2017-01-24T18:57:48-05:00

Like me, Webster is partial to Gerard Manley Hopkins, a 19th century poet who also was a Catholic convert and a Jesuit. (Depicted here bronze by Irish sculptor Rowan Gillsepie).  Webster has cited Hopkins’s poems  here, here and here.

Poems are meant to be read out loud; this is especially true for Hopkins’s. He used “sprung rhythm,” which is intended to sound like natural speech. (Unlike most poets who use free verse, however, Hopkins made sure the number of feet per line of poetry was kept consistent within a single poem.)

At a funeral I attended Saturday, the celebrant, Msgr. John Mraz, mentioned Hopkins. The deceased, Donald Patton Buckelew, like Hopkins, not only encountered Christ in the Mass, but also in his fellow human beings and in the natural world. What a gift.

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring—
  When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
  Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
 A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
  Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
  Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

2017-01-24T18:58:02-05:00

Guest post by Marian R. Bull
I woke up from one of those blissful, healing naps that I most love about summer Sundays, opened my e-mail, and got the joyful surprise of my life—a guest post from my daughter. Here it is.

This morning, I was lucky enough to find myself in the beautiful Cathedral of the Holy Name in downtown Chicago. A newly converted Catholic, I still sometimes find myself peering around in my peripheral vision at certain parts of the Mass, thinking, “Should my head be bowed right now? But that guy two pews up is looking straight at the priest. . . . ” I’ve got the hang of it by now, but I still need some help from my fellow parishioners. And I’m okay with it.

Today, while contemplating the bald, bowed head next to me, I was reminded of a recent article I read about what to expect from your first yoga class. One of the headers read, “You won’t have a clue what to do. And that’s okay.” I got to thinking about the ways that yoga classes and Masses make us appear, and the way they make us feel, and the beauty inherent in each experience. (I would like to make clear that I don’t go to yoga to hear the Word of God, and I don’t attend Mass to increase my flexibility. But both are important, though not equally so, and fill distinct needs in my life.)

When I first started attending mass, I felt a bit silly. I felt love for—and from—God, and I felt fulfilled, but I also felt a bit lost in what my RCIA sponsor tenderly called “Catholic aerobics.” But I soldiered on and got accustomed to the bowing and the kneeling, and I found that it gave my prayers, both silent and recited, more intention and meaning. I also realized that not everyone was staring at me thinking, “That girl’s head wasn’t bowed at the right time. What a silly little neophyte!!” We were all there to worship, to connect with the Holy Trinity on both a personal and a congregational level. What mattered was that I was coming together with others, each on our own spiritual path, each with a love for this amazing Church. And honestly, the more the merrier, right?

Yoga class is a bit the same way. Sure, the upper-class mothers are in overpriced yoga clothes rather than their Sunday best, and the “aerobics” look a bit different, but in the end, we are all there to find something: a workout, a mind-body connection, an escape from our busy days. And in yoga, as at Mass, once I stopped worrying about being “worse” than my peers or looking silly, what I gained from my practice increased exponentially. I focused more on my physical and mental intentions, and I felt more fulfilled after each class. I didn’t necessarily find Jesus, but I did find peace. And maybe a little bit of the Holy Spirit, too.

So why does it matter that these things are similar? For me, it’s about two things: shutting up the voices in my head worried about seeming clueless, and letting myself find peace and meaning through an individual, yet shared, experience. I love quietly murmuring “Namaste” to my fellow yogis just as I love enthusiastically saying “Peace be with you!!!” to complete strangers at Mass. (Sorry, Bald Guy Next To Me, I may be overly enthusiastic, but I’m just super psyched about sharing my love for Jesus with you.)

Once you stop worrying, you remember why you’re really there. And you actually have time to pray. And breathe. And listen to the word of God (or, in the case of yoga, to your thoughts and your body). And smile. Because, isn’t it awesome??

One last vignette. I am very blessed that I have a boyfriend who has occasionally attended mass with me. (Neither of us was raised in the Catholic church.) And honestly, how well he knows the liturgy and all of its aerobics is about as important to me as what color shirt he wears. His company makes the Mass even more meaningful: sharing the experience of connecting with God is simply beautiful. I am also lucky that he has been open-minded enough to come to yoga with me. I’ve got to admit, in his first class, he looked like he didn’t know what he was doing. And just like the article said, it didn’t matter. Because as we walked out, he looked at me, and smiled, and said, “I haven’t felt like this since the last time we left Mass.”

2017-01-24T18:58:07-05:00

Neil Young wrote and performs a tune entitled Just Singing A Song Won’t Change the World. He makes a great point, doesn’t he? However, Neil himself also says, “Even so, I will keep on singing.”

I feel the same way about reading good books on Catholic faith.

Although just reading a book may not change the world in one shot, it may help change it one person at a time. That has been my experience, at least. Some believe that reading the Bible alone is enough. But I wouldn’t be a Catholic if I thought that was true.

