the premiums, in fact the insurance companies want to provide these services as they will lower the cost to the companies since birth-prevention is cheaper than the cost of providing medical care for childbirth and subsequent infant-child care.  (That, at least, is the theory.  I am cynical enough to believe that while the insurance companies may in fact want to provide contraceptive and related services, they will still try to pass the (hidden) cost along in order to maximize their profit. That is the way business works ever since ethics courses became optional in American colleges and universities.)    Does making available to employees of religious institutions services that contradict the religious tenets of the employer-organization without any involvement by or cost to the employer-organization constitute an encroachment on free practice of religion? I think that is a bit of a stretch, but I am not a constitutional lawyer.  Of course neither are the bishops.  Most commentators believe that when this issue comes to the Supreme Court, if the Patient Affordable Care Act of 2010 is still standing despite other lawsuits, that the Court will side with the Church on this issue. They base this estimation on the January 2012 opinion delivered by the Court in the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School case v EEOC which, though dealing with remarkably different issues has the same principles (or so some think) at stake in terms of a religious body’s right to determine its administrative policies without government interference .     

      I do think we are going to have to determine sound boundaries both to protect religion and protect from religion in a secular society.  I also think there is a campaign in certain segments of our society to restrict the influence and even visibility of religion, but I honestly don’t think that is the Obama administration’s agenda.  And so I have fears that this “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign by the American Bishops is not a legitimate red flag to protect religious freedom but a thinly veiled political assault on the Obama administration to convince Catholics that they should support the Republican ticket in November.   A greater fear of mine than Obamacare being an assault on our religious freedoms is that when the wolf does come no one will take the bishops' cries for help seriously.    

Signs of the Times

 The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national organization of atheists and agnostics headed by Annie Laurie Gaylor and her husband, Dan Barker, ran a full page ad in the New York Times yesterday (March 9) calling on ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics to “Please Exit (the Catholic Church) En Mass” It was a rather blatant piece of anti-Catholicism—neither civil in tone nor cogent in argument.  (Before Dan Barker was an atheist he was an Assemblies of God Pastor with a reputation for anti-Catholic rants).  But that is not to say that the ad doesn’t have merit—it has great merit for us Catholics.  We had better look at how the Church is being perceived by a considerable segment of our society and see what we need to change about our modus operandi if we want to be credible witnesses to the Gospel in our contemporary society. 

     By “change” I don’t mean that we have to “sell out” to our contemporary society and turn a blind eye towards (much less adopt) the thin values offered by a culture that is too often morally shallow and intellectually lazy.  H. Richard Niebuhr was a Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale who in 1951 published Christ and Culture, outlining the different positions that Christians take regarding the culture in which they live. Niebuhr spoke of those Christians who take a stand of radical opposition to their surrounding culture as “Christ against Culture.”  There will always be a need for Christians who expose the lack of substance in the prevailing culture.  In October 2006 when a gunman killed five young girls and wounded five others in a one-room schoolhouse of the Amish community in Nickel Mines Pennsylvania, the world stood in awe of the spirit of generous forgiveness that the members of that community showed towards the murder (who had himself then committed suicide) and his family. Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian who had been the only person in his village to vote against the Anschluss (the 1938 union with Germany) and who was executed for refusing to fight in the army of the Third Reich is another example; as is Protestant Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose resistance of Hitler led to his execution in 1945).  American Catholic social reformer, Dorothy Day is yet another example.  Such Christians are effective witnesses that make us stop and critique the cultural Kool-Aid which so many drink without thinking.  Niebuhr outlines other positions that people might take—the “Christ of Culture” accommodationist who does not see the conflicts between the demands of the Gospel and the enticements of the culture being at the opposite end of the spectrum from the “Christ against Culture.”  At the Second Vatican Council the Church pretty much embraced the “Christ Transformer of Culture” model as the operative paradigm.  The “Christ Transformer of Culture” model admits the flaws and failures (and sinfulness) of the culture but also believes that the culture contains within it, by God’s goodness, the seeds of transformation out of which can—through processes of conversion empowered by grace—emerge the Kingdom of God.  In other words, the world is redeemed and that redemption is (slowly) becoming visible as the Kingdom takes root in our hearts.  I must admit, as I have admitted before, I am a strong Augustinian and consequently I find myself more sliding towards (though not at) the “Christ against Culture” end of the scale. 

