Ninety-seven November 11ths Ago: Armistice Day

We in the States now honor all our veterans, living and dead, on November 11th.  The original reason for this holiday, observed throughout the Western world, was the Armistice with Germany in 1918.  On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the feast of St. Martin of Tours, the Roman soldier who renounced war, the First World War ended. 

The Armistice was signed about five a.m. on November 11th, and the news was rushed to the hostile armies.  Yet the fighting raged on, pointlessly, and men continued to die, right up to the last minute before the cease-fire took effect: a sobering testimony to the effects of original sin.  2,738 men perished on the last day of the war.

Except for a few centenarians who would have been children at the time, this fratricidal slaughter has passed out of living memory, and there are now no more living veterans.  The last American veteran of that war, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 at the age of 110.  The last veteran of the defeated Central Powers, Franz Künstler, died in 2008 at the age of 107.  The last veteran on either side, Florence Green of the United Kingdom, died in 2012, also at the age of 110.

*          *          *  

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

More Random Thoughts

-- The secular lay members of the Mystical Body of Christ have their own role to play in the history of salvation and a special dignity all our own that is different from that of priests and religious.  It is crass clericalism of a major order to think that the secular lay faithful are not fully participating in the life of the Church unless we are engaged in a flurry of activity at Mass or otherwise doing things that priests ought to be doing.

-- When we go chasing after imaginary "rights," we forfeit our authentic ones, both for ourselves and for others.  When we start chasing after the "right" to pursue our unbridled passions, even at the price of putting to death unwanted babies in the womb, we forfeit our right to a well-ordered society.  When we start chasing after the "right" of two people of the same sex to enter into "marriage," we forfeit the free exercise of religion.  When we start chasing after the "right" of one spouse to put away the other spouse when he gets tired of her and trade her in for a new model, we forfeit the right of the innocent spouse to a common life and consortium; we forfeit the right of the children to live in an intact family with both mother and father; and we forfeit the property rights of the spouses.

-- That last point bears a little closer examination.  Has anybody besides innocent spouses noticed that no-fault divorce is just a great, big redistribution scheme?  File for divorce, and suddenly, your property isn't your property anymore: the marital estate -- not to mention the separate income of the spouse who makes the most money, even if he is not the one who filed -- gets turned over to the legislature and the courts to distribute as they see fit.  This kind of power in the hands of government perverts the mission of government, which should be to protect society's building-block institutions.  That is why the law favors those who set out to torpedo their families, and leaves those who want to stay together without any recourse.

-- Think you know all about the "Red Scare" and the Hollywood blacklist?  Did you know, for instance, that every single one of the Hollywood Ten was in fact an active member of the Communist Party and had pledged his allegiance to the Soviet Union?  Did you know that, in an effort to gain control over the movie industry, the Communists instigated two bitter, violent and ultimately fruitless strikes of behind-the-scenes studio employees in 1945 and 1946?  Did you know that the blacklist was actually instituted by the studios themselves -- not by the government -- in response to the defiant performance of the Hollywood Ten in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947?  If not, then you need to read Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters: Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler by Allan H. Ryskind.

-- It is always the priests who have to add their little ad-libs to the Mass, or take out parts of the Mass they don't like, who can't faithfully say the black and do the red, who have the greatest reputations for humility and pastoral-mindedness.  This proves that we no longer have a clue in what humility consists.

-- I am happy to be able to report that it has been some years now since I have seen sand or twigs or nothing at all in local holy water fonts during Lent.  But if you are unfortunate enough to live in a place where that foolishness still goes on, don't just take it.  Carry holy water around (REAL holy water, blessed according to the Rituale Romanum -- find a priest willing to do this and create a big supply) and fill the empty fonts, dumping the debris when necessary.

-- Fr. Chad Ripperger is a big proponent of spiritual contracts.  A spiritual contract is when you ask God that, every time you say a particular prayer or do a particular good work, He understand you to be offering that prayer or work for some intention.  That way, you can always pray for the intention even when you are not consciously thinking about it at the time of the prayer or work.  Here is an example of some of my own spiritual contracts.  I like to say the Litany of the Sacred Heart after every Holy Communion.  I have marked particular lines in the Litany with the names of people for whose intention I want to pray every time I say that line.  Sometimes, I just say that line as an aspiration; and every time I do, I am praying for that person.  I also have spiritual contracts tied to some of my daily prayers.  The thought that I am praying for the intentions of people I love every time I say some part of those prayers helps me to persevere in prayer even when I don't feel like it.

-- In these days of institutional rottenness both in the Church and in the secular world, we are told that those who speak out against this rottenness and who try to restore what has been destroyed are "divisive" and "uncharitable."  Bl. Clemens Graf von Galen, the Lion of Münster, teaches us how to respond to this accusation:

My Christians! It will perhaps be held against me that by this frank statement I am weakening the home front of the German people during this war. I, on the contrary, say this: It is not I who am responsible for a possible weakening of the home front, but those who regardless of the war, regardless of this fearful week of terrible air-raids, impose heavy punishments on innocent people without the judgment of a court or any possibility of defence, who evict our religious orders, our brothers and sisters, from their property, throw them on to the street, drive them out of their own country. They destroy men's security under the law, they undermine trust in law, they destroy men's confidence in our government. And therefore I raise my voice in the name of the upright German people, in the name of the majesty of Justice, in the interests of peace and the solidarity of the home front; therefore as a German, an honourable citizen, a representative of the Christian religion, a Catholic bishop, I exclaim: we demand justice! If this call remains unheard and unanswered, if the reign of Justice is not restored, then our German people and our country, in spite of the heroism of our soldiers and the glorious victories they have won, will perish through an inner rottenness and decay.