I’ve been reading my friend John C.H. Wu’s book, Beyond East and West. John shares a lot in this 364-page autobiographical sketch. What follows is a little fragment from an essay written by Monsignor Frederick Charles Kolbe that John shares with his readers and which I will now share with you. Monsignor Kolbe, you have the floor.

From the essay, The Art of Life

The light that enlighteneth every man coming into this world must have shown with special strength into the souls of those who so earnestly felt after Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, which, whether they knew it or not, is God. And every human response to this Divine shining is of the nature of Faith.

“The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole earth,” and I cannot but think that it is with some degree of the virtue of faith helping their natural insight that such men as Buddha, and Plato reached their moral level. There is something very touching in these early efforts after perfection, and like all early art, they sometimes produce simple effects which are beyond our reach in these more conscious days.

My friend John adds, “what he says about Buddha and Plato applies also to Confucius and Mencius.” Then, I found this interesting fragment from the same essay in an old Catholic magazine known as The Month published in 1903,

People sometimes fancy some disorder of theirs has a spiritual cause, when it may be only medicine or rest that they need. A typical example of this is explained by one of George Eliot’s keen observations —all the more useful to us because she was not thinking of religion at all—namely, that a violent emotion is always likely to be followed by a dreamy disbelief in the reality of its cause. When after a season of special devotion we are unaccountably tormented by temptations against faith, it will spare us a good deal of worry if we recognize that our body is only undergoing a customary reaction.

Or this: when he is contrasting the careful self-examination and perfecting of individual actions which characterizes Catholicism, and the tendency of Protestant spirituality to deprecate these details as excessive.

In this art, Protestants are impressionists (see Monet’s Sunrise, 1872, above). They employ vague sweeps of color, and deprecate close inspection. But true Art demands infinite detail and submits to endless analysis. The highest painter reveals himself in the ravishing delicacy of his lightest touches, and the truest idealism is that which seizes upon infinite detail and suffuses it to an exquisite degree with the glory of God.

Two boats in the water:  one fuzzy, one clear. Although I’m no expert in art, and I love French Impressionism, I know with certainty that painting this bottom portrait in such high detail required the level of skill and care that Monsignor Kolbe writes of in his description above.

2017-01-24T18:58:09-05:00

As we finish this novena, I’d like to thank readers who prayed along with me. What changes did you experience in yourself as you followed this spiritual discipline? Please share in the comment section below.

This novena has given structure to my days and given me St. Joan of Arc’s presence as a spiritual companion. My special intention during this novena was to ask God to find me a job so I may help support my family. I’ve been searching for work for two years. During that time, I returned to school for retraining so I might become a teacher.

In the middle of my novena days, God answered my prayer. I was offered not one, but two, full-time jobs as a high school English teacher. This was more of a blessing than I could have imagined. I have accepted one of the jobs and begin work soon at a large suburban high school, where I will be a Special Education teacher in the English Department.

We should not consider novenas quid pro quo arrangements, or engage in, as one priest so aptly calls it, dispensing-machine Catholicism. But the more we develop a relationship with Our Lord through prayer and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, the better our communication becomes. Like any relationship we care about, we need to spend time together. God does answer prayer.

He did so with Saint Joan of Arc. While she died a tortuous death at the stake, undoubtedly her soul flew peacefully to heaven. The Church eventually restored her reputation and confirmed her as a saint. Her mother, Isabelle Romée (depicted in sculplture in the photo above), began that process after her daughter’s death. An illiterate woman like St. Joan, Isabelle, taught her children the beauty of the faith. After her daughter’s death, she petitioned the Church for a retrial. A comprehensive trial involving clergy from across Europe concluded in 1456 – 25 years after St. Joan’s death –  that the young peasant girl was a martyr.

The nullification trial opened with St. Joan’s mother speaking. Now a widow, who had lost two other children in addition to Joan, she traveled to Paris in the winter to attend the trial. Imagine how she felt as she uttered this testimony on November 7, 1455.

 I had a daughter born in lawful wedlock who grew up amid the fields and pastures. I had her baptized and confirmed and brought her up in the fear of God. I taught her respect for the traditions of the Church as much as I was able to do given her age and simplicity of her condition. I succeeded so well that she spent much of her time in church and after having gone to confession she received the sacrament of the Eucharist every month. Because the people suffered so much, she had a great compassion for them in her heart and despite her youth she would fast and pray for them with great devotion and fervor. She never thought, spoke or did anything against the faith. Certain enemies had her arraigned in a religious trial. 

Despite her disclaimers and appeals, both tacit and expressed, and without any help given to her defense, she was put through a perfidious, violent, iniquitous and sinful trial. The judges condemned her falsely, damnably and criminally, and put her to death in a cruel manner by fire. For the damnation of their souls and in notorious, infamous and irreparable loss to me, Isabelle, and mine. I demand that her name be restored.”

When Isabelle was 78, the court found the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, guilty of heresy. The man had manipulated St. Joan’s trial and sent her death into motion to suit his own political agenda. The Church canonized St. Joan of Arc in 1920, 500 years after her martyrdom.