     What stops me from falling into the “Christ against Culture” slot is that those who wish to be the “Christ against Culture” voices in the Church and in the world need to have the moral probity of a Dorothy Day or Helder Camara or the Amish survivors.  You can’t talk about how wicked the culture is and then parade around in red capes with people kissing your hand, not that red capes and hand-kissing are culturally relevant but neither are they prophetic witness.  Our bishops would do well to stop sitting in pharisaic judgment on the culture from which they are benefitting and instead highlight where are appearing already the first buds of the Kingdom of God.  As I have said before, everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against—we need voices that can tell us what it is for.   We need to publicize the good that is being done in the developing world by Catholic Relief Services.  We need to show off the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor.  We need to empower the voices of Joan Chittester and Elizabeth Johnson and Donna Orsuto and Barbara Reid and Mary Ann Glendon and Sandra Schneiders and Margaret O’Brien Stienfels and Lisa Sowle Cahill and Delores Leckey and Mary Lyons and Diane Bergant and Teresa Koernke and M. Theresa Moser and Janet Mock and hundreds of other women to speak out and be heard within the Church and for the Church.  We need to make the Catholic Worker Houses and Marriage Encounter and Cursillo and the Secular Franciscans and Gethsemane Abbey and Catholic Charities USA and Commonweal more visible.  We need to get the insights of Richard Rohr and Ronald Rohlheiser and other contemporary spiritual writers into the hands of spiritual seekers.  We need people to identify the fact that Notre Dame and the College of the Holy Cross and the University of San Diego and Boston College and Georgetown and DePaul University and dozens of other top-rate schools are brought to you by our Catholic Church.  And we need to remind people too that dozens of hospitals named Mercy and Providence and Saint Joseph and Charity and Saint Vincent’s and whatever were built for health care of all people of any and no faith by the Catholic Church and its many agencies.   We have a lot going for us as a Church—we only need the sort of leadership that knows better than to keep singing in a minor key.

I Keep Bad Company

I am "of a certain age" and I live in the ivory tower of academia so am a bit naive about the Blogosphere.  Boy there are some nasty people out there.  I guess I spend too much time in Church and not enough with the local neo-Nazi groups.   I have posted a number of entries over the past year on anti-Catholicism in the United States.  I had always seen this as an aberration but now I am learning not to take it personally.  It is not Catholics that some people hate—it is just about everyone. There is a cesspool of hatred out there.  I have been a little taken aback by just how nasty people can be on comments to blogs or news articles.  Here are some examples.  

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates pledged a further $750 million to the troubled global AIDS fund on Thursday and urged governments to continue their support to save lives.

"These are tough economic times, but that is no excuse for cutting aid to the world's poorest," he said in Davos at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

So what response does this generosity generate:

Yet another tax deduction that I will ending paying. My plan, who ever you are, Buffet, Gates, Winfrey, etc., only American charities, with monies spent in America, are tax deductible. Americans are the ones that built your empires, give to those, not some third world country that hates us anyway.

Why not donate the money for cancer research you liberal fool instead of something that effects mostly perverts? All of my friends and relatives who died of cancer spit upon you from their graves.

I'm glad the overlords of this "charity" have another $750,000.00 to play with.

aids cost in America? Only the rich can afford. Aids cost in 3rd world countries? basically free. American's foots the bill. Hey Bill, give the money to charities or hospitals that use it in America.

What did Bill Gates do for America lately. Its like people adopting from China, as a status trend. As if Americans are #$%$ and don't deserve charity!!!!!!!!!!!

Barney Frank thanks you

Bill should be funding tubal ligation's, vasectomies, contraception, and abortion - not pills to keep AIDS sufferers

AIDS patients have to bear the responsibility for their own diseases as it is their behavior that led to them getting sick in the first place.

“The individual suffering from AIDS certainly is a victim — frequently a victim of his own lifestyle

What a waste of cash. Let them croak.

What's next? Is he going to be bridesmaid at Barney Frank's wedding?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And then they can't Joe Paterno rest in peace.  Granted the man didn't do all that he could to stop kids from being abused, but he's dead.  You would think that they could at least let him pass without condemnation but even those who criticize the hatemongers have to get ugly

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP)—Crediting him with building not just better athletes but better men, some 12,000 people—including Penn State students, fans and football stars—paid tribute to Joe Paterno in a campus memorial service Thursday that exposed a strong undercurrent of anger over his firing.

