Pope Francis and Ecumenical Dialogue

Luther posting the 95
Theses on the Castle
Church Door 

Pope Francis continues to drive the Krazies to the brink of schism.  The current outrage is his apology for the atrocities committed by Catholics against Protestants during the Reformation and his decision to attend a public commemoration of the Reformation at the Lutheran Cathedral in Lund, Sweden, this autumn marking the beginning of the 5^th centennial of the Reformation. 

It is curious that the commemoration marking the beginning of the year long anticipation of Luther’s 1517 posting of the 95 Theses on Wittenberg Castle Church is being held in Sweden and not in Germany.  Presumably the conclusion of the centennial will be held next year in Wittenberg and it is easier for the Pope to go to an event held by the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden rather than the Evangelical (Lutheran) Church in Germany as the Swedish Church has always maintained much more of its Catholic heritage than the other Lutheran Churches. 

Lund has been a diocese since 1060—originally suffrage to Hamburg—and a Metropolitan Archdiocese from 1104 until the Reformation.  During the Middle Ages it held the primacy of Scandinavia.  During the Reformation the Scandinavian Churches temporarily abolished the distinctions of Archbishop, reducing Lund to a diocese again.  It currently is a diocese suffragen to Uppsala.  The last Catholic Archbishop of Torben Bille who, before he could be consecrated, was arrested and imprisoned by Christian III of Denmark. 

This gets a little complicated here as there are several interlocking historical circles.  Lund at the time of Torben Bille was actually under Danish rule.  Christian’s father, Frederick I, had introduced Lutheranism into Denmark.  Christian’s accession to the throne was initially blocked by the Catholic bishops and nobles who were resisting the Reformation, but after the Count’s War King Christian prevailed in his efforts to make the Church of Denmark Lutheran.  As Lund was in his realm, he was not anxious for a Catholic bishop there and so replaced Bille with Frans Vormordsen.  It was over a century later, in 1658, that Lund was ceded to Sweden. 

As for the Church of Sweden being Lutheran, that is a parallel but separate story.  Sweden, Denmark, and Norway had been united under one crown by Margaret I of Denmark in the 1397 Union of Kalmar.  With the gradual rise of distinct national identities among the Scandinavian peoples in the fifteenth century this Union became more and more fragile.  In the early sixteenth century the Swedes established their independence under the leadership of Gustav Vasa, a truly great monarch.  The problem was that the Archbishop of Uppsala and primate of Sweden, Gustav Trolle, was still loyal to Christian II of Denmark.  The Danish parliament, the Riksdag, petitioned the pope to replace him with Johannes Magnus, a prelate  more to his own liking.  There were four other empty dioceses and Gustav proposed candidates to the pope for these dioceses as well.  The pope rejected Magnus and three of Gustav’s four candidates.  The King installed Magnus without the authorizing papal bull.  The irony is that Magnus turned out to be a loyal Catholic and Gustav was frustrated in his attempts to introduce Lutheranism to Sweden.  He finally sent Magnus to Russia on a diplomatic errand.  Meanwhile, Magnus’ brother went to Rome and explained to the Holy See the situation in Sweden and why Trolle could not be reinstated.  The Holy See ended up having Magnus consecrated as Archbishop of Uppsala but as Gustav Vasa was determined to introduce Lutheranism to his kingdom, the point was moot and Magnus was unable to return to his see and spent the remainder of his life in Rome. 

Why did Gustav Vasa want Sweden to be Lutheran?  Basically it was the same story as the motivation behind Henry VIII.  Both monarchs—as well as several other European Kings and princes—believed that the Church in their realms should be subject to the Crown and not to a foreign prince—the Pope.  This was the time of the rise of nation states and the various kings and princes saw the political power of the Church and were determine to harness it for their own purposes.  In countries such as France, and even more so Spain, where the papacy pretty much gave control over the Church to the Crown there was no problem.  But in Denmark and Sweden and England and Scotland and a variety of German principalities and dukedoms, the practicalities of politics trumped Christian faith.  Of course today too God often get’s the word and self-interest gets the deed. 