Dear Saint Joan, Thank you for accompanying me throughout the day, and in the work that I did. Thank you also for your guidance and your counsel. Please help me to listen to God and to you, dear Saint, that I may do what I am called to do. Please intercede on my behalf and beg God to take all my faults and turn them into virtues. I thank you for all you have done for me, and all the things you have interceded for on my behalf. Please continue to pray for me and for all the souls who need it.

St. Joan of Arc, Pray for us. Amen.

2017-01-24T18:58:15-05:00

For a long time I was mystified by several friends of mine. Each was born and raised Catholic, then fell away from the Church in their late teens or early adulthood. What could have caused this, I wondered? I was often critical of these friends. How could they not see the beauty of the Church they were born into? Then I realized that the same thing had happened to me.

I used to refer to my boarding-school years as the best educational experience of my life. Now, I see them differently: as the beginning of a nightmare from which I am only now waking up. When I went off to school at the ridiculously unformed age of fifteen, I was like some of my raised-Catholic friends; I was a devout little Episcopalian altar boy. I am not being ironic. I loved serving at the altar, and during those mid-teen years I even thought seriously about becoming an Episcopal minister. Dear old Dr. Bassage, the revered senior minister at our church, had written my recommendation for boarding school, and I could see little better in life than to follow in his path.

Then I went away to school. Things happened there that I am still trying to sort out, but the end result was that three years later, I graduated a self-satisfied agnostic liberal railing against my father because he supported the war in Vietnam. I was destined not to return to church, as a regular devotion, for nearly 40 years. By then, my father was my best male friend.

What happened when I went away to school? I succumbed to the tyranny of my peers. While the school faculty was supposed to act in loco parentis, there was little in the way of authentic adult authority, except for “Dean Bob,” who threatened punishments from “restricts” to the ax. Our dorm master during my first two years was ridiculed by every student who lived on the floors he supposedly ruled; during senior year, I lived in a house where the benign master, beloved by the fifteen of us who lived above his ground-floor quarters, blithely ignored the odd, smoky odors emanating from upstairs. The school minister, known with genuine affection as “The Rev,” was the closest thing we had to a spiritual authority, but the times being what they were, his message had to be so rounded off at the corners, for reasons of ecumenism, that it had little edge. I do not remember much talk of Jesus Christ.

My peers taught me how to be an adult. A fifteen-year-old kid who was just learning to shave showed up at a dorm one day and, for purposes of survival, quickly kowtowed to the common mentality of the “buttroom” (where we smoked), the classroom, and the athletic field. The central characteristic of that mentality was a deep cynicism about all forms of authority, combined with an absurd self-satisfaction that was only punctured when, as occasionally happened, someone got seriously sick or injured, or a friend threatened suicide.

I ask myself how I could possibly have given up so completely my Christian faith, and the only answer I can come up with is this tyranny. To survive socially, to be accepted, and probably to counteract unspoken feelings of homesickness, I fell asleep to my real needs, my real nature. And so began a long, bad dream.

By the time I became a Catholic 30 months ago, I had sent my two children to boarding school. I make no judgment about them here; they are bright, successful, happy young adults, and each is following her own sincere spiritual journey, one of which has led to the Catholic Church. But if I saw the world as I do now when my wife and I faced the decision of where to send our daughters to high school, I would have thought twice about it.

I am a Catholic today because I finally awoke from that experience. What wakes a person up? Not himself. An alarm clock, maybe? I think the Church would call it grace.

2015-03-11T08:55:05-05:00

Imagine that you woke up to the news this morning that a former President of the United States, say Jimmy Carter for example, has just held a press conference saying that he has entered the Abbey at Gethsemane to become a Cistercian monk. Would you be flabbergasted? Amazed? Incredulous? Or would you be intrigued? That’s how I felt when I learned the news that I am going to share with you today. (more…)

2015-06-07T23:36:18-05:00

I found this photograph on a blog with the following caption: So Funny, So True. Maybe it’s just me but I would argue that the caption should have been So Sad, So Tragic.

As a parent of three school-age children, there is plenty for me to worry about in the world. Teen “Self-Help” is not one of them. As the title for this post states, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” a quote attributed to the philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

Spinoza did not believe in a personal God, nor could his brilliant mind come to terms with the idea of God becoming a human, as Our Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ did. I would say (and I’m definitely not brilliant) that Spinoza had a problem understanding Love.

As parents of three school-age children, my wife and I have been entrusted with raising these individuals in a way that will serve themselves and society well and in the manner that God has ordained them to be raised. That is, in a way that will teach them the Two Greatest Commandments (as stated in Luke Chapter 10 here):

There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

Of course, saying this and actually doing it are not easy tasks. And I would argue that they cannot be done alone, nor without prayer and constant attention. My wife and I need all the help we can get! And this is another reason why I personally became a Catholic so that I could join with my wife in unity to lead my small flock by example and with all of the benefits that the Sacraments provide and the Graces that The Church has to offer.

