THE P
RTAL
The recusant tradition in English Catholicism is of course a noble one , consecrated by the blood of martyrs . At another level , it is also a complicated one – there was courage and noble endurance , as families held fast to the Catholic Faith
January 2011 Page 8
A Recusant Martyr
and passed it on from one generation to the next . But there was also a slow dwindling , a diminishing in numbers as the years of savage persecution gave way to inexorable marginalising .
Martyrdom and Patriotism
Martyrs can teach us so much – not just about courage and faith on a scale that is beyond anything with which we come into daily contact , but also about deep thinking , the sincere desire to seek and find the truth and to hold fast to it . There is also the question of patriotism – true love of country , that seeks the very best for the spiritual good of the nation , that is concerned with the nation ’ s soul .
Lose all for Christ
John Henry Newman once wrote something rather frightening about England . Writing at a time when our country ruled great tracts of the world , and was admired and honoured as a mighty force , with a Navy that patrolled the oceans and a language , traditions , and system of law being exported everywhere , he saw something crucial . We should be prepared , he said , to accept that God should allow Britain to fall from its status among the nations , to lose all its prestige , all its worldly greatness , if it could but regain the fullness of its Christian heritage in union with the whole Catholic Church .
Today
In the 21 st century , we live in a completely different Britain , in a world unimaginable to Newman . We no longer even speak much about the days when Britain had an empire , and the thought that there are still statues of Queen Victoria in odd corners of the globe makes us feel rather peculiar . The years of pride in empire belong to a distant past and even post-imperial anguish is now an irrelevant topic consigned to TV programmes discussing the 1950s and 60s . John Henry Newman ’ s meditation strikes us with great force : here we are , in just such a situation as he was attempting to describe . And for what are we praying ? What are we seeking ? And where do we find guidance ?
“ Lead kindly light ”
Newman was a patriot : he loved England – not just the spires of Oxford and the mucky bits of
Birmingham , but the English language and the ties of love binding friends and binding us all to our history . There is something of the ache of longing for home in “ Lead kindly light ”, written at sea when he was in anguish of mind : the message of the hymn is all about seeking God ’ s truth and knowing that God will never lead us astray and that we can trust that kindly light , but the poignancy and passion of the words perhaps owe something to the reality its having been written when far from things that were dear and familiar and with a knowledge that even that dearness could never assuage a soul ’ s longing .
“ the king ’ s good servant – but God ’ s first ”
This anguish is there in the English martyrs of long ago . It is there in Edmund Campion ’ s message to his “ own deare countrie ” written as he set out from Bohemia to join the English mission knowing that it could mean torture and death . It is there in the prayers for the Queen uttered in sincerity by martyrs even as they watched the knife and rope being made ready . It is there in St Thomas More ’ s pledge that he was “ the king ’ s good servant – but God ’ s first ”.
THE PORTAL
In THE PORTAL over the next months , we will be looking at the lives of some great English saints and martyrs , and at the – sometimes rather worrying – message that they give to us .
The author is conscious of the genuine courage faced by those who , in stepping out into the Ordinariate , conscious that history is being made , and that there are stories here that will one day be told and shared as part of continuing story of the passing-on the Faith in our land , conscious of a great gratitude to those who are making this step and of the special quality of these days as we pace together .
Joanna Bogle