Smearing Cardinal Pell with... Frugality

In the race to tarnish the image of His Eminence Cardinal George Pell, a staunch defender of Catholic orthopraxy at last year's Synod on the Family, malcontents have illegally leaked confidential information regarding the costs hitherto incurred by the Secretariat for the Economy in the ongoing efforts to bring the Vatican's finances in line with international standards and eliminate rumors of corruption.

Leaving no expense unscrutinized, the leaked information revealed that Cardinal Pell spent a whopping €2,508 ($2,813) on clerical clothing. At which you, gentle reader, are supposed to gasp in shock and dismay.

If you look like this, you're doing it right.
(Photo: Getty)

Let's put things in perspective.

In an article published at Vatican Insider in 2012, Andrea Tornielli put together an itemized list of all the garments and items required for each Cardinal to be considered properly dressed. As you can't simply saunter down to your local Wal-Mart and pick up a triple-pack of fascia on sale, it's natural that you would have to turn to a tailor specializing in clerical garb. If you're in Rome, that would be the renowned Gammarelli's, which also services the Pope. Here's the list:

• red mozzetta: €200
• red cassock: €800
• black cassock with red piping: €200
• red biretta: €120
• red and golden pectoral cord: €80
• red fascia: €200
• red zucchetto: €40
• red socks: €15 per pair

As you can see, things add up pretty quickly. Tornielli notes:

Given that cardinals usually purchase two sets of each of these outfits, they can expect to spend around four to five thousand Euro to complete their wardrobe.

And that's for just four complete suits, which must be worn by a Cardinal whenever he is fulfilling his official duties.

I'd say Cardinal Pell got out of Gammarelli's on the cheap.

Cardinal Marx: We Won't Wait For Rome

His Eminence Reinhard Cardinal Marx
(Photo: Erzbistum München)

In a meeting reported in the German press yesterday, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, President of the German Bishop's Conference, made a rather unambiguous statement regarding how he and his fellow bishops see the upcoming 2015 Synod in relation to their plans for the Catholic Church in Germany:

We are not subsidiaries of Rome. Each Bishop's Conference is responsible for the pastoral care in its own cultural sphere and has its unique mission to preach the Gospel. We can't wait for a Synod to tell us how we here have to go about the pastoral care of families and married persons.

It was Cardinal Marx who made headlines during the 2014 Synod by speaking out in favor of applying the so-called "pastoral law of graduality" to the question of admittance of public adulterers to Holy Communion, telling reporters:

I think it is very important to see that we have ways or that there is a graduality also in the way to the sacrament.

Readers will recall that several Cardinals present at the 2014 Synod, most notably His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Burke, rejected such an approach as it requires the introduction of a hitherto unheard-of separation of pastoral practice from doctrine - a separation both Cardinal Gerhard Müller of Germany, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, have described as smacking of heresy. 

Decidedly unfazed by the clear warning contained in such declarations, Cardinal Marx and the other members of the German Bishop's Conference appear determined to charge ahead, regardless of the actual results of the Synod scheduled to take place in Rome this Fall.

The Eucharist: Proof of Christ's Love

Ninth in a Series on the Reasons of the Eucharist

by

Fr. Albert Tesnière, S.S.S.

Dominus Est!

THESIS

The Eucharist is the Permanent Proof of the Love of Jesus Christ for each one of us.

ADORATION

Adore Our Lord Jesus Christ, present before your eyes in the Blessed Sacrament, and behold with gratitude, with astonishment and adoration, behold if it be not true that the Eucharist gives Him to you wholly and for you alone.

It is the prodigy and supreme extent of His love here below. It is only in heaven that His love will permit us to possess Him in a greater and better degree. And it is the property, the end and the aim of the Eucharist to render Christ capable of being given to each one of us, in truth, and in entirety.

Therefore it is the "effusion" of His love, according to the words of the Council of Trent; in other words, the gift which God had made us of Himself in the Incarnation has increased, has multiplied, and has been shed like an abundant stream issuing from a lofty rock, which spreads its deep waters throughout the whole valley.

Saint Thomas pronounced these beautiful words:

All that the Word brought to the world by making Himself man, He brings to each man in particular by the Eucharist.

It is this Sacrament which enables us to understand the energetic words of Saint Paul:

He loved me, and has given Himself for me.

On Calvary, He died once for all; in the reception of the Sacrament, the fruits of His death are communicated to each one of us. When we have received Him, we cannot any longer doubt but that He is ours, and very certainly ours; we possess Him, we hold Him, we have seen Him come, we have enclosed Him in our breast; He is our dear captive!