“Self Help” is an oxymoron. “Teen Self Help?” You’ve got to be kidding me! Look at the titles on the shelves in the photograph above. Almost every one is a supernatural thriller of some type. And why do we crave the supernatural? Isn’t it obvious? Because we are spiritual beings. Souls in earthen vessels, yearning for God and communion with Him. Why not tap into our children’s need for the supernatural in a positive way?

Time is short, and as parents we can only shape and mold our children while they are in our personal care. Decisions you make to ensure this happens will often times be unpopular in the extreme. However, as stated in Proverbs 22:6

Train a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it.

Some tasks are too important to leave to chance. Or as the poet said:

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?

Toil on, sad heart, courageously,

And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.

2017-01-24T18:59:40-05:00

Guest post by Meredith Cummings

Yesterday when I woke, I didn’t realize that before day’s end, I’d be writing an obituary. Writing obits isn’t difficult. I wrote many when I worked as a journalist. Just follow the style guide: First graph – name, age, place of death, date of death; second graph – summarize primary career in one sentence. Follow with a paragraph of chronological events – marriage, survivors, those preceding in death and funeral arrangements. Simple. It takes 10 minutes.

But I was writing about someone I knew – my dear friend Gina’s mother, Olga. How does one sum up 84 years of living in 10 minutes? Even my son thought the obit was bland. “It’s boring, mom. Mrs. Fuller wasn’t boring.”

An obit is a place marker in time, as is a birth announcement. It provides just enough information for an historian or a family member three or four generations out to outline a person in history. But it doesn’t do justice to the person who lived, the person who did something, the person who made a difference in the lives of many.

For me, one such person was Magdolen Olga Svarczkopf Fuller

Olga, or Maggie as many knew her, was born into this world a do-er. Perhaps she had no choice. With eleven siblings, there was plenty to do. Because of her strong Catholic upbringing and her Hungarian heritage, she always knew she could do what needed to be done as long as she kept God by her side.

After high school, Olga joined the Sisters of St. Francis in Oldenburg, Indiana. There, her devotion to Christ grew. But something wasn’t right. In her heart, she longed to be a mother, a mother to many, and so, she left the convent and spent another 15 years working and searching for the life to which she felt called.

In 1965, she married sweet Joe Fuller, a young Richmond boy several years her junior. Finally, she could be a mother. But there was one problem. Olga was getting older. Would she be able to bear a child?

Not to worry. God blessed her with little Regina on June 15, 1968. However, there was reason to worry because Gina was born with medical issues. At that time, doctors didn’t have all the medical miracles they do today. There wasn’t much hope.

I can imagine what Olga had to say back then, “Well, I’m just going to have to do something about this.” So she did, living months at a time in Indianapolis while her sick baby endured surgery after surgery. Olga prayed and probably drove doctors crazy. She even spent weeks and months refinishing her brother’s ugly dining room set, turning it into a work of beauty while she waited for her infant to get better. Mostly, though she just thanked God for the blessings of a husband and child, and she kept doing whatever was necessary to help her baby heal. When Gina was well enough, Olga traveled with her young daughter on two spiritual pilgrimages to Lourdes and Fatima.

All of Olga’s doing paid off. Her once sickly daughter has become a beautiful wife and mother who has inherited her own mother’s compassion and willingness to do for others.

Now remember Olga wanted to be a mother to many, but because of her age, Gina was her only child. That didn’t stop Olga. Gina’s friends, cousins, neighbors and classmates all became Olga’s “children,” as did Olga’s two grandchildren, Andy and Andrea. Olga welcomed everyone into her home, serving up her famous Hungarian soup and cabbage rolls. She offered advice, humor and friendship. She helped everyone in any way she could.

She never did for Olga, rather she always did for others, just as Christ asked her to do. Christ was the focus, and that focus never blurred. Over the years, Olga traveled to numerous Eucharistic Congresses, saw four popes and even took a private tour of the Vatican, thanks to a crabby Hungarian priest.

How did she do it all for 84 years? How did she keep going? Why didn’t she give up when the going got tough, which it did many times in her life? She did it all because of her faith in Jesus.

Olga began and ended every day with prayers of thanks. In her “spare time” she sat at her kitchen table and lovingly assembled rosaries out of blue and white plastic beads. Her husband Joe estimates she made several thousand rosaries over the years, all of which she sent to overseas missions or handed out to whomever she felt needed one.

Now, Olga was no saint. She was opinionated and cantankerous, and she could put up a good fight or start one when she wanted to. The last time I saw Olga was at her granddaughter’s (my Goddaughter’s) First Communion in April. Over lunch, the conversation turned to politics. Olga knew I was on “her side of the fence,” while most everyone else in the room was arguing for “the other side.” Olga kicked me under the table and whispered, “Well, aren’t you going to do something?” She was deliberately trying to throw me into the fray, hoping I’d start a good political fight so that she could jump in.”

“No way, Olga, I whispered back. “I’m not getting into this. Are you crazy? Two against everyone else in this house? Forget it. I’m not getting involved in family politics.” “Well, you’re part of the family, aren’t you?” she countered. “I suppose I am,” I said, grateful that she considered me family. “But if I am, I’d like to keep it that way.” She grinned and continued slurping her Hungarian soup.

