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Henry’s Reformation: England’s defining moment?

The towering presence of Henry VIII looms large over English history in this portrait by Holbein. Inset, the poetry of Robert Southwell provided spiritual nourishment for the faithful at home

Friday 6th March 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Henry’s Reformation stands as the key moment in England’s history

Adam Coates

Every country can point to some event within its past which has played a role in defining the nature of that country, both historically and to the present day. A French person would likely point to the French Revolution in 1789, a German to the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945, a Russian to the arrival of Communism. However, to what might an Englishman point? 

The events of the Second World War are surely an important one. The Civil War in the 17th century is another. A common one that would be brought up, a date seared into the mind of nearly every English person, is the Norman Conquest of 1066.

However, despite all of these, one event which arguably stands above them all is the English Reformation. Beginning, initially, as a political dispute, theological conflicts were brought to the fore with a series of Acts of Parliament, including the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which placed the English Church in Schism. The aforementioned 1534 Act formally declared the King, Henry VIII, as Supreme Head on Earth of the Church of England’.  

This was followed by Henry’s son, Edward, coming to the throne and pushing a more explicitly theologically and liturgically Protestant line. The early death of Edward saw the succession of his half-sister Mary. Her five-year reign reversed her brother’s religious reforms and her father’s schism. However, Mary’s efforts were in vain as she was succeeded by her half-sister Elizabeth who again took the English Church from under the umbrella of Rome, though choosing a theological via media between continental Protestantism and Catholicism. 

Why is this series of events arguably the most important in English history? While it is fun to engage in counterfactual history, wondering what may have happened had the religious changes of the 16th century never taken place, this is not a proper historical task. These religious changes are important, not because of what we can imagine in their absence, but because of what religion is in a human society. The 20th century historian Christopher Dawson, whom TS Eliot described as “the most powerful intellectual influence in England”, was interested in the study of civilisations.

The towering presence of Henry VIII looms large over English history in this portrait by Holbein. Inset, the poetry of Robert Southwell provided spiritual nourishment for the faithful at home

The questions of how and why they rise and fall led to a lifetime of research and writing, producing numerous books, articles and lectures. The great conclusion of Dawson’s works was that religion is one of the key and consistent driving forces of civilisation throughout history. It therefore stands to reason that an event such as the Reformation, where the religious fabric of the country was fundamentally altered from top to bottom, would be of primary importance. 

One might reasonably argue that the traditional English stiff upper lip is a result of the more restrained Protestant approach to worship when compared with the rich ceremonies of the Mass. Charles Darwin observed that “Englishmen rarely cry […]; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely”. G. K. Chesterton would write that ‘those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground’. The implication is clear; there are cultural differences between Protestant England and the Catholic countries of continental Europe that are the result of religious doctrine and practice. Even though these countries are quickly shedding their religion, those cultural differences remain

Religious changes brought about mass cultural changes. The religious houses of England were supressed in what the historian Professor George W. Bernard has described as “one of the most revolutionary events in English history”. 

The dotted remains of ruined abbeys and priories, their stone remains jutting from the ground like the bones of a long extinct beast, are eloquent testimony to the radical change of the suppression. These religious reforms, naturally, affected everyone. Some, such as those in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, responded by open rebellion. Others secretly kept their Catholicism while attending Anglican services. Some refused to attend Anglican services and practised their Catholicism secretly. 

A consistent desire among wealthy Catholic families who continued in their Catholicism was that of seeing their children educated as Catholics. Stonyhurst College, on whose estate the Christian Heritage Centre has its home, is one such school. Beginning life at Saint-Omer in 1593, it provided a Catholic education for English boys in the then Spanish Netherlands. Within centres like this, a distinctly Catholic and English culture could remain and, indeed, flourish in relative safety behind the barrier of the English Channel. These sanctuaries were to produce saints and martyrs who were to die in England for preaching the Catholic faith. 

One such figure, Robert Southwell, a product of the English College at Douai, was to provide spiritual nourishment for the faithful at home. One way he did this was through his corpus of poetry. One poem, New Heaven, New War, speaks of the coming of Christ at Christmas. God invades the Devil’s abode to defeat him: ‘This little Babe so few days old, Is come to rifle Satan’s fold; All hell doth at his presence quake, Though he himself for cold do shake; For in this weak, unarmed wise, The gates of hell he will surprise’.

God, in having taken on flesh, will defeat Satan. 

Verse such as this must have been a great comfort to English Catholics who thought themselves once again in ‘Satan’s fold’; Christ’s victory against these powers is inevitable. 

It is precisely on this topic that the Christian Heritage Centre will be hosting an academic conference on Saturday, 28th of March. Led by Professors Peter Davidson and Gerard Kilroy, the conference will examine the cultural interactions between Protestant England and the Catholic part of Europe. 

St Robert’s poetry, such as that quoted above, represented a vibrant Catholic and English culture in exile that sort to provide comfort to those at home. The conference will be providing a fresh look at these cultural contributions that demonstrate, despite its persecution, a vibrant, living body of faith. 

Adam Coates is the Educational Assistant, The Christian Heritage Centre

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A change of Christian climate, and its deniers

Friday 7th February 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

A change of Christian climate, and its deniers

Stefan Kaminski

That there is a change in the Earth’s climate is an undisputable fact. The significance of that change is debated by some. Others label these people as ‘climate change deniers’. However, there has also been a different sort of ‘climate change’ going on for a while, which also has its own set of rather vocal deniers.