Today there is a strong backlash against ecumenism among the right-wing Catholics.  They ignore both the complexities of history and our contemporary world and want no dialogue—much less apologies—with those who differ from their own opinions and views.  They are quite like the wing-nuts that have taken over conservative politics in the United States: it is all or nothing, no dialogue and no compromise.  I will steer away from the political realm—though it interlocks with a certain distorted Christianity—but in the realm of Christianity we cannot afford not to sit down and dialogue with anyone who is willing to enter into sincere and honest dialogue.  The healing of the divisions in Christianity is of paramount importance in a world that on the one flank is confronted by jihadist Islam and on the flank by the rampant secularism of our post-modern world.   Jesus’ final request for us was ut unum sint: that all may be one.  This is not an option: it is a commandment.  We are a long way from being able to fulfill that mandate but it begins with dialogue. 

Rogue Religion--Both in Christianity and in Islam

The restored Caliphate and its
Caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi 

Religion has great potential for good in the world; unfortunately it also has a great potential for evil.   The Dalai Lama has written that the purpose of religion is to cultivate such positive human qualities as tolerance, generosity, and compassion.  To this end religion has been the motivating factor in creating great works of art, music, and literature.  Even more impressively it has built massive health-care systems, institutions of learning, and movements for peace and reconciliation.  Religion has produced such people as Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Archbishop Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter, Jacques Bunel, Damian of Molokai, Thich Nhat Hanh, Corrie ten Boom, Raoul Wallenberg, and Millard and Linda Fuller.  But there is a shadow side to religion as well which has led to pogroms and persecutions and inquisitions and wars. 

We now see this new phenomenon known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) under the leadership of the self-proclaimed caliph Abu-Bakr al Baghdadi.  The Iraqi division of Al-Qaeda proclaimed the Islamic State of Iraq in that part of Iraq where it had been able to drive out the Iraqi military and establish its authority over the local populace. Abu-Bakr al Baghdadi, the mullah of a small mosque, had risen to prominence in Iraq in great part because of his having been held by American forces for ten months in 2004.  He had a seat on the Mujahedeen  Shura Council,  the Sunni Islamic Council that directed the Iraqi insurgency.  In 2010 when Abu Omar al Baghdadi was killed in an American attack, abu-Bakr was selected to succeed him as the head of the insurgency quasi-State.

When in 2013 the Iraqi insurgency expanded into Syria in Syria’s ongoing civil war, Abu Bakr proclaimed the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.  But this was only the initial step of his dream—shared by many radical Muslims—of reestablishing the ancient Islamic Caliphate—a religious and political empire that in his heyday stretched from what is today Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan in the east through Armenia, Turkey Greece and the Balkans as well as Syria, Palestine (and modern Israel), the Arab peninsula, Iran and Iraq, along north Africa with Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia and up into Europe in Spain and Portugal to the Pyrenees.  To this end, two weeks ago Abu Bakr proclaimed himself Caliph.

Now there is not agreement in the Muslim world about Abu Bakr being Caliph any  more than there is agreement in the Christian world that Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ.   I think he is; my Baptist neighbor likes Francis but doesn’t think he is the Vicar of Christ—in fact, doesn’t think that Christ has a vicar, or needs one.  We are both Christians, we just disagree on this point.  Well, ok, there are other points as well.  And the same is true in the Muslim world.  Islam is not a unified religion. In fact it is far less unified than Christianity.  But the dream of a restored Caliphate will capture the imagination of many young Muslims who feel that for these last six centuries or so their religion has not been respected and this is the chance to make its mark once again.  While this Abu Bakr fellow would seem to be another religious nut-case like David Allen Bawden, aka “Pope Michael,” a peculiar young man from Kansas who, along with his 30 “solid followers” believes he’s the true Pope, the self-selected Caliph needs to be taken far more seriously as he has the potential to bring together a significant portion of the Muslim world that has been moving more and more towards fundamentalism over the past twenty years. 

The Caliph is the successor of Mohammed.  From the very beginning there has been discord over the position with Shiite Muslims claiming that the caliphate must descend through the family of Mohammed while Sunni’s do not.  In a future posting we will look at the struggles in Islam that followed the death of Mohammed in 632 AD and the origins of the Sunni/Shia conflict.  Although himself a Sunni, Abu Bakr, now known officially as Amir al-Mu’minin  Caliph Ibrahim, in an effort to gain Shiite support as well as Sunni, claims descent from Al-Husayn ibn ‘Alî ibn Abî Tâlib, the grandson of Mohammed.  