Even on the last day of her life, Olga did for others. She visited a sick friend in the morning and worked at the church in the afternoon. The woman never stopped doing. However, on Monday, God apparently decided Olga had done enough. In thinking about this, I’m reminded of a line from the movie “Babe.” Four simple words repeated twice. In the movie, the words are directed at a pig, an amazing pig who has accomplished wonderful things. I have a feeling God may have said similar words to Olga as he called her home.

“That’ll do Olga. That’ll do.”

And that’s what we need to remember. We all know an Olga, someone whose faith shows us how to live.At one point or another, Olga did something for most everyone with whom she came in contact. We can’t list every one of those instances in an obituary. We can’t even mention them all in a eulogy. But we can keep them in our hearts and then take Olga’s doings and pass them on to others, who will then pass them on to others still.

In that way, the doings of the Olga Fullers of the world will never be forgotten.

2015-07-17T14:15:20-05:00

Guest post by William “Mac” McCarthy

Blogging makes surprising connections. Back in the day when I was a lapsed Episcopalian and he was the rare Catholic at our New England school, Mac lived down the hall from me. Forty years later, now an attorney in Bakersfield, California, he read YIM Catholic and quickly promised me a write-up on an extraordinary group of Catholic martyrs, whom we honor on July 17.

“Permission to die, Mother?”
“Go, my daughter!”

During the French Revolution’s Reign of terror, on the evening of July 17, 1794, in Paris’s Place de la Nation, a hardened crowd waited at the guillotine for the carts carrying that day’s “batch” from the Palais de Justice. A heavy stench from the putrefying blood in the pit below the scaffold hung over the plaza. During the five weeks the guillotine had stood in the Place de la Nation, a thousand severed heads had fallen into the blood-stiffened leather bag of Sanson, the Paris executioner. The blood pit had been enlarged once already but had quickly filled up again.

Usually, raucous jeers from where Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine emptied into the plaza would signal the approach of the tumbrels carrying the condemned. Not this night. A strange hush spread into the plaza. Then there was something else. Singing. Serene, female voices intoning a cool, effortless chant of verse after verse of the Te Deum.

When the tumbrels rolled up to the scaffold, the crowd grew silent. The singers were sixteen sisters from the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Compiegne. They wore long white choir mantles (cloaks) over brown robes similar to nuns’ habits. Such attire had long since been outlawed in the new order. But these women were not of the new order. Their religious clothing and singing in Latin embodied the lost time before the storming of the Bastille and the start of the revolution on July 14, 1789. Also, while plenty of priests and some nuns had been executed individually, never had an entire religious community been carted up to the guillotine. Their radiant, happy faces were wrong for this place. They should have looked sad. They were about to die. They looked joyous. The other twenty-four condemned prisoners with them looked unhappy.

The reason for the Carmelites’ happiness was their belief that the guillotine was the answer to their prayers. Every day for almost two years, since about the time of the September 1792 massacres, the sisters had made a daily act of consecration in which they offered their own lives to God as a sacrifice to restore peace, help France, and stop the killing. For Christ, their heavenly Spouse, to actually accept their offer of themselves in holocaust and grant them their martyrdom gave them great joy.

Three hours earlier at the Palais de Justice, the sisters had been condemned to death. A show trial proved them “enemies of the people.” The blatantly false charges included “hiding weapons in your convent.” In answer, the 41-year old prioress, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, lifted her crucifix from her bosom and held it up to the presiding judge saying, “The only weapon we’ve ever had in our convent is this. You cannot prove we have ever had any others.” They had no convent anyway. The revolutionary government had confiscated it and ejected them in September 1792. Carmel Compiegne and everything in it had been sold to finance the revolution.

A fellow prisoner who saw them return from hearing their death sentences reported their faces were “beaming with joy.” A Parisian working class woman who watched the Carmelites pass by on the tumbrels had shouted, “What good souls! Just look at them! Tell me if you don’t think they look just like angels! I tell you, if these women don’t go straight to paradise, then we’ll just have to believe it doesn’t exist!”

At the scaffold, the sisters performed devotions normal for dying Carmelites. The nuns renewed their monastic vows of poverty chastity and obedience. They sang the Veni Creator Spiritus:

Come, Holy Ghost, Creator blest,
and in our hearts take up Thy rest;
come with Thy grace and heav’nly aid,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made. …

One sister, was heard to cry out, “Only too happy, O my God, if this little sacrifice can calm your wrath and reduce the number of victims.”

Then Mother Teresa of Saint Augustine walked over to the foot of the scaffold steps and turned to face her spiritual daughters. In the palm of her hand, the prioress held a tiny terracotta image of the Virgin and Child, a last relic saved from Carmel Compiegne. She summoned Sister Constance, the youngest sister, who approached.