In last month’s article on Christian heritage, Sr Emanuela Edwards wrote eloquently of the significance of the Magi’s journey. She noted their wisdom and courage in recognising and following the star, which guided them to the full revelation of the Incarnate God. 

Her article was a call to Christians today to offer such a “guiding star” to the people of our own times by their witness to the faith. The particular need for visible ‘stars’ in contemporary society was already present in St Pope Paul VI’s time: she noted that he had already identified a “rupture between the Gospel and culture as the drama of our time”. 

Christianity has provided the general ‘climate’ for European culture for the best part of the last two millennia. It has shaped the greatest thinkers, writers, artists and scientists who stand unchallenged at the pinnacle of what Europe has to offer. From Augustine to John Paul II, from Agnelli to Pugin, from Albertus Magnus to George Lemaître: they were all formed by a certain worldview, which has gradually been divorced and discarded by modern thinking. 

That worldview, which the scholastic thinking of the Medieval period had elaborated and expressed so clearly, understood the entire cosmos as being in an inherent relationship to God. Creation is not seen merely as a onetime, distant event somehow linked to God, who is then subsequently written out of everything that happens since; creation is a continual act of holding everything in being, intentionally guiding every development in the cosmos, however random these may appear to us.

The Gothic masterpiece of Amiens Cathedral

 Frank Sheed (of Sheed & Ward publishers), described it as “nothingness worked upon by omnipotence”. Deliciously succinct, this phrase captures the two essential facts about our world, from a Christian point of view: it would not exist if God did not will it; it only continues to exist because God continues to will it.

This is the perspective that underwrote our Western culture, providing direction and impetus for both the sciences and the arts. The meeting of faith and culture was not simply a convenient intertwining of two parallel strands: culture was shaped by faith. Nonetheless, many academics today insist on minimising, if not altogether setting aside, the religious dynamic when delving into the minds of those cultural icons whom we all admire. A bit like today’s climate change deniers (but in reverse), they attempt to write the significance of a previous, Christian climate out of the textbooks. 

One such icon whose Christian adherence and life is frequently downplayed is the Victorian polymath, John Ruskin. He was the subject of our first evening talk of the year at The Christian Heritage Centre. Professor Keith Hanley, of Lancaster University, offered a fascinating insight into John Ruskin’s Travels on the Continent, providing us with a view of European art through this particular set of English eyes. Brought up as a devout evangelical, Ruskin had clear ideas of what defined good landscape painting. As the epigraph to his five-volume series on modern landscape painting stated, ‘Nature presented the laws behind God’s creation for mankind. Landscapes, therefore, were worthy insofar as they revealed the truth, the beauty and the intelligence of God’s creation.’

John Ruskin

In Ruskin’s opinion, the realism of William Turner was the epitome of this artistic form, which formed the comfortable confines of Ruskin’s artistic world for his early years. 

But Ruskin’s first solo trip to Italy changed all that. There, he was confronted – and indeed, “utterly crushed”, as he put it – by the revelation of the full ‘Art of Man’. His initial encounter with Jacopo Tintoretto’s work in the School of St Roch, and in particular with Tintoretto’s Crucifixion, opened his eyes to the world of “theological symbolism of the entire Christian scheme of redemption”, as Prof Hanley expressed it. Thereafter, while his views continued to evolve, they were marked by a new and lively sensibility to the transcendent world, which informed and brought a whole new significance to the material order. 

Indeed, his very last work, on the Gothic cathedral of Amiens, recognised the full drama of the medieval worldview that is so wonderfully expressed in the cathedral’s West Front: the interconnectedness of everything, from the lowliest elements of creation to the highest personages in the Judeo-Christian tradition, in a single, allembracing path to Christ.

Our next evening talk at The Christian Heritage Centre, Stonyhurst will pick up another figure who has been recently “rediscovered” and again often remoulded to the post-Christian thinking of today: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. His realism, often considered in purely psychologically terms, has even led some to consider him a 20th century painter in spirit. Yet his genius is firmly grounded in the dynamism between the spiritual and earthly worlds, and his ability to communicate this. 

Providing a “guiding star” to the one true Creator and Redeemer of the world in today’s society also requires being able to point to and reclaim the fruits that have been borne by our faith over the course of its history. 

There are plenty of voices ready to point out the apparent defects of Christianity and the problems they claim it has caused; we need more voices that can speak eloquently of the truth and beauty that Christianity has engendered over the centuries in our Western culture.

 Stefan Kaminski is the Director of the Christian Heritage Centre, Stonyhurst.

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A light shines forth from the Ribble Valley

Friday 10th January 2020

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

A light shines forth from the Ribble Valley

Sr Emanuela Edwards

High in the apse of St Mary Majors Basilica in Rome is an ancient mosaic from the 12th Century by the Franciscan artist Jacopo Torriti, which represents the story of the three kings or the Epiphany of the Lord. 

The three kings, in order of age, bear their gifts to the Christ child, who wears the robes of a victorious king. Above Christ’s head shines the star of David, which denotes his identity and has guided the king’s path to him. 

The Epiphany is a cause for great joy because it signifies when Christ was manifested to the Gentiles as God. The three kings, led by the star, have made the long journey from the East and now kneel in adoration as they recognise the fact that God has become Man in this Child.