In a 2 1/2 -hour gathering that capped three days of mourning on campus, Nike chairman and CEO Phil Knight brought the near-capacity crowd at the basketball arena to its feet when he defended the coach’s handling of child-sex allegations leveled against a former assistant. Paterno was fired two months ago by the Penn State trustees.

granny pa should have jerry tell the little pas how great joe pa was at asleepover

poor joe, he's going to miss all those big hot beefy boy's. i know i would :)

Paterno's eternity? A daily insertion of a pineapple up the A$$. Bend over Papa Joe, here's your reward

Joke Pa's coffin looked great with those NIKE' swooshs on each side.....free coffin Joke Pa? Scumbag.

To all you haters ....I will pray for you, pray that you get cancer and DIE !!!

I should go take a @#$% on your mother's face for ever giving birth to such a pathetic excuse for a human being. Get off you pedestal my friend.

so,,,it looks as though all you pedophiles,,and supporters,, may just want to move to Happy Valley(if you're not already there).. you'll have an army of people who will stand behind you,,(literally),,and you can do your child rape thing for a looooong time and no one will say shizz about it!! Maybe you can even get you a job at PSU,,it's the place alot of people like work,,some of have plenty of power,(pull),,and they've been there long enough to call the shots on what goes down around campus.
Myself,,I think I'll stay as far away from that place as I can..I'll bypass waaaaay around Pennsylvania,,,I don't want any of you sicko butt rapers getting near my kids,,,

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And then what are the bloggers writing about Mitt Romney?  I'm not a Romney fan but criticize him for substantial issues not his religion.  Catholics who engage in attacks on a candidates' religion need to look at our history a bit closer.  In our day, of course, the crazies wore sheets and hoods but it is the same ugly bias, just directed towards someone else.

VOTE Anyman but Morman.......Mitt Romney - Bishop of the Satanic Cult of Latter Day Saints. America, you will put Satan's brother in the White House.

Mormons despise the Cross, DO NOT believe in the Holy Trinity, and interpret Armageddon as the destruction of all Gentiles (You!) and Jews and... More

DEPORT ALL ILLEAGALS. Enforce the law, we don't need them, or want them.

Admin Link: 658

Romney can donate all he wants to his cult and hides as much money in the tax loopholes as he wants. But this also tells that Romney is clearly not interested in contributing to the US but only his Mormon brothers. He is not fit for presidency.
Mitt was a used car salesman in his former life. No problem giving $$ to his church, but LDS ...? It's nothing more than a very wealthy cult. Lastly, don't forget, he makes millions every year and is in the 15% bracket!! Why was I paying more than 30% when I was earning $75K/yr.?!!

The United States is a Nation founded on the Christian belief. No group, including the mormons have a right to change that. If they don't like what is going on over here, do like Jim Jones and buy land somewhere else and do what ya'll do.

Some Notes on Maryland Catholicism

A reconstruction of the Catholic Church
in Saint Mary's City, Maryland, as it
would have appeared c. 1680

Yesterday I made a reference to recusant Catholicism in regard to the Maryland Catholic experience and I have received a number of inquiries asking me to explain that further.  

      As we have mentioned in a number of blogs, Henry VIII broke the Church of England from communion with the Roman Papacy in 1536 (well, truthfully,  in a series of gradual steps from 1528 until 1536) but he changed neither doctrine nor liturgy, keeping the Anglican Church a sort of non-papal Catholicism.  It was his son Edward VI (1547-1553)—or actually Edward’s Regency Council—and his (Henry’s) daughter, Elizabeth (reigned 1558-1603) who made the Church of England Protestant.  Henry’s senior daughter Mary, (reigned 1553-1558) was a Catholic, restored Catholicism, and bitterly persecuted “the heretics” (aka Protestants).  Henry had also persecuted Protestants (even after his break with Rome) and also quite brutally, far more brutally than he executed several dozen Catholics who were beheaded for treason (i.e. denying his royal authority over the Church) rather than for religious reasons (where the punishment was burning at the stake which is what he usually did to Protestants).  Edward and Elizabeth were reluctant to use religion as a reason for execution, which is not to say that they were reluctant to execute, only that they wanted another reason than matters of conscience.  Their reigns were not particularly bloody, at least as far as religion went, and Elizabeth in particular was not anxious to interfere in the conscience issues of individuals.  That is not to say she didn’t do away with a number—and not a particularly small number—of Catholics, in the hundreds. It is only that they were imprisoned, tried, and put to death for treason.  You see, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 (fair enough and about time for that matter) and he also absolved her subjects of their loyalty to her.  In other words, Catholics were told that they didn’t have to support Elizabeth as Queen.  This is because Elizabeth’s nearest kinsperson and heir to her throne, Mary  Queen of Scots, was a Catholic.  If the Catholics rose up and overthrew Elizabeth, England would have a Catholic Monarch again.  Pius liked that Reformation over.  But this put English Catholics in a terrible bind.  They could not be trusted to support the government.  You can imagine if Pope Benedict told modern American Catholics—“go ahead, overthrow your government,” what the outcome would be.  There were fears in American history, especially during the Know Nothing crisis of the 1850’s when many Americans believed precisely that: the Catholics would, as they grew in numbers, replace our Republican Government with a Catholic monarchy where Protestants would be persecuted.  (Check out blog entries for January 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, February 1, March 7—all 2011.) There are people today who believe that Muslims will take over and impose sharia law on the United States.  They want Islam to be illegal in our country.  They want Muslims deported.  They insist that all Muslims are anti-American terrorists.  This is the exact sort of paranoia that gripped England in the years after 1570.  It was complicated by the fact that French and especially Spanish diplomats were encouraging rebellion and providing funds to anti-Elizabeth cabals.  Could you trust Catholics?  Maybe you had Catholic friends.  They seemed like nice people, but could you trust them?  Elizabeth, to her credit didn’t over react despite much pressure from much of her Council.  Elizabeth herself had Catholics among her friends and confidants and she was no fanatic.  Priests—as agents of a foreign power (the Pope and the King of Spain) and those who sheltered priests were hunted out, imprisoned, most often tried and executed.  They were normally executed by hanging until almost dead, then being cut down and gutted while still (barely) alive and then—for good measure—dismembered.  This was the punishment for treason.  Ordinary lay Catholics were usually left alone except for those who sheltered or aided priests. 