This was 29-year-old Sister Contance’s first act of obedience as a professed Carmelite. Moments before, as her sisters were renewing their vows, she was pronouncing her vows for the first time. In 1789, at the start of the Revolution, just before she completed her novice year, the revolutionary government prohibited the taking of religious vows. So, after six years as a novice, she finally made her profession in extremis. Previously, she had expressed a terrible fear of the guillotine. She would show no fear this night.

At the steps, Sister Constance knelt at her prioress’s feet and received a blessing. She kissed the clay Madonna and Child cupped in her prioress’ hand. Finally, bowing her head, she asked:

“Permission to die, Mother?”
“Go, my daughter!”

Sister Constance rose from her knees. A witness described her as radiant as “a queen going to her receive her diadem.“ As she began her climb up to the scaffold, she spontaneously intoned the Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, the 117th Psalm. That psalm was sung by the Discalced Carmelite Order’s mother-foundress, St. Teresa of Avila, at the foundation of every new Carmel in 16th-century Spain. Hearing Sister Constance, her sisters immediately took up the chant:

Praise the Lord, all ye nations!
Praise Him all ye people!
For his mercy is confirmed upon us,
And the truth of the Lord endureth forever!
Praise the Lord!

At the top of scaffold steps, still joined in chant with her sisters, Sister Constance waved aside the executioner and his valet. She walked on her own to the vertical balance-plank; was strapped to it; and then lowered into horizontal position. With a swoosh and a thud, the guillotine had cut the number of voices to 15. The remaining voices rose in defiance. Even before her falling head reached Sanson’s leather bag, Sister Constance was in the arms of her heavenly Spouse in the Kingdom of the Lamb.

The exact order in which the other 15 sisters climbed the scaffold has not come down to us. We know only the last two sisters. What is known is that the guillotine mob remained silent the whole time, an almost impossible–or one could say miraculous–occurrence. The bumps, clicks, swooshes and thuds of the death apparatus told of the deadly business. But the calm, austere chant of the Laudate Dominum never stopped.

About every two minutes, one voice would fall away from the others, to be heard no more by mortal ears. Each sister, when her time came, went to her Mother and knelt; received a blessing; and kissed the Madonna and Child statuette.

“Permission to die, Mother?”
“Go, my daughter!”

Here are the names of the other sisters:

Sister Jesus Crucified, choir sister, age 78. She and Sister Charlotte had celebrated their jubilee of 50 years of profession.

Sister Charlotte of the Resurrection, choir sister, age 78. The martyrs arrived at the Paris Concierge (jail) from Compiegne on July 13 after a two-day journey in open carts. Sister Charlotte was unable to rise and step out of the cart with her sisters. She could only walk with a crutch, but her hands were tied behind her back. Exhausted, she sat alone in the tumbrel in the soiled straw. An angry guard jumped up and tossed her out onto the cobblestones. After lying still for a while, Sister Charlotte lifted her bloodied head and gently thanked the brutal guard for not killing her. She wanted to live long enough to make her witness with her sisters.

Sister Euphrasia of the Immaculate Conception, choir sister, age 58

Sister Julie Louise of Jesus, choir sister, age 52. Sister Julie Louise of Jesus entered Carmel as an aristocratic young widow. Well educated and musically talented, she composed a song or poem every year for the community’s July 16 patronal festival, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. This year, at the Concierge in Paris, since writing materials were forbidden in jail, she managed to obtain scraps of charcoal. She composed a long five stanza song about a happy martyrdom and set it to the tune of the bloodthirsty La Marseillaise. One line went, “Let’s climb, let’s climb, the scaffold high!” The day before they went to the guillotine, all the sisters gaily sang Sister Julie Louise’s feast day song. Their only disappointment was they would not die on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

Sister Teresa of the Heart of Mary, choir sister, age 52

Sister Saint Martha, lay sister, age 52

Sister Catherine, extern, age 52

Sister Marie of the Holy Spirit, lay sister, age 51

Sister Teresa of Saint Ignatius, choir sister, age 51

Mother Henriette of Jesus, past prioress and novice mistress, choir sister, age 49

Sister Teresa, extern, age 46

Sister Saint Louis, subprioress, choir sister, age 42

Sister Saint Francis Xavier, lay sister, age 30

Sister Henriette of the Divine Providence, choir sister, age 34. This sister was the second to last to die. She was a fiery beauty, whose nine adult bothers and sisters included two priests and five nuns. Fearing her natural beauty would be a distraction, she had withdrawn from the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, a public nursing order and sought out the hidden life in the cloister at Carmel. One of her sisters became the Superior General of all the Sisters of Charity of Nevers. (This was the order of St Bernadette of Lourdes.)

In the courtroom at the Revolutionary Tribunal on the day of her martyrdom, she boldly challenged the Tribunal’s notorious public prosecutor, Antoine Fouquier-Tinville, to define what he meant by calling her community “fanatic.” In response to her repeated demands that he stop avoiding her question and answer it, the prosecutor finally said their “attachment to their religion” made them criminals and dangers to public freedom. At the guillotine, since she was the Carmel’s infirmarian, she took a place by the steps and helped her older, weaker sisters up the scaffold steps.

