Catholic Truth in History

by

Hilaire Belloc

[Note: Given the relative success of our historical series on Protestantism and an attendant increase in awareness of the need for reliable resources in the study of the history of the Catholic Church, I've decided to use this blog as a platform from which to embark on something of a social-networking educational experiment:  the History of the Catholic Church community on Google+. This community will be focused on engaging faithful Catholics in the study of Church history using Mourret's excellent History of the Catholic Church as its core curriculum along with supplemental material from around the internet. All readers of this blog are welcome to join. To get the endeavor off to a good start, we begin with a short essay by Hilaire Belloc on the importance of history and its study by Catholics. -RC]

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Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

I had almost written that history is the most important department of all education. To put this without modification would be, of course, to put it wrongly. The most important part is the teaching of dogma; next, and inextricably connected with it, the teaching of morals; next, the securing (and this is also connected with the teaching of dogma and morals) of continuous Catholic daily custom.

History comes, of course, after all these. Any Catholic parent would much rather that his children grow up ignorant of history than ignorant of the Faith or of sound morals, or of Catholic custom and habit. Nevertheless, there is an aspect in which history may be called the most important of all subjects taught. And that aspect is precisely the purely scholastic aspect.

If I am sending my child to a school where he is taught positively certain things for a few hours a day, I may at a pinch guarantee his getting his religion and morals at home. But I cannot prevent his history being taught at the school, for history is regarded everywhere as part of the secular curriculum. And yet, upon what view of history he absorbs in youth depends a man's judgment of human life and of the community in which he will pass his days.

History is the memory of the State and at the same time the object-lesson of politics. It is by true history that men know what they really are. False history must make them think themselves different from what they really are. By history is the continuity of the State preserved and its character determined. Now history being of this supreme importance to philosophy, to one's whole outlook on life, and yet at the same time universally treated as a secular subject, you have meeting in it two issues, the conflict between which forms the great peril Catholics have to run in this country [i.e. England]. History must have a philosophy. It must tend to praise or to blame. It must judge. There is no such thing as mere external history, for all history is the history of the human mind. Therefore, in anti-Catholic society, history will be anti-Catholic. It will be anti-Catholic in the textbooks. It will be anti-Catholic in the examinations which Catholic youth has to pass. We are confronted in this country with the crucial difficulty of having to present the most important of human subjects, the one which, of temporal subjects, most affects the soul, with a machinery designed for the production of an anti-Catholic effect. 

Anti-Catholic Methods

First, let us examine in what way the anti-Catholic effect comes in. The great error of Catholics who would meet the opposing current is that they search out in the textbook which they must use the sentences maligning particular Catholic characters, times, doctrines, or false statements with regard to particular events. But such passages are rare and are not essential.

The essentials of anti-Catholic history, the things which make it all anti-Catholic, are, first, the anti-Catholic selection of material; second, what is called the anti-Catholic tone; and third, the anti-Catholic proportion observed in the presentation of historical fact. I would like, with your permission, to enlarge upon these three points which are capital to our subject.

First, as to selection. The telling of any story whatever is a matter of selection. If you select so that the truth sought is not revealed, then your selection, though every fact you present be true, is in its sum-total an untruth. What facts we choose to tell, and in what order, determine the picture we present.

Now, as to tone. I would like to emphasize in this matter of tone in history something which a good deal of detailed work has taught me but which, I think, is not sufficiently appreciated. It is this: tone or atmosphere in history is not a vague unseizable thing. It does not escape analysis. You can, if you will carefully go through a passage, exactly noting the adverbs and adjectives used, the type of verb also, and even, sometimes, the substantives, put your finger upon what gives the particular tone and say: ''That was the way in which the lie was told."

Thirdly, proportion, the respective amount of space and weight given to various parts of your story, is the final element which determines the whole. It is not the same as selection. Two men may select the same dozen facts to relate and each relate them, yet arrange a very different proportion among them of length, emphasis and weight.

We are surrounded by an atmosphere of, and presented with the machinery of, anti-Catholic history; history which produces its anti-Catholic effect not so much by misstatement of fact - that is rare - as by anti-Catholic selection, anti-Catholic tone, and anti-Catholic proportion.

How to Meet Them

How are we to meet the evil? How are we to teach our Catholic youth true history, that is, Catholic history? For it behooves us to remember what in a Protestant country it is easy to forget: that the Catholic Church is not one of many opinions, but the truth. Its clergy are not part of the "clergy of all denominations," but the priests of God with Sacramental power. What it says definitely on any matter is not, to use the modern jargon, a "subjective" truth; it is an objective truth. It is not the presentation of something in the mind. It is the presentation of something that would go on being there though all human mind were destroyed. And truth supports truth, as untruth supports untruth. Catholic truth is not something stuck into general history like a pin into a pin-cushion. It is part of the universal truth. The same attitude which makes a man deny the morality of divorce and affirm the morality of private property will make him tell the truth about history, when he comes to write it, in matters apparently remote from Catholic doctrine.

There is a Catholic truth about the Conquest of England, or the War of the Roses, or the Prankish Monarchy in Gaul, quite as much as there is Catholic truth about the Manichean heresy or the nature of the Reformation. By this I do not mean that in these temporal matters, dependent upon positive evidence, there will not he differences in judgment among the most learned of Catholic authorities. But I do mean that a whole library of different and conflicting books written by Catholics and dealing with the history of Europe would be Catholic in nature and would teach Catholic history; and that a similar collection of books written by anti-Catholics, however much they differed among themselves, would be anti-Catholic in tendency and produce an anti-Catholic effect upon the reader, and, so far as they indoctrinated the reader, would be indoctrinating him in lies.

Antagonistic Textbooks

Our first difficulty is the lack of textbooks. Here we may note a very deplorable accident of the immediate past. Ever since modern accurate detailed history began, pretty nearly every textbook of note has been written in direct antagonism of the Faith. Of the mass of Protestant work that goes without saying. All the German Protestant work and all the English Protestant work is anti-Catholic. The man who waved his arm at the British Museum and said: "Books written by dons to attack the Church" was exaggerating, but there was something in what he said. It is no answer to this truth to say that many of the writers are what is called "fair" to the Catholic Church. You cannot be called "fair" to the truth. The truth is not one of two interesting antagonists around whom you have to keep a ring. If you do not support it you cannot help attacking it. To talk of being "fair" to the Catholic Church in history is exactly parallel to talking of a judge being "neither partial on one side nor impartial on the other."