       Most of the towns in England, and London in particular, had converted early to Protestantism but much of the rural population had remained Catholic.  In some very rural places, especially in the west and in the far north, Mass was still being said in the parish churches with neglectful sheriffs turning their heads.  Also while the middle class and the “new nobility” (those families raised to nobility by the Tudors in reward for service) were ardently Protestant, many of the “old nobility” (who tended to be anti-monarchy as they saw the London Government taking away many of their hereditary rights) remained Catholic.

      Thus English society under Elizabeth and then under the Stuarts, James I and Charles I, had considerable pockets of Catholicism.  Some wealthy families were even able to retain a Catholic chaplain under the guise of being a tutor to the family children.  As the years passed and especially after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, the laws were enforced less vigilantly and priests, if they were careful and especially if they were far from London, could discreetly minister to the great Catholic families and the tenants on their estates.   This isn’t to say that the persecution was over but only that the laws were not always enforced with vigor.  Nevertheless, Catholics could not have churches.  Mass was said in private homes—usually those of the wealthier upper classes who could pay the fines if caught and who had enough political pull to guarantee they were left alone.  Gone were the days when there could be processions in the streets or public devotions.  Catholic devotional life was centered in the family with prayers like the rosary.  There weren’t many statues and crosses—they were hard to come by and dead giveaways that the family was Catholic.   Devotional books of private prayers were popular and the writing of English monks and nuns on the Continent such as Dom Augustin Baker and Dame Gertrude More stressed deep personal prayer—even a tradition of contemplative prayer.  Thus English Catholicism in the seventeenth century became very different than Continental Catholicism.  It was far more restrained in its devotional life, more literate than emotional, Christocentric rather than focusing on saints and miracles.  This was the Catholicism brought to Maryland by the English colonists.  Priests usually wore lay clothes in subdued colors.  The liturgy was simple and without ornamentation as it would be celebrated in private homes.  Statues and devotional objects were rare.  (Bishop John Carroll put no statues in his Cathedral, the Basilica of the Assumption, when it was built.  It was only his French successor but two, Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, that imported statues of Mary and Jesus from Europe.) The more exotic Catholicism that many of us who grew up before Vatican II remember came to America with the waves of immigrants from Germany and Italy in the mid and late nineteenth-century, but traditional American Catholicism bears greater resemblance to the post-Vatican II practices we know today

The Roots of the Reformation II: It's didn't start with Luther



A medieval burgher peeks out frin his
window beneath the pulpit of the
Stefansdom in Vienna--it was this class
that was drawn to the eachings of
Peter Waldo



