It Is Never Advisable to Die as the Leader of a False Religion

The Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church set the world on a course of self-destruction that has led most people alive today to believe that one religion is as good as another, that it does not make any difference at all what one believes as long is a “good” person. This religious indifferentism has led to the triumph of a spirit of sentimentality that prevents even most Catholics from seeing the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith, and thus being prone to a range of emotions that have nothing at all to do with Catholic truth.

Although we have not had a television since 2003 and I do not watch the streaming of “live events” on my computer (and rarely, if ever, view videos of any sort), I have read enough about the pomp and circumstance surrounding the death and ten-day period of mourning of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and “her own realms”) to say that enough is enough. Queen Elizabeth II laid claim to be the “defender of the faith” and is being heralded as a “Christian” leader even though the religious sect over which she was the nominal head was founded by a lecherous, lustful, adulterous, bigamous, incestuous, gluttonous, bloodthirsty tyrant named Henry VIII of the House of Tudor, who demanded a decree of nullity from his marriage to his true wife, Catherine of Aragon, so that he could marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The Parliamentary Act of Supremacy that declared King Henry VIII to be the “Supreme Head of the Church in England as far as the law of God allowed” never had any standing with the true God of Divine Revelation, the Most Blessed Trinity, Who hates all false religions.

King Henry VIII’s “Church of England” of which the late Queen Elizabeth II was the nominal head was built on the blood of over 72,000 English and Irish martyrs who had remained steadfastly loyal to the only true Church, the Catholic Church. Henry VIII had been bestowed with the title of “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X on October 11, 1521, for his book on the defense of the seven sacraments, which was a refutation of the heretical theology of Martin Luther. King Henry VIII’s book defended Catholic teaching on the indissolubility of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and it defended the doctrine of Papal Supremacy. He rejected the true Faith because of his own lustful desires and created a false church to cater to them.  No king or queen of England has been a "defender" of any kind of "faith" except a false one.

Words matter, good Catholics.

Words matter to God, and they should matter to us.

The Church of England is a lie. It has no valid bishops or priests. Its liturgical rites are devoid of the ability to sanctify and save anyone’s immortal soul and are, quite indeed, offensive to the honor and glory of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All the pageanty of the past twelve days was nothing other than a prolonged masquerade party. (The same can be said, of course, about the liturgical rites of any false religion, including the Roman Rite of the counterfeit church of conciliarism.)

Where is our hatred of heresy for the love of God? 

Where?

Can the fact that a lady who did her royal duty with diligence and in a spirit of self-denial while dressing fashionably ever erase the fact that this lady spent her entire life in a false religious sect that is both heretical and schismatic and thus offensive to God and useless to the sanctification and salvation of souls?

Have we made such a "peace" with the established fact of a false religion and its pretty ceremonies are capable of undoing these words of a Catholic priest who had converted to the true Faith from Anglicanism after an intense mental struggle?

The love of God brings many new instincts into the heart. Heavenly and noble as they are, they bear no resemblance to what men would call the finer and more heroic developments of character. A spiritual discernment is necessary to their right appreciation. They are so unlike the growth of earth, that they must expect to meet on earth with only suspicion, misunderstanding, and dislike. It is not easy to defend them from a controversial point of view; for our controversy is obliged to begin by begging the question, or else it would be unable so much as to state its case. The axioms of the world pass current in the world, the axioms of the gospel do not. Hence the world has its own way. It talks us down. It tries us before tribunals where our condemnation is secured beforehand. It appeals to principles which are fundamental with most men but are heresies with us. Hence its audience takes part with it against us. We are foreigners, and must pay the penalty of being so. If we are misunderstood, we had no right to reckon on any thing else, being as we are, out of our own country. We are made to be laughed at. We shall be understood in heaven. Woe to those easy-going Christians whom the world can understand, and will tolerate because it sees they have a mind to compromise!

The love of souls is one of these instincts which the love of Jesus brings into our hearts. To the world it is proselytism, there mere wish to add to a faction, one of the selfish developments of party spirit. One while the stain of lax morality is affixed to it, another while the reproach of pharisaic strictness! For what the world seems to suspect least of all in religion is consistency. But the love of souls, however apostolic, is always subordinate to love of Jesus. We love souls because of Jesus, not Jesus because of souls. Thus there are times and places when we pass from the instinct of divine love to another, from the love of souls to the hatred of heresy. This last is particularly offensive to the world. So especially opposed is it to the spirit of the world, that, even in good, believing hearts, every remnant of worldliness rises in arms against this hatred of heresy, embittering the very gentlest of characters and spoiling many a glorious work of grace. Many a convert, in whose soul God would have done grand things, goes to his grave a spiritual failure, because he would not hate heresy. The heart which feels the slightest suspicion against the hatred of heresy is not yet converted. God is far from reigning over it yet with an undivided sovereignty. The paths of higher sanctity are absolutely barred against it. In the judgment of the world, and of worldly Christians, this hatred of heresy is exaggerated, bitter, contrary to moderation, indiscreet, unreasonable, aiming at too much, bigoted, intolerant, narrow, stupid, and immoral. What can we say to defend it? Nothing which they can understand. We had, therefore, better hold our peace. If we understand God, and He understands us, it is not so very hard to go through life suspected, misunderstood and unpopular. The mild self-opinionatedness of the gentle, undiscerning good will also take the world's view and condemn us; for there is a meek-loving positiveness about timid goodness which is far from God, and the instincts of whose charity is more toward those who are less for God, while its timidity is searing enough for harsh judgment. There are conversions where three-quarters of the heart stop outside the Church and only a quarter enters, and heresy can only be hated by an undivided heart. But if it is hard, it has to be borne. A man can hardly have the full use of his senses who is bent on proving to the world, God's enemy, that a thorough-going Catholic hatred of heresy is a right frame of man. We might as well force a blind man to judge a question of color. Divine love inspheres in us a different circle of life, motive, and principle, which is not only not that of the world, but in direct enmity with it. From a worldly point of view, the craters in the moon are more explicable things than we Christians with our supernatural instincts. From the hatred of heresy we get to another of these instincts, the horror of sacrilege. The distress caused by profane words seems to the world but an exaggerated sentimentality. The penitential spirit of reparation which pervades the whole Church is, on its view, either a superstition or an unreality. The perfect misery which an unhallowed  touch of the Blessed Sacrament causes to the servants of God provokes either the world's anger or its derision. Men consider it either altogether absurd in itself, or at any rate out of all proportion; and, if otherwise they have proofs of our common sense, they are inclined to put down our unhappiness to sheer hypocrisy. The very fact that they do not believe as we believe removes us still further beyond the reach even of their charitable comprehension. If they do not believe in the very existence our sacred things, how they shall they judge the excesses of a soul to which these sacred things are far dearer than itself?

Now, it is important to bear all this in mind while we are considering the sixth dolor. Mary's heart was furnished, as never heart of saint was yet, yet with these three instincts regarding souls, heresy, and sacrilege. They were in her heart three grand abysses of grace, out of which arose perpetually new capabilities of suffering. Ordinarily speaking, the Passion tires us. It is a fatiguing devotion. It is necessarily so because of the strain of soul which it is every moment eliciting. So when our Lord dies a feeling of repose comes over us. For a moment we are tempted to think that our Lady's dolors ought to have ended there, and that the sixth dolor and the seventh are almost of our own creation, and that we tax our imagination in order to fill up the picture with the requisite dark shading of sorrow. But this is only one of the ways in which devotion to the dolors heightens and deepens our devotion to the Passion. It is not our imagination that we tax but our spiritual discernment. In these two last dolors we are led into greater refinements of woe, into the more abstruse delicacies of grief, because we have got to deal with a soul rendered even more wonderful than it was before by the elevations of the sorrows which have gone before. Thus, the piercing of our Lord with the spear as to our Blessed Lady by far the most awful sacrilege which it was then in man's power to perpetrate upon the earth. To break violently into the Holy of Holies in the temple, and pollute its dread sanctity with all manner of heathen defilement, would have been as nothing compared to the outrage of the adorable Body of God. It is in vain that we try to lift ourselves to a true appreciation of this horror in Mary's heart. Our love of God is wanting in keenness, our perceptions of divine things in fineness. We cannot do more than make approaches  and they are terrible enough. (Father Frederick Faber, The Foot of the Cross, published originally in England in 1857 under the title of The Dolors of Mary, republished by TAN Books and Publishers, pp. 291-295.)

Why are we so ready to forget these truths by surrendering to the sentimentality of the moment?

Saint Thomas More denounced the so-called Church of England in the speech he delivered at his mock trial after Richard Rich’s perjured testimony condemned him to death for speaking against the Oath of Supremacy, which he had not done until he uttered the following words:

 Forasmuch, my lord, as this indictment is grounded upon an act of Parliament directly oppugnant to the laws of God and his holy church, the supreme government of which, or of any part thereof, may no temporal prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome, a spiritual preeminence by the mouth of our Savior himself, personally present upon the earth, to Saint Peter and his successors, bishops of the same see, by special prerogative granted; it is therefore in law amongst Christian men, insufficient to charge any Christian man....

       More have I not to say, my lords, but that like as the blessed apostle Saint Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of Saint Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends forever: so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation. (Saint Thomas More's Speech in Defense of Himself, at his Trial.)

There is no need to recount here the history of the evil effects of Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church as to do so would distract from the principal purposes of this commentary. Those unfamiliar with the facts may read the appendices below.

Perhaps it is good to remember these words of Dom Prosper Guerager, O.S.B, that were contained in his reflection on the life of Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen:

A Catholic who gives heretics credit for sincerity when they talk about religious toleration proves the he knows nothing about the past or the present. There is a fatal instinct in error, which leads it to hate the Truth; and the true Church, by its unchangeableness, is a perpetual reproach to them that refuse to be her children. Heresy starts with an attempt to annihilate them that remain faithful; when it has grown tired of open persecution it vents its spleen in insults and calumnies; and when these do not produce the desired effect, hypocrisy comes in with its assurances of friendly forbearance. The history of Protestant Europe, during the last three centuries, confirms these statements; it also justifies us in honouring those courageous servants of God who, during that same period, have died for the ancient faith. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year.)

Dom Prosper Gueranger described with prophetic accuracy the very spirit of the likes of Jorge Mario Bergoglio he continues to use insults and calumnies to disparage those who hold fast to the Catholic Faith, including the countless millions of martyrs who have preferred death to apostasy. Why are we so ready to make our own peace with that which was opposed so valiantly by Catholic martyrs just because a ninety old lady dies after presiding over a dead religion that has the power to save no one, including herself? How can we be opposed to Jorge Mario Bergoglio in theory yet melt like wax and act accoding to his own false beliefs when a member of a false religion, no less its head, dies?

One of the many thousands of English and Irish martyrs was Blessed Margaret Clitherow, who was put to death under the authority of Queen Elizabeth I of England on the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, March 25, 1686, as she refused all entreaties to “pray” with Protestants after she had been imprisoned for hiding Catholic priests:

There were present at her martyrdom the two Sheriffs of York, Fawcet and Gibson, Frost, a minister, Fox, Mr. Cheke's kinsman, with another of his men, the four sergeants, which had hired certain beggars to do the murder, three or four men, and four women.

'The martyr coming to the place kneeled her down, and prayed to herself. The tormentors bade her pray with them, and they would pray with her.'

The were still hoping for some act that could be construed as apostasy, not that it would save her life now, but because they needed a little victory to use a propaganda and to offset their shame. So they would intrude even into her converse with God, to confuse her last moments. Who should say, if they prayed with her, that she was not praying with them?

Clear-heaaded to the last, 'the martyr denied, and said, “I will not pray with you, and you shall not pray with me; neither will I say Amen to your prayers, nor shall you to mine.”

'Then they will her to pray for the Queen's Majesty.'

This was intended as a trap. If she refused, she was a traitor; if she prayed, they could and would pray with her. But Margaret Clitherow's ready with did not fail her even now.

'The martyr began in this order. First in the hearing of them all, she prayed for the Catholic Church, then for the Pope's Holiness, Cardinals, and other Fathers that have chage of souls and then for all Christian princes. At which words the tormentors interrupted her, and will her not to put her Majesty among that company; yet the martyr proceeded in this order, “and especially for Elizabeth, Queen of England, that God turn her to the Catholic faith, and that after this mortal life she may receive the blessed joys of heaven. For I wish as much good,” quoteth she, “to her Majesty's soul as to mine own.”  (Mary Claridge, Margaret Clitherow, London, England: Burns and Oates, 1966, pp. 173-174.)

Blessed Margaret Clitherow, who worshiped God in a “dead language” that spoke of the transcendence of God above particular cultures and provided a sense of the Mysterium Tremendum that is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, did not have to “discern” anything. Indeed, she preferred death to apostasy, and so must we by refusing even the slightest affiliation with the counterfeit church of conciliarism and its robber barons who are enemies of Christ the King and of the souls whose sins He atoned by offering Himself up to His Co-Equal and Co-Eternal God the Father in Spirit and in Truth on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday.

Suffice to say for the present, however, that all the pageantry and “traditional” ceremonies that ended on Monday, September 19, 2022, the Feast of Saint Januarius and His Companions (and the Feast of Our Lady of La Salette), mean nothing. They are without any supernatural benefit to the immortal soul of Queen Elizabeth II, and they are without any supernatural benefit to anyone else, including her four children, three of whom (Charles, Anne, and Andrew) have carried on the grand Protestant tradition of divorce and remarriage or to her grandchildren. The Anglican Church is false, and it was early as 1570 that Pope Saint Pius V denounced the Edwardian Ordinal as heretical and sacramentally barren:

He that reigneth on high, to whom is given all power in heaven and earth, has committed one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, outside of which there is no salvation, to one alone upon earth, namely to Peter, the first of the apostles, and to Peter’s successor, the pope of Rome, to be by him governed in fullness of power. Him alone He has made ruler over all peoples and kingdoms, to pull up, destroy, scatter, disperse, plant and build, so that he may preserve His faithful people (knit together with the girdle of charity) in the unity of the Spirit and present them safe and spotless to their Saviour.

1. In obedience to which duty, we (who by God’s goodness are called to the aforesaid government of the Church) spare no pains and labour with all our might that unity and the Catholic religion (which their Author, for the trial of His children’s faith and our correction, has suffered to be afflicted with such great troubles) may be preserved entire. But the number of the ungodly has so much grown in power that there is no place left in the world which they have not tried to corrupt with their most wicked doctrines; and among others, Elizabeth, the pretended queen of England and the servant of crime, has assisted in this, with whom as in a sanctuary the most pernicious of all have found refuge. This very woman, having seized the crown and monstrously usurped the place of supreme head of the Church in all England to gather with the chief authority and jurisdiction belonging to it, has once again reduced this same kingdom- which had already been restored to the Catholic faith and to good fruits- to a miserable ruin.

2. Prohibiting with a strong hand the use of the true religion, which after its earlier overthrow by Henry VIII (a deserter therefrom) Mary, the lawful queen of famous memory, had with the help of this See restored, she has followed and embraced the errors of the heretics. She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics; oppressed the followers of the Catholic faith; instituted false preachers and ministers of impiety; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fasts, choice of meats, celibacy, and Catholic ceremonies; and has ordered that books of manifestly heretical content be propounded to the whole realm and that impious rites and institutions after the rule of Calvin, entertained and observed by herself, be also observed by her subjects. She has dared to eject bishops, rectors of churches and other Catholic priests from their churches and benefices, to bestow these and other things ecclesiastical upon heretics, and to determine spiritual causes; has forbidden the prelates, clergy and people to acknowledge the Church of Rome or obey its precepts and canonical sanctions; has forced most of them to come to terms with her wicked laws, to abjure the authority and obedience of the pope of Rome, and to accept her, on oath, as their only lady in matters temporal and spiritual; has imposed penalties and punishments on those who would not agree to this and has exacted then of those who persevered in the unity of the faith and the aforesaid obedience; has thrown the Catholic prelates and parsons into prison where many, worn out by long languishing and sorrow, have miserably ended their lives. All these matter and manifest and notorious among all the nations; they are so well proven by the weighty witness of many men that there remains no place for excuse, defense or evasion.