I think when we remember that President George W. Bush said that God told him to invade Iraq we can see the danger that religion , in the wrong hands (and minds), can create.  I remember a few days before the second Iraq war began having dinner with friends.  Other guests at the table included a Christian Arab couple.  The wife is Syrian; the husband Egyptian.  Both are Catholics.  Although they are staunch Republicans, they emphatically said that this war would destabilize the entire Near East and bring great suffering on many, including and especially, the Christian population of these nations.  Truer words were not spoken.  Pope John Paul warned us very sternly not to go into this war and he was ignored.  The American bishops did nothing to make his message heard in this country.  Few clergy took up the Pope’s admonition. 

There was, I believe, a time when the situation in the Near East could have be defused by the United States insisting on a just solution to the Palestinian issue.  The Israel Lobby in this country made sure that did not happen and we have continued to give Israel a blank check to abuse its Arab population.  Muslims—and Christians—have seen their co-religionists have their centuries-old olive orchards uprooted, their homes bulldozed, their communities divided by “the Wall,” and their people terrorized  by the “settlers” and the Israeli soldiers who protect the thieves who rob the Palestinians of their fields, their shops, and their homes.  The injustices perpetrated on these people whose ancestors lived in that land when Joshua first led the Hebrew people across the Jordan into a “promised land”  have set the Arab world afire and that conflagration now threatens the whole world.  It is, I am afraid, far too late to douse the flames by correcting the injustices in Israel/Palestine.  Militant Islam is on the move.  Thank you to the Presidents Bush.  Thank you to Dick Cheney.  Thank you to Ronald Rumsfeld.   And thank you to the “Christianity” that enabled this disaster.  

When Religion Goes Bad

I was very disappointed that Malala Yousafzai didn’t wind the Nobel Peace Prize.  I can’t think of anyone better to symbolize the victory of Peace over Violence in our contemporary world.  But last week when I saw Diane Sawyer interviewing a group of Muslim women and heard them say that Malala should “return to Islam” and express their opinions that non-Muslim women like Ms. Sawyer are “oppressed” because they don’t live “under God’s will” but as “beholden to the slavery of their own desires” I saw not only the danger of radical Islam but the danger of radical religion of any stripe. 

Several days ago The New York Times carried a story of two Rabbis who—for a hefty fee—would arrange for men to be kidnapped and tortured until they gave their wives a get (a religious bill of divorce, required by Orthodox interpretation of the Mosaic Law for a woman to be released from marriage).  And again, like listening to those Muslim women, I cannot but wonder about what religion   devolves into among those who consider themselves “orthodox.”  Kidnapping and torture are a legitimate means to carry out compliance with the Mosaic Law?  And I read a story on the internet a few days ago how Orthodox Jewish settlers had not only stolen the land from Arab families in the West Bank but adding insult to injury, defaced their mosque.  And this is done because Jewish extremists make the claim that “God has given this land” to them.  The Name of God is blasphemed when it is used to justify such atrocities just as it was blasphemed when Christians used horror stories of child kidnappings and murders to instigate pogroms against the Jews of Europe. 

Extremist Hindus murder Muslims and Christians in India in the name of religious teachings that would demand religious conformity to all ethnic Indians.  And Buddhists—despite the clear teachings of the Buddha—massacre Muslims in Myanmar.  No wonder so many in our modern world just walk away in bewilderment and even disgust from religion all together. 

And sadly there is a Catholic Taliban too that would impose on all in our country, of whatever religion or of no religion, the dictates of the Church when it comes to matters of marriage or reproduction.  There are those who would bind not only the consciences but the freedom of others to rules of conduct whose only basis for authority are religious teachings. 

I am not saying that there are not moral standards and that Christianity’s moral law is in any way arbitrary.  I am only saying that any religion that compels adherence of unbelievers to its creeds or to its specific moral precepts is essentially a false way of life.  As Christians we have a mission to convert hearts, not to impose laws.  Winning hearts is a far more challenging mission than imposing laws, but it is the mission Christ gave to his Church and the only one we do with his blessing.