The personal meeting of God and man therefore takes place at the table of Communion, and as nothing obliges Him to make this gift of Himself, it must be acknowledged that He makes it from love, because He loves us personally, as though each one of us were the only object and the whole end of His infinite love!

Oh, adore Jesus Christ in this supreme manifestation of His love! See Him, the Infinite, the Most High, the Supreme Majesty, coming towards you, offering Himself to you, descending in you, annihilating Himself for you, for you and your nothingness, for your past faults and your present miseries! It might be said, at the hour of Communion, so entirely is He yours, that there are only you and He in the world!

Does not this fact, this union, constitute that which is most admirable and most incredible in the Eucharistic mystery? And yet it is so; believe, adore, love!

THANKSGIVING

Render thanks to the infinite goodness of the heart of Jesus, for the admirable condescension which has led Him to specialize, to individualize, to render personally and make intimately to each one of us the gift of Himself in the Eucharist.

Ah! His Heart knew our hearts; He knew that the supreme requirement of love is intimate union, a total and direct gift. He knew that it would not have sufficed for us to be loved with the most generous devotedness, if this love had not been carried as far as the personal proof of union, of the individual gift. And the kind Saviour, who had already done so much for us by being born and by dying for us, added to it this consummation of giving Himself up in person to those for whom He had been born and had died.

He desires thereby to make us also understand that His intention is to be personally useful to us, by devoting Himself to the service of each one of us, bringing to each the particular graces which are personally necessary to him, on account of his nature, his character, of his position, his vocation, his needs, his difficulties, his temptations and his trials. It is above all amongst souls that there are not two to be found which are exactly alike. The triumph of love ought therefore to be to bend, to adapt itself to these thousands and thousands of forms, to the needs of souls. This is what the Saviour has done by multiplying His Sacrament that He may make it the nourishment of each one of us.

Give thanks, then, bless and understand how great is the abundance of His goodness, which, better than manna, adapts itself to the needs and the taste not of some hundreds of thousands of Israelites only, but of innumerable multitudes who will traverse, from the Last Supper to the judgment, the desert of this life.

REPARATION

Is it not true that gratitude ought to be modelled upon and be measured by the benefit bestowed? If, then, Jesus loves us individually; if He makes of each one of us the object and the end of His love, is it not strictly necessary that we should repay Him in an equal degree by loving Him with an entire love, a special love, a love of predilection, by choosing Him for the supreme object of our love and of our devotedness; by loving Him where He loves us, in His Sacrament; and by making our love, our thoughts, our homage, our labors, our sufferings, our joys, our successes, as well as our pains and our defects, centre around the Tabernacle, as a continually renewed proof?

To love and to serve God in a vague manner as a God more or less unknown, without ever feeling of His adorable Person in the Sacrament any of the sentiments which we experience for the persons whom we love, without ever showing Him the tenderness of which we are prodigal towards the creature; to love Him only from interest, or from fear, and not as children and friends is this a response to make to the love which gives itself so generously and so intimately to us?

We are everything to Him; why is He not everything to us? Seek; be ashamed, blush! How little heart we must have to love Him so little and so ill who has so loved us!

PRAYER

Earnestly ask for the grace and the virtue of a personal love of Jesus: to love Him personally is to love Him for Himself, at the price of the whole of yourself.

Let Him be the rule of your thoughts, the most cherished of your affections, the last end of your works; do everything for Him, for His love, His satisfaction, His glory.

Then, above all, come to Him, give Him your time, much of it, as much as is possible, always more and more of it. Be not merely His slaves nor His mercenaries, when by His Sacrament He desires that you should be henceforth His friends. His delights are to be with us; let our delights be to be with Him!

PRACTICE

Make frequent interior recollections of Christ's love. Think regularly, visit frequently, and pray continuously to Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

The Miracle at the Beautiful Gate

Reading N°4 in the History of the Catholic Church

by

Fr. Fernand Mourret, S.S.

The Apostles preached with extraordinary success. A few days after the baptism of the three thousand Pentecostal converts, two thousand persons joined the Church following a miracle which is related in the Acts of the Apostles.