-- Things in the Church have been so bad for so long that we are ready to leap on any little crumb of comfort -- any tiny sign, for instance, that in fact we have been mistaken all these years about our pastor or our bishop being a doctrinaire leftist, or that reverence will soon be restored in our local parishes -- in the frantic hope that it portends a change for the better.  But once we have devoured that crumb, we see that nothing has really changed, and we feel emptier than ever.  We may  have to endure even worse times before authentic reform comes.  But when it does come, we will not need to wonder whether it is here.  It will be unmistakable.  

The Immaculate Conception

Yesterday was the 73d anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; today, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, is the 73d anniversary of our declaration of war on Japan.  Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception is the patroness of these United States.  Have you ever thought about whether there is any significance in the fact that we entered the Second World War on our patronal feast?

This year it seems good to link to a couple of apologetics posts on the subject of the Immaculate Conception:

Mary, Conceived without Sin, You DID Know: why a certain popular song about Mary must never be sung in a Catholic Church

Potuit, Decuit, ergo Fecit: Why the Immaculate Conception Must Be True: a response to a self-professed apostate

Remember Pearl Harbor

That awful December 7th, 73 years ago, was also a Sunday.  At a stroke, the lives of millions were turned upside down and changed forever.

A Japanese camera captured that stroke on the morning of December 7, 1941.  The images of Japanese planes, tiny yet unmistakable, can be seen passing over Ford Island.  The U.S.S. West Virginia and U.S.S. Oklahoma, on the far side of the island, have just sustained torpedo hits. 

One of the iconic images of the Pearl Harbor attack: the U.S.S. Arizona burns.  The explosion of the Arizona's forward magazines claimed 1,177 of the 2,403 American lives lost at Pearl Harbor.  The crew of the nearby U.S.S. Tennessee attempts to fend off burning oil with fire hoses.  

The first two American chaplains to die in World War II -- one Protestant minister, one Catholic priest -- died at Pearl Harbor.  Protestant chaplain of the Arizona, Capt. Thomas Leroy Kirkpatrick, sprang to action in sick bay as soon as the attacks commenced.  Sick bay was so near to the forward magazines that he was killed almost instantly in the great explosion while ministering to the wounded.  Chaplain Kirkpatrick still lies with his crewmates in their sunken ship at the bottom of the harbor.

Chaplain Kirkpatrick's clock was recovered from the wreck of the Arizona, the hands frozen at the moment the forward magazines exploded.  

The U.S.S. Oklahoma, capsized and burning.  429 men perished aboard the Oklahoma.

The total number of the Oklahoma's dead would have reached 441 if it were not for Fr. Aloysius Schmitt, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Acting Chaplain.

On December 7, 1941, the young priest from St. Lucas, Iowa, had only been ordained for six years, appointed a chaplain for two and a half years, and had celebrated his 32nd birthday only three days earlier.  Did he have any suspicion that that was to be his last birthday, and indeed almost his last day on earth?  Yet although death came to Fr. Schmitt suddenly, it did not find him unprepared, nor even without Viaticum: when the Japanese attack began, he had just finished celebrating Mass.  

When disaster struck, Fr. Schmitt went to sick bay to minister to the wounded and dying. Mission Capodanno gives the following moving account of what happened next:

When the Oklahoma was struck and water poured into her hold, the ship began to list and roll over. Many men were trapped. Schmitt found his way -- with other crew members -- to a compartment where only a small porthole provided enough space to escape.

Chaplain Schmitt helped other men, one by one, to crawl to safety. When it became his turn, the chaplain tried to get through the small opening. As he struggled to exit through the porthole, he became aware that others had come into the compartment from which he was trying to escape. As he realized that the water was rising rapidly and that escape would soon be impossible, he insisted on being pushed back through the hole so that he could help others who could get through the opening more easily. Accounts from eyewitnesses that have been published in the Arizona Memorial newsletter relate that the men protested, saying that he would never get out alive, but he insisted, "Please let go of me, and may God bless you all."

Fr. Schmitt, martyr of charity, was posthumously awarded the Navy/Marine Corps Medal for his selfless bravery, which saved the lives of twelve crewmen who otherwise would have been trapped in the sinking ship.

Remember Pearl Harbor, soon to pass from living memory.  Remember and do not forget.

Angelic Children and "Hedge-Priests"

Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914)

Some of the most worthwhile literature, both fiction and non-fiction, is that which leads us to other worthwhile literature.  I came upon something interesting today while re-reading Hillaire Belloc's absorbing Characters of the Reformation.  In his chapter on Elizabeth I of England, Belloc mentions a pamphlet by "Hugh Benson."  This did not mean much to me when I first read this chapter a few years ago; but now that I know who Robert Hugh Benson was, this reference caught my attention.  Robert Hugh Benson was an Anglican priest who entered the Catholic Church in 1903 and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood the following year.  He was also a celebrated author: his excellent novel, Lord of the World (1907) is a fictionalized account of the coming of Antichrist.

The Benson pamphlet in question, published in 1906, compares and contrasts the death of Mary Tudor with that of her sister, Elizabeth, half a century later.  It is shocking, at least to anyone brought up on the mythology of "Bloody Mary" and "Good Queen Bess," and sobering, and provides much food for meditation.

The Death-Beds of "Bloody Mary" and "Good Queen Bess"

By Robert Hugh Benson, M.A.

" 'BLOODY MARY,' a sour, bigoted heartless, superstitious woman, reigned five years, and failed in everything which she attempted. She burned in Smithfield hundreds of sincere godly persons; she went down to her grave, hated by her husband, despised by her servants, loathed by her people, and condemned by God. 'Good Queen Bess' followed her, a generous, stout-hearted strong-minded woman, characteristically English; and reigned forty-five years. Under her wise and beneficent rule her people prospered; she was tolerant in religion and severe only to traitors; she went down to her grave after a reign of unparalleled magnificence and success, a virgin queen, secure in the loyalty of her subjects, loved by her friends, in favour with God and man."