A Protestant historian is not to be commended, for instance, because he admits that many of the monasteries suppressed by Thomas Cromwell were well conducted. Rather is the Catholic historian to be commended who thoroughly exposes the ill-conduct of many of these monasteries, but who tells us what really happened. And what really happened was that the monastic institution was uprooted in England not because it had gone bad, nor because it was "outworn," not because it was unpopular, but because it was for the moment unfashionable in the smart intellectual world of that generation, because it was the chief defense of the Papacy and of unity of religion and, above all, because the King and the avaricious men who surrounded him wanted other people's goods. These three things combined explain that capital disaster in English history, the fiscal and territorial revolution of 1539. And if you do not put these three causes forward as the three great causes of the event, you are writing bad history.

It would be difficult to say why all the great textbooks since modern history began have been anti-Catholic, with the exception of Lingard, and even the great Lingard was influenced by the Protestant society in which he lived and for which he wrote. I can only connect so singular a phenomenon with the general story of Catholic academic work. The Church was, as it were, "taken aback" by the onslaught of skepticism in the eighteenth century. The French political system, the monarchy which was the chief defense of the Church, at that moment happened to be in decay, and when the storm blew that institution over, the scattered and defeated Catholic army of Europe took some time to rally. It did not really rally till our own time. There is also, probably, a large element of chance in the matter. Great historians are few, just as great poets are few.

At any rate, whatever the cause, there you have it. Every name you mention - Montesquieu, Mommsen, Michelet, Freeman, Stubbs, Treitschke, and a host of minor ones - tells the story of Europe and of his own country against the Church. The popular rhetorical historians do the same thing. The same is true of the dull and would-be accurate school-books. Green, who wrote for sale, leaves the innocent youth upon whom he imposed under the impression that all history led up to a Divine climax - the Protestant society of his common room. And there may be (I have not read them) other later textbooks continuing the same tradition. The great compendiums, such as the "Oxford History," or the much superior Rambaud and Lavisse, are in the same boat.

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The Reformation in Scotland

Ninth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

John Knox (1514-1572)

In England, as we have seen, the Reformation began with the throne and was forced upon the people; in Scotland, it began with a small but active portion of the people and was forced upon the government; once seated on the throne, it worked downward on the entire nation. It resembled a vast conflagration which begins with a match applied at the bottom of a pile of wood, shoots upward and spreads over the surface, kindling first all the dry portions it meets, and gradually consuming everything from the top to the bottom.

The dry branches were the corrupt members of the Church; and they were many in that land, more than elsewhere, especially among the clergy. For the freedom of ecclesiastical elections had been much violated, the rights of the Sovereign Pontiffs over the appointment of bishops ignored, and the Kings had often thrust their favorites into vacant bishoprics and other important benefices. For instance, King James V had made his illegitimate sons abbots and priors of Holyrood House, Kelso, Melrose, Codingham and St. Andrew's. Under such circumstances, inferior benefices were often openly put up for sale, or bestowed on unworthy candidates, sometimes on illiterate minions of courtiers.

Among such clergymen, religious scandals were frequent, and all manners of abuses were multiplied. The land was among the most remote corners of the Church, so that supervision and interference of the Roman Pontiff were very difficult, and therefore rare and inefficient. Such demoralization of the clergy could not fail to react on the laity, extinguishing in their hearts all reverence and confidence. Certainly there were at the time still large numbers of holy priests and monks and nuns; multitudes among the laity remained pious, fervent and faithful Catholics; but the depraved members of society are apt to be the most noisy and most active, and are always the most unprincipled in their use of means.

Such is the ordinary source of religious corruption in history; the secular power usurps the appointment of the Church dignitaries, the unworthy bishops install unworthy men in lower benefices, scandals and abuses degrade the clergy in the eyes of the laity, who lose confidence in their spiritual guides and reverence for religion itself.

The disgust of the good Catholics in Scotland, and the gibes and insults of the ill-disposed attracted more attention year after year. It was the time when Luther had just succeeded in revolutionizing religion in Germany, Calvin was triumphant in Geneva, Henry VIII had made himself the head of the Church in England. The most restless malcontents in Scotland were looking for a religious revolution in their own country as a cure of the existing evils. But many of them had a further design. They noticed that in all regions where the Reformation gained ground, the lords were enriched by the appropriation of Church lands and the treasures of the altars and the monasteries; only there was no sovereign in Scotland willing to promote the confiscation. They plotted among themselves secretly and perseveringly and at last accomplished their wicked purpose.

Their first effort was to foster the popular discontent. Revilings and ridicule of the demoralized clergy went far towards discrediting the ancient doctrine. Poetry contributed its aid, and fostered heretical views there as it had done in Germany. Sir David Lindsay thrilled the heart of the nation by lines as vigorous as they were elegant. The same wordy warfare was there used to discredit the clergy and the Church which was afterwards so successfully emploed by Voltaire to destroy the nobles and Christianity in France, where he prepared the way for the Reign of Terror.

The soul of the Reformation in Scotland, the counterpart of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin on the continent, was John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterians. he was born in 1505, ordained a priest in 1530; he was a man of learning and uncommon ability, a powerful preacher, but exceedingly coarse in his language. From 1535, he was a Protestant at heart, though he wore the mask of orthodoxy till 1542. A few years later, in open violation of his solemn vow of celibacy, he married a Miss Bowes, at Berwick, on the Scottish borders.

In 1544, Henry VIII plotted with some Scottish traitors to get possession of Mary, the heir to the throne of Scotland, who was then an infant only one year old. He was thwarted in his criminal design by a true Scottish patriot, Cardinal Beatoun. But he had his revenge in the murder of that noble prelate, perpetrated by the foiled conspirators. Knox openly approved the crime, and defended it as a "godly deed," which was to promote the work of the Reformation. he joined the band of guilty wretches, furnished them with armed defenders, with whom he was taken prisoner and carried to France by the allies of Mary.

Thence, after two years' detention, he passed into England, where he fraternized with Cranmer and his friends, who were then engaged in drawing up the Book of Common Prayer. When Mary restored Catholicity there, he fled to Geneva, to imbibe, from Calvin's teachings, the predestinarianism and the fanaticism which he was to infuse into his own followers. In 1555, he entered Scotland secretly, and encouraged the lords, who, that same year, entered into their first "Solemn League and Covenant" to bring about the establishment of the new gospel. Two years later, they went further, and swore to uproot the "abominations and idolatry" of the ancient faith.