Martin Luther was not the first voice to speak up against the Institutional Church and go his own way—and take followers with him.  Peter Waldo was one of the wealthiest cloth merchants in Lyons—itself one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.  On day, while hearing mass, he was struck by the Gospel Command: if you be perfect—go, sell all that you have (and you will have treasure in heaven) and come, follow me.  Waldo was probably in his early thirties at this time and, in the late twelfth century that was a somewhat more mature and advanced age than it would be now.  He was a serious man, a man of deep piety and the words struck to his heart.  He paid a priest to make him a translation of the gospels into his native Lyonnais patois—a sort of early medieval French spiced with some Provençal—and he began to study the gospels assiduously.  As he was married and had children—two daughters—the monastic life was not an option for him, but neither did he seem to be attracted to that form of Christian discipleship.  Like many of his religious contemporaries—Stephen of Grandmont (who was actually about two generations ahead of Waldo) or Francis of Assisi (who was actually a generation younger than Waldo), he simply wanted to follow the gospel.   He endowed his daughters as nuns in the reformed abbey of Fonterevault, turned his business over to his wife for her support, separated from her and gave his money to the poor.  He then began to preach in the streets of his native city.

The citizens of Lyons were amazed to see one of their wealthiest burghers standing in the streets of their city wearing shabby clothes and talking about Christian discipleship.  The bishop, in his palace and fine robes, was particularly unhappy.  The clergy in their elegant dress and with a comfortable life style were embarrassed by his zeal.  He was told that since he was not in Orders (a priest or deacon) he had no authority to preach.  Waldo’s response was that as long as he conformed to the Apostolic life—no purse, no sack, no walking stick, no change of clothes—the authority which Jesus gave his apostles in sending them out was sufficient (Matthew 10:9-10).  Well, the Gospel rarely suffices to prove much to the clergy who are impressed only with canon law and perhaps dogmatic theology and Waldo was told not to preach.  So he went to the Pope in 1179.  Alexander III was a canon lawyer.  He was impressed by Waldo’s earnestness and his renunciation of wealth and family for the sake of the Gospel but he was a canon lawyer and like many canon lawyers even today he could not think outside the box.  No, Waldo was not to preach.

Well this brought Peter Waldo to a crisis.  The Church told him he could not preach, the Gospel told him he could, and the Holy Spirit, or what he perceived as the Holy Spirit, told him he must.   About twenty years later another Canon Lawyer pope, Innocent III, would cut the Gordian knot and distinguish between what we call “witnessing” and formal canonical and doctrinal preaching—permitting the former to the laity.  Alas, by that time—as so often in the history of the Church—it was too little too late. 

Waldo and his followers found themselves outcasts from the Church.  The movement spread and actually took root in Lombardy in the areas around Milan.  Milan had a long history of tension with the Institutional Church going back to the Patarini controversies of the eleventh century.  The Milanese were not very tolerant of sloppy standards and thought that if the Church were going to legislate things like celibacy then they should enforce the rules.  Moreover, the Milanese had a long history of class conflict and the working class—mostly tied to the cloth industry (and remember Waldo was a cloth merchant) were among the strongest voices crying out against the wealth of the clergy and laxity of clerical morals. 

Waldo was excommunicated by Lucius III in 1184 but the movement was not condemned as “heretical” until Lateran IV in 1215.  Waldo and his followers were quite orthodox in both their Trinitarian and Christological beliefs.  In regard to their ecclesiology and sacramental theology they reflected many of the popularly held beliefs that were accepted by the Church prior to the extensive doctrinal clarifications of the Fourth Lateran Council which defined there to be seven sacraments, the necessity of auricular confession to a priest, and the precise nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.   Three hundred years later,  in the sixteenth century, when the Calvinist Reformation articulated many of the “Reformed Doctrines,” the Waldensians subscribed—more or less—to that theological trend though they would later affiliate with the World Methodist Council of which they are still members today, although not Methodists.   

The real issue was not “orthodoxy” as Waldo and his followers were well within the current boundaries of Catholic faith as it was accepted in the 12^th century.  Years ago I heard a noted Protestant historian say that “the Roman Church will accept almost any deviation from its doctrine as long as it doesn’t challenge the basic authority of the Church itself.”  As a historian, I have seen that time and time again.  Church authorities will rationally discuss any and all doctrines and examine the dogmas of the Church with the most critical scholarship as long as the authority of the magisterium is not brought into question.  Waldo’s challenge to the Church of his day was that he appealed against its authority to Scripture and individual conscience.   What should be noted in the situation behind Waldo and his break with the Church is the antagonism of many people to the wealth and power of the Institutional Church as well as the distance between the hierarchy and many of the clergy, on the one hand, and the working-class faithful on the other.  Peter Waldo had a credibility that many clergy lacked in the eyes of many because of the simplicity and earnestness of his life.  We are going to see this theme repeated in other circles as we build up to the Protestant Reformations.