3. We, seeing impieties and crimes multiplied one upon another the persecution of the faithful and afflictions of religion daily growing more severe under the guidance and by the activity of the said Elizabeth -and recognizing that her mind is so fixed and set that she has not only despised the pious prayers and admonitions with which Catholic princes have tried to cure and convert her but has not even permitted the nuncios sent to her in this matter by this See to cross into England, are compelled by necessity to take up against her the weapons of justice, though we cannot forbear to regret that we should be forced to turn, upon one whose ancestors have so well deserved of the Christian community. Therefore, resting upon the authority of Him whose pleasure it was to place us (though unequal to such a burden) upon this supreme justice-seat, we do out of the fullness of our apostolic power declare the foresaid Elizabeth to be a heretic and favourer of heretics, and her adherents in the matters aforesaid to have incurred the sentence of excommunication and to be cut off from the unity of the body of Christ.

4. And moreover (we declare) her to be deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever.

5. And also (declare) the nobles, subjects and people of the said realm and all others who have in any way sworn oaths to her, to be forever absolved from such an oath and from any duty arising from lordship. fealty and obedience; and we do, by authority of these presents , so absolve them and so deprive the same Elizabeth of her pretended title to the crown and all other the above said matters. We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication.

6. Because in truth it may prove too difficult to take these presents wheresoever it shall be necessary, we will that copies made under the hand of a notary public and sealed with the seal of a prelate of the Church or of his court shall have such force and trust in and out of judicial proceedings, in all places among the nations, as these presents would themselves have if they were exhibited or shown.

Given at St. Peter’s at Rome, on 25 February 1570 of the Incarnation; in the fifth year of our pontificate. (Pope Saint Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, February 25, 1570.)

How has the passage of time corrected the heretical content of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (which is a replacement for the four parts of the liturgy used in the Catholic Church: The Breviary, the Missal, the Pontifical, and the Ritual)? 

Although Regnans in Excelsis seems to have been forgotten quite deliberately by the conciliar revolutionaries and by the Anglicans, it is impossible for anyone to simply “forget” about Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae, September 15, 1887. Pope Leo XIII, of course, definitively declared that Anglican orders were null and void. This simple declaration has been an obstacle that the conciliar and Anglican ecumaniacs have long sought to overcome by one Modernist sleight of hand after another.

The following passages from Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae determined the invalidity of Anglican orders once and for all, noting that for the conciliar revolutionaries, much like their comrades in the political and social order of things, nothing is ever considered” unless it is “settled” on their terms, which, ipso facto, makes their reversal of theological and/moral truth “irreversible”:

24. In the examination of any rite for the effecting and administering of Sacraments, distinction is rightly made between the part which is ceremonial and that which is essential, the latter being usually called the “matter and form”. All know that the Sacraments of the New Law, as sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which they effect, and effect the grace which they signify. Although the signification ought to be found in the whole essential rite, that is to say, in the “matter and form”, it still pertains chiefly to the “form”; since the “matter” is the part which is not determined by itself, but which is determined by the “form”. And this appears still more clearly in the Sacrament of Order, the “matter” of which, in so far as we have to consider it in this case, is the imposition of hands, which, indeed, by itself signifies nothing definite, and is equally used for several Orders and for Confiirmation.

25. But the words which until recently were commonly held by Anglicans to constitute the proper form of priestly ordination namely, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” certainly do not in the least definitely express the sacred Ordel of Priesthood (sacerdotium) or its grace and power, which is chiefly the power “of consecrating and of offering the true Body and Blood of the Lord” (Council of Trent, Sess. XXIII, de Sacr. Ord. , Canon 1) in that sacrifice which is no “bare commemoration of the sacrifice offered on the Cross” (Ibid, Sess XXII., de Sacrif. Missae, Canon 3).

26. This form had, indeed, afterwards added to it the words “for the office and work of a priest,” etc.; but this rather shows that the Anglicans themselves perceived that the first form was defective and inadequate. But even if this addition could give to the form its due signification, it was introduced too late, as a century had already elapsed since the adoption of the Edwardine Ordinal, for, as the Hierarchy had become extinct, there remained no power of ordaining.

27. In vain has help been recently sought for the plea of the validity of Anglican Orders from the other prayers of the same Ordinal. For, to put aside other reasons when show this to be insufficient for the purpose in the Anglican life, let this argument suffice for all. From them has been deliberately removed whatever sets forth the dignity and office of the priesthood in the Catholic rite. That “form” consequently cannot be considered apt or sufficient for the Sacrament which omits what it ought essentially to signify.

28. The same holds good of episcopal consecration. For to the formula, “Receive the Holy Ghost”, not only were the words “for the office and work of a bishop”, etc. added at a later period, but even these, as we shall presently state, must be understood in a sense different to that which they bear in the Catholic rite. Nor is anything gained by quoting the prayer of the preface, “Almighty God”, since it, in like manner, has been stripped of the words which denote the summum sacerdotium.

29. It is not relevant to examine here whether the episcopate be a completion of the priesthood, or an order distinct from it; or whether, when bestowed, as they say per saltum, on one who is not a priest, it has or has not its effect. But the episcopate undoubtedly, by the institution of Christ, most truly belongs to the Sacrament of Order and constitutes the sacerdotium in the highest degree, namely, that which by the teaching of the Holy Fathers and our liturgical customs is called the Summum sacerdotium sacri ministerii summa . So it comes to pass that, as the Sacrament of Order and the true sacerdotium of Christ were utterly eliminated from the Anglican rite, and hence the sacerdotium is in no wise conferred truly and validly in the episcopal consecration of the same rite, for the like reason, therefore, the episcopate can in no wise be truly and validly conferred by it, and this the more so because among the first duties of the episcopate is that of ordaining ministers for the Holy Eucharist and sacrifice.

30. For the full and accurate understanding of the Anglican Ordinal, besides what we have noted as to some of its parts, there is nothing more pertinent than to consider carefully the circumstances under which it was composed and publicly authorized. It would be tedious to enter into details, nor is it necessary to do so, as the history of that time is sufficiently eloquent as to the animus of the authors of the Ordinal against the Catholic Church; as to the abettors whom they associated with themselves from the heterodox sects; and as to the end they had in view. Being fully cognizant of the necessary connection between faith and worship, between “the law of believing and the law of praying”, under a pretext of returning to the primitive form, they corrupted the Liturgical Order in many ways to suit the errors of the reformers. For this reason, in the whole Ordinal not only is there no clear mention of the sacrifice, of consecration, of the priesthood (sacerdotium), and of the power of consecrating and offering sacrifice but, as we have just stated, every trace of these things which had been in such prayers of the Catholic rite as they had not entirely rejected, was deliberately removed and struck out.

31. In this way, the native character or spirit as it is called of the Ordinal clearly manifests itself. Hence, if, vitiated in its origin, it was wholly insufficient to confer Orders, it was impossible that, in the course of time, it would become sufficient, since no change had taken place. In vain those who, from the time of Charles I, have attempted to hold some kind of sacrifice or of priesthood, have made additions to the Ordinal. In vain also has been the contention of that small section of the Anglican body formed in recent times that the said Ordinal can be understood and interpreted in a sound and orthodox sense. Such efforts, we affirm, have been, and are, made in vain, and for this reason, that any words in the Anglican Ordinal, as it now is, which lend themselves to ambiguity, cannot be taken in the same sense as they possess in the Catholic rite. For once a new rite has been initiated in which, as we have seen, the Sacrament of Order is adulterated or denied, and from which all idea of consecration and sacrifice has been rejected, the formula, “Receive the Holy Ghost”, no longer holds good, because the Spirit is infused into the soul with the grace of the Sacrament, and so the words “for the office and work of a priest or bishop”, and the like no longer hold good, but remain as words without the reality which Christ instituted.

32. Many of the more shrewd Anglican interpreters of the Ordinal have perceived the force of this argument, and they openly urge it against those who take the Ordinal in a new sense, and vainly attach to the Orders conferred thereby a value and efficacy which they do not possess. By this same argument is refuted the contention of those who think that the prayer, “Almighty God, giver of all good Things”, which is found at the beginning of the ritual action, might suffice as a legitimate “form” of Orders, even in the hypothesis that it might be held to be sufficient in a Catholic rite approved by the Church.

33. With this inherent defect of “form” is joined the defect of “intention” which is equally essential to the Sacrament. The Church does not judge about the mind and intention, in so far as it is something by its nature internal; but in so far as it is manifested externally she is bound to judge concerning it. A person who has correctly and seriously used the requisite matter and form to effect and confer a sacrament is presumed for that very reason to have intended to do (intendisse) what the Church does. On this principle rests the doctrine that a Sacrament is truly conferred by the ministry of one who is a heretic or unbaptized, provided the Catholic rite be employed. On the other hand, if the rite be changed, with the manifest intention of introducing another rite not approved by the Church and of rejecting what the Church does, and what, by the institution of Christ, belongs to the nature of the Sacrament, then it is clear that not only is the necessary intention wanting to the Sacrament, but that the intention is adverse to and destructive of the Sacrament.

34. All these matters have been long and carefully considered by ourselves and by our venerable brethren, the Judges of the Supreme Council, of whom it has pleased Us to call a special meeting upon the 16th day of July last, the solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They with one accord agreed that the question laid before them had been already adjudicated upon with full knowledge of the Apostolic See, and that this renewed discussion and examination of the issues had only served to bring out more clearly the wisdom and accuracy with which that decision had been made. Nevertheless, we deemed it well to postpone a decision in order to afford time both to consider whether it would be fitting or expedient that we should make a fresh authoritative declaration upon the matter, and to humbly pray for a fuller measure of divine guidance.

35. Then, considering that this matter, although already decided, had been by certain persons for whatever reason recalled into discussion, and that thence it might follow that a pernicious error would be fostered in the minds of many who might suppose that they possessed the Sacrament and effects of Orders, where these are nowise to be found, it seemed good to Us in the Lord to pronounce our judgment.

36. Wherefore, strictly adhering, in this matter, to the decrees of the pontiffs, our predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own initiative and certain knowledge, we pronounce and declare that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void. (Pope Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, September 15, 1887.) 

One of the chief ironies of the present moment, although one I came to recognize only sixteen and one-half years ago, sadly, is that the text of Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae condemns not only the rites of “episcopal” consecration and presbyteral “ordination” in the false Anglican sect but also those within the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

Father Louis J. Campbell, who was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on September 3, 1961, for the Order of Saint Augustine and has been the pastor of Saint Jude Shrine in Stafford, Texas, since 2001, explained what is defective in the Anglican “rites” of “episcopal” consecration and “presbyteral” ordination are also present in the conciliar “rites as well, relying upon Pope Pius XII’s Sacramentum Ordinis, November 30, 1947, to illustrate this fact:

“Let no one lead you astray with empty words,” warns St. Paul in today’s Epistle (Eph.5:6). We must keep the faith, the faith of our fathers, handed on to us from the Apostles by saints and martyrs, the fathers and doctors of the Church, and holy popes and bishops. Now it is our turn to teach the faith, handing it on to the younger generation unchanged and untainted by heresy, lest the Church become the desolate kingdom spoken of by Our Lord in the Gospel. 

Many, “with empty words,” have tried to destroy the Catholic faith – Arius, Luther, Calvin and Cranmer, to name a few. Then came the Modernists, condemned by Pope St. Pius X, whose heresies lived on to be re-hatched at Vatican II by the liberal theologians, and canonized by the conciliar popes.

If one were to set out to destroy the Catholic faith, a good place to begin would be to tamper with the Sacraments, the Sacrament of Baptism, for instance. But every well instructed Catholic knows that the essential rite of Baptism requires the pouring of water upon the head of the person (or immersing the person in the water) while saying the words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (or Holy Spirit).  

If the priest baptizing were to say, “I pour upon you the life-giving waters of salvation, that you may share the life of the Holy Trinity,” we would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Sacrament was invalid, and that the person would have to be re-baptized using the form that is required for validity. We would not have to wait for the theologians to debate the matter, or for the Holy See to issue a decree of nullity. Any Catholic in his right mind would know that the attempted Baptism was invalid. Any attempt by the “liturgical experts” to change the essentials of the Sacrament would not have been tolerated by the Catholic faithful.   

But consider some of the other sacraments. Most of us knew little of what was required, for instance, for the valid consecration of a bishop. In a ceremony rarely witnessed by most of the faithful, the Sacrament was administered in Latin amid mysterious and lengthy rites. Change the form of this Sacrament, and who would notice? Then what better way to destroy the Catholic Church than to render invalid the Sacrament of Holy Orders, since true bishops are absolutely necessary if the Church is to survive?    

The essential matter and form for the valid consecration of a bishop was determined by Pope Pius XII on November 30, 1947, in the Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 40, 1948, 5-7), a document which appears to have all the essential characteristics of infallibility. Even if it does not, it is certainly an authoritative document, which Pope Pius expected to be taken most seriously. With the laying on of hands, the consecrating bishop was to say the words of the Preface, “of which,” says the pope, “the following are essential and therefore necessary for validity: ‘Fill up in Thy priest the perfection of Thy ministry and sanctify him with the dew of Thy heavenly ointment, this thy servant decked out with the ornaments of all beauty’” (Comple in sacerdote tuo ministerii tui summum, et ornamentis totius glorificationis instructum coelestis unguenti rore sanctifica). 

At the end of the document Pope Pius XII states: “We teach, declare, and determine this, all persons not withstanding, no matter what special dignity they may have, and consequently we wish and order such in the Roman Pontifical... No one therefore is allowed to infringe upon this Constitution given by us, nor should anyone dare to have the audacity to contradict it...”

Pope Pius XII’s body had hardly begun “a-mouldering in the grave” when the agents of change began working in earnest to destroy the Catholic faith. Paul VI, once the confidant and trusted friend of Pope Pius XII, had that “audacity to contradict” when he published his own decree in 1968. In vain did Pope Pius XII “teach, declare, and determine” what was required for the validity of the Sacrament of Orders. Paul VI would introduce entirely new words, requiring them for validity, words which were never used for the consecration of a bishop in the Roman Rite: “So now pour out upon this chosen one that power which is from you, the governing Spirit whom you gave to your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the Spirit given by him to the holy apostles, who founded the Church in every place to be your temple for the unceasing glory and praise of your name” (Pontificalis Romani, June 18, 1968).

As to why Paul VI found it necessary to discard the essential words of the traditional form of consecration and replace them with entirely different words, he says “…it was judged appropriate to take from ancient sources the consecratory prayer that is found in the document called the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, written at the beginning of the third century.”

Judged appropriate? By whom? None other than Archbishop Annibale Bugnini and his associates of the “Consilium,” who invented the Novus Ordo Mass. And who on earth was Hippolytus of Rome? He was an anti-pope of the third century who separated from Rome because of doctrinal differences and established a schismatic church, although he later returned to the Catholic Church and died a martyr. Who knows but that his “Apostolic Tradition” was drawn up for his schismatic sect? 

And whatever became of Pope Pius XII’s Apostolic Constitution, Sacramentum Ordinis?  The name Sacramentum Ordinis was even given to another document by John Paul II, probably as a red herring to throw us off the track.  