So we can imagine some modern Englishman summing up the reigns of these two half-sisters who ruled England successively in the sixteenth century -- an Englishman better acquainted with history-books than with history, and in love with ideas rather than facts.  It is interesting, therefore, to pursue our investigations a little further, and to learn in what spirit each of these two queens met her end, what was the account given by those about them, what were the small incidents, comments, and ideas that surrounded the moments which for each of them were the most significant of their lives. Death, after all, reveals what life cannot; for at death we take not only a review of our past, but a look into the future, and the temper of mind with which we regard eternity is of considerable importance as illustrating our view of the past. At death too, if at any time, we see ourselves as we are, and display our true characters. There is no use in keeping up a pose any longer. We drop the mask, and show our real faces.

We should expect, then, if we took the view of the ordinary Englishman, that Mary Tudor would die a prey to superstition and terror; the memory of her past and the prospect of her future would surely display her as overwhelmed with gloom and remorse, terrified at the thought of meeting God, a piteous spectacle of one who had ruled by fear and was now ruled by it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, dying full of honour and years, would present an edifying spectacle of a true Christian who could look back upon a brilliant and successful past, a reign of peace and clemency, of a life unspotted with superstition and unblameable in its religion; and, forward to the reward of her labours and the enjoyment of heaven. There will be no mummery or darkness round her bed, as round her sister's.

Let us turn then to history and see how far our expectations are justified by it.

Our first extract will be from Clifford's Life of Jane Dormer. This lady was one of Mary's greatest friends, a woman of extreme simplicity and beauty of character, who, after refusing many other offers, finally married the Duke de Feria, after her mistress' death. She was in Mary's service during all the years of her reign, and was actually with her when she died.

The Death-bed of "Bloody Mary."

"When it chanced that Jane was not well, as that she could not well attend upon the Queen, it is strange, the care and regard her Majesty had of her, more like a mother or sister, than her Queen and mistress. As in the last days of this blessed Queen, she being at Hampton Court and to remove to London, Jane having some indisposition, her Majesty would not suffer her to go in the barge by water, but sent her by land, in her own litter, and her physician to attend her. And, being come to London, the first that she risked for was Jane Dormer, who met her at the stairfoot and told her that she was reasonably well.

"The Queen answered, 'So am not I,' -- being about the end of August, 1558. So took her chamber and never came abroad again. . . .

"It pleased Almighty God that this sickness was her last, increasing daily, until it brought her to a better life. Her sickness was such as made the whole realm to mourn, yet passed by her with most Christian patience. She comforted those of them that grieved about her, she told them what good dreams she had, seeing many little children, like angels, play before her, singing pleasing notes, giving her more than earthly comfort, and thus persuaded all ever to have the holy fear of God before their eyes, which would free them from all evil, and be a curb to all temptations. She asked them to think that whatsoever came to them was by God's permission, and ever to have confidence that He would in mercy turn all to the best."

[Life of Jane Dormer; sometime Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen, afterwards Duchess of Feria; by Clifford, quoted by Miss Stone.]

Cardinal Pole, who was ill at the same time as the Queen, and who died a few hours after her, thus writes to Philip a few days before her death:

"During her malady, the Queen did not fail to take the greatest care of herself, following the advice of her physicians" (quoted by Miss Stone) and Monsignor Priuli, the Cardinal's friend and secretary, thus writes of the illness and death of them both: --

"During their illness they confessed themselves repeatedly, and communicated most devoutly, and, two days before their end, they each received Extreme Unction; after which it seemed as if they rallied, and were much comforted, according to the fruit of that holy medicine."

One of the things about which Mary was most anxious, was the future of England. It must be remembered that, at that time in English history, a sovereign had a great deal of influence in the appointment of a successor. Perhaps it is not possible to say that Mary could have prevented Elizabeth's succession, but, if she had been the spiteful and revengeful woman that her enemies suppose, she could at least have given Elizabeth a great deal of trouble, by bequeathing the crown to her husband or to some other Catholic claimant. But she was simple enough to trust Elizabeth's word, and to believe that when that lady promised solemnly to preserve the Catholic faith, she meant what she said. After all, Elizabeth had been regular in hearing two Masses a day for at least a year or two; she had protested her orthodoxy even with tears, again and again, and Mary preferred to trust her sister, and to bequeath the crown to her rather than to treat her as one in whom it was impossible to put any confidence. Here is Clifford's account of the matter: --

"Queen Mary in her last sickness sent Commissioners to examine her [Elizabeth] about religion, to whom she answered, 'Is it not possible that the Queen will be persuaded I am a Catholic, having so often protested it?' and thereupon did swear and vow that she was a Catholic. This is confirmed by the Duke of Feria's letter to the King, who in this sickness of the Queen visited the Lady Elizabeth. He certified him that she did profess the Catholic Religion, and believed the Real Presence, and was not like to make any alteration for the principal points of religion." [Life of Jane Dormer, quoted by Miss Stone.] Elizabeth, as we know now, kept her word just long enough to secure her succession; she was crowned with Catholic rites by a Catholic bishop, and then immediately set to work to break her promise. She began by striking at the very heart of the Religion she had sworn to preserve, by her action in forbidding the Elevation of the Host at Mass, and so proceeded to re-establish the "Reformation principles" which she had explicitly abjured. Here is the account which Mr. David Morris B.A. , an historian of strong Protestant views gives of her energy: --

"Thus the Reformation was again the law of England and the work of Pole and Mary faded away. 'The nuns and monks were scattered once more, the crucifixes came down from the roodlofts, the Maries and Johns from their niches, and in Smithfield Market, at the cross-ways and street-corners, blazed into bonfires, as in the old days of Cromwell.' . . . These changes were not carried out without much opposition. . . . All the bishops, excepting the Bishop of Llandaff, refused the oath of supremacy, and were consequently deprived of their sees."