The psalm chant stopped only when the last Carmelite, the prioress—Mother Teresa of Saint Augustine, age 41, had climbed the scaffold steps and followed her daughters. She was the only child of an employee of the Paris Observatory. Since she was not from a wealthy family, the generous young Dauphine of France, Marie Antoinette, had paid her dowry for Carmel. The prioress was well educated and artistic. Some of her paintings still hang on the walls of French Carmels. She was only 34 when she was first elected prioress. She is believed to be the first nun to have felt the call to community martyrdom.

Before beginning her walk up the steps, the prioress made the sign of the cross and paused. A pious woman in the crowd, who saw the hesitation, understood and moved up to discreetly take the tiny terracotta Virgin and Child statuette from the hand of the great prioress of Carmel Compiegne. The statuette was kept safe and has come down to us.

Ten days after the Carmelites of Compiegne fulfilled their vow and offered themselves up in sacrifice to stop the bloodshed, Robespierre fell from power. A bloody revolutionary, he was a key architect of the Reign of Terror. The next day, July 28, 1794, he was guillotined and the Reign of Terror soon faded.

That the martyrs were able to wear parts of their forbidden habits at the guillotine, like their white choir mantles, was due to unusual coincidences or, more likely, the hand of God. After their expulsion from Carmel Compiegne, they had been forbidden to wear their habits. With no money to buy clothes, they had to accept worn out, cast-off, immodest clothing. They draped scarves over their shoulders and necks to protect their modesty.

But, on July 12, 1794, in the jail in Compiegne (a confiscated convent) they had donned what remained of their habits in order to wash their single outfits of civilian clothing. At the same time, the mayor received an order from the Paris Committee of Public Safety ordering the martyrs’ immediate transport to Paris for “trial.” The secular clothes were soaking in wash tubs. Delaying the execution of the Paris order was unthinkable (and too risky) for the Compiegne officials. Therefore, the martyrs went to Paris in what they had left of their forbidden habits. Perhaps, when their Lord decided to accept their offer of martyrdom, He also granted the martyrs the tender mercy of dying in their beloved, long, white choir mantles.

The worn-out, immodest civilian clothes left soaking in the tubs at Compiegne had yet another role in God’s plan. Confined in the Compiegne jail with the Carmelites had been 17 English Benedictine sisters. Four others had already died in jail. They had been arrested as foreigners in 1792 at their monastery in Cambrai. A granddaughter of St. Thomas More had founded the monastery when Catholic religious orders were forbidden in England. Though kept apart, Benedictines learned of the Carmelites’ daily consecration to sacrifice themselves to restore peace and free prisoners.

After the Carmelites were taken to Paris, the Compiegne jailers made the Benedictines wear the Carmelites’ abandoned civilian clothes. The Benedictines were still wearing them when they were finally allowed to sail for England in 1795. That community eventually founded England’s famous Stanbrook Abbey. Today, Benedictines at Stanbrook still honor the Carmelites as martyrs whose deaths somehow stopped the killing and saved the jailed Benedictine sisters from the guillotine. In 1895, Stanbrook Abbey returned many of the “wash tub” clothes as venerated relics to the newly reestablished Carmel Compiegne.

The martyrs were beatified by St. Pius X on May 13, 1906. Their memory is celebrated on July 17 by both branches of the Carmelites and the archdiocese of Paris.

Several successful literary and artistic works have helped spread the martyrs’ story around the world. They include Gertrude von De Fort’s famous 1931 novella, Song at the Scaffold, which in turn inspired Georges Bernanos’ Les Dialogues des Carmelites (1949), as well as Francis Poulenc’s opera (1957) and an Italian-French film (1959), both also named Les Dialogues des Carmelites.

Almost all the historical facts used in this post come from William Bush’s outstanding book, To Quell the Terror: The Mystery of the Vocation of the Sixteen Carmelites of Compiegne Guillotined July 17, 1794, ICS Publications (1999). The same goes for a lot of the wording and observations in this posting. Bush has spent many years studying the martyrs. His book has a picture of the terracotta statuette and photos of art work by the martyrs, including a beautiful pastel of Christ on the Cross by Mother Teresa of Saint Augustine. Any errors, misstatements, or unclear writing here in this post are this writer’s fault.

For a short, brilliant essay on the martyrs, Catholicism, and modern times, read “The Mantle of Elijah: The Martyrs of Compiegne as Prophets of the Modern Age” by Terrye Newkirk, OCDS. It is only 11 pages and easily downloaded from the ICS website.

“Permission to die, Mother?”
“Go, my daughter!”

2017-01-24T19:00:00-05:00

“Why should we suffer? Why should we die?”

Ah, the eternal question. And in this chapter “The Albigensian Attack“, Belloc gets to the heart of the matter of why the Incarnation came about, Christianity was founded, and why the Catholic Church exists. Because as we know, we are mere human beings. We die. And since the beginning, mankind has wanted to know “why?”

