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A Personal Account of the Persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan England.
By Fr. John Gerard, S.J.; translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman, S.J., with an Introduction by Thomas Storck (Four Face Press, P.O. Box 834, Springfield, Va. 22150, 1952/2000 reprint; www.fourfacespress.com), 287 pp. PB $13.95.
The first time I heard this story was in the 1950s when I heard it read at table during our meals as Jesuit seminarians. The book captured my fancy at the time, so when I received this reprint I decided to read it to see if it was as good as I thought it was over forty years ago. I have not been disappointed.
The book, according to the author, was written at the request of his superiors—the time was about 1609. Fr. Gerard had been a missionary in England from 1589 until 1606 when he was forced to flee the country for his life.
This book reads more like a novel than an autobiography. There is drama and suspense galore, as our hero, Fr. Gerard, outfoxes and eludes the persecutors of Catholics under the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, and then her successor James I. The practice of the Catholic faith was banned by the Elizabethan heretics; the punishment for violation of the unjust laws was to be hanged, and then drawn and quartered while still alive. A few, like St. Thomas More, were treated more gently and just had their head chopped off in a public square.
Fr. Gerard traveled among the gentry and wealthy people of the time because they had large houses where they could hide him and had rooms where Mass could be celebrated. It was in these houses that the famous “priest holes” were constructed. These were hidden small holes in the large buildings which were used to hide the priest when the persecutors came looking for him. Often they would spend two or three days searching for the priest, the “holes” were so cleverly built that they could not find them.
Pursuit, hiding and escape are the stuff of good novels. This book has all of that and more because it tells of the harrowing experiences of Catholic priests and brothers who put their lives on the line to provide the Mass and the Sacraments for the persecuted English Catholics. The book as it stands could be the basis of an exciting film, but it will not be made because the heroes are Roman Catholics who truly believe in the Catholic faith.
Fr. Gerard and his fellow priests, many of whom were martyred, like Robert Southwell and Edmund Campion, offered their lives in a highly dangerous situation because they believed that the English Catholics needed the Sacraments in order to save their souls. To me that seems to be the only convincing reason why they exposed themselves to the danger of a horrible death.
The secular media are regularly criticizing and attacking the Catholic Church for its treatment of Galileo (which was mild and genteel) and the Inquisition (which treated its prisoners better than the civil authorities of the time treated theirs), but very little is said, if anything, about the exceedingly cruel treatment of Catholics under Henry VIII and especially Elizabeth and James in England. The unstated principle seems to be: When Catholics violate the human rights of others it is a horrible crime and must be denounced, but when Protestants or civil authorities do the same thing or worse, it is because of their excessive zeal and is just a mistake. One cannot avoid the conclusion in these matters that a double standard is at work — a standard which is directed against Catholics. Why?
Let me conclude this review by saying clearly that this is a very good book; it is a page-turner like an exciting suspense story. The book is not only entertaining, it is also instructive in the sense that the reader learns a great deal about the persecution of Catholics under the English Protestant monarchs. We should not forget that, before Henry VIII, England had been Catholic for a thousand years. Conflict with the Magisterium of the Church over divorce on the part of the head of the government led to a change in religion and the banning of the ancient faith. It happened in “jolly” England. It is not too far fetched to say that it could happen here, especially in the present climate of disregard for truth on the part of people in high places.
Kenneth Baker, S.J.
By Thomas C. Peters
(Ignatius Press, P.O. Box 1339, Ft. Collins, Colo. 80522, 2000), 167 pp. PB $12.95.
Thomas Peters, who has previously written “beginners guides” to both Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, tells us in his “Preface” that imagination is at the center of Chesterton’s work. “Chesterton himself was one of the great Christian writers, and he held a profound belief in the potential holiness of the arts. . .” (11). I would be hard-pressed to put “imagination” at the center of Chesterton’s work, though he certainly was interested in it. And again, while he was quite observant of “the arts,” he was likewise aware that the arts could have an “unholy” potential as well as a holy one at the real center of our existence. Without going into the Byzantine theory about the icon, it seems more proper to say that the “arts” as such are not “holy,” but the artists can, though need not always, be, holy. Can a bad man be a good artist? Evidently, not a few have been, so we must make relevant distinctions.