Saints Peter and John Healing the Lame Man
Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665)

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon. Peter and John had gone up to the Temple to pray:

A certain man who was lame from his mother's womb, was carried: whom they laid every day at the gate of the Temple, which is called Beautiful, that he might ask alms of them that went into the Temple. He, when he had seen Peter and John about to go into the Temple, asked to receive an alms. But Peter with John, fastening his eyes upon him, said: "Look upon us." But he looked earnestly upon them, hoping that he should receive something of them. But Peter said: "Silver and gold I have none; but what I have, I give thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, arise and walk." And taking him by the right hand, he lifted him up, and forthwith his feet and soles received strength. And he leaping up stood and walked and went in with them into the Temple, walking and praising God. And they knew him, that it was he who sat begging alms at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple; and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened to him. And as he held Peter and John, all the people ran to them to the porch which is called Solomon's, greatly wondering. 

But Peter seeing, made answer to the people: "Ye men of Israel, why wonder you at this? or why look you upon us, as if by our strength or power we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus, whom you indeed delivered up and denied before the face of Pilate, when he judged He should be released. But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you. But the author of life you killed, whotm God hath raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. And in the faith of His name, this man whom you have seen and known, hath His name strengthened; and the faith which is by Him hath given this perfect soundness in the sight of you all. And now, brethren, I know that you did it through ignorance, as did also your rulers. But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled. Be penitent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. That when the times of refreshment shall come from the presence of the Lord, and He shall send Him who hath been preached unto you, Jesus Christ, whom heaven indeed must receive, until the times of the restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets, from the beginning of the world. [...] To you first God, raising up His Son, hath sent Him to bless you; that everyone may convert himself from his wickedness."^[1]

The Apostle was still speaking when the priests who were on duty in the Temple arrived. They were accompanied by a group of Sadducees. The disciples of Christ had no more bitter enemies than these sectaries, one of whose principal tenets was the denial of the resurrection of the dead. Upon hearing the doctrine of survival being preached, not merely as a hope, but as a truth established by the Resurrection of Christ, they became furiously angry. They remarked to the priests that addressing the people in the porch of the house of God without commission from the hierarchical authority was an act of culpable boldness. To seize the two Apostles and hurry them off to prison was the work of a moment. It was evening, too late for a trial, and hence further proceedings were postponed to the next day. But many who heard Peter's discourse believed in Christ. The infant Church of Jerusalem was now made up of five thousand men.

On the following day, the leaders of the people, the ancients and the scribes, met together. In this gathering were to be seen the High Priest Annas,^[2] Caiphas, John, and Alexander.^[3] In full numbers, the court assembled which had but recently condemned the Master; it would now try the disciples.

The judges, placing Peter and John in their midst, asked: "By what power or by what name have you done this?"^[4] The scene, despite its simplicity, was one of unparalleled importance. For the first time, the lowly disciples of Christ, "illiterate and ignorant men,"^[5] stood in the presence of those hostile powers of which their Master had given them a glimpse. But the heavenly aid which had been promised did not fail them. The presiding officer of the Sanhedrin did not dare say "miracle" or "cure." He called the prodigy "this."

Saints Peter and John before the Sanhedrin
(Image: goodsalt.com)

The Acts tell us that Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, turned a simple and direct look upon his judges, and said to them:

Ye princes of the people and ancients, hear! If we this day are examined concerning the good deed done to the infirm man, by what means he hath been made whole, be it known to you all and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God hath raised from the dead, even by Him this man standeth here before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you the builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved."^[6]

Seeing the constancy of Peter and of John, understanding that they were illiterate and ignorant men, they wondered. And they knew then that they had been with Jesus. Seeing the man also who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But they commanded them to go aside out of the council; and they conferred among themselves. [...] And calling them, they charged them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.^[7]

To impose silence on the two Apostles, to hinder the divulging of a fact which glorified the name of Jesus - such was the only penalty which the persecuting despots found.

But Peter, aided by the Holy Ghost, did not yield. He replied: "If it be just in the sight of God, to hear you rather than God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." The Non possumus, so often repeated by Peter's successors before the powers of this world, was heard for the first time in the precincts of a court. The religious chiefs of Jerusalem might well, on that day, have convinced themselves that a new power had arisen on earth. The Master had said: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's."

The members of the Sanhedrin did not know what to do with the Apostles. "They, threatening, sent them away, not finding how they might punish them, because of the people; for all men glorified what had been done, in that which had come to pass."^[8]

Footnotes

[1] Acts 3:1-26.

[2] A long time before, the Romans had removed Annas from the office of High Priest and had bestowed it upon Caiphas. But the Jews considered this office inalienable; and no real Jew would concede that any foreign power had a right to remove the High Priest. Annas, therefore, retained the title of High Priest, although he no longer performed the duties of the office.

[3] Acts 4:5 f.

[4] Acts 4:7.