What conclusion does one draw? The Catechism of the Council of Trent states: “In our Sacraments… the form is so definite that any, even a casual deviation from it renders the Sacrament null.” We would never tolerate a change in the form of the Sacrament of Baptism. Never! Can we blithely accept a total deviation in the form of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, a change which omits the part of the traditional form declared essential for validity by Pope Pius XII? I think not! Pope Pius XII changed nothing of the traditional form, but merely designated which part of the form was essential for validity. Paul VI omitted that essential part of the form and replaced it with something entirely new. Not even popes (certainly not would-be popes) can change the form of a Sacrament. Whom do we trust, Pope Pius XII who carefully guarded the traditional sacramental form handed down from ages past, or Paul VI? Paul VI, who on the flimsiest of pretexts changed the essential form of a Sacrament, thus rendering it invalid. The result is that we are left with a whole generation of pseudo-bishops attempting to govern the Church without the grace of office. A miter and a bishop’s ring do not a bishop make. And the Kingdom is brought to desolation (Lk.11:17).  

But even among traditionalists many refuse to consider the possibility of invalid sacramental rites. It’s more convenient to think that if the pope says so it’s got to be OK. But Paul VI told us the Novus Ordo Mass was OK, and look where that has brought us. The day must come when all awaken to the fact that the Church has been brought low by an apostasy more monstrous than we have been willing to admit. Only then will the true bishops emerge, a true pope will restore the hierarchy, and the Church will rise more glorious than ever. “And all mankind shall see the salvation of God” (Lk.3:6).  (Father Louis J. Campbell, "A Kingdom Brought to Desolation (Lk.11:17)," Third Sunday of Lent, March 27, 2011, Saint Jude Shrine, Stafford, Texas.)

It is thus very ironic that the conciliar revolutionaries have long sought to overlook Apostolicae Curae to provide their “official” (but utterly worthless) endorsement of Anglican orders as their own rites of “episcopal” consecration” and “priestly” ordination stand thereby condemned as well.

Most people alive today, however, are smitten with the sentimentality of Queen Elizabeth II’s death and with the accession of her adulterous eldest son, Charles Philip Arthur George, to the throne as King Charles III, whose accession was proclaimed on Saturday, September 10, 2022, the Feast of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino:

Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His Mercy our late Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second of Blessed and Glorious memory, by whose Decease the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is solely and rightfully come to The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George:

We, therefore, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this Realm and members of the House of Commons, together with other members of Her late Majesty's Privy Council and representatives of the Realms and Territories, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, and others, do now hereby with one voice and Consent of Tongue and Heart publish and proclaim that The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George is now, by the Death of our late Sovereign of Happy Memory, become our only lawful and rightful Liege Lord Charles the Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of his other Realms and Territories, King, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, to whom we do acknowledge all Faith and Obedience with humble Affection; beseeching God by whom Kings and Queens do reign to bless His Majesty with long and happy Years to reign over us.

Given at St James's Palace this tenth day of September in the year of Our Lord two thousand and twenty-two.

God Save the King! (Proclamation of Accession of King Charles III.)

Defender of the Faith?

Not the true Faith, the Catholic Faith.

The false religion of Anglicanism was founded on the carnal desires of a bloodthirsty tyrant, and its rejection of Papal Primacy has led it to endorse a welter of errors that have returned England to its Druid past. Only two percent of English nationals bother to show up at Anglican services every Sunday, and only twelve percent of the English consider themselves to be Anglican, facts contained in a Protestant publication, Christianity Today, two years ago:

The evidence for secularization, or at least for the declining importance of Christianity, is compelling. Christian affiliation in the UK fell from 66 percent to 38 percent over 25 years, with Anglicanism accounting for the sharpest decline in affiliation. By 2018, only 12 percent of the national population identified as belonging to the Church of England or its sister churches in Scotland and Wales.

Any residual cultural affiliation to the Church of England appears to be in freefall and is likely to accelerate; surveys show as few as 1 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds now identify as Anglican. Likewise, attendance at Church of England services has fallen significantly in recent decades, down to an average weekly attendance of 57 people (compared to a mean of 81 in the Episcopal Church in the US, which has also suffered decline).

Looking at the data, we might question the validity of a national church that attracts less than 2 percent of the national population to regular worship. Indeed, this might even be taken as fuel to fire the debate about the established nature of the Church of England. But what of the second picture? (Anglican Churches in the UK Are Shrinking in Size.)

The Christianity Today article went on, however, to note with approval that the “Church of England” was still nevertheless an important “social” institution in providing services to the poor and the hungry. In other words, the supposed worship of God does not matter as it has been supplanted by naturalistic concerns. One can see clearly that the Anglican path of degeneration has been the model by which Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s false entity, the counterfeit church of conciliarism, has become a means of social reform and “saving the planet,” not of human sanctification and salvation.

It is important to remember that the warfare waged by King Henry VIII against the sanctity and indissolubility of Holy Matrimony made inevitable his false religious sect’s warfare against the fecundity of marriage at its Lambeth Conference in 1930:

Resolution 15

The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage and Sex

Where there is clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, the method must be decided on Christian principles. The primary and obvious method is complete abstinence from intercourse (as far as may be necessary) in a life of discipline and self-control lived in the power of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles. The Conference records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. (Resolution 15 - The Life and Witness of the Christian Community - Marriage.)

This decision opened the floodgates of Protestant acceptance of contraception, which, of course, had been promoted for the previous fifteen years in the United States of America by the nymphomaniac revolutionary anti-Theist named Margaret Sanger. An organization known as the Federal Council of Churches in America (which merged in 1950 with other such organizations to form the “National Council of Churches”) endorsed contraception in 1931, prompting the following editorial to appear, amazingly enough, in The Washington Post:

The Federal Council of Churches in America some time ago appointed a committee on "marriage and the home," which has now submitted a report favoring a "careful and restrained" use of contraceptive devices to regulate the size of families. The committee seems to have a serious struggle with itself in adhering to Christian doctrine while at the same time indulging in amateurish excursions in the field of economics, legislation, medicine, and sociology. The resulting report is a mixture of religious obscurantism and modernistic materialism which departs from the ancient standards of religion and yet fails to blaze a path toward something better.   

The mischief that would result from an attempt to place the stamp of church approval upon any scheme for "regulating the size of families" is evidently quite beyond the comprehension of this pseudo-scientific committee. It is impossible to reconcile the doctrine of the divine institution of marriage with any modernistic plan for the mechanical regulation of human birth. The church must either reject the plain teachings of the Bible or reject schemes for the “scientific” production of human souls. Carried to its logical conclusion, the committee’s report if carried into effect would lead to the death-knell of marriage as a holy institution, by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality. The suggestion that the use of legalized contraceptives would be “careful and restrained” is preposterous. If the churches are to become organizations for political and 'scientific' propaganda they should be honest and reject the Bible, scoff at Christ as an obsolete and unscientific teacher, and strike out boldly as champions of politics and science as substitutes for the old-time religion. ("Forgetting Religion," Editorial, The Washington Post, March 22, 1932.)

The Lambeth Conference’s Resolution 15, which prompted Pope Pius XI to issue Casti Connubii on December 31, 1930, accustomed the British people to “planned” pregnancies and opened the way to the public acceptance of one degrading practice after another over the course of time, up to and including the legalization of surgical baby-killing by means of the Abortion Law of 1967 that was passed Parliament at the behest of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Here is a brief history of surgical baby-killing in the United Kingdom as found on the website of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn in England:

In 1938, a London gynaecologist, Aleck Bourne, tested the laws by performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted by five off-duty British soldiers. Dr Bourne was a supporter of the Abortion Law Reform Association.

He was charged with an illegal abortion, and pleaded not guilty on the basis that the girl's mental health would have been adversely affected by giving birth. Dr Bourne was acquitted after the judge, Mr Justice Macnaughten, invited the jury to decide whether in acting to preserve the girl's mental health, as he saw it, the doctor's action had amounted to saving her life. The judge evidently condoned the abortion, and the jury acquitted the doctor.

The effect of the Bourne case was to give legal sanction for abortions to prevent damage to a woman's physical or mental health, a test which became interpreted more and more liberally, and which was incorporated into the Abortion Act. This marked a watershed and although medical grounds are still formally required, doctors can practice abortion virtually on request provided they claim mental health is at risk. Aleck Bourne eventually became appalled at the results of his case and became an early member of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.

Steel's 1967 Abortion Act

The Abortion Act was introduced by the liberal MP David Steel with the tacit support of the Labour government under Harold Wilson. Steel introduced the bill as a Private Member's Bill after drawing third place in the ballot on 12th May 1966. The bill would not have reached the statute book but for the support of the government which provided the parliamentary time needed to get the bill through. The government was sympathetic to the measure but did not want to include it in its own legislative programme. The bill was eventually given a third reading by the House of Commons on 14th July 1967, and came into force on 27th April 1968.

The operation of the Act proved controversial from the outset, and a committee of inquiry was set up under Mrs Justice Lane in 1971 to review the working of the Act. Obstetricians and gynaecologists who refused to provide abortions, were put under pressure, and although those in senior posts were protected by the 'conscience clause' in the Act others were forced out of the specialism, or out of the country, as pro-abortion officials in the Department of Health demanded that NHS hospitals should provide wide access to abortion services.

Pro-life reform attempts

Pro-life MPs sought to amend the Act, first introducing amendment bills as early as 1969. But despite numerous attempts through the 1970s and 1980s, they all failed to achieve any reform of the Act, as government ministers of various parties and Department of Health officials studiously defended the legislation and its abuse.

In 1990 the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher introduced a bill (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act) to legislate for in-vitro fertilisation, and agreed to allow amendments to the Abortion Act to be attached to the bill, thereby overcoming the major obstacle to getting abortion amendments onto the statute book. This proved a miscalculation on the part of pro-life MPs, as it later became clear that the government's agenda was not to introduce any significant restriction, but to widen the abortion law to accommodate new abortion techniques and to extend abortion for disabled babies up to birth (previously it had been restricted to the point at which the baby could be born alive).

Recent efforts

Further attempts to amend the law by pro-abortion MPs were attached to a later embryology bill in 2008. These also failed for reasons that are not apparent.

Recent efforts have focused on unlawful abuses of the abortion law, such as the practice of sex-selection abortion, and the discriminatory nature of abortion for disabled babies.  The policy of the Department of Health to allow "unwanted" pregnancy to be deemed a threat to mental health is another way in which the law is being treated with contempt.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson

We fed the public a line of deceit, dishonesty, a fabrication of statistics and figures ... we sensationalized the effects of illegal abortions, and fabricated polls which indicated that 85% of the public favoured unrestricted abortion, when we knew it was only 5%. We unashamedly lied, and yet our statements were quoted (by the media) as though they had been written in law. (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.)

British authorities admitted in 2013 that over eight million children had been killed since 1967 (Over eight million abortions since 1967), although a chart found here provides statistics that date as far back as the very year of the infamous 1930 Lambeth Conference. The British Isles have been a killing field since 1534, and it is thus only logical that it has been the scene of so much carnage in recent decades. Only seventeen percent of the British people believe that the killing of preborn children by surgical means is wrong in all instances (Ipsos Mori Research Publications), a figure that is very similar to that here in the United States of America, where nineteen percent of the public believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances (Gallup Poll.)

By the way, good readers, perhaps it should be pointed out the august Queen Elizabeth II gave her royal assent to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s law that decriminalized the killing of innocent preborn children, something that her apologists might claim was her “constitutional duty” even though one’s duty to God and His Commandments come before the dictates of unjust laws. Many of these same apologists might contend that she had no choice but to give her royal assent to the Parliamentary bill legalizing the absurdity that is “marriage” between people of the same gender, but the very fact that the English Parliament, whose origins can be traced back to 1295 when England was a thoroughly Catholic kingdom, would even consider passing legislation to permit baby-killing and “gay marriage” is the consequence of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in England and its replacement by the “church” of which the English monarch is the nominal head.

Here is what the Catholic Church teaches about supposed conflicts between the truth and “duties of state”:

10. But, if the laws of the State are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church, or conveying injunctions adverse to the duties imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then, truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime; a crime, moreover, combined with misdemeanor against the State itself, inasmuch as every offense leveled against religion is also a sin against the State. Here anew it becomes evident how unjust is the reproach of sedition; for the obedience due to rulers and legislators is not refused, but there is a deviation from their will in those precepts only which they have no power to enjoin. Commands that are issued adversely to the honor due to God, and hence are beyond the scope of justice, must be looked upon as anything rather than laws. You are fully aware, venerable brothers, that this is the very contention of the Apostle St. Paul, who, in writing to Titus, after reminding Christians that they are "to be subject to princes and powers, and to obey at a word," at once adds: "And to be ready to every good work."Thereby he openly declares that, if laws of men contain injunctions contrary to the eternal law of God, it is right not to obey them. In like manner, the Prince of the Apostles gave this courageous and sublime answer to those who would have deprived him of the liberty of preaching the Gospel: "If it be just in the sight of God to hear you rather than God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

That the late Queen Elizabeth II “had” to obey Parliament rather than God is but a vivid proof of how England’s break from the Catholic Church and Papal Primacy led directly to the rise of the modern “democratic” state where “majorities” of one kind or another control titular monarchies rather than monarchies being restrained by the use of the Indirect Power (teaching, preaching, exhortation, admonitions) and Direct Power (sanctions, interdicts, bulls of excommunication) exercised by a pope and/or his bishops when those in civil power threatened to do that which was opposed to the good of souls and hence inimical to the maintenance of the common temporal good. English monarchs once were the good servants of the Holy Father before they became tyrants who, after much bloodletting that included a civil war in the Seventeenth Century, ultimately became figureheads for Parliamentary majorities, who have proven themselves to be quite adept at shedding as much blood as Henry VIII and Elizabeth I by means of their endorsement of and participation in needless wars, including the war that was waged against Irish Catholics (who are distinct from the Marxist Irish Republican Army) in Northern Ireland, and by the endorsement of the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn. Debauchery and licentiousness have been endorsed by Parliamentary majorities as the Queen did her “royal duty” even though by doing so she was defying the very law of God. Then again, the whole of modern England and its false religious sect is based on the defiance of the law of God, and no Catholic should ever forget this fact, ignore it, or minimize it as inconsequential. Falsehood leads to state-sponsored terror against the lives and, more importantly, the souls of innocent human beings.

Moreover, the teleology of error is such that the Anglican sect declined over time to such an extent as to become, as noted very favorably in the Christianity Today report quoted above, nothing other than an institution of social work where matters such as the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came to be viewed with skepticism or outright denial by a large number of Anglican laymen posing as “priests” and “bishops,” something that Father Denis Fahey alluded to in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

The tide of revolt which broke away from the Catholic Church had the immediate effect of increasing the power of princes and rulers in Protestant countries. The Anabaptists and the peasants in Germany protested in the name of ‘evangelical liberty,’ but they were crushed. We behold the uprise of national churches, each of which organizes its own particular form of religion, mixture of supernatural and natural elements, as a department of State. The orthodox Church in Russia was also a department of State and as such exposed to the same evils. National life was thus withdrawn from ordered subjection to the Divine Plan and the distinction laid down by our Divine Lord Himself, between the things that are God’s and the things that are Caesar’s, utterly abolished. Given the principle of private judgment or of individual relation with Christ, it was inevitable that the right of every individual to arrange his own form of religion should cause the pendulum to swing from a Caesarinism supreme in Church and State to other concrete expressions of ‘evangelical liberty.’ One current leads to the direction of indefinite multiplication of sects. Pushed to its ultimate conclusion, this would, this would give rise to as many churches as there are individuals, that is, there would not be any church at all. As this is too opposed to man’s social nature, small groups tend to coalesce. The second current tends to the creation of what may be termed broad or multitudinist churches. The exigencies of the national churches are attenuated until they are no longer a burden to anybody. The Church of England is an example of this. As decay in the belief of the Divinity of Jesus continues to increase, the tendency will be to model church organization according to the political theories in favour at the moment. The democratic form of society will be extolled and a ‘Reunion of Christendom,’ for example, will be aimed at, along the a lines of the League of Nations. An increasing number of poor bewildered units will, of course, cease to bother about any ecclesiastical organization at all.