The phrase “the Christian imagination” implies that there is a “non-Christian imagination.” Chesterton himself seems to have been quite good at imagining what non-Christian things might be like, even what downright evil things might be like. The word “imagination” is a delicate one, of course, when it comes to relating it to religion. Not a few want to make the truths of religion simply to be products of somebody’s “imagination,” that is, basically it is not true, not real. Religion, in this view, is something drummed up by the human mind with no further justification but itself and its swoonings. Imagination needs grounding in something that is not itself imagination.
The arts refer to things like paintings, poems, buildings, symphonies, and such things. They imply a certain sort of second reality, a reality that exists because human beings exist and make or, to use the word improperly, “create.” There are noises, and screeches, and murmurs, and thunders in nature, but not songs and concertos. Yet, Chesterton himself could conceive of God’s making the morning sunrise again and again simply because it was beautiful. Moreover, how one conceives the world will have a direct effect on how this imaginative secondary reality of art is seen.
Thomas Peters rightly wants to look at both sides of this question, both at what Chesterton thought of art and artists and at Chesterton himself as an artist. “Chesterton’s theology is an assertion that the Creator exists indeed; and this same Creator of the earth and the stars is the creator of bacon on the rafter and the wine in the wood; and the God that made good laughter has pronounced them good. We are created in the very image of God who created laughter, joy, play, nonsense, and imagination” (127). The Creator of the earth and the stars does not quite create the bacon and the wine in the exact same way; the latter two require some intervention of human art or craft, as does, usually, human laughter.
Peters points out that Chesterton was both a critic and himself a creator of artistic things, poems, sketches, dramas, and essays. In one capacity, he is using his own imagination to sketch even himself; in the second he is looking at how others used theirs — say Dickens, or Chaucer, or Stevenson, or Browning. Few would claim that Chesterton was a dramatist or artist of the first rank. But he certainly was a critic of the first rank, as he was an essayist of the first rank.
One problem that we might see in Chesterton was whether his “imagination” was always Christian, whether he was a homo naturaliter Christianus. He seems, as Fr. Ian Boyd told me, to have acquired his Christian imagination early on from his reading of the stories of George MacDonald. Still, it is difficult to see at times that what he said before his conversion was much different from what he said later. He himself once remarked that if Christianity had not already existed when he came along, he would have had to invent it, a “heresy,” no doubt but a good point. I think Peters is right when he writes that “the Christian imagination dares to take risks. The Christian imagination can dare because it understands in its very depths that the first shall be last, . . . that the proud shall be humbled, that the little child shall lead them all” (42). Things are as they seem to God, but not to us. We need to know that.
This useful little book recalls for us that artistic side of Chesterton that is often less attended to in his writings and character. But it is quite clear that we cannot deal with Chesterton’s artistic side without, sooner or later, running directly into his philosophy. Peters puts it well: “Chesterton viewed everyday life as a sacrament — as a visible representation of important sacred events. In this view, our daily decisions and actions represent an even more profound struggle between good and evil that is always raging behind the scenes. This view is distinctly at odds with any other-worldly mysticism that relegates the earthly present to unimportance and with any world view like materialism that relegates the mystical to non existence” (133). The struggle between good and evil is there. The earthly present is important. The mystical does exist. It was Chesterton’s happy talent, as Peters indicates, to be able to hold these three aspects of reality within one world, a world he did not make, but one he could imagine, because it was in fact created.
James V. Schall, S.J.
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.
By Hans von Campenhausen
(Hendrickson Publishers, P.O. Box 3473, Peabody, Mass. 01961, 1989), 518 pp. HB $29.95.
Hans von Campenhausen (1903-1989) was perhaps the leading Protestant Patristics scholar of this century; he was the head of ecclesiastical history at the University of Heidelberg, member of the British Academy, and author of numerous books and essays covering the first 500 years of Christianity. This edition is a reprint combining von Campenhausen’s two most important works: The Fathers of the Greek Church (1955) and The Fathers of the Latin Church (1960).
This single volume is a highly accessible treatment of the early Church, reading more as a collection of biographies than a systematic account of doctrinal concerns. The first half (1-190) treats Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origin, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, Synesius of Cyrene, John Chrystostom, and Cyril of Alexandria. Each is portrayed succinctly but accurately. Throughout, von Campenhausen’s chief concern is to show how the Church’s first theologians not only engaged the pagan world but transformed it through many of its own cultural and philosophical presuppositions. As von Campenhausen examines each Greek Father, it becomes apparent how these theologians directed their thinking not only to preserving and defending the Faith but, more importantly for each, to teaching the faithful in an intelligent and cogent fashion: “They thought of themselves as the authorized teachers of the Church, as Christian philosophers, as trained, enlightened interpreters of the Bible, which contains God’s saving revelation.”