Religion Gone Bad

Let’s take a little break from the Anglican history—though it just about to get interesting with Henry VIII and all that stuff—and look at some contemporary issues.  The following article by Jason Rezaian appeared in the Washington Post on May 31^st  

In TEHRAN — In the narrow alleys of south Tehran, life is a struggle that feels anything but just.
The traditionally religious neighborhoods have long been a base of support for the Islamic republic and the 1979 revolution that led to its formation. The densely populated communities supplied tens of thousands of young men to fight in the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. Their working classes formed a base of support that helped catapult Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005.
But the quality of life has been plummeting for families such as the Vahidis, a three-generation clan of 14 people crammed into three small floors of a roughly built house. On a recent day, the 80-year-old matriarch, Khatoon Vahidi, lay quietly trembling in a room, the victim of a recent stroke; her three daughters said they have halved the dosages of her medication because the imported drug she needs has tripled in price.
“We love our supreme leader. We just hope a better president comes,” said 45-year-old Mahboobeh Vahidi, the oldest of the daughters and a mother of four. Devout, working-class Shiite families such as the Vahidis compose much of Iran’s population of 75 million, but with an election to choose Ahmadinejad’s successor less than two weeks away, some are questioning old allegiances.

“We love our supreme leader…”  This encapsulates the major problem of organized religion—any religion.  We too often have the cult of the leader instead of the search for Truth. In this case Ms. Vahidi. her belief in the Ayatollah Khamenei has blinded her to the role that a particularly dogmatic school of Islam plays in the misery of the Iranian peoples.   Iran’s domestic and foreign policy is driven by dogma, and dogma as defned by one man, rather than reason and the search for the welfare of the people of Iran. But this is not a problem limited to Iran or to Islam.  It doesn’t matter whether the leader is Sayyed Ali Khamenei or Ruhollah Khomeini before him or Joel Osteen or Patriarch Kirill of Moscow or the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Dalai Lama, L. Ron Hubbard, or the Pope.  The Problem is when people confuse religion with Truth and religious leaders with Divine Authority.  I say divine authority rather than God because there are many far too devout people who can, at least intellectually, distinguish between God and a human leader but who still confuse the credibility of the human leader with a confidence that should be placed in God alone. Many people cling to religious doctrines, or even opinions, as God’s final and authoritative word when religious doctrines, at best, can be no more than attempts to articulate a Truth that surpasses any human ability to comprehend much less to define.  This over confidence in one’s religious opinions leads to the burning of Christian churches in Nigeria, Buddhists attacking Moslems in Myanmar, Palestinians being driven out of their homes by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and Hindu attacks on native Indian Christians.  It has led to the outrageous attacks on Christians under Pakistani “Blasphemy Laws.” It was responsible for pogroms against the Jews in Russia and it permitted “good Catholics”—even Saints like Maximilian Kolbe—to fan the flames of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust.  It is responsible for the fire-bombing of abortion clinics by right wing Christians and attacks on the LGBT community by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. Contemptible amounts of evil have been—and are being done—in the name of Jesus, of the Prophet, of the Buddha, and of God himself by people claiming to be religious but who have confused prejudice for faith and rage for virtue. 