Mary of Guise, the Queen Dowager

The Queen dowager, who was governing the country during the minority of Mary, strove to conciliate the rebels. She offered them full liberty of worship in the practice of the reformed doctrines, but they would not accept the offer; they had covenanted together for the total destruction of the Catholic religion. This is admitted by Knox himself, for in a letter which he wrote in 1559, he said that his party obtained permission for eight days to practice "religious liberty" as they understood it, and he adds:

In the which (days), the abbey of Lindores, a place of black monks, twelve miles distant from St. Andrew's, we reformed: their altars we overthrew; their idols, vestments of idolatry and Mass books we burned in their presence, and commanded them to cast away their monkish habits.

Knox and his brother preachers marched through the land, with the assistance of the covenanted rebels, establishing along their route the glorious Reformation, in the light of burning churches and monasteries, with their burning libraries and works of art. The preaching aroused the mob, and the mob did the work of destruction; for it was a solemn injunction of the Calvinistic creed, still contained, we believe, in the Presbyterian confession of faith, forcibly to remove all "false worship" and all "monuments of idolatry."

The Protestant Hutchinson writes:

The Reformation, in its violence, was a greater disgrace to religion than all the errors it was intended to subvert. Reformation has hitherto always appeared in the form of a zealot full of fanatic fury, with violence subduing, but through madness creating almost as many mischiefs in its oversight as it overthrew errors in its pursuits. Religion has received a greater shock from the present struggle to suppress some formularies and save some scruples than it ever did by the growth of superstition.

The dowager Queen-regent offered, over again, the free exercise of their religion to the covenanted Protestant lords, but these would not accept the offer in good faith; they claimed besides the right to remove "false worship and the monuments of idolatry." By this term, they meant especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the center of Catholic worship. Protestants generally in our day have no conception of the bitter fanaticism with which the early Reformers in various lands persecuted their fellow countrymen who persevered in their ancestral faith.

Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots

In Scotland particularly, they carried their ferocity to the most shocking excesses. They did not even allow their young Queen Mary, when she came home from France, to have Mass said by her chaplains in her own palace. Miss Agnes Strickland, herself a Protestant, writes in her valuable work Lives of the Queens of Scotland as follows:

On that morning, being Sunday (the first day of her return), Mary ordered Mass to be said in the Chapel Royal, resolutely claiming for herself and the Catholic members of her household the same liberty of conscience and freedom of worship which she frankly guaranteed to her subjects in general, without reservation or exceptions. The hearts of the congregation (the Protestants) were wonderfully moved when they learned that the Queen, though she refrained from persecuting interference with their mode of worship, meant to go to Heaven her own way. Patrick, Lord Lindsay, braced on his armour, and, rushing into the close at the head of a party of the Church militant, brandished his sword and shouted: "The idolater priest shall die the death!" They attacked the Queen's almoner, and would have slain him, if he had not fled for refuge into the presence of his royal mistress.

On the following Sunday, Knox preached on the evil of idolatry, and he expressed in his sermon such fanatical hatred of the ancient worship as to say one Mass was more fearful unto him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in one part of the realm on purpose to suppress the whole religion. These very words are attributed to him by his warm admirer, the historian of his life, the preacher McCrie. The acts of open violence by which the Reformation was spread from one city to another, by the desecration of churches, the plundering and sacking of monasteries, etc., had begun in 1559. In 1560, the rebels had formed a parliament without commission from their sovereign, and they had established in that meeting the new religion on the ruins of the old; they had abolished the papal power and enacted punishments against all who still had recourse to it; they had abolished the Holy Mass, and enacted, for the priests who should continue to offer it and the faithful who attended the service, forfeiture for the first offense, banishment for the second, and death for the third. The new confession of faith was modeled on that of Calvin. The dowager Queen marched with an army against the rebels, and had got the better of them so that their power was on the point of being crushed, when it was saved and made triumphant by the open support of Queen Elizabeth, who had so far aided them in secret ways. The same Protestant historian of Knox, McCrie, quoted above, and who substantially admits nearly everything we have narrated, says, on this matter:

The disaster, which caused the Protestant army to leave Edinburgh, turned out to the advantage of their cause. It obliged the English court to abandon the line of cautious policy, which they had hitherto pursued. On February 27, 1560, they concluded a formal treaty with the lords of the congregation; and in the beginning of April, the English army entered Scotland.

What secret plotting had begun was consummated by open violence, as far as the establishment of the Reformation in Scotland was concerned.

As to the subsequent life of the unfortunate but truly glorious Queen Mary, and her heroic death, we shrink from entering here upon the sickening story of the intrigues, slanders, treason, murder and forgeries by which all this was brought about. Of forgeries, the Anglican parson Whitaker says, and with his words we can appropriate close the narrative of the Reformation in Scotland:

Forgery - I blush for the honor of Protestantism while I write - seems to have been peculiar to the Reformed. I look in vain for one of the accursed outrages among the disciples of Popery.

On the Pastoral Nature of Vatican II: An Evaluation

by

Msgr. Brunero Gherardini

[Note: While this presentation was originally delivered in December 2010, it seems that it has received relatively little attention outside the italophone world in the four-year interim: at the time of writing, the Italian-language video of the presentation has ca. 4,300 views, and the version with English subtitles has a mere 375. This is a pity, given that Msgr. Gherardini provides us with a truly masterful dissection of the notion of a "pastoral" council as well as a useful framework for understanding the varying degrees of assent to which the documents of Vatican II can be seen as binding the Catholic faithful. For those who appreciate the fine art of Italian gesticulation - and Msgr. Gherardini is an old master - I've included a link to the subtitled video below. - RC]

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Once upon a time, there was the Arabian Phoenix. Everyone talked about her - but no one had ever seen her. And today there is an updated version, also much talked about, but nobody can tell what it may be. Its name is Pastoral.

The Word

Msgr. Brunero Gherardini

One thing should be crystal clear: the word itself is no problem, for its derivation from the Latin pascere (to feed, graze) is obvious. The Latin verb was born from pabulum (pasture, feed) that gives life to a family not very large, but easily distinguishable in its components: to pasture, in the sense of herding and feeding, pastum (which, in Italian, becomes pasto, "a meal"), which can also be translated as "food"; Latin pastor (shepherd), the person who leads to pabulum, provides food and guards herds and flocks. Pastor becomes in turn the father of pastoricia ars (Italian: pastorizia), the art of tending animals; of Italian pastura (pasture, pasture-land); and of pastoral, already present in late Latin to describe the clothes, food, customs, language of a shepherd. Pasteurization (the process to preserve liquid substances, such as milk), however, is not derived from pastor, but from the French pastoriser, in turn derived from the inventor Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).