Although chronologically simultaneous, theology in the East and in the West developed quite independently from each other. Given the format of this edition, the reader must unfortunately decide for himself what the major differences between East and West are. It becomes obvious, however, that although Oriental thought was the original soil in which Christian revelation first took root, von Campenhausen is convinced that it is in the Western Church theology comes to fruition. The second half of this volume (1-328) thus examines the major thinkers of the West. Taken up here are the lives and works of Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Boethius. In selecting only seven figures, von Campenhausen is able to provide a much more comprehensive picture of each churchman. Particularly helpful here are the essays on the often-overlooked Lactantius and Ambrose. Lactantius, whom the Renaissance dubbed the “Christian Cicero,” is faithfully portrayed as an original theologian and one of Christianity’s first humanists. Similarly, von Campenhausen appreciates the Bishop of Milan as both an administrator and a theologian and not just as the mentor of St. Augustine.
Despite von Campenhausen’s competence and clarity, this volume does not stand on its own. Not only is more needed in terms of theological and doctrinal study, every now and then von Campenhausen’s Protestantism colors his conclusions: e.g., “In the last analysis, Peter only made the first confession to Christ, and on the strength of that did not claim any supremacy” (II.123). Biases like this are rare but nonetheless remind the reader of Christopher Dawson’s insight that one can never separate history from theology. Each section of this volume includes helpful, albeit out-dated, bibliographies and suggestions for further study. As it is, however, this work is a helpful introduction to the major figures of the first 450 years of Christianity.
David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Innsbruck, Austria
By Leon J. Suprenant, Jr. & Philip C. L. Gray. (Emmaus Road Publishing, 827 North Fourth Street, Steubenville, OH 43952, 800- 398-5470, 1999), 223 pp. PB $11.95.
Emmaus Road Publishing is, together with Lay Witness magazine, the print apostolate of Catholics United for the Faith. Messrs. Suprenant and Gray serve CUF respectively as executive director and director of Information Services; the former has a master’s degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, while the latter teaches theology there. Their book, Faith Facts is a clear, concise compendium of essential Catholic teaching and practical apologetics.
The title is a bit misleading, though the contents are most certainly not. The book is neither a catechism nor a question box, and the “facts” are actually sound, constructive teachings on a wide range of topics that are important to Catholics today. The book grew out of frequently-asked-questions fielded by CUF’s Information Services department, which answers over a thousand queries per month.
Faith Facts is light years ahead of the scatter-shot, proof-text sort of apologetics often heard on call-in Catholic radio programs. Instead of explaining things people have wondered about or replying to individual objections, the book addresses broad areas of concern for practicing Catholics. The 23 chapters are grouped under the headings: Creed, Liturgy, Morality, Marriage and Family, Catholic Education, Biblical Apologetics, Mary.
The book is quite up-front about its sources. After the Preface the reader finds four pages of abbreviations for the books of the Bible, the documents of Vatican II, other magisterial documents and, of course, the new Catechism and Code of Canon Law. Scripture and authoritative teachings are cited cogently and conjointly throughout. Five pages of recommended references in Appendix I inspire confidence in the additional “Faith Facts” tracts published by CUF and listed there as well.
Each chapter, about the length of a substantial magazine article, provides a little dossier on a particular topic. The chapters in the section on the Creed, for instance, are entitled, “Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist,” “Papal Authority and Our Response” and “The Communion of Saints.” The emphasis is on substance and clarity. Occasionally, as in the chapter “Marriage in God’s Plan,” an effort is made to distill the teaching of an entire post-synodal document, and clarity suffers.
The authors do not attempt to present “the last word” on any subject, though: they are providing food for thought, in tremendous abundance. “Questions for Reflection or Group Discussion” help start the work of digestion. “Side-bars” (e.g., quotations from Scripture challenging the “once-saved, always saved” mentality, or statistics on the consequences of contraception) are employed to great effect.
In a book so well done there are still chapters that shine. “The Catholic Response to Sola Scriptura” and “The Catholic Education of Youth” are extraordinary treatments of these vital subjects, which delve beneath questions of “method” to theological truths about God and man and their relations in Christ. CUF has provided a manual of the faith by laymen and for laymen. I strongly recommend the book for adult education and R.C.I.A. classes.
Michael J. Miller
Glenside, Pa.
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