It was in this manner that Elizabeth observed her promise made to her sister. However, this is by the way; we must return to our subject.

Of the final scene of Mary's life we have a tolerably detailed account, taken down from the relation of Jane Dormer herself, who was one of the few friends who remained with Mary to the end. Most of her other attendants had already made their way to Hatfield, to pay their court to the Princess who would presently be in power. This account is an interesting comment on the way in which Mary's religion was a support to her in the crisis, and forms an agreeable comparison with the same element in her sister's death nearly fifty years later. Of course Mary's devotion in no way proves the truth of her faith; it is only an evidence of her absolute and serene sincerity.

"That morning hearing Mass, which was celebrated in her chamber, she being at the last point (for no day passed in her life that she heard not Mass), and although sick to death, she heard it with good attention, zeal, and devotion, as she answered in every part with him who served the Priest, such yet was the quickness of her senses and memory. And when the priest came to that part to say, 'Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,' she answered plainly and distinctly to every one, 'Miserere nobis, Miserere nobis, Dona nobis pacem.'

"Afterwards, seeming to meditate something with herself, when the Priest took the Sacred Host to consume it, she adored it with her voice and countenance, presently closed her eyes and rendered her blessed soul to God. This the Duchess [Jane Dormer] hath related to me, the tears pouring from her eyes, that the last thing which the Queen saw in this world was her Saviour and Redeemer in the Sacramental Species, no doubt to behold Him presently after in His glorious Body in heaven. A blessed and glorious passage, 'Anima mea cum anima ejus.'" [From Life of Jane Dormer, quoted by Miss Stone.]

Mary thought it her duty also, in common with most Christian people, to make some provision for the disposal of her body and her goods after her death -- again offering a comparison with Elizabeth's action. She had already impoverished herself with efforts to restore to the service of God what her father had taken "to his own use"; and on her death-bed she made further dispositions in the same direction. In her will and codicil, every page of which she signed painfully with her own hand, she bequeaths her soul to the mercy of Almighty God, and to the "good prayers and help of the most pure and blessed Virgin St. Mary, and of all the Holy Company of heaven"; and her body to be buried at the discretion of her executors. She leaves large sums to the poor, to the Religious Houses which she had re-founded, to the poor scholars at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and to Hospitals, especially to one for disabled soldiers; she also leaves legacies to her ladies and her servants, as well as to her husband and executors. This will was entirely disregarded by Elizabeth, and lay, as Miss Stone remarks, in obscurity for over three hundred years.

So far, then, we are agreeably surprised. There is no terror of the future, or agonised remorse: there is repentance, of course, and confession of sin and shortcomings, but that is scarcely to Mary's reproach. There is tranquil confidence in religion and the mercy of God; she encourages her friends, makes her will, trusts her sister, and gives up her soul during what was to her, throughout her life, the most sacred and holy action of the day. Whether or not her religion was true is not our affair now; we are only concerned with the way in which it was her support during her last moments, and even if we are not satisfied as to its objective truth, we can at least be satisfied with its power to uphold one who believed in it with all her heart. In this sense, if in no other, we can say, with Jane Dormer, "A blessed and glorious passage! May my soul be with hers!"

We turn now to

The Death-bed of "Good Queen Bess";

and, if we happen to be of the religion of that lady, and an admirer of her character and achievements, we shall expect to find her last moments marked with the same kind of incidents and aspirations as those of her superstitious sister. If a false religion can give peace and serenity, a true religion can do no less; in fact we might reasonably expect it to do a good deal more, considering the conspicuous advantages that it gave to Elizabeth, at any rate from a worldly point of view. We should expect, also, that a religion which claimed to be an improvement upon Popery should at any rate be free from superstition -- at least in the case of such a professor as the common-sense Elizabeth. Whether that was so or not we shall hear from Elizabeth's companions.

We begin with an extract from the account given by Lady Southwell, one of the women in attendance on her a few weeks before her death: --

"Her Majesty being in very good health one day, Sir John Stanhope, Vice-Chamberlain, came and presented her Majesty with a piece of gold of the bigness of an angel, full of characters which he said an old woman in Wales had bequeathed to her on her death-bed and thereupon he discoursed how the said testatrix, by virtue of the piece of gold, lived to the age of 120 years, and in that age, having all her body withered and consumed, and wanting Nature to nourish her, she died, commanding the said piece of gold to be carefully sent to her Majesty, alleging, further, that as long as she wore it on her body she could not die.

"The Queen in confidence took the said gold and hung it about her neck . . .

" Though she became not suddenly sick, yet she daily decreased of her rest and feeding, and within fifteen days she fell downright ill, and the cause being wondered at by my Lady Scrope, with whom she was very private and confidant, being her near kinswoman, her Majesty told her (commanding her to conceal the same), 'that she saw one night her own body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire.' This vision was at Whitehall, a little before she departed for Richmond, and was testified by another lady, who was one of the nearest about her person, of whom the Queen demanded 'Whether she was not wont to see sights in the night?' telling her of the bright flame she had seen. . . .

Afterwards, in the melancholy of her sickness she desired to see a true looking-glass, which in twenty years before she had not seen, but only such a one as on purpose was made to deceive her sight, which true looking-glass being brought her, she presently fell exclaiming at all those flatterers which had so much commended her, and they durst not after come into her presence. [LADY SOUTHWELL, quoted by Miss Strickland.]