And in this chapter, Belloc synthesizes the ideas that we have formed in an attempt to come to terms with this truth. He touches on Manicheanism, Stoicism, and heck, even Buddism. For example he writes,

Various ways out of the torturing enigma have been proposed. The simplest and basest is not to face it at all…another way less base, but equally contemptible intellectually, is to say there is no problem because we are all part of a meaningless dead thing with no creative God behind it… another nobler way, which was the favourite way of the high pagan civilization from which we sprang, the way of the great Romans and the great Greeks, is the way of Stoicism. This might vulgarly be termed “The philosophy of grin-and-bear-it”… another way is the profound but despairing way of Asia, of which the greatest example is Buddhism: the philosophy which calls the individual an illusion, bids us get rid of the desire for immortality and look forward to being merged in the impersonal life of the universe. What the Catholic solution is we all know.

Or hopefully you do. If you didn’t before reading this chapter, you know now. A lot of ground is covered here. Heck, you might want to let your children read this chapter so they will understand what all the fuss is about regarding being a practicing Catholic. What’s the deal? Well,

Shaw, Belloc, And Chesterton

the Catholic Church has on this particular problem a very definite answer within the field of her own action. She says, first, that man’s nature is immortal, and made for beatitude; next, that mortality and pain are the result of his Fall, that is, of his rebellion against the will of God. She says that since the fall our mortal life is an ordeal or test, according to our behavior, in which we regain (but through the merits of our Savior) that immortal beatitude which we had lost.

And then he proceeds to discuss and explain the various manifestations of this particular heresy. First up is Manicheanism. Have you ever seen Star Wars and it’s various sequels and prequels? May the Force be with you? The Dark Side of the Force and the good side? Now you know where George Lucas got that idea. Remember in The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda is training the young Jedi(the Good Side) Luke Skywalker and he punches Luke in the shoulder and says “not this crude matter” referring to his human body? Hmmm, sounds like,

But one thing the Manichean of every shade has always felt, and that is, that “matter” belongs to the evil side of things. Though there may be plenty of evil of a spiritual kind yet good must be “wholly” spiritual.

You’ve probably heard, or maybe even experienced, Christianity of some stripe that treats matter and the human body like this. Not to mention any other religions out there, or new age thinking, that does the same. I know I’ve bumped into people who have said exactly what Belloc says when he describes the human body and its characteristics as follows:

That is something you find not only in the early Manichean, not only in the Albigensian of the Middle Ages, but even in the most modern of the remaining Puritans. It seems indissolubly connected with the Manichean temper in every form. Matter is subject to decay and is therefore evil. Our bodies are evil. Their appetites are evil. This idea ramifies into all sorts of absurd details. Wine is evil. Pretty well any physical pleasure, or half-physical pleasure, is evil. Joy is evil. Beauty is evil. Amusements are evil, and so on. Anyone who will read the details of the Albigensian story will be struck over and over again by the singularly modern attitude of these ancient heretics, because they had the same root as the Puritans who still, unhappily, survive among us.

I’m glad I’m a Catholic now because finally the world makes some sense! And I’m glad I’m a Marine too, because there is a lot of warfare in this chapter. But before I continue, I’m going to hand the reins over to Jason, one of our YIMC Book Club volunteers has these words to say about this chapter:

The Albigensian heresy today is also known as the Cathar heresy. Belloc points out that this heresy is actually a form of Manicheanism. Belloc connects the rise of the Albigensian/Cathar heresy as an attempt of answering the “the problem of evil”. Why are there evil, suffering, and death?

Atheists propose the solution that there is no God. Stoics grin and bear it. Buddists claim individual existence is an illusion.

The Albigensians/Cathars resorted to dualism, that is that God is good but not omnipotent. And that goodness is opposed by evil that was equally as powerful. God the Father is no more powerful than Satan. Furthermore, all matter (being subject to decay) was of evil and good was only spiritual.

The conclusions based on that claim are far-reaching. If matter is evil and God is good, then Jesus could not have been human (no Incarnation), could not have suffered, and was not resurrected. If matter is evil, then the sacraments are false being present in matter. How can Jesus be present in evil matter? Thus no Eucharist.

The heresy divided France. The southern lords embraced the heresy in opposition of the King of France in the north. Belloc isn’t explicit about this but we can see the violent conflict had significant political aspects. Both England and Spain (neither of which embraced the heresy) supported the heretics in hopes of weakening the French.

Belloc shows his bias in his historical account of the battles between the northern and southern French factions.

Of course, Belloc is many things but unbiased is probably not one of them.  Not for the purpose of this book anyway. Jason, and probably others,  have questions about the historical accuracy of Belloc’s accounts.  Footnotes would have been nice here, but perhaps the best thing to do is to consider this chapter as a springboard for following your own curiosity regarding the historical facts surrounding the conflicts that ensued as a result of this movement. A preview of The Inquisition – A Political and Military Study of Its Establishment is available on Google Books.

But as an overview of an erroneous idea that just keeps cropping up over and over, I found this chapter to be very helpful.  How about the rest of you? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.

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