The first [political] result was an enormous increase in the power of the Temporal Rulers, in fact a rebirth of the pagan regime of Imperial Rome. The Spiritual Kingship of Christ, participated in by the Pope and the Bishops of the Catholic Church being no longer acknowledged, authority over spiritual affairs passed to Temporal Rulers. They were thus, in Protestant countries, supposed to share not only in His Temporal Kingship of Christ the King, but also in His spiritual Kingship. As there was no Infallible Guardian of order above the Temporal Rulers, the way was paved for the abuses of State Absolutism. The Protestant oligarchy who ruled England with undisputed sway, from Charles the Second’s time on, and who treated Ireland to the Penal Laws, may be cited, along with that cynical scoundrel, Frederick of Prussia, as typical examples of such rulers. Catholic monarchs, like Louis XIV of France and Joseph II of Austria, by their absolutist tendencies and pretensions to govern the Catholic Church show the influence of the neighboring Protestant countries. Gallicanism and Josephism are merely a revival of Roman paganism.

The rejection by Luther of the visible Catholic Church opened the door, not only to the abuses of absolute rulers, supreme in Church and State, but soon led to an indifference to all ecclesiastical organizations. As faith in the supernatural life of grace and the supernatural order grew dim and waned, the way was made smooth for the acceptance of Freemasonry. The widespread loss of faith in the existence of the supernatural life and the growing ignorance of the meaning of the Redemption permitted the apostles of Illuminism and Masonry to propagate the idea that the true religion of Jesus Christ had never been understood or been corrupted by His disciples, especially by the Church of Rome, the fact being that only a few sages in secret societies down the centuries had kept alive the true teaching of Jesus Christ. According to this ‘authentic’ teaching our Saviour had enot stablished a new religion, but had simply restored the religion of the state of nature, the religion of the goodness of human nature when left to itself, freed from the bonds and shackles of society. Jesus Christ died a martyr for liberty, put to death by the rulers and priests. Masons and revolutionary secret societies alone are working for the true salvation of the world. By them shall original sin be done away with and the Garden of Eden restored. But the present organization of society must disappear, by the elimination of the tyranny of priests, the despotism of princes and the slavery resulting from national distinctions, from family life and from private property.

Father Fahey went on to describe the Lutheran concept of the "separation of Church and State:"

The rending of the Mystical Body by the so-called Reformation movement has resulted in the pendulum swinging from the extreme error of Judaeo-Protestant Capitalism to the opposite extreme error of the Judaeo-Masonic-Communism of Karl Marx.

The uprise of individualism rapidly led to unbridled self-seeking. Law-makers who were arbiters of morality, as heads of the Churches, did not hesitate to favour their own enterprising spirit. The nobles and rich merchants in England, for example, who got possession of the monastery lands, which had maintained the poor, voted the poor laws in order to make the poor a charge on the nation at large. The enclosure of common lands in England and the development of the industrial system are a proof of what private judgment can do when transplanted into the realm of production and distribution. The Lutheran separation of Church from the Ruler and the Citizen shows the decay in the true idea of membership of our Lord's Mystical Body.

"Assuredly," said Luther, "a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian, but a prince. The man is Christian, but his function does not concern his religion."

Even though the circumstances of Martin Luther’s revolution against the true Faith and the one that took place under Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer in England were different, both Protestant revolutions overthrew the Social Reign of Christ the King, thus paving the way for the triumph of today’s statist totalitarianism in so-called “democratic republics” and making constitutional monarchs little more than puppets controlled by their Judeo-Masonic masters in legislative or multinational governing bodies, something that the notorious globalist, environmental alarmist, population-control fascist, and worthy adulterous inheritor of the crown that once sat atop the head of the adulterous King Henry VIII five centuries ago, has long promoted:

June 14, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Prince of Wales has come under fire after using a speech on Islam and environmentalism as an opportunity to call for a reduction in the world’s birth rate, especially among Muslims.

But what has drawn the ire of some commentators is that moments after making his controversial remarks, the prince went on to quote famed Christian writers C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton in support of the thesis of his address.

Dr. Dave Beresford, an expert on G.K. Chesterton who writes for the Chesterton Society’s Gilbert Magazine, told LifeSiteNews.com that, “To quote Chesterton in support of any population control program is entirely misleading.” In fact, said Beresford, Chesterton's writings are chock-full of compelling arguments against population control, a fact of which Prince Charles seems to have been wholly unaware.

The prince conspicuously placed his treatment of population issues at the end of his hour-long speech, which marked the 25th anniversary of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, of which he is the patron. 

The general thrust of the address was a call for a return to “tradition.” Such a move was presented as a means of combating the West’s “rapacious desire for continuous economic growth” and the “mechanistic and reductionist approach to our scientific understanding of the world around us.”

But before wrapping up the speech the prince said there was “one final issue I have to mention.”

“Wherever you look, the world's population is increasing fast,” he said. “It goes up by the equivalent of the entire population of the United Kingdom every year. Which means that this poor planet of ours, which already struggles to sustain 6.8 billion people, will somehow have to support over 9 billion people within fifty years.”

The prince told his audience that it must “face up to the fact more honestly than we do that one of the biggest causes of high birth rates remains cultural” – an apparent reference to the high birth rate amongst Muslims.

Then, while concluding his address, the Prince of Wales quoted Chesterton as saying that “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as a root.” He also mentioned C.S. Lewis’ famous statement in Mere Christianity, that “sometimes you do have to turn the clock back if it is telling the wrong time” and “going back can sometimes be the quickest way forward.”

But not everyone is impressed by the prince's message or by the illustrious intellectual company he is keeping. When asked for comment specifically about the prince’s remarks on birth rate, Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and an expert on demographic issues, simply quipped, “Prince Charles should stick to matters that he's good at, like handing out awards at cricket and polo matches.”

Beresford, however, specifically took issue with the prince’s use of Chesterton, telling LifeSiteNews.com that the early 20th century English writer would have been appalled to be invoked in a speech that advocated population control.

“Chesterton’s major contribution to social criticism is his argument against population control. That is possibly his most significant contribution,” said Beresford.

In 1925 Chesterton wrote an introduction to Charles Dickens’A Christmas Carol in which he said that “The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him, whether he is part of the surplus population; or if not, how he knows he is not.”

Elsewhere, in an essay titled “Social Reform vs. Birth Control,”Chesterton argued that it is typically the wealthy elite who are interested in promoting population control as a solution to poverty, often simply as a means of avoiding dealing with the more difficult root problems that lead to poverty.

“If [the Birth-Controller] can prevent his servants from having families, he need not support those families. Why the devil should he?” wrote Chesterton. “The landlord or the employer says in his hearty and handsome fashion: ‘You really cannot expect me to deprive myself of my money. But I will make a sacrifice. I will deprive myself of your children.’”

Beresford reiterated that “Chesterton dedicated his entire literary output to celebrating the goodness of life and to fighting against ideas such as population control.”

In reference to Prince Charles’ remarks, he said, “It’s unfortunate that one of the chief beneficiaries of a modern industrial economy and thus one.of the wealthiest people in the world has recourse to an old-fashioned trick of blaming the poor for all the world's ills.” (Prince Charles’ Population Control Speech Backfires with References to Chesterton, C.S. Lewis.)

King Charles III is a supporter of the global reset of the Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum, an ally of both Bill Gates and George Soros, and a stooge of the World Health Organization. He is a fatuous baby boomer who has been crying wolf about the environment for decades and whose religious “faith” is nothing other than that of the rationalism, utilitarianism, and naturalism which emerged from the diseased carcass of Anglicanism decades ago.

God save the king?

Please, God save us from such a king as we pray for the rising up of the great French monarch!

Unlike his late mother, King Charles III will not “have” to sign anything he opposes as he supports the entirety of the globalist agenda without question.

Alas, no one “has” to do anything that is opposed to his conscience, and it is thus telling that Queen Elizabeth’s conscience was informed by her duties to her state and not to Christ the King. The defender of a false faith born after a revolution against the Social Reign of Christ the King was thus taught a false sense of “duty” to mere men because her false religion sect rejected Our King’s true Church, which alone has the supernatural means to rightly inform and guide the consciences of civil rulers to put duty to truth over a false obligation to obey the precepts and ordinances of mere men who have come to believe in fables as true and to reject the truth as “divisive” and “bigoted.” The world in which we live is suffering from a paucity of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces, resulting in the deification of man and his supposed “ability” to reshape the world according to his own unaided powers.

This lack of a superabundance of Sanctifying and Actual Graces is, of course, the combined result of the effects of Protestant Revolution and the Modernist revolution that unfolded at the “Second” Vatican Council and has evolved by means of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical travesty. Men will revert to barbarism if they do not have belief in, access to and attempt to cooperate with the graces won for us by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by means of the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. A world filled with neo-barbarians and neo-pagans and devil worshippers, a world filled with hedonism and materialism, will inevitably wind up imprisoned by statists, who always use chaos as the pretext for establishing an “order” that result eventually in active, overt and bloody persecutions against believing Catholics, that is, those who do not subscribe the false religion of man that is covered over by a slight gloss of Catholicism that is conciliarism.

England Rejected and Then Spat Upon Its Catholic Heritage

England gave Christendom a distinctive Anglo-Saxon culture, including the development of much of the Common Law, some of which is still the basis of legal reasoning, albeit much more infrequently now than in the past, in the United States of America. English judges heard cases-at-law as they sat under crucifixes and attempted to provide remedies and/or render decisions that were consonant with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. These judges were mindful of the fact that they would be judge by the Divine Judge, Christ the King, at the moment of their Particular Judgment, and it was from the tradition of justice that flowed from the Common Law that the Magna Carta was issued in 1215 to serve as a check upon the abuses of royal power. Although certainly owing a debt to the heritage of Roman law, the Magna Carta, however, was written by Catholics who were mindful of their duties to Christ the King, and it is one of the greatest English contributions to Christendom. The very seeds of the parliamentary-ministerial system of government were planted by the Magna Carta.

Yet it is, however, that it is not the grand Catholic legacy of England that influences the world today, acknowledging, of course, the injustices that England visited upon France—and especially our brave Saint Joan of Arc—during the Hundred Years’ War.  No, it is the English legacy of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry, which was at the very roots of the American founding principles, that helped to create the New World Order that enslaves us all at the moment.

Alas, there is another sorry legacy of Britain that largely escapes the attention of most commentators today: the influence of the British heretic named Pelagius, who lived between 360 A.D. and 418 A.D.

Pelagius taught that human beings were capable of more or less stirring up graces within themselves to save their souls and to accomplish whatever it is they set their minds to doing by means of their free wills. Many people alive today have never heard of Pelagianism or its variant, semi-Pelagianism, but most Americans believe inchoately, if not more explicitly, that they can do whatever it is they want because they are Americans. Pelagianism is at the heart of “American Exceptionalism,” which is itself but variant of the “British Exceptionalism,” that has been issued to try to remake the world in the image of the religious indifferentist and Calvinist-Judeo-Masonic American “way.”

Pelagianism was fought, however, by many a saint. Saint Germanus used the cult of the Protomartyr of Roman Britain, Saint Alban, who feast is celebrated, although not universally, on June 22, to combat Pelagianism.  Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B.’s The Liturgical Year described the valor of Saint Alban and how he was hated by the anti-historical Protestant Revolutionaries:

For a thousand years Alban too reigned with Christ. At last came the epoch when the depths of the abyss were to be let loose for a little time, and Satan, unchained, would once again seduce nations. Vanquished formerly by the saints, power was now given him to make war with them, and to overcome them in his turn. The disciple is not above his Master: like his Lord, Alban too was rejected by his own. Hated without cause, he beheld his illustrious monastery destroyed, that had been Albion's pride in the palmy days of her history; and scarce was even the venerable church itself saved, wherein God's athlete had so long reposed, shedding benefits around far and near. But, after all, what could he do now, in a profaned sanctuary, in which strange rites had banished those of our forefathers, and condemned the faith for which martyrs had bled and died? So Alban was ignominiously expelled, and his ashes scattered to the winds. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

Hatred for the past is a common theme of revolutionaries, including the one named Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

The work of Saint Alban and others to evangelize Roman Britain was not completed in their lifetimes. Unlike Saint Patrick, who worked a genuine miracle in the conversion of Ireland in his own lifetime it was not until five hundred ninety-five years later that the evangelization of Britain started again, this time under the guidance of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who had been sent to Britain by Pope Saint Gregory the Great:

Throned on the apostolic See, our saint proved himself to be a rightful heir of the apostles, not only as the representative and depositary of their authority, but as a follow-sharer in their mission of calling nations to the true faith. To whom does England owe her having been, for so many ages, the 'island of saints'? To Gregory, who, touched with compassion for those Angli, of whom, as he playfully said, he would fain Angeli, sent to their island the monk Augustine with forty companions, all of them, as was Gregory himself, children of St. Benedict. The faith had been sown in this land as early as the second century, but it had been trodden down by the invasion of an infidel race. This time the seed fructified, and so rapidly that Gregory lived to see a plentiful harvest. It is beautiful to hear the aged Pontiff speaking with enthusiasm about the results of his English mission. He thus speaks in the twenty-seventh Book of his Morals: 'Lo! the language of Britain, which could once mutter naught save barbarous sounds, has long since begun to sing, in the divine praises, the Hebrew Alleluia! Lo! that swelling sea is now calm, and saints walk on its waves. The tide of barbarians, which the sword of earthly princes could not keep back, is now hemmed in at the simple bidding of God's priests.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year.)

Look at the hatred directed at Father Edmund Campion, S.J., for simply adhering to that which every Englishman believed for nearly a thousand years since the time of Saint Augustine of Canterbury—and which many in Britain, including Saint Helena, had embraced as early as the latter part of the Third Century A.D. as a result of the work of Saint Alban. It was during the closing of his trial that was to conclude with his being sentenced to death by being drawn and quartered that Father Campion himself noted the irony contained in his being condemned for believing what every ancestor of those who had condemned him had believed for nearly a thousand years:

"The only thing I have now to say is, that if my religion makes me a traitor, I am worthy to be condemned. Otherwise I am, and have been, as good a subject as ever the Queen had.

"In condemning me you condemn all your own ancestor--all the ancient priests, bishops and kings--all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.

"For what I have taught . . . that they did not teach? To be condemned with these lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and joy.

"God lives; posterity will live; their judgment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are now going to sentence me to death." (Father Harold C. Gardiner, S.J., Edmund Campion: Hero of God's Underground, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957, pp. 160-161.)  

The exact same phenomenon has occurred as a result of the conciliar revolution. All but a microscopically small number of Catholics attached to the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism have grown to hate most of what is dismissed derisively as the "pre-conciliar church," which was the point of They Like It! thirteen years ago now. Those who have no direct memory of the "pre-conciliar church" have been brainwashed by a highly sophisticated campaign of disinformation that helped to create a "false memory" of the past that even wiped out the true memories of those who lived in that "pre-conciliar church" and loved everything about it until they were "taught" that they could not even trust their own memories.

Our Lady Will Come to the Rescue of her Dowry, England

Despite the fact that the Anglican sect has existed for nearly five centuries and that the conciliar sect has been about the work of deceiving Catholics for over six decades now, there are still pockets of Catholics here and there who know what is true and who, like many of slackers before them, are trying to make sense of the state of apostasy and betrayal that exists at this time.

Indeed, there are Anglicans in England who have converted to what they think is the Catholic Church without realizing that they have only moved from one deck of the SS One World Ecumenical Church to another. These souls are motivated by a desire to belong to the Catholic Church and most of them want nothing to do with the so-called “Anglican Use” liturgy of the “Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham” as they want to belong to the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church and to worship God in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that their English forefathers rejected with a ready abandon following Henry VIII’s break from the Catholic Church in 1534. We must pray for these good people to come to a recognition of the fact that the Catholic Church is the spotless, inerrant, virginal mystical bride of her Divine Founder, Invisible Head, and Mystical Bridegroom, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and thus cannot ever err nor make accommodations with those steeped in error.