While Mary sees heavenly children playing and singing about her bed, Elizabeth sees her own body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire, and examines her looking-glass to see if she were really as beautiful as her courtiers declared. But to continue; Sir Robert Carey writes: --

"When I came to Court I found the Queen ill-disposed, and she kept her inner lodging; yet she, hearing of my arrival, sent for me. I found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her, I kissed her hand, and told her it was my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and in health, which I wished might long continue. She took me by the hand and wrung it hard and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well,' and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days, and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humour, but I found by her it was too deeply rooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed . . . From that day forwards she grew worse and worse. She remained upon her cushions four days and nights at the least. All about could not persuade her either to take any sustenance or go to bed." [SIR ROBERT CAREY.]

And again, the French Ambassador writes to his master: -- [March 19.]

"(The) Queen Elizabeth (hath) been very much indisposed for the last fourteen days, having scarcely slept at all during that period, and eaten much less than usual, being seized with such a restlessness that, though she had no decided fever, she felt a great heat in her stomach and a continual thirst, which obliged her every moment to take something to abate it. Some ascribed her disorder to her uneasiness with regard to Lady Arabella Stuart; others to her having been obliged by her Council to grant a pardon to her Irish rebel, Tyrone. Many were of opinion that her distress of mind was caused by the death of Essex; but all agreed that before her illness became serious, she discovered an unusual melancholy, both in her countenance and manner.

[March 22.]

"The Queen of England had been somewhat better the day before, but was that day worse, and so full of chagrin and so weary of life that, notwithstanding all the entreaties of her councillors and physicians for her to take the proper medicine and means necessary for her relief, she refused everything." [DE BEAUMONT, quoted by Miss S.]

"Bloody Mary," then, lies in bed, hearing Mass each morning, receiving the sacraments with devotion and serenity, looking back indeed on a short life that had apparently failed, but to an eternal future which seemed full of hope. "Good Queen Bess," in the midst of honours and success, after a long and magnificent reign, does not sleep; she lies on cushions; it is suggested by her friends that her melancholy may arise from having been compelled to pardon her enemy; and there is no word as yet, of religion. It can scarcely, surely, be the past which she regrets! Has she not prospered in all to which she has put her hand? Can it be death, judgement, and eternity of which she is afraid? And, if so, is it possible that the religion for which she has sacrificed her plighted word, has no comfort for her now?

Her visions, too! Her own body, "exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire," -- is that a mere superstition with nothing to justify it, or is it something worse?

Her own kinsman adds another terrible detail or two; let us hear them in Miss Strickland's words:--

"The [Lord] Admiral [Howard] came and knelt beside her where she sat among her cushions sullen and unresigned; he kissed her hands, and with tears implored her to take a little nourishment. After much ado he prevailed so far, that she received a little broth from his hands, he feeding her with a spoon. But when he urged her to go to bed, she angrily refused, and then in wild and wandering words hinted of phantasma that had troubled her midnight couch.

" 'If he were in the habit of seeing such things in his bed,' she said, as she did when in hers, he would not persuade her to go there' . . .

"When Cecil and his colleagues were gone, the Queen, shaking her head piteously, said to her brave kinsman --

" 'My lord, I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck.' The Lord Admiral reminded her of her wonted courage, but she replied, desponding:

" 'I am tied, I am tied; and the case is altered with me.' "

[MISS STRICKLAND.]

She was carried to bed soon, but again left it. The French Ambassador continues: --

"The Queen continued to grow worse, and appeared in a manner insensible, not speaking above once in two or three hours, and at last remained silent for four and twenty, holding her finger almost continually in her mouth, with her rayless eyes open and fixed on the round, where she sat on cushions, without rising or resting herself, and was greatly emaciated by her long watching and . . . . This morning the Queen's Music (i.e. the choir) has gone to her. I believe she means to die as gaily as she has lived. . . ."

[DE BEAUMONT.]

"The Queen hastens to her end, and is given up by all her physicians. They have put her to bed almost by force, after she had sat on cushions for ten days, and has rested barely an hour each day in her clothes."

[DE BEAUMONT.]

About this time Lady Southwell adds a significant story: --

"The two ladies-in-waiting discovered the queen of hearts with a nail of iron knocked through the forehead, and thus fastened to the bottom of her Majesty's chair; they durst not pull it out, remembering that the like thing was used to the old Countess of Sussex, and afterwards proved a witchcraft, for which certain persons were hanged."

[LADY SOUTHWELL, quoted by Miss S.]

Let Miss Strickland continue: --

"Lady Guildford then in waiting on the Queen, and leaving her in an almost breathless sleep in her privy chamber, went out to take a little air, and met her Majesty, as she thought, three or four chambers off. Alarmed at the thought of being discovered in the act of leaving the royal patient alone, she hurried forward in some trepidation in order to excuse herself, when the apparition vanished away. Lady Guildford returned, terrified, to the chamber; but there lay Queen Elizabeth, still in the same lethargic motionless slumber in which she had left her."

It is really rather appalling -- this atmosphere of superstitious fear that lay round the Queen. Whether Lady Guildford was mistaken, or whether that uneasy spirit in some manner manifested itself in the gloom of the gallery, it is impossible to know. But at least we know the mood in which the Court found itself -- this Court which dared not run from this dreadful old woman as its predecessor had run from her sister, to pay homage to the rising sun.