Does this mean that religious people should not organize themselves into churches, synagogues, mosques, or sanghas?  By no means, but we need to keep in focus what the nature of religion is and we need to recognize that those who pretend to religious leadership whether on the level of the local congregation or through vast television “ministries,” or national and international conferences, councils, synods, or curiae are no more than charlatans if they do not speak for the dignity and rights of men, women, and children (note: women and children, not merely men) that empower each human person to live not only in safety but with the opportunity for a better future in this world as well as some doctrinally defined “next.”   And let us remember too that while each of us is entitled to believe our particular religious tradition to contain “more” truth than others, that no religion or Church has the monopoly on Truth and that far less Truth is “known” to the human mind than can ever be apprehended or defined. 
If religion does not succeed on the human level it can make to pretense to bear Divine sanction for if it does not allow us to be more fully human it impedes the work of the One who created humankind.  The High Middle Ages and Renaissance fostered a humanism that was deeply rooted in the Catholic Tradition of our Christian faith precisely because it took seriously the levels of human development that make us more god-like people.  The disdain of “humanism” and “humanistic thought” by self-proclaimed Christians only betrays how little these same “Christians” understand of our history and heritage as Christians in general and Catholics in particular.
Church Fathers such as Iranaeus and Athanasius spoke of how God became human so that humans might become Divine.  (Actually the Greek in which they wrote was far more explicit, even scandalous: God became Man so that Man might become God.  Their use of the word “Man” here is not a gender specific word as “man” has become in English but defines how each man, woman, and child is invited by the Incarnation of Christ to “become God.”  A priest friend of mine tells me he has been reported for “heresy” six times in this thirty plus years as a priest and every single time was for that quote: God became Man so that Man might become God.)    
The lesson of the Incarnation is that it is precisely in the fully human person of Jesus, that is in his humanity, that we come to see his Divinity and if we were truly human, truly what God has created us to be, we too would see in our humanity the revelation of our becoming Divine.  The problem is that we are less than human.  We have masked the “image and likeness of God” in which we were created by our anger, our prejudices, our indifference to the sufferings of others, our greed, and the other vices which make us less than human.
If Christianity is to be faithful to its founder, it must reinfuse its theology with a genuine humanism—a focus on our human development that evokes from us our best nature, our “angel faces” of which Newman wrote, that let the divine glory shine out from us.  To many of us remind me of the words attributed to Gandhi; I love your Christ but I have yet to meet a Christian.    

Rebellious Catholics VI

Elizabeth I, target of Papal Plots

Imagine for a moment: You have a foreign religious leader sending foreign-trained clerics into a Christian country with orders to kill the leaders of government and replace them with their own coreligionists who will impose their religion on the native population.  No I am not speaking of Radical Islamic Terrorists infiltrating the United States; I am speaking of sixteenth century Roman Catholics Terrorists infiltrating England.  You have a Pope who has declared the Monarch to be a “servant of crime” and deposed for her religious views.  The Pope further declared her Catholic subjects freed of any allegiance to her and in the name of their religion forbade them to obey her in any matter, civil or religious.  Priests trained in the dominions of her enemies, the Kings of Spain and France, were sent into the country encouraging plots for the Queen’s overthrow and murder in  hopes of replacing her with a Catholic monarch who would suppress English constitutional freedoms and imposed the Catholic faith on the realm.  Who thinks of a sainted pope as an Ayatollah; Jesuits as radical clerics (ok, I’ll give you that one), and devout Catholics as religious terrorists, but there you have it.  For us the Papal Ayatollah is a canonized saint; the terrorist plotters canonized or beatified martyrs; and the cause, Catholicism.  How often are our moral judgments no more than matters of perspective?     

Well, back to the unfolding story of Mary, Queen of Scots—a pawn in this drama—the would be Catholic replacement for Protestant Elizabeth.  When we left our saga, Mary had been deposed from the Scottish throne by her Protestant barons, ostensibly for having married the Earl of Bothwell, the man suspect in the death of her previous husband, Lord Darnley.   Of course, the reasons were far more complex than that and the religious tensions of Scotland in the 1560’s and ‘70’s played a major part in the dissatisfaction of the Protestant barons and populace with the Catholic Queen. Even more to the core of the issue, however, was Mary’s failure to know how to rule and the consequent civil unrest.  In any event, in May the deposed Queen fled south across the border to England.

Mary’s hope was that Elizabeth of England would help her regain her Scottish throne.  They were, after all, both anointed monarchs and it served neither that the idea should spread that an anointed Sovereign should be forced to abdicate by the nobility of the realm.  Elizabeth was sympathetic to the argument but was caught in a difficult position herself.  Mary was her nearest relative and consequently the heir apparent to her own throne.  It did not serve Protestant Elizabeth’s welfare to have her heir, a Catholic, in England where Mary could be a rallying point for rebels against Elizabeth.  And of course, a letter to English Catholics from the Pope—Saint Pius V (notice the “Saint” part) and the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis—commanding English Catholics to withhold their loyalty to Elizabeth did not make Mary any the more welcome to Elizabeth.    It would be much better for Elizabeth if Mary were back in her own kingdom and busy with her own problems there.  On the other hand, Elizabeth’s Council—all Protestant—didn’t favor England helping a Catholic Queen regain control over and against the Protestant rulers of a neighboring country.  Moreover, Elizabeth was troubled by rumors of Mary’s involvement in Darnley’s murder.   So Elizabeth convened an inquest to investigate Mary’s role in the murder.  