The story of the three kings has much to say to us about the importance of Christian witness in the world in which we live. St Pope Paul VI spoke of a, “rupture between the Gospel and culture as the drama of our time.” Therefore, it is important to learn how to make the Christian faith more apparent in modern culture, such that it becomes a ‘star’ that guides people towards God.

The exquisite mosaic by Jacopo Torriti, which represents the story of the three kings.

At the time of Our Lord, many, like the astrologers and wise men, looked to the stars for signs. Almost everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, was seeking ‘the One who would come’. It is interesting to ponder how many wise men saw that ‘special star’ but lacked the wisdom or courage to follow it. From the scriptures we know only of the wise men from the East, three by tradition. Their interest in that star was inspired by the fact that it indicated the birth of a king and this set them on a journey. These three wise men were able to ‘read the stars’ and were brave enough to go in search of God. In the end, their search was rewarded with a meeting with God that changed the whole direction of their lives. With their lives totally changed by the experience and the gift of faith they received, the kings returned home via a ‘different way’.

Our Christian traditions, history and religious celebrations act as bright stars in a darkening world to remind everyone that God exists and is present. The stars in the night sky have special properties as they cannot be blocked out. They remain there however dark it gets, to light the way or to guide all those who choose to follow them. As we see a crucifix in a school or a Church building, the statues or works of religious art, they all somehow speak silently of the existence of God who came to earth. To those without faith, they act as a way of indicating the fact that God exists and encourages them, like the kings, to ask the great question of life. 

To those with the faith, they draw our minds to God encouraging us to engage in a loving dialogue with Him.

St Mary Majors Basilica in Rome

Just as the wise men were attracted by the new star, it is important for Christians to interact with all that is new in society so that it can be transformed to testify to Christ. The internet, mobile phones and social media must be filled with the Gospel message to speak of God from within our modern culture. 

As people look down into the stupefying maze of content on their phones, they should find something of God that encourages them perhaps to look up. Only then can we see the light that comes from faith which can lead us, just like the kings, to find God.

St Pope John Paul II said that, “Christianity is a creator of culture in its very foundation” and so faith must lead to visible signs and tangible actions in the world in which we live to change it for the better. The Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst exists to be like a star to attract those who, like the kings, search for God. It seeks to be a light that shines forth from the Ribble Valley to speak in new and exciting ways of the wonderful Christian story and to help make new roots in today’s modern culture.

God Bless Us
And the Virgin Protect Us

 Sr Emanuela Edwards MDR is a member of the Missionaries of Divine Revelation. The Missionaries of Divine Revelation are the official guides for the Vatican Museums delivering the tours of ‘Art and Faith’ that can be booked online at the Museum’s website.

She can be contacted via: [email protected], with more information via www.mdrevelation.org

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Christians must fight against post-modernism

Michael Dopp speaking at the Christian Heritage Centre on 1st October

Friday 1st November 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Christians must fight against post-modernism

Stefan Kaminski

Faith and reason: ‘the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth’

Michael Dopp speaking at the Christian Heritage Centre on 1st October

The well-known line reproduced above comes from Pope Saint John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Fides et Ratio. It presents a powerful, and no doubt provocative, challenge to today’s society. Many would scorn such a statement. Indeed, perhaps a surprising number of Catholics might also raise their eyebrows. Surely, the ingenuity and the progress of the human spirit are only thanks to our intellectual capacity? 

The Enlightenment philosophers certainly thought that faith and doctrine no longer had a place in the rational, modern world order. As a result, faith became distanced from reason in the public forum and increasingly privatised. 

The gradual effect of this public separation of faith and reason for the individual is a loss of the sense of the relationship between their own intellect and God. The spiritual life, then, all too easily becomes reduced to a matter of the emotions only. The danger of undernourishing our intellect in the matter of faith is that the reception of the sacraments become mere ritual and prayer takes on a certain tedious repetitiveness. In the meantime, the intellect is left to hold on to certain basic ideas it believes to be true, without ever developing these or integrating them more fully into the spiritual life.

Today, however, not only has the search for truth cast off any reference to faith, but truth itself is questioned: our deconstructed, post-modern age denies the validity of any universal truths. 

“Post-modernism” does not merely reject faith and doctrine, it also rejects the existence of objective truth that is accessible to our reason. As a result, we live in an age where opinions and feelings are the only measure of the human spirit, where tolerance is the highest social virtue, and where morality is a purely subjective matter.

A stained glass of the Baptism of Our Lord, when Jesus is publicly revealed as the Son by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. Originally from St Malachy’s Church, Toxteth, Liverpool, closed in 2001. Now at the Christian Heritage Centre.

The resulting challenge facing the Catholic who wishes to live out the faith coherently in today’s world has multiplied. Today’s Catholic does not simply need to justify his faith: today’s Catholic must also justify his reason. It is no longer enough to say, “I believe in God”. It is no longer even enough to explain why one believes in God. It is now also necessary to articulate why any sort of belief can be at all considered true in the first place. 

Recently, the Christian Heritage Centre hosted Michael Dopp, a well-known Canadian speaker on the New Evangelisation and Catholic apologetics. During the course of a talk, Michael commented that, “post-modernity is essentially insanity… [because] everything that matters is unknowable.” 

He succinctly observed the contradiction inherent in postmodern thinking: it claims that there is no metaphysical truth, and yet this itself is a claim about metaphysical truth; it says that all truth is relative, and yet it makes judgements (a claim to absolute truth) about the truths proclaimed by others; it claims to be tolerant, and yet it is inherently intolerant of views motivated by a different way of thinking. 