This having been noted, however, the longing for union with the true Church and their beloved England’s return thereto was also near and dear to the heart of the very same pope who had declared Anglican orders to be null and void, Pope Leo XIII, who addressed an Apostolic Letter to England in 1895 begging for the English to fly unto the patronage of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Possessing a true pastoral heart, Pope Leo XIII wanted to free the English from their enslavement to the sorts of theological errors that have emptied the pews of Anglican church buildings and led many among the ranks of the Anglican clergy to reject the Ten Commandments and even to go so far as deny the Sacred Divinity of Our Lord Himself. Like Pope Pius IX immediately before him, Pope Leo XIII exhorted non-Catholics to convert to the true Church, and this fact alone should help to convince the unconvinced that those who have laid claim to the papacy since the death of Pope Pius XII on October 9, 1958, have been and continue to be antipopes who have preached doctrines antithetical to that which is contained within the Sacred Deposit of Faith and thus inimical to the good of souls upon which the entirety of a just social order must be premised.

Pope Leo XIII started his Apostolic Letter, which was written in 1895, by reminding the English of his own pastoral concern for them and of their own rich history of Catholicism, which produced numerous saints and respected centers of learning:

The love and care of the Roman Pontiffs for England has been traditional from the days of our holy pre­decessor Gregory the Great. Religion and humanity generally, and especially the English nation, owe him a deep debt of gratitude. Although prevented, by the Divine call to yet higher duty, from himself undertaking the apostolic labour “of converting the Anglo-Saxons, as he had proposed to do whilst still a monk, his mind remained intent upon this great and salutary design” (Joann. Diac. in vita ejus, c. ii. 33), nor did he rest until it was accomplished. For from that monastic family which he had formed in learning and holiness of life in his own house he sent a chosen band under the leadership of Augustine to be the messengers of grace, wisdom, and civilization to those who were still buried in paganism. And relying as he did on Divine help his hope grew stronger under difficulty, until at length he saw his work crowned with success. He himself writes of this in tones of triumphant joy in reply to St. Augustine, who had sent him the news of the happy result: “Glory be to God on high and on earth peace to men of good will. To Christ be the glory in whose death we live; by whose weakness we are strong, in the love of whom we seek in Britain those brethren whom we knew not; by whose mercy we have found those whom knowing not we sought. Who can tell what gladness filled the hearts of all here to know that the English race, by the workings of the grace of God Almighty, and by your labours, my brother, has been illuminated by the light of our holy Faith, which expels the darkness of error, and has with free mind trodden underfoot those idols to which aforetime they were subject in ‘foolish fear” (Epist. c. xi., 28, al c. xi., 58). And congratulating Ethelbert, King of Kent, and Bertha his Queen, in a letter full of affection, in that they imitated St. Helen, of illustrious memory, and Constantine, the devout Emperor” (ib. c. xi., 66, al. c. xi., 60, c. xi., 29, al c. ix., 59), he strengthens them and their people with salutary admonitions. Nor did he cease for the rest of his life to foster and develop their faith in instructions dictated by holy prudence. Thus Christianity, which the Church had conveyed to Britain, and spread and defended there against rising heresy;” after having been blotted out by the invasion of heathen races, was now by the care of Gregory happily restored. 

Having resolved to address this letter to the English people, we recall at once these great and glorious events in the annals of the Church, which must surely be re­membered by them in gratitude. Moreover, it is note­worthy that this love and solicitude of Gregory was inherited by the Pontiffs who succeeded him. This is shown by their constant interposition in providing worthy and capable teachers in learning, both human and divine, by their helpful counsels, and by their affording in abundant measure whatever was necessary for establishing and developing that rising Church. And very soon was such care rewarded, for in no other case, perhaps. did the Faith take root so quickly, nor was so keen and intense a love manifested towards the See of Peter. That the English race was in those days devoted to this centre of Christian unity divinely constituted in the Roman Bishops, and that in the course of ages men of all ranks were bound to them by ties of loyalty, are facts too abundantly and plainly testified by the pages of history to admit of doubt or question. 

The Holy League for England’s return to union

But, in the storms which devastated Catholicity throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. England, too, received a grievous wound; for it was first unhap­pily wrenched from communication with the Apostolic See, and then was bereft of that holy Faith in which for long centuries it had rejoiced and found liberty. It was a sad defection; and our predecessors, while lamenting it in their earnest love, made every prudent effort to put an end to it, and to mitigate the many evils consequent upon it. It would take long, and it is not necessary, to detail the sedulous and increasing care taken by our predecessors in those circumstances. But by far the most valuable and effective assistance they afforded lies in their having so repeatedly urged on the faithful the practice of special prayer to God that He would look with compassion on England. In the number of those who devoted themselves to this special work of charity there were some venerable and saintly men, especially Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Philip Neri, and, in the last century. Paul, the founder of the Society of the Passion of Christ, who, not without a certain Divine impulse, it is said, was instant in supplication “at the throne of Divine Grace:” and this all the more earnestly that the times seemed less favourable to the realization of his hopes. We, indeed, long before being raised to the Supreme Pontificate, were deeply sensible also of the importance of holy prayer offered for this cause, and heartily ap­proved of it. For, as we gladly recall, at the time when we were Nuncio in Belgium, becoming acquainted with an Englishman, Ignatius Spencer, himself a devout son of the same St. Paul of the Cross, he laid before us the project he had already initiated for extending a society of pious people to pray for the return of the English nation to the Church.

We can hardly say how cordially we entered into this design, wholly inspired by faith and charity, and how we helped forward this cause, anticipating that the Eng­lish Church would obtain abundant assistance thereby. Although the fruits of Divine Grace obtained by prayer had previously manifested themselves, yet as that holy League spread they became notorious. Very many were led to follow the Divine call, and among them not a few men of distinguished eminence, and many, too, who in doing so had to make personal and heroic sacrifices. Moreover, there was a wonderful drawing of hearts and minds towards Catholic Faith and practice, which rose in public respect and esteem, and many a long-cherished prejudice yielded to the force of truth.

Looking at all this, we do not doubt that the united and humble supplications of so many to God are hasten­ing the time of further manifestations of His merciful designs towards the English people when “the Word of the Lord may run and be glorified” (Thess. iii. I)”. Our confidence is strengthened by observing the legislative and other measures which, if they do not, perhaps, directly, still do indirectly help forward the end, have in view by ameliorating the condition of the people at large, and by giving effect to the laws of justice and charity. (Pope Leo XIII to the English People, April 14, 1895.)

Please noted that Pope Leo XIII called to mind the work of the great Benedictine, Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who was sent by his fellow Benedictine, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, to re-evangelize the British at the beginning of the Seventh Century. Although the heretical Anglicans have tried to coopt Saint Augustine of Canterbury as their own, Pope Leo XIII was reminding the English that the first Archbishop of Canterbury was a Catholic who had been sent to England by the Vicar of Christ, thus reminding all Englishmen of good will that the papacy was central to the conversion of England and to the sustaining of the Holy Faith there until the break caused by King Henry VIII in 1534.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury was, as noted just above, the Apostle to England, and he was sent there by his fellow Benedictine, Pope Saint Gregory the Great, to evangelize a land whose Catholic Faith, which had been established in Britain by Pope Saint Eleutherius in the Second Century A.D., had been decimated by the invasions of the Angles and the Saxons. The hagiography found in Matins for the Divine Office on the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, May 28, provides the account:

Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Apostle of the English, was sent into England by blessed Gregory, and came thither in the year 597. At that time there was in Kent a most mighty king named Ethelbert, whose power reached even to the Humber. When this King had heard wherefore the holy man was come, he received him kindly, and bade him and his companions, who were all monks, to come to his own capital city of Canterbury being struck with astonishment at the perfect blamelessness of their lives, and the power of the heavenly doctrine which they preached, and which God confirmed with signs following. 

They drew nigh to the city in solemn procession, singing the Litany, and bearing before them for their standard a silver cross and a picture of the Lord our Saviour painted on a panel. Hard by the city, upon the east side, there was a Church builded of old time in honour of St. Martin, and wherein the Queen, who was a Christian, was used to pray. There they first began to meet together, to sing, to pray, to celebrate Masses, to preach, and to baptize, until the King was turned to the faith, and the most part of his people were led by his example, (but not his authority,) to take the name of Christian, for he had learnt from his teachers and his own soul's physicians, that men are to be drawn, and not driven to heaven. And now Augustine, being ordained Archbishop of the English and of Britain, lest he should leave untravailed any part of the Lord's vineyard, asked from the Apostolic See a new band of labourers, Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinian.

Having arranged the affairs of his church, Augustine held a synod with the bishops and doctors of the ancient Britons, who had long been at variance with the Roman Church in the celebration of Easter and other rites. But since he could not move them, either by the authority of the apostolic see or by miracles, to put an end to these variations, in a prophetic spirit he foretold their ruin. At length, after having endured many difficulties for Christ, and having become noted for miracles, when he had placed Mellitus in charge of the church of London, Justus of that of Rochester, and Laurence in charge of his own church, he passed to heaven on the 26th day of May, in the reign of Ethelbert, and was buried in the monastery of St. Peter, which thereafter became the burying-place of the bishops of Canterbury and of some kings. The English people honoured his memory with fervent zeal; and the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII extended his Office and Mass to the universal Church. (Matins, Divine Office, Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury.)

Writing before Pope Leo XIII extended the Feast of Saint Augustine of Canterbury to the universal Church and moved it from a concelebration with Saint Philip Neri and Pope Saint Eleutherius, Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., connected Saint Augustine of Canterbury’s reconquering of England for Christ the King and His true Church with rejection of the Holy Faith by the English people after the revolution inaugurated by the lecherous, murderous lout named King Henry VIII and then institutionalized by his daughter by the nefarious Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I:

Four hundred years had scarcely elapsed since the glorious death of Eleutherius, when a second Apostle of Britain ascended from this world, and on this same day, to the abode of eternal bliss. We cannot but be struck by the fact that the names of our two Apostles appear on the Calendar together: it shows us that God has his own special reasons in fixing the day for the death of each one among us. We have more than once noticed these providential coincidences, which form one of the chief characteristics of the liturgical cycle. What a beautiful sight is brought before us to-day, of the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who, after honouring on this day the saintly memory of the holy Pontiff from whom England first received the Gospel, himself ascended into heaven, and shared with Eleutherius the eternity of heaven’s joy! Who would not acknowledge in this, a pledge of he predilection wherewith heaven has favoured this country, which, after centuries of fidelity to the truth, has now for more than three hundred years been an enemy to her own truest glory?

The work begun by Eleutherius had been almost entirely destroyed by the invasion of the Saxons and Angles; so that a new mission, a preaching of the Gospel, had become a necessity. It was Rome that again supplied the want. St. Gregory the Great was the originator of the great design. Had it been permitted hm, he would have taken upon himself the fatigues of the apostolate to our country. He was deeply impressed with the idea that he was to be the spiritual Father of these poor islanders, some of whom he had seen exposed in the market-place of Rome, that they might be sold as slaves. Not being allowed to undertake the work himself, he looked around him for men whom he might send as Apostles to our island. He found them in the Benedictine monastery where he himself had spent several years of his life. There started from Rome forty monks, with Augustine at their head, and they entered England under the standard of the Cross.

Thus the new race that then peopled the island received the faith, as the Britons had previously done, from the hands of a Pope; and monks were their teachers in the science of salvation. The word of Augustine and his companions fructified in this privileged soil. It was some time of course before he could provide the whole nations with instruction; but neither Rome nor the Benedictines abandoned the work thus begun. The few remnants that were still left of the ancient British Christianity joined the new converts; and England merited to be call, for long ages, the ‘Island of Saints.’

The history of St. Augustine’s apostolate in England is of thrilling interest. The landing of the Roman missioners and their marching through the country, to the chant of the Litany; the willing and almost kind welcome given them by king Ethelbert; the influence exercised by his queen Bertha, who was a French-woman and a Catholic, in the establishment of the faith among the Saxons; the baptism of ten thousand neophytes, on Christmas day, and in the bed of a river; the foundation of the metropolitan see of Canterbury, one of the most illustrious Churches of Christendom on account of the holiness and noble doings of its Archbishops; all these admirable episodes of England’s conversion are eloquent proofs of God’s predilection of our dear land. Augustine’s peaceful and gentle character, together with his love of contemplation amidst his arduous missionary labours, gives an additional charm in this magnificent page of the Church’s history. But who can help feeling sad at the thought that a country, favoured as ours has been with such graces should have apostatized from the faith; have repaid with hatred that Rome which made her Christian; and have persecuted with unheard-of-cruelties the Benedictine Order to which she owed so much of her glory? (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year: Volume 8—Paschal Time, Book II, pp. 604-606.)

The legacy of Saint Augustine of Canterbury has been rejected by the people of England, Wales, Scotland ,and Northern Ireland. While it is true enough that many of those who apostatized did so out of fear of incurring Henry VIII and his bought-and-paid-for minions, the Protestant Revolution took hold in a short space of time, and it was within that short space of time that the once proudly Catholics of England came to “burn what they once adored.” A furious, passionate hatred for the Catholic Church became, in turn, a “tradition” of its own.

The conciliar “popes” have even spoken of the heretical and schismatic Anglican sect as one of four parts of “the Christian Faith, which some, including Jorge Mario Bergoglio, believe consists of the “Roman Christianity,” “the Reformed Ecclesiastical Communities,” “the Anglican Tradition” and “Orthodoxy.”  Martyrs died to defend the true Faith from the apostasies of the Greeks, the “reformers” (Martin Luther, John Calvin, et al.) and the Anglicans. Their martyrdom is held to be of no account even to the conciliar “popes” who have either “beatified” or “canonized” them.

This is what Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini/Paul VI said to Archlayman Michael Ramsey on March 24, 1966, the Feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel, when the two first met:

In this city of Rome, from which St. Augustine was sent by St. Gregory to England and there founded the cathedral see of Canterbury, towards which the eyes of all Anglicans now turn as the centre of their Christian Communion, His Holiness Pope Paul VI and His Grace Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, representing the Anglican Communion, have met to exchange fraternal greetings.

At the conclusion of their meeting they give thanks to Almighty God who by the action of the Holy Spirit has in these latter years created a new atmosphere of Christian fellowship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion.

This encounter of the 23rd March 1966 marks a new stage in the development of fraternal relations, based upon Christian charity, and of sincere efforts to remove the causes of conflict and to re-establish unity.

In willing obedience to the command of Christ who bade his disciples love one another, they declare that, with His help, they wish to leave in the hands of the God of mercy all that in the past has been opposed to this precept of charity, and that they make their own the mind of the Apostle which he expressed in these words: "Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3, 13-14).

They affirm their desire that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect, esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the Gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed.

The dialogue should include not only theological matters such as Scripture, Tradition and Liturgy, but also matters of practical difficulty felt on either side. His Holiness the Pope and His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury are, indeed, aware that serious obstacles stand in the way of a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life; nevertheless, they are of one mind in their determination to promote responsible contacts between their Communions in all those spheres of Church life where collaboration is likely to lead to a greater understanding and a deeper charity, and to strive in common to find solutions for all the great problems that face those who believe in Christ in the world of today.

Through such collaboration, by the grace of God the Father and in the light of the Holy Spirit, may the prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ for unity among His disciples be brought nearer to fulfilment, and with progress towards unity may there be a strengthening of peace in the world, the peace that only He can grant who gives "the peace that passeth all understanding", together with the blessing of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that it may abide with all men for ever. (Common Declaration of Paul the Sick and Layman Arthur Michael Ramsey.)