[5] Acts 4:13.

[6] Acts 4:8-12.

[7] Acts 4:13-18.

[8] Acts 4:21.

***

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Fr. Timothy Scott Removed as Basilian Spokesperson

Fr. Timothy Scott, C.S.B.

According to information delivered to The Radical Catholic by a loyal reader (Gordon D.), Fr. Timothy Scott, C.S.B., Executive Director of the Canadian Religious Conference, has been removed from his position as spokesman for the Basilian Fathers. The letter, received earlier today and signed by one Fr. David Katulski, reads as follows:

Thank you for your concern about the misconduct of Fr. Scott. I assure you that he is no longer spokesperson for the Basilian Fathers.

The dismissal comes swiftly on the heels of the faithful Catholic outcry after it became known that Fr. Scott tweeted an obscene acronym to His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke, reported here as well as across the Catholic internet yesterday. While it remains uncertain what role, if any, the response of the faithful played in the decision to remove Fr. Scott - the offence was clearly great enough in and of itself to warrant such punitive action - we can hope that this signals a turn for the better for the Congregation of St. Basil.

***

UPDATE: In an interesting turn of events... oh, I'll let Michael Voris explain:

Fr. Timothy Scott Tweets His Way to a Sabbatical

What's going on with the Catholic media relations in Canada? Or does the problem reside with the Canadian branch of the Congregation of St. Basil? First, Fr. Rosica, C.S.B., Chief Executive of Salt and Light Television and assistant to the Holy See Press Office, scores an own goal by threatening Catholic blogger Vox Cantoris with a lawsuit for defamation, and now this:

Fr. Timothy Scott, C.S.B., Executive Director of the Canadian Religious Conference and spokesman for the Basilian Fathers, tweets an obscene acronym directed at His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke. The nasty bit (no, I'm not going to explain what the acronym means; Google will tell you all you need to know):

To his credit, Fr. Scott, after experiencing terrific backlash from faithful Catholics, apologized, also via twitter, with the following text:

I apologize unreservedly for my rudeness. Thank you to all who have chastened me. Time for penance and a twitter timeout.

I'm not going to castigate the man for using foul language. Nor am I going to give him a verbal thrashing for giving juvenile, passive-aggressive vent to his obvious frustration towards that good and saintly Prince of the Church, Cardinal Burke. He's apologized - hopefully he's confessed and received absolution - and he's taking a time out for some well-deserved penance. Good for him.

I do, however, question the sagaciousness of keeping this man employed as spokesman of the Basilian Fathers. I mean, is this guy really the best they could find? Granted, that sounds like a rhetorical question, but given Fr. Rosica's latest display of media-savvy brilliance, I'm thinking the question deserves an honest answer.

***

UPDATE: Fr. Timothy Scott Removed as Basilian Spokesperson

The Reformation in Ireland, France and the Netherlands

Twelfth and Last in a series on the Protestant Reformation

by

Fr. Charles Coppens, S.J.

We have so far sketched in rapid outlines the establishment of the Reformation in most of those European lands in which it obtained permanent dominion. The situation about A.D. 1560 is thus described by Prescott in his History of Philip II:

Scarcely forty years had elapsed since Luther had thrown down the gauntlet to the Vatican by publicly burning the Papal bull at Wittenberg. Since that time, his doctrines had been received in Denmark and Sweden. In England, after a vacillation of three reigns, Protestantism, in the peculiar form which it still wears, had become the established religion of the state. The fiery cross had gone over the hills and valleys of Scotland, and thousands and ten of thousands had gathered to hear the word of life from the lips of Knox. The doctrines of Luther were spread over the northern parts of Germany, and freedom of worship was finally guaranteed there by the treaty of Passau. The Low Countries were the 'debatable land' on which the various sects of Reformers, the Lutheran, the Calvinist, the English Protestant, contended for mastery with the established Church. Calvinism was embraced by some of the cantons of Switzerland, and at Geneva its apostle had fixed his headquarters. His doctrines were widely circulated through France till the divided nation was prepared to plunge into that worst of all wars, in which the hand of brother is raised against brother. The cry of reform had passed even over the Alps, and was heard at the walls of the Vatican. It had crossed the Pyrenees; the King of Navarre declared himself a Protestant, and the spirit of the Reformation had insinuated itself secretly into Spain, and had taken hold, as we have seen, of the middle and southern provinces of the kingdom.