When we proclaim our faith in the Incarnation, we make an incredibly bold statement that stands in opposition to the core tenets of postmodern thinking. By stating that God the Son became man, that He assumed a real human nature while remaining fully God, we are not only claiming a metaphysical truth: we are also claiming that our intellect is capable of knowing metaphysical truth. The Christian holds that the Word – the Logos, the Reason –through whom and for whom Creation was made (cf. John 1:1-3), does not simply remain an inaccessible, spiritual reality. 

The Christian proclaims that the Logos became man. In other words, truth – the highest and most significant Truth – joined itself to our human nature and embraced a human soul, with a human intellect and a human will. 

What does this say about humanity? Simply, that humanity is capable of knowing, of loving and of receiving God. What do the Incarnation and the Paschal mysteries say to us about metaphysical truths? That there is one, overarching reality with which our physical reality is in strict relationship: we were made by God and for God, we fell from His grace, and we have been redeemed by Him. This truth about the human race is neither abstract nor purely metaphysical: these are events that occurred in the flesh, that are part of a history. They are events that gener-ated consequences and continue to be experientially verifiable.

To separate these Christian truths from our intellectual lives is, indeed, insanity. The 20th century apologist, Francis Sheed, notes at the beginning of his book Theology and Sanity: “If we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world.” 

Post-modernism, and indeed many of us on a day-to-day basis, are guilty of living in a fictitious world where we do not see everything in its real place, namely in an essential relationship to the living God. 

This is not simply an exercise of faith by the heart and the will. This is an act of the intellect: it is an intrinsically different way of looking at the world to that proposed by both modernity and, even more radically, postmodernity. St John Henry New-man once said: “Dogma is the food of prayer”. This may sound foreign to our contemporary ears, but putting aside societal preconceptions, he makes a profoundly relevant point for us today. It is necessary for us, as it was for Newman, not only to make space for the “heart-to-heart” conversation with God, but also to seek the objective truth and reasoning for our beliefs, as handed on by the Church over the centuries.

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre

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Ritual and worship: signs, symbols and realities in the liturgy

The Old Chapel Museum contains a stunning collection of chausables worn by Catholic clergy through the ages. Photo by permission of the Governors of Stonyhurst College, copyright Stonyhurst College Collections

Friday 4th October 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Ritual and worship: signs, symbols and realities in the liturgy

Adam Coates

Many readers will, a few months ago, have experienced an event that numerous proud parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncle go through – that of seeing their beloved child, grandchild, or niece or nephew graduate from university. 

They will have stepped, momentarily, into the sometimes baffling and esoteric world of academia. Heads may have been ‘capped’, hoods draped over shoulders, strange gowns will have been worn by the graduates and academic staff, the Gaudeamus Igitur may have even been sung. 

Overall, it makes for an enjoyable occasion as the graduands join the ranks of graduates, and their years of toil and labour are recognised and rewarded appropriately.

The Old Chapel Museum contains a stunning collection of chausables worn by Catholic clergy through the ages. Photo by permission of the Governors of Stonyhurst College, copyright Stonyhurst College Collections

When viewed from the outside, these events may seem curious to behold. Why is someone touched on the head with an old hat? Why is a hood draped over your shoulders? We realise, within the confines of the graduation, that this is representative of something else; the signs and symbols of the ceremony mark an event and a change. Fundamentally, these things speak of something beyond that which they simply are. The old hat being tapped upon someone’s head marks the conferral of a degree, the odd gown represents the membership of the academic community. 

There is here, a certain parallel with the liturgy of the Church. In the liturgy, the Second Vatican Council says, ‘the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ’. Why does the Church worship? Fundamentally, the Church worships because worship is what is owed to God. To use the language of the 20th century philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, the Church makes a “value response” to the supreme Value that is God. Unlike something which is merely subjectively satisfying, the realm of the objective is not something we bend to our will, but something which bends us to it. As God is supreme, we use the methods and ways He gives us to glorify Him. This is not something God needs, and it adds nothing to His being; it is, rather, the proper response of mankind to God.

Why, though, is Catholic worship filled with signs and symbols? Why does the priest genuflect? Why do people fall to their knees in adoration? Why are a series of vestments worn? Why does the priest make various gestures with his hands? To provide a general answer to these questions, it is necessary to go back to the question of what is the human person. A person, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, is a “unity of soul and body”. The body is not merely some vehicle for our souls to get around in, but is an essential part of what it is to be human. 

The atmospheric interior of St Peter’s. Photo by permission of Cassidy & Ashton

With regard to how we come to know things, St Thomas Aquinas asserts, drawing upon the Greek philosopher Aristotle, that nothing can exist in our minds without our first having sensed it. That is, our way of knowing anything depends on us having sensed it, at least in an elemental fashion, in some way. Even if one were to imagine something fanciful, like pink elephants with yellow polka dots, I am only able to imagine such a bizarre creature because I know what an elephant looks like, because I know what the colours pink and yellow are, and because I know what polka dots are. My imagination depends upon the abstract sense data to create the fictional. 

What does this have to do with worship? Exactly because we cannot know anything without having sensed it in some way, the Church makes liberal use in its official worship of that which engages the senses. What communicates that God is glorious: simply stating the fact, or saying it and falling to our knees in adoration? 