The cause of the "conflict" between the Anglican sect and the Catholic Church was the declaration that was passed by the English Parliament at the command of King Henry VIII stating that he was the supreme head of the Church in England, thereby permitting him to marry his mistress, the plotting, scheming Anne Boleyn. The Anglican sect started as a result of the carnal lust of a debauched man, Henry Tudor, who was egged on by disciples of the heretic Martin Luther such as Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

Pope Leo XIII, moved with the love of a true pastor’s heart that was modeled after that of the Most Sacred Heart of the Good Shepherd Himself, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, understood that men can forget history, which is why he gently reminded the English to call to their minds what had been attacked with a violent fanaticism three hundred sixty-one years earlier. His Holiness also strove to point out that the movement of many prominent Anglican “ministers” and men esteemed in the fields of arts and letters to the Catholic Church that was as yet ongoing when he wrote his Apostolic Letter was a hopeful sign that England might reclaim the Holy Faith. Indeed, the conversions of esteemed scholars such as Father Frederick William Faber, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Monsignor Ronald Knox, and Father Gerard Manley Hopkins to the Catholic Faith brought out the conversions of many others.

Leaving nothing to change, however, Pope Leo XIII exhorted the English to return home to Rome, to abandon the errors that had been institutionalized and had produced most of the wretched social conditions that Anglicans and Catholics alike had sought to ameliorate in decades preceding his Apostolic Letter:

And here no thought is more welcome to our soul than that happy unity of Faith and will for which our Redeemer and Divine Master prayed in that earnest supplication a unity which, if useful at all times even for temporal interests, both at home and abroad, is shown by the very divisions and confusions of these days to be more than ever needful. We on our part, watching the signs of the times, exhorting and taking thought for the future, urged thereto by the example of Christ and the duty of our Apostolic office, have not ceased to pray, and still humbly pray, for the return of Christian nations, now divided from us, to the unity of former days. We have more than once of late years given expression to this object of our desires, and have devoted sedulous care to its realization. The time cannot be far distant when we must appear to render an account of our stewardship to the Prince of Pastors, and how happy, holy blessed should we be if we could bring to Him some fruit-some realization of these our wishes which He has inspired and sustained. In these days our thoughts turn with love and hope to the English people, observing as we do the frequent and manifest works of Divine Grace in their midst; how to some, it is plain, the confusion of religious dissensions which divide them is a cause of deep concern, how others see clearly the need of some sure defence against the inroad of modern errors which only too readily humour the wishes of fallen nature and depraved reason; how the number of religious and discreet men, who sincerely labour much for reunion with the Catholic Church, is increasing. We can hardly say how strongly these and other signs quicken the charity of Christ in us, and redoubling our prayers from our inmost soul we call down a fuller measure of Divine Grace, which, poured out on minds so well disposed, may issue in the ardently desired fruit, the fruit, namely, that we may all meet into the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son God (Eph, iv, 13), careful to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, one body and one Spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism (ib, 3-5).

With loving heart, then, we turn to you all in Eng­land to whatever community or institution you may belong, desiring to recall you to this holy unity. We beseech you, as you value your eternal salvation, to offer up humble and continuous prayer to God, the Heavenly Father, the Giver of all Light, who with gentle power impels us to the good and the right, and without ceasing to implore light to know the truth in all its fullness and to embrace the designs of His mercy with single and entire faithfulness, calling upon the glorious name and merits of Jesus Christ, who is “author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. xii. 2), who loved the Church and delivered Himself for it that He might sanctify it and might present it to Himself a glorious Church (Eph. v. 25-27.) Difficulties may be for us to face, but they are not of a nature which should delay our apostolic zeal or stay your energy Ah, no doubt the many changes that have come about, and time itself, have caused the existing divisions to take deeper root. But is that a reason to give up all hope of remedy, reconciliation, and peace? By no means if God is with us. For we must not judge of such great issues from a human standpoint only, but rather must we look to the power and mercy of God. In great and arduous enterprises, provided they are under­taken with an earnest and right intent, God stands by man’s side, and it is precisely in these difficulties that the action of His Providence shines forth with greatest splendour. The time is not far distant when thirteen cen­turies will have been completed since the English race welcomed those apostolic men sent, as we have said, from this very city of Rome, and, casting aside the pagan deities, dedicated the first fruits of its faith to Christ our Lord and God. This encourages our hope. It is, indeed, an event worthy to be remembered with public thanksgiving; would that this occasion might bring to all reflecting minds the memory of the faith then preached to your ancestors, the same which is now preached – Jesus Christ yesterday, today and the same for ever, as the Apostle says (Heb. xiii. 8), who also most opportunely exhorts you; as he does all, to remem­ber those first preachers “who have spoken the word of God” to you, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation (ib. 7). (Pope Leo XIII to the English People, April 14, 1895.)

A true pope seeks the conversion of non-Catholics to the true Faith.

Antipopes denounce those who seek such conversion.

As we know, especially from the statistics recounted earlier in this commentary, most of the people in England have returned to pagan deities while many others are simply pagans who worship themselves.

In the midst of what appear to be insuperable problems, Our Lady, who has conquered all heresies, stands ready to win back her Dowry, England, which is why there are so many pilgrimages taking place to the site of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham that was attacked after Henry Tudor began his revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself had established in England to effect man’s return to him through His Catholic Church.

Although the information below comes from a “resist while recognize” site, I am presenting it  to those who read this article as a means of providing encouragement in the middle of events that seem to be out of control even though all that is occurring is within the Providence of God, Who has given His Most Blessed Mother preeminence of place in the return of England to the Catholic Faith:

WALSINGHAM IS ENGLAND'S NAZARETH

"When England returns to Walsingham, Our Lady will return to England".

Before the reformation Walsingham was one of the three main pilgrimage sites in the world along with Jersusalem and St. James' Way (Santiago de Compostella).

Since these times it as always been understood that every English Catholic will go on pilgrimage to Walsingham and...

...Walk the Holy Mile.

WALSINGHAM, THE PRAYER FOR ENGLAND & DEVOTION TO OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM ARE ALL LINKED TO THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND (TO CATHOLICISM) WHICH WILL LEAD EVERYONE IN THIS COUNTRY TO CHRIST.

1. TO PRAY FOR THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

2. TO THANK GOD FOR THE GOOD THAT HAS HAPPENED IN YOUR LIFE.

3.  TO ASK FOR THE INTERCESSION OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM FOR HEALING (CATHOLICS DO NOT HAVE TO TRAVEL TO LOURDES FOR HEALING BECAUSE CATHOLICS HAVE BEEN HEALED BY GOING ON PILGRIMAGE TO WALSINGHAM IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY).

4. TO ASK FOR THE INTERCESSION OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM FOR HELP IN YOUR LIFE.

5. TO SPEND TIME CLOSE TO GOD. WALSINGHAM IS WHAT IS REFERRED TO AS A 'THIN PLACE' WHERE HEAVEN COMES CLOSE TO EARTH. THIS IS DUE TO THE INTENSITY OF HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF PRAYER AND DEVOTION.

MOST IMPORTANTLY CATHOLIC PILGRIMAGE IS A PERSONAL SACRIFICE TO GOD. (ORA PRO NOBIS: THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.)

England’s departure from the Holy Faith was foreseen as early as the year 1061 by Saint Edward the Confessor, who also saw her return in a manner similar to though seen in a mystical experience of Saint Dominic Savio:

EDWARD THE CONFESSOR & THE VISION OF THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND

"During the month of January, 1066, the holy King of England St. Edward the Confessor was confined to his bed by his last illness in his royal Westminster Palace. St. Ælred, Abbott of Rievaulx, in Yorkshire, relates that a short time before his happy death, this holy king was wrapt in ecstasy, when two pious Benedictine monks of Normandy, whom he had known in his youth, during his exile in that country, appeared to him, and revealed to him what was to happen to England in future centuries, and the cause of the terrible punishment.

They said: 'The extreme corruption and wickedness of the English nation has provoked the just anger of God. When malice shall have reached the fullness of its measure, God will, in His wrath, send to the English people wicked spirits, who will punish and afflict them with great severity, by separating the green tree from its parent stem the length of three furlongs. But at last this same tree, through the compassionate mercy of God, and without any national (governmental) assistance, shall return to its original root, reflourish and bear abundant fruit.' (Saint Edward the Confessor.)

After having heard these prophetic words, the saintly King Edward opened his eyes, returned to his senses, and the vision vanished. He immediately related all he had seen and heard to hisvirgin spouse, Edgitha, to Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, and to Harold, his successor to the throne, who were in his chamber praying around his bed." (See "Vita beati Edwardi regis et confessoris", from manuscript Selden 55 in Bodleian Library.) (ORA PRO NOBIS: THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.)

The Dream of Saint Dominic Savio about the Return of England to the Catholic Faith

 'One morning, while I was doing my thanksgiving after Holy Communion, I was taken by a strong distraction. It seemed that I was on a very vast flat land surface, full of people surrounded by thick darkness. They were walking, but did so as though they had lost their way and could not see where they set their feet. Someone beside me said, "This region is England."

'Then I saw the Supreme Pontiff, Pius IX. He was dressed in a majestic fashion, carrying in his hands a splendorous light, and advancing amidst the multitude of people. As He advanced, the darkness gradually disappeared and the people were bathed with so much light that it seemed noon time.  

'The friend said, "This light is the Catholic Religion, which must illuminate England." (ORA PRO NOBIS: THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.)

The return of England to the true Faith from which she departed nearly half a millennium ago will be the work of Our Lady, and it is because that this is so that Pope Leo XIII composed a prayer to the Mother of God to win back her Dowry, England, to her Divine Son’s one and only true Church, the Catholic Church:

O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon England “thy Dowry” and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee. By thee it was that Jesus, our Saviour and our hope, was given unto the world; and He has given thee to us that we might hope still more. Plead for us thy children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the Supreme Shep­herd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith fruitful in good works we may all deserve to see and praise God, together with thee, in our heavenly home. Amen. (Pope Leo XIII to the English People, April 14, 1895.)

That prayer, composed one hundred twenty-seven years ago, is really all the proof one needs to have about the difference between the conciliar antipopes and our true popes, who knew that it was their duty before the One Whose Vicar they were during their respective papacies to seek with urgency the conversion of all non-Catholics to the true Church, the Catholic Church.

The final victory belongs to Our Lady. We know Our Lady and her Divine Son’s Holy Church will emerge victorious, especially by means of her Most Holy Rosary.

Thus, praying our Rosaries as we beseech Saint Joseph, the Patron of the Universal Church and the Protector of the Faithful, to protect us in these times of great peril, may we fly unto his Most Chaste Spouse, to surrender to everything, including our liberty if this is to be taken away from us, to serve Christ the King as soldiers in His holy army in our battle with the forces of the adversary in our lives and in the world-at-large.

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Appendix A

William Cobbett on the Plunder of the Catholic Church and the Rise of Pauperism in England under King Henry VIII

183. If I look at the county of Surrey, in which I myself was born, and behold the devastation of that county, I am filled with indignation against the ruffian devastators. Surrey has very little of natural wealth in it. A very considerable part of it is mere heath-land. Yet this county was, from one end of it to the other, ornamented and benefited by the establishments which grew out of the Catholic Church. At Bermondsey there was an abbey; at St. Mary Overy there was a priory, and this convent founded that very St. Thomas’s Hospital which now exists in Southwark. This hospital also was seized by the ruffians, but the building was afterwards given to the City of London. At Newington there was a hospital, and after its revenues were seized the master obtained a licence to beg! At Merton there was a priory. Then, going across to the Sussex side, there was another priory at Reigate. Coming again near the Thames, and more to the west, there was a priory at Shene. Still more to the west there was an abbey at Chertsey. At Tandridge there was a priory. Near Guildford, at Sende, there was a priory; and at the lower end of the county, at Waverley, in the parish of Farnham, was an abbey. To these belonged cells and chapels at a distance from the convents themselves; so that it would have been a work of some difficulty for a man so to place himself, even in this poor heathy county, at six miles distance from a place where the door of hospitality was always open to the poor, to the aged, the orphan, the widow and the stranger. Can any man now place himself, in that whole county, within any number of miles of any such door? No, nor in any other county. All is wholly changed, and all is changed for the worse. There is now no hospitality in England. Words have changed their meaning. We now give entertainment to those who entertain us in return. We entertain people because we like them personally, and very seldom because they stand in need of entertainment. A hospital, in those days, meant a place of free entertainment, and not a place merely for the lame, the sick, and the blind; and the very sound of the words "Old English Hospitality" ought to raise a blush on every Protestant cheek. But besides this hospitality exercised invariably in the monasteries, the weight of their example was great with all the opulent classes of the community, and thus to be generous and kind was the character of the nation at large; a niggardly, a base, a money-loving disposition could not be in fashion, when those institutions to which all men looked with reverence set an example which condemned such a disposition.

184. And if I am asked why the thirteen monks of Waverley, for instance, should have had And I may go on and ask why anybody should have any property at all? Aye, but they never worked; they did nothing to increase the nation's store. Let us see how this is. They possessed the lands of Waverley, — a few hundred acres of very poor land, with a mill, and perhaps about twenty acres of very indifferent meadow land, on one part of which, sheltered by a semicircle of sand-hills, their abbey stood, the river Wey (about twenty feet wide) running close by the outer wall of the convent.

Besides this they possessed the impropriated tithes of the parish of Farnham, and a pond or two on the commons adjoining. This estate in land belongs to a Mr. Thompson, who lives on the spot, and the estate in tithes to a Mr. Halsey, who lives at a distance from the parish. Now, without any disparagement to these gentlemen, did not the monks work as much as they do? Did not their revenue go to augment the nation's store as much as the rents of Mr. Thompson or the tithes of Mr. Halsey? Aye, and which is of vast importance, the poor of the parish of Farnham, having this monastery to apply to and having for their neighbour a bishop of Winchester who did not sell small beer out of his palace, stood in no need of poor rates, and had never heard the horrid word pauper pronounced. Come, my townsmen of Farnham; you who as well as 1 have, when we were boys, climbed the ivy-covered ruins of this venerable abbey (the first of its order in England; you who as well as I have, when looking at those walls which have outlived the memory of the devastators, bat not the malice of those who still taste the sweets of the devastation; you who, as well as I, have many times wondered what an abbey was, and how and why this one came to be devastated; you shall be the judge in this matter. You know what poor-rates are, and you know what church-rates are. Very well then, there were no poor-rates and no church-rates as long as Waverley Abbey existed and as long as bishops had no wives. This is a fact wholly undeniable. There was no need of either. The Church shared its property with the poor and the stranger, and left the people at large to possess their own earnings; and as to matters of faith and worship, look at that immense heap of earth round the church where your parents and my parents and where our progenitors for twelve hundred years lie buried; then bear in mind that for nine hundred years out of the twelve they were all of the faith and worship of the monks of Waverley, and with that thought in your mind find, if you can, the heart to say that the monks of Waverley, by whose hospitality your fathers and my fathers were for so many ages preserved from bearing the hateful name of pauper, taught an idolatrous and damnable religion.