The Earl of Moray, regent for the infant James VI and thus chief opponent of Mary’s return to Scotland, produced a silver jewel-box with the monogram of Francis II of France, Mary’s first husband, containing love letters and poems from Mary to Darnley’s suspected killer, the Earl of Bothwell.   If the letters were genuine they could be construed as proof of a plot between Mary and Bothwell to do away with Darnley and marry his murderer.  Historians even today are undecided if the letter were genuine.  As the original letters were destroyed by Mary’s son, James VI, in 1584, they cannot be examined for evidence.  Most contemporary historians believe they were forgeries but while their authenticity might indicate their conspiracy, their being forgeries proves nothing either way.  Mary may or may not have been party to Darnley’s murder, but she certainly was a more than willing partner to marriage with his alleged (and probable) murderer.  Elizabeth’s inquest ended, as Elizabeth had planned, with no verdict.  Mary was kept in England, far from the Scots border lest her allies rescue and rally around her and yet distant enough from London to be no threat to Elizabeth. 

Well, one can’t say no-threat to Elizabeth as Mary became the focus of several plots by English Catholic nobles and gentry to do away with Elizabeth and put Mary on the throne.  Elizabeth’s council became increasingly anxious to be rid of Mary and wanted her executed but Elizabeth saw that it would not set a good precedent to executed an anointed monarch.      

Mary’s imprisonment was far from severe.  She maintained her own household with usually about twenty retainers including Catholic chaplains.  She was permitted Catholic worship in her chapel.  She had her own cooks and ate as befits a Queen.  She received visitors seated on a chair of state under a royal canopy. Her possessions filled over 30 wagons.  She never let those responsible for her oversight forget that she was a Queen.  She would spend nineteen years in captivity. 

Elizabeth’s advisors wanted to be rid of Mary and while Elizabeth herself was reluctant to move against a fellow Queen, members of her Council began to actively seek reasons to do away with the Catholic threat to the Crown—and threat to their influence over that Crown.  In 1584, after several Catholic plots against Elizabeth in Mary’s favor, Mary’s imprisonment became more restrictive under the oversight of Sir Amias Paulet, a rabid anti-Catholic Calvinist.  Yet Mary still maintained her own household and chaplains and compromised not at all about her style and rank as a Queen.  In response to the Ridolfi plot and the Throckmorton plot—both Catholic led plots to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her with Mary—Parliament passed ever more severe laws against those who might plot against Elizabeth to put Mary on the throne.  Mary herself would eventually be caught in the web of those laws.      

The occasion to use those laws to get rid of Mary came with the 1586 Babington Plot, named for a twenty-five year old Catholic Nobleman, Sir Anthony Babington, who conspired with agents of Philip II of Spain and members of Mary’s household to assassinate Elizabeth and, with the aid of an invasion army from Spain, put Mary on the English throne and restore Catholicism.  Philip II was motivated in this by the 1570 Bull of Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Elizabeth an usurper and admonished Catholics not to recognize her as Monarch.  Philip had declared his willingness to work with English rebels who would put the “rightful” monarch—Mary—on the throne.  Now Philip was a devout, indeed fanatical, Catholic but his purposes were not to implement a Papal Bull but rather to use that bull as the occasion to exercise Spanish influence over England.  Spain was the greatest power of the day with its vast American colonies and the titanic amount of gold those colonies were producing, but England was the up and coming power that would soon challenge Spain and which, indeed, by the late 17^th century replace Spain as the greatest naval power and expand its Empire way beyond that of Spain.  In other words, Philip wanted to crush the English serpent while it was still in the egg and before it could be a threat to his empire.  Putting Mary on the throne of England would make England a client-state of Spain rather than a potential rival.  If it advanced the Catholic faith—all the better, but that was a benefit not a motivation. 