Falling to our knees, as well as being an appropriate value response, also has a pedagogical element in that we are made small before He who is mighty. Similarly, a stained-glass window, showing a saint and some item related to them, or a scene from the life of Our Lord or Our Lady, is a far more powerful devotional and catechetical tool than merely reading about the fact. As St Thomas Aquinas says, it is “befitting to man … that he should employ sensible signs to signify anything, because he derives his knowledge from sensibles”. 

St Thomas continues to relate this to the idea of worship in the form of sacrifice.

A continuous theme of the religious education curriculum for Catholic school children in England and Wales is an explanation and examination of the signs and symbols found within Catholic churches and in the liturgy.

It is hoped that we at the Christian Heritage Centre, making liberal use of the Stonyhurst College Collections and the sumptuous neogothic St Peter’s church, will be able to assist in this mission. St Peter’s is rich and colour and light and makes an ideal place for children to learn about Christian symbolism.

The Stonyhurst College Collections speak for themselves. As the oldest museum in the English-speaking world, it holds in trust a repository of sacred objects beyond compare. The chasubles worn and seen by our illustrious predecessors (pictured) are not simply museum pieces, but something that even today speaks of the beauty and grandeur of God experienced in the liturgy. Their beauty is communicative of Him who is beauty itself. It is hoped that visiting school groups of all ages will be able to see a little piece of this reality when they visit the Christian Heritage Centre on school visits. 

These objects, signs and symbols are all part of a reality stretching across time as the Church and its servants throughout the ages tried ever anew to communicate the greatness of the Almighty and the reality of the liturgical acts taking place. Thus the human person, this union of body and soul, is enriched by the Church’s liturgy in making this proper value response to God. They are educated and nourished by the use of sensible things, communicating in the most authentic manner possible the truth of spiritual realities. 

Adam Coates is the Educational Assistant at The Christian Heritage Centre

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Communicating the faith through stories of the saints and martyrs

Drawing of Edmund Campion SJ by Charles Weld, c1850, from a 17th century original painting.

Friday 6th September 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Communicating the faith through stories of the saints and martyrs

Sr Emanuela Edwards looks at storytelling and how, even in our hi-tech digital age, it remains a powerful way to communicate the faith.

One of the greatest challenges, if not the greatest, for the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst is the communication of the faith to the people of our time. The Christian faith we possess, and the roots of our Christian Heritage must be rendered interesting and challenging and be communicated to everyone. It should be done in such a way that it can reinforce the faith of those who believe, whilst at the same time reach out to the periphery to speak of God’s love for all even to those who would not usually be interested!

One way of achieving this aim is to use the ancient art of storytelling. Since primitive times, stories have been used to transmit important truths, events and lessons to successive generations. In fact, the faith was originally handed on by the Apostles who testified or told the story of what they witnessed and learned from Christ. Artefacts and relics, like those in the Stonyhurst Collection, physically bring the stories of the martyrs and saints into proximity to those who look upon the objects. Pope Leo I asked, “why should the mind toil when the sight instructs” and indeed, looking at these artefacts and explaining their story presents an opportunity to recount the Christian faith in a captivating way.

Writing in the 4th Century Tertullian said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith”. Encountering the stories of the lives of the saints and martyrs who have shaped our Christian Heritage sows the seeds of the faith in successive generations. Each artefact in the Stonyhurst Collections works like a silent sermon because it testifies to the life and witness of the martyr in question making their stories enter the present time and touch the life of the person viewing the object perhaps causing them to consider its lesson. Therefore, the stories of the Saints and martyrs become living lessons in the faith that can teach and inspire new generations hopefully calling them to a deeper conversion.

Oscar Romero Relic and Triptych. Relic is the property of a private individual on loan to Stonyhurst College. Triptych and bust of Romero are property of Stonyhurst College Photo: Property of Stonyhurst College

One of the most striking stories in the Collections is told by the relic of the rope that bound St Edmund Campion to the hurdle on which he was dragged through the streets of London before his execution. (The actual relic is the property of the British Jesuit Province on loan to Stonyhurst College). That rope tells the story of a Priest who, on penalty of death, nevertheless came to England in 1580 to preach the Gospel, confess and offer the Sacrifice of the Holy Mass to the Catholics driven underground in order to practice their faith. He preached and disseminated his famous Decem Rationes – ten reasons demonstrating the truth of the Catholic religion and was eventually captured, imprisoned and tortured before his execution at Tyburn on the 1st December 1581. His story raises an interesting question: why did St Edmund not yield to the tortures and inducements to conform in order to save his life? By word and deed St Edmund most eloquently testified that the Catholic faith is worth dying for. He did not change the course of his life as he knew that a seed must die to yield fruit (cfr. Jn 12:24). Today, that fruit is harvested in the hearts of those who are told of this heroic Priest whose behaviour was inspired by the truth of Christ and are brought into contact with the faith he died to proclaim.

Drawing of Edmund Campion SJ by Charles Weld, c1850, from a 17th century original painting.

The Collections also have a part of the vestment worn by St Oscar Romero who was killed in El Salvador in 1980 whilst offering the Holy Mass. This relic serves as a poignant reminder that Christian martyrdom is not an ancient reality but that this story still continues today.