Contemporary depiction of the iconoclasm of the Reformers
Zurich, Switzerland (1584)

The more carefully one studies the Reformation, especially in its early stages, the more clearly he understands that "religious liberty" in the mind of those secretaries meant the liberty to tear down what they called the idolatrous worship of the Catholic Church, the Holy Mass, the altars, the sacred images, the monasteries of the monks, the convents of the nuns, driving out and murdering the faithful bishops and priests, and vesting the spiritual power in temporal princes, who at once proceeded to plunder whatever riches the piety of centuries had dedicated to the Divine service. This was the Reformation in a nutshell.

It was absolutely necessary for every Catholic nation to refuse and forcibly put down that species of religious liberty, and to use for the purpose inquisitions, imprisonments, banishments, executions of the leaders in heresy, etc. All this was at times carried to excess, as is always the case in civil wars as well as in foreign wars. Catholics waged war on rebellious citizens; for, in those days, heresy meant war upon the old religion, and nowhere, in no single country, did Protestantism prevail except by war. The Protestant Bishop Stubbs writes:

Where Protestantism was an idea only, as in France and Italy, it was crushed out by the Inquisition; where, in conjunction with political power, and sustained by ecclesiastical confiscation, it became a physical force, there it was lasting. It is not a pleasant view to take of the doctrinal changes, to see that where the movements toward it were pure and unworldly, it failed; where it was seconded by territorial greed and political animosity, it succeeded.

And again:

The instruments by which it [i.e. the Reformation] was accomplished were despotic monarchs, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, and venal, slavish parliaments. It sprung from brutal passion, was nurtured in selfish and corrupt policy, and was consummated in bloodshed and horrid crime.

The Reformation in Ireland

Ireland is a striking example of all this. If ever any land was made desolate by the burning zeal of fanatics who strove to force their own novel notions upon an unwilling population, it was the fair isle of Erin; and the crushing process was continued during three long centuries. I would not attempt to write the history of that bloody business; for to write history, a man must be cool and unperturbed by passion, and I do not see how I could keep cool while handling such a theme. I am no Irishman, nor of Irish descent; but I feel my pen warming in my hand, and my cheeks glowing, and my heart throbbing with indignation and compassion at the thought of such wrongs, such cruel and persistent violence used for generations to stamp their religion out of a faithful, heroic people.

Let a bigoted Protestant, the poet Spencer, speak in my place. He was in Ireland at the close of the Desmond rebellion, and he got three thousand acres of the confiscated Irish land as his share of the booty. He wrote:

Out of every corner of the woods and glens they [i.e. the Catholic people] came creeping forth on their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eat dead carrion; happy were they who could find it. In a short space, there was none almost left; and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly void of man and beast.

This is but one scene in a tragedy of woes, more pathetic than Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear. But all this is deeply written in the mind and the heart of the entire Irish race, and need not be recounted to prove that God has heroic servants in every age, and that He will not allow the gates of hell to prevail against His own faithful friends. Here are a few more scenes of this sad tragedy. I will give the words of D'Arcy McGee:

While the war against the Desmonds was raging in the south, under pretense of suppressing rebellion, no one could help seeing that, in reality, it was directed against the Catholic religion. If any had doubted the real objects, events which quickly followed Elizabeth's victory soon convinced them. Dermot O'Hurley, archbishop of Cashel, being taken by the victors, was brought to Dublin in 1552. Here, the Protestant primate Loftus besieged him in vain for nearly a year to deny the Pope's supremacy, and acknowledge the Queen's. Finding him of unshaken faith, he was brought out for martyrdom on Stephen's Green, adjoining the city; and there he was tied to a tree, his boots filled with combustibles, and his limbs stripped and smeared with oil and alcohol. Alternately they lighted and quenched the flames which enveloped him, prolonging his tortures through four successive days. Still remaining firm, before dawn of the fifth day, they finally consumed his last remains of life, and left his calcined bones among the ashes at the foot of his stake.* The relics gathered by some pious friends were hidden away in the half-ruined church of St. Kevin, near that outlet of Dublin called Kevinsport. In Desmond's tour of Kilmallock were then taken Patrick O'Haley, bishop of Mayo; Fr. Cornelius, a Franciscan, and some others. To extort from them confessions of the new faith, their thighs were broken with hammers, and their arms crushed by levers. They died without yielding, and the instruments of their torture were buried with them in the Franciscan convent of Askeaton. The Most Rev. Richard Creigh, primate of all Ireland, was the next victim.

Catholicity in Ireland has outlived the storm of three centuries of persecution, and has become the seed of salvation to as many millions in our age all over the earth as there were thousands of victims in the age of Queen Elizabeth and after.