As regards her attitude to her own Church ministers we have the following significant facts. "When she was near her end," writes Miss Strickland, "the Council sent to her the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates, at the sight of whom she was much offended, cholericly rating them, 'bidding them be packing,' saying 'she was no atheist, but she knew full well they were but hedge-priests.' "

Did she think then, one wonders, of men who were not "hedge-priests" of her making, but of a Church which claims to rule, not to be ruled by princes: a Church, too, to which she had promised allegiance and with whose rites she had been crowned -- men who under her orders had suffered a death, compared with which the "fires of Smithfield" were mercy itself, for no other crime than that of ministering to the souls of men the Word and Sacraments that were still all but universal in Christendom? Mary had, indeed, burned men for heresy, according to the laws of the realm; it had been left for tolerant Elizabeth, the champion of Private Judgement, to strip and disembowel living priests and laymen for the crime of allowing their Private Judgement to differ from her own. One cannot help wondering whether she now remembered Campion, Briant, Sherwin, and the rest -- and the rack, and the rope, and the butcher's knife, and cauldron; whether the thought crossed her mind that perhaps such men as these might have had a message to her soul that others could not have.

However, it was too late, and as death became imminent, even "hedge-priests" were better than none at all. At least they might soothe her for a few minutes, even if they could do no more.

"About six at night," writes Sir Robert Carey, "she made signs for the Archbishop and her chaplains to come to her. . . . Her Majesty lay upon her back, with one hand in the bed, and the other without. The Bishop kneeled by her and examined her first of her faith, and she so punctually observed all his several questions, by lifting up her eyes and holding up her hand, as it was a comfort to all beholders. Then the good man told her plainly what she was, and what she was to come to; and though she had been long a great Queen here upon earth, yet shortly she was to yield an account of her stewardship to the King of kings. After this he began to pray, and all that were by did answer him. . . . The Queen made a sign with her hand. My sister Scrope, knowing the meaning, told the Bishop the Queen desired he would pray still. He did so for a long half-hour after, and then thought to leave her. The second time she made sign to have him continue in prayer. He did so for half an hour more, with earnest cries to God for her soul's health, which he uttered with that fervency of spirit as the Queen to all our sight much rejoiced thereat, and gave testimony to us all of her Christian and comfortable end."

For even such dumb signs as these, interpreted by Carey's charity, I suppose all sincere Christians must be thankful, but they are all the reassurance we can get.

There is no word of repentance or of her desire for God's pardon; there is no suggestion apparently from her or from any other that it would be at least seemly for a dying woman to receive what she would have called "the most comfortable sacrament of Christ's body and blood." No; the "hedge-priests" prayed long and loud by the bed; the Queen made occasional signs for them to continue; and the bystanders rejoiced at such a "Christian and comfortable end." That, then, was what the "Reformed Religion," the "glorious light" of which Henry VIII of matrimonial memory was the dawn and Virgin Elizabeth the full-orbed day -- this was all that it could do for her: and, at three o'clock in the morning, "Good Queen Bess" died and appeared before God.

As regards her care for the future and the disposition of her property, we read in Nichols's Progresses that "she made no will, neither gave anything away; so that they which come after find a well-furnished jewel-house, and a rich wardrobe of more than 2,000 gowns, with all things else answerable," -- which must have been a great satisfaction to all concerned.

But all this proves nothing?

Oh, no! it proves nothing!

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, LONDON.

May, 1906.

The Winter Solstice

Once again, we arrive at the shortest day of the year.  As the year progresses, the sun appears not only to move from east to west, but also to trace a path farther north or south in the sky.  This northerly or southerly travel continues until the solstice, when the sun appears to stand still and begin to reverse course.  Today is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, which, for us, means the shortest day and the longest night of the year.  After this, the hours of daylight will increase, and the darkness will decrease.

Which may have something to do with the fact that Christmas falls right about this time.  According to the Julian calendar, in use at the time of Christ, the winter solstice was regarded as occurring on -- December 25th.  To the extent they acknowledge the existence of Christ at all, the modernists and skeptics, who hold that we created God and not the other way around, like to cast doubt on the historical validity of December 25th as the day of His birth.  But it was God Who created us, and gave us our taste for symbolism, and He satisfies it without the need for us to make up for any lack of ingenuity on His part.  Setting aside the difficulties of perfectly transposing the Gregorian and Julian calendars, the simplest and therefore probably true explanation for why we celebrate Christmas on December 25th is because Jesus Christ really was born on December 25th.

As I hope I may never tire of pointing out, the changes of season are freighted with spiritual significance, and not because we give them that significance ourselves in order to satisfy some primitive instinct for religion.  They are significant because God, Who is a God of Order and Harmony, interwove nature and salvation history.  The winter solstice coincides with Christmas, when the Light of the World enters the world and the days begin to lengthen.  The summer solstice, when the days begin to shorten, coincides with the Nativity of John the Baptist, who said that he must decrease while the Savior increased.  The vernal equinox coincides with the Feast of the Annunciation,  the beginning of the Incarnation and the end of the winter of Satan's reign.  It also coincides with Good Friday, when the Cross became the Key that opened the gates of heaven, barred by sin.  Then comes the spoliation of hell, and Easter, which marks its decisive defeat, and takes place on the first Sunday on or after the first full moon on or after the equinox (say that one five times fast).  There are no huge feasts that coincide with the autumnal equinox; my own theory on that (and it's only my opinion) is that, since it coincides with the time for harvest, it stands for the harvest of souls at the End of Time.

Next to all this, neo-pagan change-of-season festivals are pretty lightweight.  This Christmas, may we all seat ourselves at the rich banquet of Christianity, and pass up the New Age baloney sandwich.