The Babington Plot failed miserably.  It had been infiltrated by Elizabeth’s security system under Sir Francis Walsingham.  Moreover, despite Pius’ injunctions in Regnans in Excelsis, the majority of English Catholics among the nobility and gentry were loyal subjects of Elizabeth and Babington found nowhere near the support he needed. The end result was that Babington and thirteen coconspirators were executed for treason.  More seriously, Mary herself was accused of treason and brought to trial.  She was convicted on October 25, 1586 and sentenced to death for treason.   

Even then, Elizabeth was slow to act.  Parliament and Council insisted Mary be put to death.  Elizabeth didn’t like the idea.  Kill one queen, you can kill any queen and Elizabeth did want to show that Monarchs were liable to execution.  She had a point.  Her execution of Mary would be used as a precedent when Parliament executed Mary’s grandson Charles I in 1649.  Charles’ execution in turn would be the precedent for the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France in 1793.  Their execution would set the model for the murder of the Russian Imperial family in 1918.  You see how these ideas spread? 

Under pressure Elizabeth reluctantly signed a death warrant but she entrusted it to her secretary William Davison, a privy-councilor, with instructions not to part with it—in other words, to make sure it was not used.  Now it wasn’t that Elizabeth didn’t want to see Mary dead, she just didn’t want a public execution.  Elizabeth tried to use her influence to have Mary secretly poisoned—as if that wouldn’t be suspicious under the circumstances.   No assassins could be found, however—Sir Amias Palet, Mary’s gaoler (jailer) being a rabid evangelical was one who refused to do such a dastardly deed.  Elizabeth kept dragging her feet about allowing the execution.  William Cecil, Lord Burleigh—Elizabeth’s first councillor—convened a meeting of the Privy Council without Elizabeth’s knowledge and mandated the execution.

Mary was beheaded on the morning of February 8^th   1587 at Fotheringhay Castle.  Executions of this sort were state occasions and done amidst elaborated ritual.  It was, after all, a death and so black was the color of the day.  The Hall was draped in black, the scaffold erected in the middle of the room was draped in black, and all present wore black.  Three stools, all draped and cushioned in black were provided—one for the victim until such time in the ceremony she was to kneel at the chopping block, and two for the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, the official witnesses of the Queen.   

Mary was a Queen and she determined to control the scene—which she did.  She had been informed the night before that she was to be executed in the morning and after writing her will and a letter to her brother-in-law Henri III of France, spent the night in prayer in the castle chapel.  She emerged in the morning into the Hall of the Castle carrying her rosaries, tall, strong, and with determination.  She was dressed, as was the protocol, from head to foot in black. The axemen knelt and asked her pardon, which she graciously and with a smile granted.  Before kneeling at the block she had to disrobe of her veil and gown to give the headsman a clear chop, and as her dress fell to the ground the crowd gasped as she was left in her under-bodice and petticoats which were of scarlet red—the color of martyrs.  The point was lost neither on her executioners nor on historians. Her maids blindfolded the Queen with a gold-embroidered kerchief and she knelt and the block, extending her arms like the crucified.  Her last words were “in manuas tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit).  

Mary’s most dramatic moment and the one in which she trumped her executioners came after the beheading.   As the executioner held  up her head by its auburn tresses and cried out the traditional “Behold, the head of a traitor; God Save the Queen,” Mary’s bald head fell free of what had been but a wig and rolled to the edge of the stage, leaving the headsman holding but a wig and the audience shaken by the display.  

Mary’s remains were conveyed to nearby Peterborough cathedral where they were interred after a Protestant service.  When her son James VI of Scotland acceded to the English Throne as James I of England, he had his mother’s body moved to Westminster Abbey and entombed in the chapel of Henry VII, across the aisle from the tomb of Elizabeth.  Just as a historical note, her original gravesite in Peterborough Cathedral was directly across the Quire from the resting place of Katherine of Aragon, first wife to Henry VIII, the remote and indirect perpetrator of so much of this misfortune.  A Saint—no.  A marty, no.  A politician and an actress—Mary Queen of Scots was among the best.