185. That which took place in Surrey took place in every other county, only to a greater extent in proportion to the greater wealth and resources of the spot. Defacing followed closely upon the heels of confiscation and plunder. If buildings could have been murdered, the tyrant and his plunderers would have made short work of it. As it was they did all they could; they knocked down, they blew up, they annihilated as far as they could. Nothing, indeed, short of diabolical malice was to be expected from such men; but there were two abbeys in England which one might have hoped that even these monsters would have spared, — that which contained the tomb of St. Austin, and that which had been founded by and contained the remains of Alfred. We have seen how they rifled the tomb of St. Austin at Canterbury. They tore down the church and the abbey, and with the materials built a menagerie for wild beasts and a palace for the tyrant himself. The tomb of Alfred was in an abbey at Winchester, founded by that king himself. The abbey and its estates were given by the tyrant to Wriothesley, who was afterwards made Earl of Southampton, and who got a pretty good share of the confiscations in Hampshire. One almost sickens at the thought of a man capable of a deed like the destruction of this abbey. Where is there one amongst us who has read any thing at all who has not read of the fame of Alfred? What book can we open, even for our boyish days, that does not sound his praise? Poets, moralists, divines, historians, philosophers, lawyers, legislators, not only of our own country but of all Europe, have cited him, and still cite him, as a model of virtue, piety, wisdom, valour and patriotism, as possessing every excellence without a single fault. He, in spite of difficulties such as no other human being on record ever encountered, cleared his harassed and half-barbarized country of horde after horde of cruel invaders, who at one time had wholly subdued it and compelled him, in order to escape destruction, to resort to the habit and the life of a herdsman. From this state of depression he, during a not long life, raised himself and his people to the highest point of happiness and of fame. He fought, with his armies and fleets, more than fifty battles against the enemies of England. He taught his people by his example as well as by his precepts, to be sober, industrious, brave and just. He promoted learning in all the sciences; he planted the University of Oxford; to him, and not to a late Scotch lawyer, belongs " Trial by Jury." Blackstone calls him the founder of the Common Law; the counties, the hundreds, the tithings, the courts of justice, were the work of Alfred. He, in fact, was the founder of all those rights, liberties and laws which made England to be what England has been, which gave her a character above that of other nations, which made her rich and great and happy beyond all her neighbours, and which still give her whatever she possesses of that pre-eminence. If there be a name under heaven to which Englishmen ought to bow with reverence approaching towards adoration it is the name of Alfred. And we are not unjust and ungrateful in this respect at any rate, for, whether Catholics or Protestants, where is there an Englishman to be found who would not gladly make a pilgrimage of a thousand miles to take off his hat at the tomb of this maker of the English name ? Alas! that tomb is nowhere to be found. The barbarians spared not even that. It was in the abbey before mentioned, called Hyde Abbey, which had been founded by Alfred himself and intended as the place of his burial. Besides the remains of Alfred this abbey contained those of St. Grimbald, the Benedictine monk, whom Alfred brought into England to begin the teaching at Oxford. But what cared the plunderers for remains of public benefactors? The abbey was knocked down or blown up, the tombs were demolished, the very lead of the coffins was sold," and, which fills one with more indignation than all the rest, the estates were so disposed of as to make the loan-makers, the Barings, at this day the successors of Alfred the Great!

186. Wriothesley got the manors of Micheldever and Stratton, which by marriage came into the hands of the family of Russell ; and from that family, about thirty years ago, they were bought by the Barings, and are now in possession of Sir Thomas Baring. It is curious to observe how this Protestant "Reformation" has worked. If it had not been there would have been no paupers at Micheldever and Stratton, but then the Russells would not have had the estates, and they could not have sold them to the Barings: aye, but then there would have been, too, no national debt as well as no paupers, and there would have been no loan-makers to buy the estates of the Russells. Besides this there would have been no bridewell erected upon the precise spot where the abbey church stood; no tread-mill, perhaps over the very place where the ashes of Alfred lay; and, what is more, there would have been no need of bridewell or tread-mill. It is related of Alfred that he made his people so honest that he could hang bracelets up by the way side without danger of their being touched. Alas! that the descendants of that same people should need a tread-mill! Aye, but in the days of Alfred there were no paupers, no miserable creatures compelled to labour from month's end to month's end without seeing meat, no thousands upon thousands made thieves by that hunger which acknowledges no law, human or divine.

187. Thus then was the country devastated, sacked and defaced; and I should now proceed to give an account of the commencement of that poverty and degradation which were, as I have pledged myself to show, the consequences of this devastation, and which I shall show, not by bare assertion, nor from what are called " Histories of England," but from Acts of Parliament, and from other sources which every one can refer to, and the correctness of which is beyond all dispute. But before we come to this important matter we must see the end of the ruffian "Vice-gerent," and also the end of the tyrant himself, who was, during the events that we have been speaking of, going on marrying and divorcing or killing his wives, but whose career was, after all, not very long.

188. After the death of Jane. Seymour, who was the mother of Edward VI., and who was the only one of all the tyrant's wives who had the good luck to die a queen and to die in her bed ; — after her death, which took place in 1537, he was nearly two years hunting up another wife. None certainly but some very gross and unfeeling woman could be expected to have voluntarily anything to do with a man whose hands were continually steeped in blood. In 1539 he found, however, a mate in Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves. When she arrived in England he expressed his dislike of her person ; but he found it prudent to marry her. In 1540, about six or seven months after the marriage, he was divorced from her, not daring in this case to set his myrmidons to work to bring her to the block. There was no lawful pretence for the divorce. The husband did not like his wife; that was all, and this was alleged, too, as the ground of the divorce." Cranmer, who had divorced him from two wives before, put his irons into the fire again for this occasion, and produced in a little time as neat a piece of work as ever had come from the shop of the famous "Reformation." Thus the King and Queen were single people again; but the former had another young and handsome wife in his eye. This lady's name was Catherine Howard, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk. This Duke, as well as most of the old nobility, hated Cromwell, and now was an opportunity of inflicting vengeance on him. Cromwell had been the chief cause of the King's marriage with Anne of Cleves; but the fact is his plundering talent was no longer wanted, and it was convenient to the tyrant to get rid of him.

189. Cromwell had obtained enormous wealth from his several offices, as well as from the plunder of the Church and the poor. He had got about thirty of the estates belonging to the monasteries ; his house, or rather palace, was gorged with the fruits of the sacking; he had been made Earl of Essex; he had precedence over every one but the King; and lie, in fact, represented the King in the Parliament, where he introduced and defended all his confiscating and murdering laws. He had been barbarous beyond all description towards the unfortunate and unoffending monks and nuns ; without such an instrument the plunder never could have been effecte : but he was no longer wanted; the ruffian had already lived too long; the very walls of the devastated convents seemed to call for public vengeance on his head. On the morning of the 10th of June, 1540, he was all-powerful; in the evening of the same day he was in prison as a traitor. He lay in prison only a few days before he had to experience the benefit of his own way of administering justice. He had, as we have seen in the last chapter, invented a way of bringing people to the block or the gallows without giving them any form of trial, without giving them even a hearing, but merely by passing a law to put them to death. This was what he had brought about in the case of the Countess of Salisbury; and this was what was now to fall on his own head. He lived only about forty-eight days after his arrest; not half long enough to enable him to expiate, barely to enumerate, the robberies and murders committed under his orders. His time seems, however, to have been spent, not in praying God to forgive him for these robberies and murders, but in praying to the tyrant to spare his life. Perhaps of all the mean and dastardly wretches that ever died, this was the most mean and dastardly. He who had been the most insolent and cruel of ruffians when he had power, was now the most disgustingly slavish and base. He had, in fact, committed no crime against the King ; though charged with heresy and treason, he was no more a heretic than the King was, and as to the charge of treason there was not a shadow of foundation for it. But he was just as guilty of treason as the abbots of Reading, Colchester and Glastonbury, all of whom and many more he had been the chief instrument in putting to death. He put them to death in order to get possession of their property; and I dare say to get at his property, to get the plunder back from him, was one of the motives for bringing him to the block. This very ruffian had superintended the digging up of the ashes of Thomas a Becket and scattering them in the air; and now the people who had witnessed that had to witness the letting of the blood out of his dirty body, to run upon the pavement to be licked up by hogs or dogs. The cowardly creature seems to have had, from the moment of his arrest, no thought about anything but saving his life. He wrote repeatedly to the King in the hope of getting pardoned, but all to no purpose: he had done what was wanted of him, the work of plunder was nearly over, he had, too, got a large share of the plunder which it was not convenient to leave in his hands; and therefore, upon true "Reformation" principles, it was time to take away his life. He in his letters to the King most vehemently protested his innocence. Aye, no doubt of that; but he was not more innocent than were the butchered abbots and monks, he was not more innocent than any one out of those thousands upon thousands whom he had quartered, hanged, burned, or plundered; and amongst all those thousands upon thousands there never was seen one, female or male, so complete a dastard as himself. In these letters to the tyrant he fawned on him in the most disgusting manner; compared his smiles and frowns to those of God; besought him to suffer him to kiss his balmy hand once more that the fragrance thereof might make him fit for heaven! "The base creature deserved his death, if it had only been for writing these letters. Fox, the "martyr" man, calls this Cromwell the “valiant soldier of the Reformation." Yes, there have been few soldiers to understand sacking better; he was full of valour on foraging parties, and when he had to rifle monks and nuns and to rob altars; a brave fellow when he had to stretch monks and nuns on the rack to make them confess treasonable words or thought ; but when death began to stare him in the face he was, assuredly, the most cowardly caitiff that ever died. It is hardly necessary to say that this man is a great favourite of Hume, who deeply laments Cromwell's fate, though he has not a word of compassion to bestow upon all the thousands that had been murdered or ruined by him. He, as well as other historians, quotes from the conclusion of one of Cromwell's letters to the King these abject expressions: " I, a most woful prisoner, am ready to submit to death when it shall please God and your Majesty; and yet the frail flesh incites me to call to your grace for mercy and pardon of mine offences. — Written at the Tower with the heavy heart and trembling hand of your Highness's most miserable prisoner and poor slave, Thomas Cromwell. Most gracious prince, I cry for mercy, mercy, mercy" That is the language of Fox's "valiant soldier." Fox meant valiant, not in the field or on the scaffold, but in the convent, pulling the rings from women's fingers and tearing the gold clasps from books: that was the Protestant valour of the “Reformation." Hume says that Cromwell " deserved a better fate." Never was fate more just or more appropriate. He had been the willing, the officious, the zealous, the eager agent in the execution of all the tyrannical, sacrilegious, and bloody deeds of his master, and had amongst other things been the very man who first suggested the condemning of people to death without trial. What could be more just than that he should die in the same way? Not a tear was shed at his death, which produced on the spectators an effect such as is produced when the foulest of murderers expiate their crimes on the gallows.

190. During the seven years that the tyrant himself survived this his cruel and dastardly vice-gerent, he was beset with disappointments, vexations, and torments of all sorts. He discovered at the end of a few months that his new queen had been, and still was, much such another as Anne Boleyn. He with very little ceremony sent her to the block, together with a whole posse of her relations, lovers, and cronies. He raged and foamed like a wild beast, passed laws most bloody to protect himself against lewdness and infidelity in his future wives, and got for his pains the ridicule of the nation and of all Europe. He for the last time took another wife; but this time none would face his laws but a widow, and she very narrowly escaped the fate of the rest. He for some years before he died became, from his gluttony and debaucheries, an unwieldy and disgusting mass of flesh, moved about by means of mechanical inventions. But still he retained all the ferocity and bloody-mindedness of his former days. The principal business of his life was the ordering of accusations, executions, and confiscations. When on his death-bed every one was afraid to intimate his danger to him, lest death to the intimator should be the consequence; and he died before he was well aware of his condition, leaving more than one death-warrant unsigned for want of time.

191. Thus expired, in the year 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the thirty-eighth year of his reign, the most unjust, hard-hearted, meanest "and most sanguinary tyrant that the world had ever beheld, whether Christian or heathen. That England which he found in peace, unity, plenty and happiness, he left torn by factions and schisms, her people wandering about in beggary and misery. He laid the foundations of immorality, dishonesty and pauperism, all which produced an abundant harvest in the reigns of his unhappy, barren, mischievous and miserable children, with whom, at the end of a few years, his house and his name were extinguished for ever. How he disposed of the plunder of the Church and the poor; how his successors completed that work of confiscation which he had carried on so long ; how the nation sunk in point of character and of wealth ; how pauperism first arose in England ; and how were sown the seeds of that system of which we now behold the effects in the impoverishment and degradation of the main body of the people of England and Ireland ; all these will be shown in the next chapter, and shown, I trust, in a manner which will leave in the mind of every man of sense no doubt that, of all the scourges that ever afflicted this country, none is to be put in comparison with the Protestant Reformation.

CHAPTER VII.

192. Having shown that the thing impudently called the “Reformation” was begun in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood, I intended to show in the present chapter how the main body of the people were by these doings impoverished and degraded up to this time; that is to say, I intended to trace the impoverishment and degradation down to the end of the reign of the tyrant, Henry VIII. But upon reviewing my matter I think it best first to go through the whole of my account of the plunderings, persecutings and murderings of the "Reformation" peopl ; and when we have seen all the robberies and barbarities that they committed under the hypocritical pretence of religious zeal, or rather, when we have seen such of those robberies and barbarities as we can find room for, then I shall conclude with showing how enormously the nation lost by the change, and how that change made the main part of the people poor and wretched and degraded. By pursuing this plan I shall in one concluding chapter give, or at least endeavour to give, a clear and satisfactory history of this impoverishment. I shall take the present Protestant labourer and show him how his Catholic forefathers lived  and if cold potatoes and water, if this poorer than pig-diet, have not quite taken away all the natural qualities of English blood, I shall make him execrate the plunderers and hypocrites by whom was produced that change which has finally led to his present misery and to nine-tenths of that mass of corruption and crime, public and private, which now threatens to uproot society itself.

193. In pursuance of this plan, and in conformity with my promise to conclude my little work in ten chapters, I shall distribute my matter thus: — in chapter VII. (the present) the deeds and events of the reign of Edward VI. In chapter VIII., those of the reign of Queen Mary. In chapter IX., those of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and in chapter X., the facts and arguments to establish my main point, namely, that the thing impudently called the “Reformation” impoverished and degraded the main body of the people. In the course of the first three of these chapters I shall not touch, except incidentally, upon the impoverishing and degrading effects of the change, but shall reserve these for the last chapters, when, having witnessed the horrid means, we will take an undivided view of the consequences, tracing those consequences down to the present day.

194. One of Henry's last acts was a will by which he made his infant son his immediate successor, with remainder, in case he died without issue, to his daughter Mary first, and then in default of issue again, to his daughter Elizabeth, though, observe, both the daughters had been declared illegitimate by Act of Parliament, and though the latter was born of Anne Boleyn while the king's first wife, the mother of Mary, was alive. Parliament had given the king the right to determine the succession by will.

195. To carry this will into execution, and to govern the kingdom until Edward, who was then ten years of age, should be eighteen years of age, there were sixteen executors appointed, amongst whom was Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and the "honest Cranmer." These sixteen worthies began by taking, in the most solemn manner, an oath to stand to and maintain the last will of their master. Their second act was to break that oath by making Hertford, who was a brother of Jane Seymour, the King's mother, "protector," though the will gave equal powers to all the executors. Their next step was to give new peerages to some of themselves. The fourth, to award to the new peers grants of the public money. The fifth was to lay aside at the coronation the ancient English custom of asking the people if they were willing to have and obey the King. The sixth was "to attend at a solemn high mass.” And the seventh was to begin a series of acts for the total subversion of all that remained of the Catholic religion in England, and for the effecting of all that Old Harry had left uneffected in the way of plunder.

196. The monasteries were gone; the cream had been taken off; but there remained the skimmed milk of church altars, chantries and guilds. Old Harry would doubtless, if he had lived much longer, have plundered these; but he had not done it, and he could not do it without openly becoming Protestant, which, for the reasons stated in paragraph 101, he would not do. But Hertford and his fifteen brother worthies had in their way no such obstacle as the ruffian king had had. The church altars, the chantries and the guilds contained something valuable, and they longed to be at it. The power of the Pope was gotten rid of, the country had been sacked, the poor had been despoiled; but still there were some pickings left. The piety of ages had made every church, however small, contain some gold and silver appertaining to the altar. The altars in the parish churches, and generally in the cathedrals, had been left as yet untouched; for though the wife-killer had abjured the Pope, whose power he had taken to himself, he still professed to be of the Catholic faith, and he maintained the mass and the sacraments and creeds with fire and faggot. Therefore he had left the church altars unplundered. But they contained gold, silver, and other valuables, and the worthies saw these with longing eyes and itching fingers.