Pastoral soon became part of the ecclesiastical jargon to characterize three of the letters of Saint Paul, or the activity and teaching of evangelizers, or episcopal insignia such as ring, crosier, letters. More recent (but not modern) is the use of the word "pastoral" in reference to theology and with a non-dogmatic meaning; in fact, originally pastoral meant "anti-dogmatic." Apart from the ecclesiastical jargon, however, any educated person will easily relate pastoral to the nymphs of Arcadian poetry, to love poetry of Provençal origin, to Aminta (a pastoral drama) of Torquato Tasso, and to music of a simple and tender kind, whose specific characterization is the Sixth Symphony of Beethoven.

The Word Pastoral in Vatican II

After such a broad semantic spectrum, any allusion to the unknown and unseen Arabian Phoenix may appear unsustainable because of evident contradiction. Yet, the hypothetical "may" is neutralized by the absence from the conciliar documents of a sufficient reason adequate to justify it. I say "sufficient reason," because if I said that in the Council documents the word "pastoral" is not present, I would display crass and unforgivable ignorance of Vatican II. Not only is the word there, but it's there in abundance; indeed, it characterizes Vatican II in its specificity of ecumenical Concil against the other twenty that precede it. Vatican II does, in fact, speak of "pastoral action" in general and, in a more direct way, of "pastoral activities;" it identifies various "pastoral necessities" and advocates the institution of, and the mutual cooperation among, various "pastoral subsidies" in order to obviate such necessities; it duly lists among such subsidies the planning and organization of "courses, conferences, centers with their libraries specifically designed for pastoral studies, to be entrusted to eminently qualified persons." For the purpose of radiating "pastoral sensitivity" and any required knowledge within the widest possible radius, Vatican II makes it an obligation for the bishops to study on their own or at an inter-diocesan level the best system "to ensure that presbyters, particularly after several years since their ordination," pursue the required in-depth study of "pastoral methods." And, given that a strong contribution to the apostolic action of the Church can also come from the lay ranks, the Council invites the bishops to choose "priests endowed with the necessary qualities and sufficiently formed," who may in turn provide lay persons with an adequate formation and eventually entrust them with special "pastoral action tasks." And so that "the unity of intent among priests and Bishops may render their pastoral action ever more fruitful," the clergy is urged to hold periodical meetings that should be extended to other members of church organizations "in order to deal with pastoral issues."

Episcopal Conferences of individual nations are warmly encouraged to take to heart and foster the pastoral training of the clergy by means of "pastoral institutes in cooperation with purposely chosen parishes, periodical conferences, appropriate workshops." Not to be omitted, a call to "the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority" to establish an institute "for liturgical pastoral care" with "experts in liturgy, music, sacred art, and pastoral care." These data prove that the Arabian Phoenix is at home in Vatican II, but Vatican II does not say who or what she may be.

Those who "rule and nurture the people of God" are exhorted to incarnate the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep (John 10:11) and to follow "the example of those priests who, even in our own time, did not hesitate to sacrifice their own lives for their flock." Briefly, while exhorting the clergy to become, day after day, the instrument of an increasingly effectual service to the people of God, Vatican II declares explicitly that its "pastoral goals" aim at "the internal renewal of the Church, the dissemination of the gospel throughout the whole world, and the establishment of a relationship based on dialogue with it." Such goals evidently respond to an underlying principle, a notion (rudimentary at least) of a barely sketched pastoral care; a relationship based on dialogue with the world by a Church renewed in her methods of evangelization and apostolate. At this point, though a bit vaguely, the Arabian Phoenix begins to give herself away.

Such insistence (and so much of it) is not surprising. To the contrary, it attests to docility and fidelity to the guidelines that Pope Roncalli, on the 11th of October, 1962, presented to the Council Fathers at the official opening of the great conciliar assembly: though doctrine ranked first among the Council's tasks, Pope John diversified its methodology as compared to the past. Previously, the Church had not eschewed firm and severe condemnation. Today she prefers to strictness the medicine of mercy. According to Pope Roncalli, then, the Church ought to show the good, benevolent, patient countenance of a Mother, most of all to a mankind fettered by so many hardships. She ought to foster human progress by expanding the scope of charity, to spread love, concord, and peace. In this way the contours of the Arabian Phoenix, though they remain hazy, merge with those of the good and patient Mother.

As if to confirm Roncalli's orientation, Paul VI in his homily of the 7th of December, 1965, for the Ninth Session of the Council, declared that the Church takes to heart, along with the kingdom of heaven, mankind and the world; indeed, the Church exists in function of mankind and the world, for the bond between Catholic religion and human life is an intrinsic one, to the point that Catholic religion can be called the very life of man and mankind thanks to her sublime doctrine, to her maternal care with which she accompanies man towards his last end, to the means she gives him to achieve such an end. An umpteenth declaration of pastoral intent that, since it remains within the boundaries of generic statements, does not yet unveil the countenance or the features of the Arabian Phoenix.

On the pastoral character of the Council, however, no doubts and no questions. Vatican II was not - only because it did not want to be - a dogmatic Council and, all things considered, not even a disciplinary one. It only wanted to be "pastoral." Yet, in spite of many interventions by in- and outsiders, the true significance of its declared "pastoral character" is still lost in the fog.

An Undefined Concept

A few lines back I indicated the multifaceted "pastoral role" of the Council. Pastoral as a qualifying adjective or in connection with a noun really occurs dozens and dozens of times. Yet, not one single occurrence gives, if not a definition, at least a hint of an explanation. I realize that, through a critical analysis of various declarations, one can get the general idea; this idea, however, could not be a direct expression of the Council's teachings.

Gaudium et spes is the most cogent example. It is even characterized as "pastoral constitution" being, all of it, an ideal and positive ferment in favour of man, of his freedom and dignity, of his presence in the family, in society, in cultural endeavours, and in the world, for the purpose of conferring upon private and public life breath and dimensions to measure of man. The association of the word "pastoral" with "constitution" in the heading is the most novel of all novelties in the whole Vatican II; and so was it perceived by the Council Fathers themselves, who, before giving their approval, discussed several other definitions. The only justification for associating those words is found in the note that follows the title of this unusual document called "pastoral" both because "on the basis of doctrinal principles, it aims at expounding the attitude of the Church towards the world and the people of today", and because attitude and doctrinal principles intersect and complement each other. The inference should be that such an attitude is always the application and the practical expression of doctrinal principles. To understand which ones, however, is still a problem: sociological, political, economical principles, perhaps, but not - or at least not directly - evangelic ones.