Another English martyr whose story is told through the artefacts and relics of the Stonyhurst Collections is St Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, who was martyred for refusing to take the Oath of Succession in 1535. This saint’s story demonstrates how artefacts and relics can show the faith of the saint rather than just tell of it hence providing a more powerful source of Christian inspiration. During the homily for the Canonisation of St Thomas More, Pope Pius XI spoke of the “ardour of his prayer” and the “practice of those penances by which he kept his body in subjection.” Indeed, this can be borne out by close inspection of his golden crucifix with spikes on the back that was worn as a penance by the Saint. Here we learn something of the intimate life of the Saint that was founded on a deep prayer life. In fact, it was this intimacy with Christ that strengthened him to resist the tears of his wife and children over his condemnation and to be, “content to lose goods, land and life as well rather than to swear against his conscience”. In this way, the stories of the Saints also teach us that Christian witness is borne through a closeness to Christ in prayer and is not the fruit of the passing moment.

It is hoped that a visit to this beautiful collection will make the stories of the Saints vibrate in our hearts giving us a living lesson in the truths of the faith. May the stories of the martyrs strengthen us by imparting the knowledge of the faith and the inspiration to live it so that we too can witness to our rich Christian heritage that shaped our past and partake in its reconstruction in our own time.

Sr Emanuela Edwards

Missionaries of Divine Revelation
Trustee of the Christian Heritage Centre at Stonyhurst
[email protected]
www.mdrevelation.org

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Sacred places that speak of the Catholic Faith throughout the ages

The Cistercian abbey at Whalley dates from the Middle Ages

Friday 2nd August 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Sacred places that speak of the Catholic Faith throughout different ages

Stefan Kaminski

Times change; people and places come and go. But the one Person a Christian relies on never changes or leaves: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).  This fundamental conviction remains true for all Christians regardless of the age or society in which they live. It provides the same foundational inspiration for every authentic Christian life, and unites people throughout history – and indeed outside of history – in the hope of the Resurrection.

Up in Lancashire, within the space of about 10 miles (as the crow flies) one can visit the ruins of Whalley Abbey, the Shrine of Ladyewell at Fernyhalgh and Stonyhurst College. Each of these speaks in a particular way of a different era and dimension of the Catholic faith: each place witnesses to individuals and communities that bore out the conviction expressed by St Paul at various times and in various walks of life.

The Cistercian abbey at Whalley dates from the Middle Ages

Whalley Abbey testifies to monastic life, in the form of Cistercian monks, during the late Middle Ages. Established in 1296, it had a relatively short life of less than 250 years, before being dissolved by Henry VIII. Despite the bad press that is sometimes meted out, monasteries served as an important cultural driving force, maintaining the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts, generating artistic and architectural trade, and working the land to sustain their communities. If the Cistercian monks were more aesthetic and orientated to a life of prayer, all the more because of their desire to serve God alone.

Although the Shrine at Fernyhalgh pre-dates the Abbey with a devotional history extending back to the 11th century, it speaks most powerfully of the harshest period of the Protestant Reformation and the testimony of the Martyr-saints. The staunch faithfulness of local recusant Catholics, the determination of missionary priests and the willingness of all to lay down their lives for their belief in the one Church established by Jesus Christ, is vividly expressed in the collection of relics and in the famous Burgess Altar. This latter is a beautifully carved wooden altar, complete with a triptych of panels and a Nativity Scene underneath, which closes up to disguise itself as cupboard. Saints Edmund Campion and Edmund Arrowsmith are amongst the many priests to have offered Holy Mass at it, risking their lives and those of their congregation for this greatest of Mysteries.

Stonyhurst College of course begins its history precisely because of the Reformation, with the establishment of the school at St Omers in France, in 1593. Its story on English soil starts in 1794. Across both periods however, the school’s story is a testimony to the creativity, ingenuity, learning and sheer hard work of the Jesuit order. The great learnedness of the Society’s members is evidenced in multifarious ways in the school’s operations: the contribution to astronomy through the work of its observatory; the design and operation of its own powerplant; the writing and production of whole series of plays; numerous musical contributions.  All of this has its inspiration and final end “ad majorem Dei gloriam” (for the greater glory of God).

Across this panoply of Catholic activity, the underlying dynamic is the same: a personal conviction that God became man, and that He died and rose on the Cross for our salvation. If we wonder at the force of the conviction held by those monks, martyrs and school masters, it is because it was not simply a belief: it was faith. And therein lies a subtle, but substantial, distinction. In a society which tends towards viewing beliefs as a private matter, each as valid as the next, which may be held freely so long as they do not interfere in the lives of others, it is easy to lose a sense of the grandeur of the theological faith that the Church holds.

The Burgess Altar at the Ladyewell Shrine, Fernyhalgh

Beliefs are common to everyone – be they beliefs in a political system or in the wisdom of their favourite TV personality – and indeed everyone has some belief about God. In all its guises however, belief remains an intellectual act that begins and ends with the human individual. As such, it only has its foundations in that same person.

Faith, on the other hand, is a response. It is firstly the acceptance of Truth: the highest and final Truth, which is valid for all people in all places. This Truth is known to be true by the Christian, not because he or she thinks it an attractive thing to believe, but because it comes from God. How do we know it comes from God? Because we choose to believe the corporate witness of the Church: from those first Christians who saw the God-man walk this earth, down to each and every man, woman and child who has testified to that Truth with their lives over the last two millenia.

Such a faith does not remain a personal belief for private consumption: it prompts an obedience (literally, a “listening to” as the Latin roots signifies) and subsequent action. From Abraham taking all his family and possessions to an unknown destination across the Arabian desert, to those parents of the 17th and 18th centuries illicitly sending their sons across the Channel to receive a Catholic education, they all acted on “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1): they had faith.