Remember Pearl Harbor

One of the best museum exhibits I have ever seen was held at the Reagan Library during the early to mid '90s.  Entitled "World War II: In Their Own Words," the exhibit took you from the last days of peace at Pearl Harbor through to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and featured artifacts from every noteworthy event of the war.  In accordance with the theme, the exhibit also featured written documents, letters, diaries, and memoirs from every person of note on both sides, and from soldiers who recorded the events in journals as they happened. The Pearl Harbor section of the exhibit featured Franklin Roosevelt's pince-nez, and the typescript of his Day of Infamy speech with his penciled corrections.  One of the most poignant and gripping items in the whole exhibit was a Navy pharmacist's mate's white tunic, covered in blood stains from helping with the wounded after the attack.  It was quite a small tunic; the man wearing it had to have been very young.

Now, almost three quarters of a century after that fateful day, the United States is again in peril, only this time, from within.  Very few Pearl Harbor veterans have lived to see the 72nd anniversary of the date that would live in infamy.  I wonder how many of them are happy about the path taken by the country they suffered for so long ago.

December 5, 1933: A Toast to a Well-Deserved Failure

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can't stop what it's meant to stop.

We like it.

It's left a trail of graft and slime,

It's filled our land with vice and crime,

It don't prohibit worth a dime.

Nevertheless, we're for it.

Franklin P. Adams

It has just been brought to my attention that it was 80 years ago today that the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- Prohibition -- was repealed.  Now it isn't every day that an injustice gets remedied in our corrupt world, so when one is, that is a moment to celebrate and commemorate.

Yes, Prohibition was an injustice.  It was an unjust burden on individual liberty to outlaw drinking for all, even in moderation, because of the relative few who abused drink.  Deliberate drunkenness is a serious sin, because it deprives us of our capacity to reason; but there is nothing, however legitimate, that can't be abused.  Liberty itself can be abused, and is, every minute of every day; but that would not justify locking everybody up on the off-chance.  Besides, despite the religious justifications advanced for Prohibition, the absolute prohibition of alcohol is contrary to Scripture.  Our Lord Himself turned water into wine at the wedding at Cana: not grape juice, but actual wine, with alcohol and everything.  (Question: at the time of Christ, was there such a thing as non-fermenting grape juice?)  He also drank wine Himself -- for which the Pharisees criticized him (Matthew 11:19).  And St. Paul advises his brother bishop, Timothy, to take wine for his health (1 Timothy 5:23).  

Prohibition was an outstanding example of America's curious ideas about morality.  In his essay "On American Morals," G.K. Chesterton reflects on an article by an American writer calling for the abolition of what she called "righteousness," on the grounds that "righteousness" was incompatible with reality.  He sums up the American attitude:

The standard of abstract right and wrong apparently is this. That a girl by smoking a cigarette makes herself one of the company of the fiends of hell. That such an action is much the same as that of a sexual vampire. That a young man who continues to drink fermented liquor must necessarily be "evil" and must deny the very existence of any difference between right and wrong. That is the "standard of abstract right and wrong" that is apparently taught in the American home. And it is perfectly obvious, on the face of it, that it is not a standard of abstract right or wrong at all. That is exactly what it is not. That is the very last thing any clear-headed person would call it. It is not a standard; it is not abstract; it has not the vaguest notion of what is meant by right and wrong. It is a chaos of social and sentimental accidents and associations, some of them snobbish, all of them provincial, but, above all, nearly all of them concrete and connected with a materialistic prejudice against particular materials. To have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever; and to make certain local likes and dislikes as a substitute. We need not be very surprised if the young man repudiates these meaningless vetoes as soon as he can; but if he thinks he is repudiating morality, he must be almost as muddle-headed as his father. And yet the writer in question calmly proposes that we should abolish all ideas of right and wrong, and abandon the whole human conception of a standard of abstract justice, because a boy in Boston cannot be induced to think that a nice girl is a devil when she smokes a cigarette.

This muddled thinking persists to this day.  There are still many who look upon even the moderate use of alcohol and tobacco as vices, in a country that countenances, among other things, promiscuity, sexual deviancy, abortion and euthanasia.  Indeed, it is practically a vice to regard a vice as a vice.  We really do not have a standard of right or wrong.  William F. Buckley, Jr. once commented: "You can take the most disorderly, self-indulgent twenty-one-year-old sailing; he may smoke pot in his cabin while fornicating, but he will not throw the trash overboard.  How come?"  It is a species of the "formless fanaticism" that Chesterton called the great danger of the American temperament.

The failure of Prohibition is attributed, at least by some, to the shortcomings of law enforcement; by others, to the shortcomings of men in general; but the fact is, despite its noble intentions, Prohibition deserved to fail.  Tonight, before I go to bed, I will pull a cork and drink a toast to the correction of this extravagant societal over-correction.

“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,

There’s always laughter and good red wine.

At least I’ve always found it so.

Benedicamus Domino!”

― Hilaire Belloc

Morton's Fork

I emerge from underneath my rock long enough to comment on the business of Barack Obama versus Vladimir Putin.

I must say, I am rather alarmed by the admiration a lot of people on my end of the political spectrum seem to have for Vladimir Putin, and their readiness to yield to the temptation to compare him favorably to Barack Obama.  There is no doubt that Barack Obama has utter contempt for the rule of law, the free market, the integrity of the family, Western Civilization in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and that he is making the United States a laughingstock on the world stage.  But let us not forget that the Soviet Union, Putin's old stomping ground, was a Machiavellian world of lies, intrigues, betrayals, and assassinations, and that persons did not flourish in such a world by being nice.  We should not be quick to embrace as "Leader of the Free World" a man who rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the KGB.  

We should also keep in mind that great evils frequently come in pairs, so that, seeking to oppose one, the undiscerning are driven into the arms of the other. We had a striking example of that during the last century.  Nazism and Communism were both atheistic, materialistic, religion-hating, tradition-hating, totalitarian ideologies; yet some people joined the Communist Party in order to oppose Nazism, and others became Nazis in order to fight the Communists.  All were wrong, and millions paid the price.