The reference to man and the world recalls the intrinsic limitations of both entities, their being created, and their living in time; their dynamic qualities, their unceasing evolution threatened, as if by Damocles's sword, by an always possible regression. All this highlights their variable and contingent condition but also the problems inherent in the practical application of those doctrinal principles that are for the most part absolute and irreformable. The note, too, acknowledges such perplexities and points them out, but does not solve them. It even complicates matters when it establishes that "the Constitution shall be interpreted according to the general norms of theological hermeneutics, taking into consideration the changing circumstances and their intrinsic links with the matters in question." Truly, should "pastoral care" consist of this merry-go-round of yes-and-no, any definition of it would be impossible. It is stated that the unquestionability of doctrine is to be applied to contingent situations; but should it make doctrine contingent, or should it render the contingent unquestionable and absolute, such an application would turn both elements upside down:"yes" arm-in-arm with "no." I understand why, from the Council halls on, Gaudium et spes was the most debated and the most hindered text. Its submission to committees and subcommittees was of little avail, and likewise its passage through as many as four successive formulations: the difficulty,bordering on hybris, lies in the simultaneous assertion of "yes" and "no."

Perhaps this unresolved perplexity is at the root of the problematicalness that still, after roughly half a century of post-Conciliar age, accompanies every discourse on the Council's "pastoral" role. In practice such perplexity is employed to legitimize just about everything and its opposite. Both conciliar hermeneutics, often analyzed by the Holy Father - the one, which considers Vatican II a new way of being Church, and the other that, to the contrary, links the Council to the living Tradition of the Church, are legitimized by this unsolved difficulty. In both hermeneutics, in fact:

• At the doctrinal level, Vatican II acquires all the values and the appearance of a dogmatic council: the former interpretation turns it into a super-Council, the latter into a doctrinal summary of all previous councils.
• At the pastoral level, Vatican II appears as a container, mixed because of the very fact of its "pastoral" nature, a sort of free hitter who, for "pastoral" reasons, is allowed to say simultaneously "yes" and "no."

At this point, it becomes imperative to provide an objective and unprejudiced assessment of the overall quality of Vatican II, a council that was hastily and naively limited to the "pastoral" sector.

The Four Levels of Vatican II

Those familiar not only with Gaudium et spes, but with all sixteen conciliar documents, are well aware that the variety of its topics and their respective methodologies situate Vatican II on four qualitatively distinct levels:

1. The generic level of ecumenical council as ecumenical council.
2. The specific level of its "pastoral" role.
3. The level of appeal to other councils.
4. The level of innovations.

At the first and generic level, Vatican II meets all the requirements to be an authentic Council of the Catholic Church, the twenty-first in a series. It follows that its magisterium is a conciliar one, that is to say: solemn and supreme, a fact that does not, in and of itself, testify to its dogmaticalness and infallibility; to the contrary, it does not even include these characteristics, because they were removed from the start from the Council's horizon.

At the second and specific level the pastoral role justifies the Council's extraordinarily broad interests that often exceed the boundaries of Faith and theology, e.g. the mass media, technology, the value attached to efficiency in contemporary society, politics, peace, war, socioeconomic life. This level also belongs to the conciliar teaching and is therefore solemn and supreme, but cannot claim - because of the matters dealt with and the non-dogmatic fashion in which they are treated - a validity in and of itself infallible and irreformable.

The appeal to some teachings of previous councils constitutes the third level. On occasion this appeal is direct and explicit (Lumen gentium §1: praecedentium Conciliorum argumento instans [urging on with the argument of previous councils]; Lumen gentium §18: Concilii Vaticani I vestigia premens [pressing on the tracks of the First Vatican Council]; Dei verbum §1: Conciliorum Tridentini et Vaticani I inhaerens vestigiis [treading in the footsteps of the Tridentine Council and Vatican I]), at times it is indirect and implicit and re-states already defined truths, such as the nature of the Church, her hierarchical structure, the apostolic succession, the universal jurisdiction of the Pope, the incarnation of the Word, redemption, the infallibility of the Church and her magisterium, eternal life for the good and eternal damnation for the wicked. In this respect, Vatican II is endowed with unquestionable dogmatic validity, yet this fact does not make it a dogmatic council, because its dogmaticalness is a reflection of the dogmatic character of the conciliar texts cited above.

Innovations constitute the fourth level. If one looks at the spirit that guided the Council, one could say that the whole Council was fourth-level, moved as it was by a radically innovative spirit, even when and where it attempted to strike root in Tradition. Some innovations, however, are specific: collegiality of bishops, the absorption of Tradition in Holy Writ, the limitation of biblical inspiration and inerrancy, the strange relations with the Jewish and Islamic world, the strain on the so-called religious freedom. It is all too plain that, if there is a level where the dogmatic character cannot be perceived at all, it is precisely that of conciliar novelties.

Conclusion

Adherence to Vatican II is, for the reasons stated above, qualitatively articulated. Inasmuch as all four described levels express conciliar teaching, all four require of individual believers and Catholic-Christian communities the duty of an adherence that shall not necessarily be always "of Faith." Such adhesion only goes to the truths of the third level, and only inasmuch as they derive from other assuredly dogmatic Councils. A religious and respectful reception is due to the other three levels, as long as some of their assertions do not collide with the perpetual reality of Tradition by reason of an obvious break of some of their formal variants with the eodem sensu eademque sententia [with the same sentiments and the same consensus]. In such a case, dissent, especially if calm and reasoned, determines neither heresy nor error.

As regards the second, pastoral level, one must truly think that the Council Fathers were not aware of the mortgage paid by themselves to Enlightenment by opening up the Council to a pastoral role that from the very beginning, according to the Enlightenment mentality from which it sprang, had given a trip to God in order to replace Him with man and even, at times, to identify God with man. Indeed, eighteenth-century pastoral care bypassed the motivations, sources, contents, and methods of dogmatic theology and opened wide the gates of the theological fortress to the primacy of anything natural, rational, temporal, sociological.