We might be tempted to wonder dubiously at our own faith (or indeed, to avoid asking ourselves what might feel like an embarrassing question!). However, Rome was not built in a day, and neither were places such as Whalley Abbey, Ladyewell and Stonyhurst. The real work started with the daily prayer and attentiveness to God of each individual concerned in all of those histories. The places that remain – be they merely the stones of a ruined church or a functioning school – reach back to beyond the external achievements of those Catholics: they bear witness firstly to lives that were centred around God. Without that continued response of faith – an acknowledgement of God, a prayerful listening to His Word, a striving to live out His teachings – there would be nothing for us to marvel at.

Visiting sites such as Fernyhalgh and Stonyhurst, one should therefore see “through” each physical place to the faith of the men and women that built them. They might be of another era and walk of life, but they follow the same Lord Jesus. They are now united with Him in the great “cloud of witnesses” that watches over us, waiting for us to pick up the baton and run the good race in our own time, and so join them in our heavenly destination (cf. Hebrews 12:1).

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre

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Culture is the dimension in which our faith is brought to life​

Pope John Paul II addressing UNESCO IN 1980

Friday 5th July 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Culture is the dimension in which our precious faith is brought to life

Stefan Kaminski

The term ‘heritage centre’ carries with it a certain risk: that of associating it with old, even if valuable, artefacts, which do not necessarily have particular relevance to today beyond informing us of a bygone era.

 

Heritage, however, goes well beyond the material realm: in fact, the dictionary definition speaks of “cultural traditions that have been passed down from previous generations”. Of course, such cultural traditions find a certain embodiment and expression in works and artefacts; but to fixate purely on these as the sum total of our ‘heritage’ is to do a disservice to our cultural patrimony. When we do so, the concept of culture itself also becomes impoverished as a result.

 

When Pope St John Paul II addressed UNESCO in 1980 barely two years after his election, he emphatically reminded the organisation that the diverse traditions and eras of spiritual heritage and culture all have a common ground in our common human nature. Different cultures find their meeting place in the human being because culture “is a characteristic of human life as such”, he told the assembly. He went on to say that, “Human life is culture” because the cultural dimension is what distinguishes human life over and above any other animal life. Culture is therefore the societal expression of the spiritual and rational dimension of the human being: indeed, “culture is the specific way of man’s existing and being”.

 

This fact John Paul II traces back to the first accounts of humanity in the first two chapters of Genesis. There, the Lord’s entrustment of the earth to the dominion of mankind and His command to “cultivate the earth” is intrinsically linked to man’s (in the non-gender specific sense) creation in the image of God. From the relatively simple beginning of cultivating the soil, man’s God-given intellect enables the creation and nurture of a tradition of artistic creativity and scientific enquiry, forming the cultural dimension of the life of human society.

Pope John Paul II addressing UNESCO IN 1980

If John Paul II insisted on the unity of faith and reason, he similarly often repeated the mantra that ‘faith must become culture’. It could be said in fact, that culture is the primary dimension in which the unity of faith and reason should become visible. The fruits of our intellect – our work, our understanding of the world, our creative output – should be shaped by our faith, if indeed our faith is genuinely integrated as part of our lives. Such a culture will naturally be authentically human because it seeks what is good, beautiful and true: ultimately the Creator.

This is especially important in the home, the school and the parish, where faith is first handed on. If a good catechesis is not to find itself accused of hypocrisy, it needs be complemented by the promotion and nourishment of a culture that embodies the same principles. This requires Catholics who not only understand, believe and practice the tenets of their faith, but who have both the courage to challenge what does not lead to God, as well as the ability to speak their faith through what is true, good and beautiful in our culture. 

On the other hand, it is worth remembering the educative power of culture, regardless of its merits. The “primacy and essential task of culture… is education”, John Paul II reminded UNESCO. To disregard and dismiss as a fad those things in our culture that lead away from the truth and are objectively harmful is to lead astray our children. To leave at a distance that which is good and true in our culture is to deprive the next generation.

For this reason, part of the task that the Christian Heritage Centre has set itself is to promote an appreciation and understanding of the Christian influences in our cultural tradition. This heritage is not one that belongs to the history books or to a dim-and-distant past: it belongs to every modern-day Christian, since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and for ever” (Heb 13:8). Every Christian-informed cultural work is a potential catechetical tool, just as the highest creative achievements of the human spirit, be they Bach, Michelangelo, Shakespeare or Rembrandt, remain valid as exemplars of artistic and technical genius and as inspiration for the rest of time.

The Christian Heritage Centre’s first event is thus a study weekend on faith and literature, exploring two key themes in English writings: our place within the world and our own vision for ourselves. The Christian tradition has much to offer on both fronts: from the fundamental goodness of creation to virtue-based character formation, Chesterton, Austen, Green and Tolkien (amongst others) have all incorporated Christian wisdom into their writings.

The weekend will offer both lectures and guided group discussions, within a framework of prayer, to enable participants to have a deeper understanding of the Christian thinking behind some of the best-loved pieces in English literature. Alongside a broad selection of English texts, there will also be a certain focus on J.R.R. Tolkien’s works. Whilst it is offered with a wide audience in mind, the weekend will be of particular interest to parents and teachers concerned with the moral and cultural formation of their children and pupils, as well as to students of the humanities. Not to mention, of course, anyone simply wanting a weekend perusing literary classics in a beautiful setting!