The Reformation in France

The Reformation failed in Ireland because it drowned in the blood of it's victims; it also failed in France, but there it was drowned in the blood of Catholics and Huguenots alike. Spalding's History of the Reformation briefly sums up the story as follows:

The whole history of the Reformation in France may be related in two sentences: The Calvinists sought by intrigue and by force of arms to gain the ascendancy and to establish the new religion on the ruins of the old; but after a long struggle, they signally failed, and France was preserved to the Church. Long and terrible was the contest between the turbulent Protestant minority and the determined Catholic majority, to settle the momentous questions which should finally control the destinies of France; for nearly a hundred years, civil war, rendered still fiercer by the infusion of the element of religious zeal and fanaticism, waged with but brief intervals of pacification throughout the country, which it distracted and rendered desolate. Finally, the Catholics, meeting intrigue with intrigue, and repelling force by force, remained in the ascendant, and the Protestant party, once so aspiring, dwindled down into an insignificant fraction of the population.

The expression "meeting intrigue with intrigue" refers to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The Protestants everywhere, and all along their lines of conquest, used intrigue and deceit, as we have shown in these essays; for once they were outdone in the use of that vile weapon in France, not by the Catholic Church, nor by Catholic bishops or priests, but by an unprincipled Queen dowager, Catherine de Medicis, an infidel at heart, though happening to belong to the Catholic party. We detest her wicked plot, even though without it France might have been lost to the Church, for no evil may ever be done that good may come of it. Yet, let Protestants remember, they have no right to complain that they were that time outwitted in wickedness.

The Reformation in the Netherlands

The Netherlands we will consider last. This region comprised the present kingdoms of Holland and Belgium, with some minor provinces, part of which are now in France. The country was very prosperous when the Reformation began, but it was subject to the dominion of the Spanish crown. It became restless of the foreign yoke, when the Calvinists from France, Protestant immigrants from England, the intrigue and subsidies of Elizabeth, and the Lutheran notions which the youths of Flanders brought home on their return from the German universities, made that region a hotbed of rebellion against Philip II and his Catholic governors. Civil independence was the boon in sight, the union of all the malcontents were chiefly heretics. The result was there, as in every land to which the new gospel came, a period of war, which in the Netherlands lasted about half a century. It finished in the establishment of the Dutch republic. As soon as this was established, it proceeded to stamp out Catholicity within its boundaries. The Protestant historian Menzel puts the matter thus:

The Calvinistic tenets and forms of worship were established to the exclusion of those of the Catholics and Lutherans. The cruelties practiced by the Catholics were equaled by those inflicted on the opposing party by the Reformers. The most horrid cruelties were perpetrated by Sonoi, by whom the few Catholics remaining in Holland were exterminated, A.D. 1577.

So says Menzel. But how can we believe that the remaining Catholics were few, since the first Protestant service had been held only three years before, as he informs us? Either there must have been very many, or there must have been a vast exodus of the faithful. The extent to which the Reformation had taken possession of Europe by 1570 is thus stated by Macaulay in his Criticism of Ranke's History of the Popes:

In fifty years from the day in which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Church of Rome and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendancy - an ascendancy which it soon lost, and which it has never regained. In England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemburg, the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed, and in all other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the point of triumphing.

***

Conclusion to the Series

We had undertaken, in this series of essays, to explain the origin of the Reformation, so as to show that it was not the work of the Holy Ghost, and of the calm, prayerful co-operation of holy men, full of that charity by which the true Church is animated; and we have finished that task, in a brief but truthful account. While many minor points, here and there occurring in our statements, will, no doubt, be controverted, our main line of thought is unassailable.

We will conclude this brief sketch of the first origin of Protestantism with some remarks of Macaulay on what we may call the second stage of the Reformation. He writes:

At first, the chances seemed to be decidedly in favor of Protestantism, but the victory remained with the Church of Rome. On every point it was successful. If we proceed another half-century, we find her victorious and dominant in France, Belgium, Bavaria, Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. Nor has Protestantism, in the course of two hundred years, been able to reconquer any portion of what it then lost. It is, moreover, not to be dissembled that this wonderful triumph of the Papacy is to be chiefly attributed, not to force of arms, but to a great reflux in public opinion.

*  D'Arcy McGee's depiction of the martyrdom of Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley is not entirely correct: while the archbishop did, indeed, suffer barbarous torture, including having his legs boiled over a roaring fire, he was finally executed outside of Dublin, at Hoggen Green, by hanging.