By saying this, I do not mean at all that the pastoral model of Vatican II is the same as the pastoral model of the eighteenth century. But anyone who, in order to deny their identity, denied any relationship between the two, would be naive or disinformed. In Vatican II, the pastoral model remained rooted in Enlightenment, albeit with different expressions and motivations. It was Paul VI who rescued it from the quicksands of the Enlightenment when, at the opening of the second post-conciliar period, he transferred that model to a Romantic sphere in order to make it "a bridge to the contemporary world" that would convey to it "its inner vitality ... as a life-giving event and an instrument of salvation for the world itself." Thus the Arabian Phoenix became a bridge, a coefficient of life, an instrument of salvation; yet without losing its relationship with Enlightenment as its source through the Neo-Modernistic inspiration of its proponents. Not by chance secularization, which subsequently celebrated its triumph in the present post-conciliar stage, moved from a "pastoral theology" thus understood. And if an uncertain notion of its pastoral nature derives from ignorance of its precedents, the absurdity of the dogmaticalness of a self-styled merely "pastoral" council must needs derive from its original relationship with them.

Thus, the Arabian Phoenix unveils her true features. All things considered, it would have been better had she kept them secret still.

***

(Text Source: Centre for Mediaeval Studies Leonard Boyle)

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Heinrich Fries on the Pneumatological Church

When, after having returned to her senses, the Catholic Church begins the work of digesting and cataloging the events of what will be known as the Modernist Crisis so as to immunize herself against future outbreaks of this most pernicious of diseases, it will do well to remember the important role played by one particular actor: Heinrich Fries. 

Who?

Cardinal Kasper and Heinrich Fries

Heinrich Fries (1911-1998) was professor of Fundamental and Ecumenical Theology at the University of Munich, collaborated with both Karl Rahner and the young Joseph Ratzinger, and served as something of a mentor to his one-time student, Walter Kasper. An evaluation of the work of Heinrich Fries allows us to understand the Modernist's plans for Catholic ecclesiology - not to mention anything and everything Pope Francis says on the subject. Observe:

To believe in and understand the Church as work of the Spirit means to be mindful of its life and vitality, to protect it from narrowness and inflexibility, and from fear and faintheartedness as well as from dissolution and lack of orientation. It means, in addition, that its own renewal in the Church's constant task, a task that is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the community of believers. To believe in and understand the Church as work of the Spirit means to make a place in it for the new, the unexpected, the future, according to the injunction, "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thess. 5:19); it means, further, to acknowledge that the Spirit of God blows when and where and how it wills, that it cannot be preordained, or chained, or manipulated and regimented. Among the signs of the activity of the Spirit of the Church are the prophets in the Church, the charismatics, often too the uncomfortable critics who understand criticism as faithful engagement, the ones who push towards new turning points and leave their mark on history. (Heinrich Fries, Fundamental Theology, p. 502)

One could be forgiven for assuming that the above is a quote from Pope Francis. Indeed, the harmony between the thoughts of Pope Francis and the words of Heinrich Fries is so great that, under a different set of circumstances, the former could be accused of having plagiarized the latter. As it stands, we have to wonder whether Fries' Fundamental Theology has a place of honor in Pope Francis' personal library.

The Eucharist: A Continuation of the Work of Salvation

Fifth in a Series on the Reasons of the Eucharist

by

Fr. Albert Tesnière, S.S.S.

Dominus Est!

THESIS

The Eucharist Continues the Work of the Salvation of the Human Race.

ADORATION

Adore Our Lord Jesus Christ truly present and living in person behind the Eucharistic veils; adore Him under His beautiful title of the Saviour of the Human Race, and in the persevering labor, in the actual occupation, in the supremely merciful and excellent work of your salvation, at which He labors perpetually and without ever taking any repose, in the Sacrament of the altar; for if He instituted the Eucharist for the glorification of His Father, He also instituted it, at the same time, for the salvation of men, which is the principal means of the glory of God. In the same way as the Son of God became man for us and for our salvation, so also for us and for our salvation did He institute the Holy Sacrament. And in the same way that He procured during His human life the salvation of men by His prayers, by His preachings, by His benefits and by His Passion, it is still by the same means that He applies Himself in the Sacrament to save us.

Contemplate Him with a very attentive love, engaged in this work. During His lifetime, He prayed at night, on the mountains and in solitary places; night and day His prayers ascend from the tabernacles which are placed everywhere throughout the world, like sentinels on watch towers charged with guarding the safety of cities.

Formerly, His preaching proclaimed the truth in regard to duties and virtues which sanctify; in the Sacrament, it is His state itself which preaches to the eyes and to faith the accomplishment of all duties, and which loudly teaches all virtues. Does not the state of Jesus in the Sacrament very loudly proclaim the adoration of God, obedience, dependence, humility, patience, devotedness?

During His lifetime, He gained souls for God by His good deeds; and does He not continue in the Sacrament to heal, to nourish, to console, to make souls live again? Then, He lavished blessings; now, He gives Himself!

Lastly, He redeemed the world by the shedding of His blood. And behold, the Sacrament is nothing more than the renewal of His passion and death, the perpetual and universal effusion of His blood; it is from the Eucharist as from their source that all the Sacraments derive their salutary virtues; it is by the prayer of the Eucharistic sacrifice that our prayers which obtain grace are rendered valid. All the instruments of salvation borrow their efficacy from the Eucharist.

And thus by His prayers, His state, His gifts, His sacrifice, the Eucharistic Christ labors for the salvation of the human race, and this admirable labor will end only with the last hour of the world, when the courageous, indefatigable and heroic Workman will have finished the labor and will have fully consummated the task which He accepted from His Father. Adore Him and contemplate Him and follow Him with the most sincere admiration in this labor of love.

THANKSGIVING

Gratitude, with the joy and the happiness which accompany it, will overflow your heart if you give great attention to the fact that the Saviour comes to accomplish personally in each one of us this labor of the salvation of the human race by His Eucharist.

It is the individual application, repeated as many times as there are Christians to be saved, of all the elements of salvation. During His life, He prayed for all, and now, at the present day, He comes into every one of us and prays in him, with him; He comes to impress His teachings on the heart of each one of us by making us feed on the grace and the sap of His own virtues; He comes to us Himself, personally, entirely, sensibly to each of us, all the days of our life; He comes to die in the depths of the soul of each, shedding in us, together with His blood, all His merits, all His satisfactions. Every one can, every one ought to say: "I see the Saviour laboring directly for my salvation; I feel Him operating it in me, I am therefore really the object of His solicitude, of His labors; I may therefore be very certain to be saved if I lend myself to His operations."