Stefan Kaminski is the Director of The Christian Heritage Centre

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Finished? Theodore House has only just got started on its main mission​

Friday 7th June 2019

The CHC @ The Catholic Universe

Finished? Theodore House has only just got started on its main mission

Lord Alton of Liverpool

A Jewish rabbi once said that “the man who thinks he is finished, is finished.” And that is also true of charitable projects like the Christian Heritage Centre. Its flagship building, Theodore House, is now open and providing accommodation for retreats, conferences, formation, visitors exploring the Tolkien Trail, besides simply providing a wonderful place to recharge batteries in an overly frenetic world. But the project is still not complete. The library space in Theodore House needs developing, and funds raising for good shelving and the provision of a twenty-first century study centre and reading room.

In the world of Google, Snapchat, Instagram and general information overload, any institution that is serious about learning understands the need for and ever-greater challenge of getting people to read. Indeed, reading has been at the core of human learning for millennia, playing a pivotal role not only in our mental development but also in the formation of our character. Providing the opportunity for visitors to Theodore House to have access to good books and good writers, especially when some of the rooms in Theodore House are named after great Christian writers – C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien and G.K.Chesterton – is therefore high on the priority list. Not to forget, of course, that this was home to the Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The centrality of reading to learning is reflected in the naming of Theodore House’ Library for two singular Catholic teachers, Peter and Bridget Hardwick. ‪For many years Peter led the English Department at Stonyhurst College, and Bridget was the first woman on its staff. Peter was very widely read, having a great love of literature. 

He would have shared Mark Twain’s opinion that “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” The Hardwicks were everything you would expect inspired teachers to be: kind but firm, always encouragers, always on the lookout for whatever hidden talent they knew would be lurking somewhere not far beneath the surface.

However, teachers also need sustenance and encouragement, and The Christian Heritage Centre is mindful of the need to provide space for renewal and refreshment for the Christian teacher. The vocation of the teacher is, after all, a high one: the ultimate Teacher is Our Lord Himself, of all things that are good and true. Thus, the Great Teacher had no time for accusers who delighted in the sins and shortcomings of others; likewise, every child needs inspiring teachers to give them encouragement to help them deal with successes and failures, with life and death. It is perhaps no surprise that one of the great success stories of the Catholic Church in the UK are its schools. Waiting lists and high demand for places illustrate the confidence parents have in the values and ethos of Church schools. 

R.F.Delderfield’s moving story, “To Serve Them All My Days”, beautifully reminds us of one of the central principles of this ethos: namely, that to have the education of children entrusted to you is an amazing privilege. The story is the account of a World War One Second Lieutenant, David Powlett-Jones, a coal miner’s son from South Wales, who, in 1918, after three years of active service, is injured and shell shocked in the trenches – a rare survivor among “the lions led by donkeys.”

On being sent back to Britain, Powlett-Jones is sent to Bamfylde, a fictional independent school in North Devon, where he is told, while he recuperates, to go and teach history.  What is supposed to be a temporary post leads him to discover his true vocation as a remarkable teacher.  

Just as the wisdom of the Headmaster, Algy Herries, helps David Powlett-Jones, “P.J” or “Pow-Wow” (nicknamed because of his ability to moderate solutions through discussion and debate), to be healed emotionally he then uses the same skills to develop and encourage the pupils in his own charge – many of whom are experiencing their own traumas. Before the story ends with the outbreak of the Second World War, PJ has experienced tragedy, bereavement, rivalry, triumph, failure, distress and exhilaration. The book is aptly titled “To Serve Them All My Days”, because that is what any good teacher must do. 

Like PJ, the Hardwicks were examples of teachers who serve their charges with great love and faith, which ultimately find their real sense in the context of our earthly end.

Just before he died, Peter Hardwick gave the anthology of John Donne’s “The Divine Poems” to the Library. Included in the anthology is Donne’s Holy Sonnet on Death. It defiantly rebukes death, telling us that:

‪“Death be not proud, though some have called thee

‪Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, 

‪For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

‪Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.” 

‪Donne’s Sonnet recalls the central belief of Peter and Bridget Hardwick that beyond the grave is the promise of resurrection and eternal life:

‪“One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

‪And death shalt be no more, Death thou shalt die.”

‪They would have shared the opinion of the Benedictine monk who once remarked that the whole purpose of a Catholic education is to prepare us for death.

‪Such a preparation, as the Hardwicks demonstrated, involves living our life on earth well. They taught children to show great charity and sensitivity, all the more when things went wrong in someone else’s life. Like our Teacher, they particularly despised the tendency, so prevalent today, to gleefully humiliate people for their failings or when they fall on life’s Via Dolorosa. So rather unsurprisingly, the retired Hardwicks took a great interest in the treatment of offenders, encouraging retired colleagues to volunteer and use their teaching talents to provide literacy and other classes in the local prison. 

At the same time, Donne observes our own infinite capacity to disappoint ourselves and our friends. Reflecting on this in his “Hymn to God the Father”, he writes the following refrain to God: 

“When thou has done, thou hast not done, For I have more.”

And so he reaches the same conclusion as the Rabbi: not to imagine that we have finished. When it comes to educating both ourselves and others, such a reminder is particularly poignant. For the goal of our earthly education is to bring us before our Heavenly Teacher, and our education is not finished until we reach the end of our earthly pilgrimage.

Even a good library has its value for eternity!

For further details of how to help equip the Hardwick Library contact Stefan Kaminski at [email protected]