Today we live in equally confused times.  We are sure to pay the price for having deliberately unmoored ourselves from our Christian heritage.

Get. This. Book.

This book.  Right here.  Get it.
Now you know what it looks like.
You have no excuses.

I remember driving to work the day after Obamacare passed.  I thought about the obnoxious Hillary Clinton pushing nationalized health care nearly 20 years earlier, and how widely -- and rightly -- derided she and her pure federal power grab were then.  I thought about this immense bill, read by nobody, containing God-knows-what, being ramrodded through Congress with little or no deliberation and without regard to what the American people thought about it.  I thought about the unconstitutionality, and even anti-constitutionality of this bill that purports to give the federal government sway over every crack and crevice of our lives, far beyond its constitutionally enumerated powers.  Driving through downtown Boise, I looked around at the shops and restaurants and other little businesses that line Main Street, and the people walking or biking or driving to work.  Everything looked the same as before.  But it was not the same.  The country was not the same.  The realization lay like a dead darkness on the heart.  A line had been crossed.  We had been edging closer and closer to that line for at least the last century, until the Reagan Era, when we retreated from it for a while; but then, after Reagan left office, we hurtled back toward it.  Now, on March 24, 2010, we had crossed it.  We had crossed over into territory that looked like the America we had grown up in, but really was not.

Of course, even the America that my Generation X grew up in was nothing like as free as the one the previous generation grew up in, which was nothing like as free as the one the generation before knew.  Thanks to the New Deal and the Great Society, the burgeoning administrative state was already going full bore by the time Generation X came along.  Now, as GenXers approach middle age, the statists no longer even bother with the rhetoric of liberty.  After decades of pushing abortion and contraceptives, breaking up the family, clearing the way for us to indulge our lusts without restraint, and training schoolkids in veiled Marxist ideology and the Marxist version of history, they consider it safe to proceed openly with their takeover of our lives, without caring what we think about it.  This is the judgment we have brought upon ourselves for scorning the laws of God and man, unmooring ourselves from our Christian and constitutional roots.

In other words, we had it coming.  But does that mean we should just give up, resign ourselves to the punishment, and let our nation be destroyed?  By no means.  Indeed, we have a duty to try to extricate ourselves from our current predicament, exhausting every lawful means available short of violence.  Mark Levin's new book, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, points out a solution that our Founding Fathers left us, foreseeing a day when the federal government would get to be too big for its britches.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution contains procedures for amending the Constitution.  It provides (emphasis added):

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article [dealing with powers denied to Congress]; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Levin proposes a convention, called by two thirds of the states, for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution.  This means of amending the Constitution has been attempted, without success, on numerous occasions, and currently lies dormant.  But the Framers included it, precisely so that the States could have recourse against a federal government run amuck.  The Article V convention is not a constitutional convention that makes the whole Constitution up for grabs: the Constitution itself does not provide for its own abolition.  But then, the Constitution is effectively already up for grabs, and has been for decades.  Large swathes of it, such as the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, have been completely laid waste; other parts, such as the Commerce Clause, have been distorted beyond all reason and sense until they are wholly alien to what the Framers intended.  The point of Levin's plan is to restore the Constitution as a guarantor of liberty instead of the curtailer of it that the statists have made it; to breathe life back into its now dead letters; and, above all, to restore the sovereignty of the States, and rescue them from their current status as mere vestigial appendages of the federal government.

Levin is careful to point out that his plan is not meant to be a panacea, or definitive.  His plan does not address important social and moral issues that could, and should, be the subject of proposed amendments to the Constitution, such as the legal personhood of the unborn and the definition of marriage.  Instead, though not incompatible with the foregoing, it focuses on systemic, root problems that have overthrown the Framers' carefully constructed system of checks and balances and led to the consolidation of tyrannical power in Washington and the diminution of individual liberty.  In broad outline, he proposes the following amendments:

-- Term limits on members of Congress

-- The repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment (popular election of Senators)

-- Term limits on Justices of the Supreme Court and supermajority legislative overrides of Supreme Court decisions

-- Restrictions on federal spending

-- Restrictions on federal taxation

-- Restrictions on the federal bureaucracy

-- Restrictions on Congress' power to regulate commerce

-- A requirement of compensation for regulatory takings 

-- Authority for the States directly to amend the Constitution

-- A State check on acts of Congress

-- A voter fraud amendment

Levin makes no bones about how difficult and time-consuming it will be to get a State amendment convention going; nor does he ignore the problem of blue States.  But, fortunately, the level of society where the process must start is also that which is most accessible to us: first ourselves, then our families and friends, then our local communities.  A huge part of the strategy of totalitarians is the isolation and atomization of individuals: to keep us at each other's throats by means of imaginary grievances; to abolish long-standing mores and traditions; and to remove any and all institutions -- family, Church, local government, State government -- that stand as a buffer between centralized government and the individual.  We need to begin the work of restoring these.  People who live in liberal-dominated wastelands like Detroit have got to decide they are tired of living in a hell-hole, and then do something about it; those of us whose cities do not yet look like Detroit need to decide we don't want to see ourselves heading in that direction, and do something to avoid it.  When we have turfed the liberal bums out of our local and state governments, and replaced them with politicians who revere the rule of law and the Constitution, the momentum toward a convention will grow.  We should not be deterred from having recourse to this method of amending the Constitution merely by the fact that it has never been done before, or by the fear of a runaway convention.  The reality right now is that we already have a runaway federal government, and something has got to be done about it, before it destroys us.

On the eve of the Battle of the Bulge, General George S. Patton said there are three ways men get what they want: planning, working and praying.  Some of us have been praying, and there needs to be a lot more of that going on.  Levin's book gives us a pretty good start on the planning.  Now is the time to start working.