Oh, the touching assurance, the convincing proof, the invincible demonstration of the love, of the ardent zeal with which the Saviour wills that I should be saved!

Consider and admire that you may render thanks giving for the beauty, the goodness, the merciful condescension, the indefatigable perseverance of the salutary labor which Jesus performs in you by His Sacrament, and you will be overwhelmed with gratitude for this too beneficent Saviour!

REPARATION

The Saviour addressed a severe reproach to the Jews of His day who resisted His advances and His persuasions, refusing the salvation which He offered them, condemning themselves thereby to eternal death, and to chastisement all the more terrible because they were rejecting the Saviour Himself at the very moment when He was bringing them salvation.

What must be said of those who resist the love, the advances, the solicitations, the sacrifices of the Saviour in the Eucharist?

He continues to remain in the midst of us, multiplying the places of His residence, and we ignore Him! He renews every,day upon a thousand altars at once, in an annihilation visible to all, the sacrifice of His life, and we are determined to take no account of it! He pursues us to such a degree as to make Himself, in order to penetrate into us and to gain us, the indispensable aliment of our life, the viaticum of our pilgrimage, the consolation of our trials, and the remedy of all our evils, and we reject Him with disdain and disfavor! And we condemn the Saviour to the torture of holding out throughout the long course of centuries His suppliant arms towards a people who refuse to cast themselves into them, therein to find life!

Ah, what a crime is this! What means this in gratitude, this inexplicable hardness, this unheard-of folly? The Saviour may well say of us as He did of the obstinate men of His day, and with still better reason: "If I had not come, their sin would have been less; but woe to those who have seen Me and who have not believed in Me!"

Let us make reparation by consoling the Saviour with our fidelity and our assiduity in using the graces of salvation which He offers to us in His Sacrament. Let us examine if practically the Eucharist occupies in our life the place which it ought to fill. Do we receive it often enough, and are we sufficiently prepared? Do we have recourse to it with sufficient confidence and promptitude? Do we live in such a manner that it may work in us our salvation in an efficacious manner?

PRAYER

Ask earnestly, first, for faith in the immense power of the Eucharist for the salvation of the world and for your own salvation; second, for grace to be faithful and assiduous in making use of the Eucharist frequently and fruitfully; third, for grace to make the obstacle disappear as quickly as possible: sin, ill-regulated affections, dangerous occasions, voluntary weaknesses which prevent the Sacrament of all holiness from sanctifying you in reality; fourth, that the Eucharist may be better known, more diffused, more utilized for the salvation of the world, which languishes without it.

PRACTICE

Increase, if not in number, at least in fervor, your pious relations with the Eucharist.

Church Fathers on the Lenten Fast

Mosaic depicting the Temptation of Christ after His fast in the desert

St. Epiphanius (315 - 403)

"And in the days of the Paschal fast, when among us there are prostrations, purifications, afflictive sufferings, prayers, vigils and fastings, they [i.e. transgressors] from the morning feed themselves with flesh and wine, filling their veins, and deride us, laughing and mocking at such as celebrate the holy service of this season - so that he shows thereby his mind and his unbelief."

St. Gregory Nazianzen (329 - 390)

"We fast because we fasted not from the tree of knowledge, having been overcome thereby: for fasting was an old command, and coeval with us. It is the pedagogy of the soul, and the moderation of sensual delight; which is very meetly enjoined us, that what we lost by not observing that precept of fasting, we may recover again, observing it."

"By our passions, let us imitate His Passion."

"Christ fasted a while before His temptation; we, before the Paschal feast - the matter of fasting is the same. This hath in us the force of mortifying us with Christ, and is the purifying preparation to the feast. And He indeed fasted forty days; for He was God; but we proportionate this to our power, though zeal persuade some to leap even beyond their strength."

St. Basil the Great (330 - 379)

"For neither doth the spite of devils dare anything against him that fasteth. And the Angels, guardians of our life, do more studiously abide by such who have their souls purified by fasting."

"There are Angels who, in each church, register those who fast."

"Fasting is the beginning of penance or repentance, the continence of the tongue, the bridle of anger, the banishment of lust."

"Fasting is our assimilation unto the Angels, the temperament of life."

St. Ambrose (340 - 397)

"If any man desire to obtain the glory of the Gospel, and the fruit of the Resurrection, he ought not to be a transgressor of the mystical fast, which both Moses in the Law did, and Christ in His Gospel hath prescribed, by the authority of both Testaments, a space for the faithful striving of virtue."

"Not every hunger makes an acceptable fast, but that hunger which is undertaken from the fear of God. Consider: a Lent is fasted with us all days, except Saturday and the Lord's day."

"He that had no sin fasted a Lent, and wilt not thou who sinnest? He, I say, had no sin, but fasted for our sins."

"For so hath the Lord appointed, that as for His Passion we should mourn in the fasts of Lent, so for His Resurrection we should rejoice in the fifty days following. Therefore, we fast not in this fifty days, because in these the Lord is with us. We fast not, I say, the Lord being present; because He hath said, 'Can the children of the Bridegroom fast so long as the Bridegroom is with them?'"

St. Jerome (347 - 420)

"The Lord hath taught us that the fiercer sort of devils cannot be overcome but by prayer and fasting."

"The Lord Himself, the true Jonas, sent to preach unto the world, fasted forty days, and leaving us the inheritance of the fast, under this number prepares our souls for the eating of His Body."

"The Lord fasted forty days in the wilderness, that He might leave unto us the solemn days of the fasts."

St. Chrysostom (349 - 407)

"And the ground and teacher of all these things, fasting will be unto us; fasting, I mean, not that of most men, but that which is the true fast, viz. the abstinence not from meats only, but from sins. For the nature of fasting only is not sufficient to deliver such as betake themselves to it, except it be done agreeably to its law."

The Bloody Rise of the Anglican Church

Eighth in a Series on the Protestant Reformation

by
Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

Canterbury Cathedral

Most Anglicans take it for granted that their ancestors deliberately left the Catholic Church on account of its corruptions. They are much mistaken. In England, as in most other lands, the people were driven into the Reformation by fines, imprisonments, terrorism, the rack, the scaffold, and foreign soldiers; all this process was promoted by slanders, misunderstandings and all manners of deplorable deceptions. Look at the facts of history.

When Henry VIII died in 1547, the faith of the English people was still the same that it had been for nearly a thousand years, ever since St. Austin, with his monks, had brought it to them from Rome. True, the Pope was no longer acknowledged by the party in power to be the spiritual head of the Church in the realm; the King had usurped his place. But the people generally clung to the ancient doctrine as firmly as ever. Lingard writes:

To dispel these prejudices, Henry issued injunctions that the very name 'Pope' should be carefully erased out of all books employed in the public worship; that every schoolmaster should diligently inculcate the new doctrine on the children entrusted to his care; that all clergymen, from the bishop to the curate, should on every Sunday and holiday teach that the King was the true head of the Church, and that the authority hitherto exercised by the Popes was a usurpation, tamely submitted to by the carelessness or timidity of his predecessors; and the sheriffs in each county should keep a vigilant eye over the conduct of the clergy, and should report to the council the names, not only of those who might neglect these duties, but also of those who might perform them in deed, but with coldness and indifference.

A general espionage was organized to suppress all murmurings. Many priests and laymen were punished with death for resistance to this tyranny. In the north of England, the opposition was so vigorous as to lead to a succession of rebellions; but the Duke of Norfolk, with the aid of disciplined troops, put down the unorganized multitude.

When open opposition was suppressed, and the citizens were cowed by terror, the King drew up a brief summary of religious faith in six articles, the Bloody Six, as even Froude calls them, because those who denied any of them were burned at the stake. The Catholics who refused to take the oath of Henry's supremacy in spiritual matters were hanged and quartered. There was no free choice in those days in any country that is now Protestant.

After Henry's death, his son, Edward VI, a boy of nine years, succeeded him, with the Duke of Somerset as temporal and Cranmer as spiritual ruler during the minority. The latter had been till then a Protestant in secret; he now threw off the mask and imposed the Reformed doctrines on the realm. At his discretion, one law after another was enacted by parliament to change the religion of the people. The celibacy of the clergy was abolished. The Mass was at first retained "until a better order of service could be devised;" but Communion under both kinds was enjoined. The election of bishops was withdrawn from the deans and chapters and vested wholly in the crown. The Book of Common Prayer was completed and adopted by parliament in 1549, as having been "dictated by the aid of the Holy Ghost." All beneficed clergymen had to subscribe to this decree and use the new service instead of Holy Mass. The Six Articles of Henry were suppressed, and forty-two others substituted for them.

In all this change of religion, the people had no choice, nor the clergy either. Bishop Gardiner objected vigorously, saying we should obey God rather than man; he was sent to the Tower. The people rose in rebellion throughout the kingdom, but they were crushed with the aid of foreign troops. The Protestant historian Hallam writes:

The common people looked to their own teachers as guides in faith, and the main body of clergy were certainly very reluctant to tear themselves, at the pleasure of a disappointed monarch, in the most dangerous crisis of religion, from the bosom of Catholic unity.

And again:

This is a somewhat humiliating admission, that the Protestant faith was imposed upon our ancestors by a foreign army.

Edward died young, July 6, 1553. But his death was first kept secret till another Protestant could have been installed in his stead. Happily Mary, the legitimate heir, was notified by the Earl of Arundel. She at once unfurled her banner and the country rallied to her support. She who was dubbed by her enemies "Bloody Mary" spared Cranmer and other leaders of the plot for nearly two years before she consented to sign their death warrant; many she pardoned entirely. It was only after Wyatt's rebellion that she adopted really severe measures against the restless rebels who plotted for the restoration of Protestantism. In this, she followed the bad example of her enemies, of whom Hallam writes:

Persecution is the deadly sin of the Reformed churches, that which cools every honest man's zeal for their cause in proportion as his reading becomes more extensive.

Nearly the whole of English literature for three hundred years was a conspiracy to hide this truth.

Of course, Mary restored the Catholic religion, which was still that of eleven-twelfths of her subjects. She reinstated the Catholic bishops who had remained faithful; the married bishops and clergy retired or were removed. Cranmer had purposely so changed the forms of ordination for priests and consecration for bishops as to make these sacred Orders invalid. Of the men thus ordained, some were ordained anew in the proper manner, others retired among the laity, where they belonged.

Elizabeth I of England

The greatest difficulty in the way of reunion with Rome was the large number of influential men who had fattened on the Church property. Bishop Gardiner, Mary's lord chancellor, obtained from the supreme Pontiff leave for them to retain spoils; it was like throwing the cargo overboard to save the ship. Cardinal Pole, of the royal blood of England, was sent to his native country from Rome as legate of the Pope; everything was done that conscience allowed to restore peace to all. The entire nation was solemnly absolved in parliament of all censures incurred under Henry's and Edward's reign. Unfortunately for all concerned, Mary died in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who had become a Catholic and had sworn to the sincerity of her conversion. But finding that the Pope would not acknowledge her legitimacy, she determined to follow her father's example and make herself the head of Church and state. She took up the Reformed doctrines as a matter of state policy, and by forty-four years of persecution she forced Protestantism on the English people.

She chose William Cecil as the principal instrument of her tyranny. The plan he devised was this: to forbid all Catholic sermons, to terrorize the clergy, to make them odious to the laity, to remove obnoxious magistrates, to restore the Edwardine liturgy, and to do all this cautiously under various false pretenses. He packed a new parliament, lords and commons, at the opening of which the Queen assumed the imperious tone of her father, stating she would do what she thought best, but would prefer to have their assent rather than to act without it. Next, she forced the parliament to abolish the Catholic religion. The convocation of the clergy and the faculties of the two great universities entered a vigorous protest against this apostasy. Thereupon, the two most influential bishops were sent to the Tower. The rest, though terrorized, did not yield, but their protest was simply ignored. All the acts of Henry and Edward abolished under Mary were re-enacted. The new worship was enforced under penalty of fines, confiscations and death. Under Henry, the articles to be believed were six; under Edward, these were abolished and forty-two others were put instead; under Elizabeth, there were thirty-nine, which remain to this day. They are sworn to by every Anglican clergyman in England; but half of these ministers do not believe in them. Only one bishop consented to take the oath required, that he might keep his see; all the others were deposed, many of them imprisoned. So many of the lower clergy withdrew that laymen, mostly mechanics, had to be employed in some places to read the service. Priests who said Mass in secret were hunted like wolves, and when found they were hanged, disemboweled while still alive, and their limbs exposed in public placed. The faithful who harbored them or who assisted them at Holy Mass were imprisoned and tortured to make them betray their friends. By such persecutions, continued under several reigns, Protestantism was gradually propagated among the English people. Once separated from Rome, private judgment gradually divided the nation into countless sects.