197. To seize them, however, there required a pretext, and what pretext could there be short of declaring at once that the Catholic religion was false and wicked, and, of course, that there ought to be no altars, and, of course, no gold and silver things appertaining to them! The sixteen worthies, with Hertford at their head and with Cranmer amongst them, had had the King crowned as a Catholic, he as well as they had taken the oaths as Catholics, they had sworn to uphold that religion, they had taken him to a high mass after his coronation:' but the altars had good things about them  there was plunder remaining, and to get at this remaining plunder the Catholic religion must be wholly put down. There were doubtless some fanatics, some who imagined that the religion of nine hundred years' standing ought not to be changed, some who had not plunder and plunder only in view; but it is impossible for any man of common sense, of unperverted mind, to look at the history of this transaction, at this open avowal of Protestantism, at this change from the religion of England to that of a part of Germany, without being convinced that the principal authors of it had plunder and plunder only in view.

198. The old tyrant died in 1547, and by the end of 1549 Cranmer, who had tied so many Protestants to the stake for not being Catholics, had pretty nearly completed a system of Protestant worship. He first prepared a book of homilies and a catechism, in order to pave the way. Next came a law to allow the clergy to have wives, and then, when all things had been prepared, came the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments .Gardiner, who was Bishop of Winchester, reproached Cranmer with his duplicity, reminded him of the zeal with which he had upheld the Catholic worship under the late king, and would have made him hang himself or cut his throat if he had had the slightest remains of shame in him.

199. This new system did not, however, go far enough for the fanatics, and there instantly appeared arrayed against it whole tribes of new lights on the Continent; so that Cranmer, cunning as he was, soon found that he had undertaken no easy matter. The proclamations put forth upon this occasion were disgustingly ridiculous, coming as they did in the name of a king only ten years of age, and expressed in words so solemnly pompous and full of arrogance. However, the chief object was the plunder, and to get at this nothing was spared. There were other things to attract the grasp, but it will be unnecessary to dwell very particularly on anything but the altars and the churches. This was the real " reformation reign," for it was a reign of robbery and hypocrisy without anything to be compared with them, — anything in any country or in any age. Religion, conscience, was always the pretext; but in one way or another robbery, plunder, was always the end. The people, once so united and so happy, became divided into innumerable sects, no man knowing hardly what to believe, and, indeed, no one knowing what it was lawful for him to say, for it soon became impossible for the common people to know what was heresy and what was not heresy.

200. That prince of hypocrites, Cranmer, who, during the reign of Henry had condemned people to the flames for not believing in transubstantiation, was now ready to condemn them for believing in it. We have seen that Luther was the beginner of the work of "reformation," but he was soon followed by further reformers on the Continent. These had made many attempts to propagate their doctrines in England, but old Henry had kept them down. Now, however, when the churches were to be robbed of what remained in them, and when, to have pretext for that robbery, it was necessary to make a complete change in the form of worship, these sectarians all flocked to England, which became one great scene of religious disputation. Some were for the Common Prayer-Book, others proposed alterations in it, others were for abolishing it altogether; and there now began that division, that multiplicity of hostile opinions, which has continued to the present day. Cranmer employed a part of the resources of the country to feed and fatten those of these religious, or rather impious, adventurers who sided with him and who chose the best market for their doctrines. England was overrun by these foreign traders in religion, and this nation, so jealous of foreign influence, was now compelled to bend its haughty neck, not only to foreigners but to foreigners of the most base and infamous character and description. Cranmer could not find Englishmen sufficiently supple to be his tools in executing the work that he had in hand. The Protector, Hertford, whom we must now call Somerset (the child-king having made him Duke of Somerset), was the greatest of all “reformers” that had yet appeared in the world, and, as we shall soon see, the greatest and most audacious of all the plunderers that this infamous reformation has produced, save and except Henry himself. The total abolition of the Catholic worship was necessary to his projects of plunder, and therefore he was a great encourager of these greedy and villainous foreigners.

201. The consequences to the morals of the people were such as were naturally to be expected. All historians agree that vice of all sorts and crimes of every kind were never so great and so numerous before. This was confessed by the teachers themselves, and yet the Protestants have extolled this reign as the reign of conscience and religion! It was so manifest that the change was a bad one, that men could not have proceeded in it from error. Its mischiefs were all manifest before the death of the tyrant; that death afforded an opportunity for returning into the right path, but there was plunder remaining, and the plunderers went on. The  “Reformation” was not the work of virtue, of fanaticism, of error, of ambition, but of a love of plunder. This was its great animating principle; in this it began, and in this it proceeded till there was nothing left for it to work on.

202. Henry had, in certain cases, enabled his minions to rob the bishoprics, but now there was a grand sweep at them. The Protector took the lead, and his example was followed by others. They took so much from one, so much from another, and some they wholly suppressed, as that of Westminster, and took their estates to themselves. There were many chantries (private property to all intents and purposes), free chapels (also private property), almshouses, hospitals, guilds or fraternities, the property of which was as much private property as the funds of any plunder. And yet there are men who pretend that what is now possessed by the Established Church is of so sacred a nature as not to be touched by Act of Parliament! This was the reign in which this our present Established Church was founded, for though the fabric was overset by Mary it was raised again by Elizabeth. Now it was that it was made. It was made, and the new worship along with it, by Acts of Parliament. It had its very birth in division, disunion, discord, and its life has been worthy of its birth. The property it possesses was taken nominally from the Catholic Church, but in reality from that Church, and also from the widow, the orphan, the indigent and the stranger. The pretext for making it was that it would cause a union of sentiment amongst the people, that it would compose all dissensions. The truth, the obvious truth, that there could be but one true religion, was acknowledged and loudly proclaimed, and it was not to be denied that there were already twenty, the teachers of every one of which declared that all the others were false, and, of course, that they were, at the very least, no better than no religion at all. Indeed, this is the language of common sense, though it is now so fashionable to disclaim the doctrine of exclusive salvation.

I ask the Unitarian parson or prater, for instance, why he takes upon him that office; why he does not go and follow some trade, or why he does not work in the fields. His answer is that he is more usefully employed in teaching. If I ask of what use his teaching is, he tells me, he must tell me, that his teaching is necessary to the salvation of souls. Well, say I, but why not leave that business to the Established Church, to which the people all pay tithes? Oh no, says he, I cannot do that, because the Church does not teach the true religion. Well, say I, but true or false, if it serve for salvation, what signifies it? Here I have him penned up in a corner. He is compelled to confess that he is a fellow wanting to lead an easy life by pandering to the passions or whims of conceited persons, or to insist that his sort of belief and teaching are absolutely necessary to salvation; as he will not confess the former he is obliged to insist on the latter, and here, after all his railing against the intolerance of the Catholics, he maintains the doctrine of exclusive salvation.

203. Two true religions, two true creeds, differing from each other, contradicting each other, present us with an impossibility; what then are we to think of twenty or forty creeds, each differing from all the rest? If deism or atheism be something not only wicked in itself, but so mischievous in its effects as to call — in case of the public profession of it — for imprisonment for years and years, if this be the case, what are we to think of laws, the same laws too which inflict that cruel punishment, tolerating and encouraging a multiplicity of creeds, all but one of which must be false? A code of laws acknowledging and tolerating but one religion is consistent in punishing the deist and the atheist, but if it acknowledge or tolerate more than one it acknowledges or tolerates one false one, and let divines say whether a false religion is not as bad as deism or atheism? Besides, is it just to punish the deist or the atheist for not believing in the Christian religion at all, when he sees the law tolerate so many religions, all but one of which must be false? What is the natural effect of men seeing constantly before their eyes a score or two of different sects, all calling themselves Christians, all tolerated by the law, and each openly declaring that all the rest are false? The natural, the necessary effect is, that many men will believe that none of them have truth on their side, and of course that the thing is false altogether, and invented solely for the benefit of those who teach it and who dispute about it.

204. The law should acknowledge and tolerate but one religion, or it should know nothing at all about the matter. The Catholic code was consistent. It said that there was but one true religion, and it punished as offenders those who dared openly to profess any opinion contrary to that religion. Whether that were the true religion or not we have not now to inquire; but while its long continuance —and in so many nations too — was a strong presumptive proof of its good moral effects upon the people, the disagreement amongst the Protestants was and is a presumptive proof not less strong of its truth. If, as I observed upon a former occasion, there be forty persons who — and whose fathers for countless generations — have up to this day entertained a certain belief, and if thirty-nine of these say at last that this belief is erroneous, we may naturally enough suppose, or at least we may think it possible, that the truth so long hidden is, though late, come to light. But if the thirty-nine begin, aye, and instantly begin, to entertain, instead of the one old belief, thirty-nine new beliefs, each differing from all the other thirty-eight, must we not in common justice decide that the old belief must have been the true one? What! shall we hear these thirty-nine protestors against the ancient faith each protesting against all the other thirty-eight, and still believe that their joint protest was just? Thirty-eight of them must now be in error; this must be: and are we still to believe in the correctness of their former decision, and that, too, relating to the same identical matter? If in a trial relating to the dimensions of a piece of land, which had been proved to have always been, time without mind, taken for twenty acres, there were one surveyor to swear that it contained twenty acres, and each of thirty-nine other surveyors to swear each of the other number of acres between one and forty, what judge and jury would hesitate a moment in crediting him who swore to the twenty, and in wholly rejecting the testimony of all the rest?

205. Thus the argument would stand on the supposition that thirty-nine parts out of forty of all Christendom had protest; but there were not, and there are not even unto this day, two parts out of fifty. So that here we have thirty-nine persons breaking off from about two thousand, protesting against the faith which the whole, and their fathers, have held; we have each of these thirty-nine instantly protesting that all the other thirty-eight have protested upon false grounds; and yet we are to believe that their joint protest against the faith of the two thousand, who are backed by all antiquity, was wise and just ! Is this the way in which we decide in other cases? Did honest men, and men not blinded by passion or by some base motive, ever decide thus before? Besides, if the Catholic faith were so false as it is by some pretended to be, how comes it not to have been extirpated before now? When, indeed, the Pope had very great power, when even kings were compelled to bend to him, it might be said, and pretty fairly said, that no one dared use the weapons of reason against the Catholic faith. But we have seen the Pope is prisoner in a foreign land; we have seen him without scarcely food and raiment; and we have seen the press of more than half the world at liberty to treat him and his faith as it pleased to treat them. But have we not seen the Protestant sects at work for three hundred years to destroy the Catholic faith? Do we not see, at the end of those three hundred years, that that faith is still the reigning faith of Christendom? Nay, do we not see that it is gaining ground at this very moment, even in this kingdom itself, where a Protestant hierarchy receives eight millions sterling a year, and where Catholics were rigidly excluded from all honour and power and, in some cases, from all political and civil rights under a constitution founded by their Catholic ancestors? Can it be then that this faith is false? Can it be that this worship is idolatrous? Can it be that it was necessary to abolish them in England as far as law could do it? Can it be that it was for our good, our honour, to sack our country, to violate all the rights of property, to deluge the country with blood, in order to change our religion?

206. But in returning now to the works of the plunderers, we ought to remark that, in discussions of this sort, it is a common but a very great error to keep our eyes so exclusively fixed on mere matters of religion. The Catholic Church included in it a great deal more than the business of teaching religion and of practising worship and administering sacraments. It had a great deal to do with the temporal concerns of the people. It provided, and amply provided, for all the wants of the poor and distressed. It received back, in many instances, what the miser and extortioner had taken unfairly, and applied it to works of beneficence. It contained a great body of land proprietors whose revenues were distributed in various ways amongst the people at large, upon terms always singularly advantageous to the latter. It was a great and powerful estate, independent both of the aristocracy and the crown, and naturally siding with the people. But above all things, it was a provider for the poor and a keeper of hospitality. By its charity and by its benevolence towards its tenants and dependents, it mitigated the rigour of proprietorship, and held society together by the ties of religion rather than by the trammels and terrors of the law. It was the great cause of that description of tenants called life-holders, who formed a most important link in the chain of society, coming after the proprietors in fee and before the tenant at will, participating, in some degree, of the proprietorship of the estate, and yet, not wholly without dependence on the proprietor." This race of persons, formerly so numerous in England, has by degrees become almost wholly extinct, their place having been supplied by a comparatively few rack-renters and by swarms of miserable paupers. The Catholic Church held the lending of money for interest, or gain, to be directly in the face of the Gospel. It considered all such gain as usurious and, of course, criminal. It taught the making of loans without interest; and thus it prevented the greedy-minded from amassing wealth in that way in which wealth is most easily amassed. Usury amongst Christians was wholly unknown, until the wife-killing tyrant had laid his hands on the property of the Church and the poor. The principles of the Catholic Church all partook of generosity; it was their great characteristic, as selfishness is the characteristic of that Church which was established in its stead.

207. The plunder which remained after the seizure of the monasteries was comparatively small; but still, the very leavings of the old tyranny, the mere gleanings of the harvest of plunder, were something; and these were not suffered to remain. The plunder of the churches, parochial as well as collegiate, was preceded by all sorts of antics played in those churches. Calvin had got an influence opposed to that of Cranmer; so that there was almost open war amongst these Protestants, which party should have the teaching of the people. After due preparation in this way, the robbery was set about in due form. Every church altar had, as I have before observed, more or less of gold and silver. A part consisted of images, a part of censers, candlesticks, and other things used in the celebration of the mass. The mass was, therefore, abolished, and there was no longer to be an altar, but a table in its stead. The fanatical part of the reformers amused themselves with quarrelling about the part of the church where the table was to stand, about the shape of it, and whether the head of it was to be placed to the north, the east, the west, or the south, and whether the people were to stand, kneel, or sit at it! The plunderers, however, thought about other things: they thought about the value of the images, censers, and the like.

208. To reconcile the people to these innovations the plunderers had a Bible contrived for the purpose, which Bible was a perversion of the original text wherever it was found to be necessary. Of all the acts of this hypocritical and plundering reign this was, perhaps, the basest. In it we see the true character of the heroes of the " Protestant Reformation"; and the poor and miserable labourers of England, who now live upon potatoes and water, feel the consequences of the deeds of the infamous times of which I am speaking. Every preparation being made the robbery began, and a general plunder of churches took place by royal and parliamentary authority! The robbers took away everything valuable, even down to the vestments of the priests. Such mean rapacity never was heard of before, and for the honour of human nature let us hope that it will never be heard of again. It seems that England was really become a den of thieves, and of thieves, too, of the lowest and most despicable character.

209. The Protector, Somerset, did not forget himself. Having plundered four or five of the bishoprics he needed a palace in London. For the purpose of building this palace, which was erected in the Strand, London, and which was called Somerset House," as the place is called to this day, he took from three bishops their town houses. He pulled these down, together with a parish church, in order to get a suitable spot for the erection. The materials of these demolished buildings being insufficient for his purpose, he pulled down a part of the buildings appertaining to the then cathedral of Saint Paul; the church of Saint John, near Smithfield; Barking chapel, near the Tower; the college church of Saint Martin-le-Grand; St. Ewen's church, Newgate; and the parish church of Saint Nicholas. He, besides these, ordered the pulling down of the parish church of Saint Margaret, Westminster; but, says Dr. Heylyn, “the workmen had no sooner advanced their scaffolds when the parishioners gathered together in great multitudes with bows and arrows and staves and clubs, which so terrified the workmen that they ran away in great amazement, and never could be brought again upon that employment." Thus arose Somerset House, the present grand seat of the power of fiscal grasping. It was first erected literally with the ruins of churches, and it now serves, under its old name, as the place from which issue the mandates to us to give up the fruit of our earnings to pay the interest of a debt which is one of the evident and great consequences of the " Protestant Reformation," without which that debt never could have existed.

210. I am, in the last chapter, to give an account of the impoverishment and degradation that these and former Protestant proceedings produced amongst the people at large; but I must here notice that the people heartily detested these Protestant tyrants and their acts. General discontent prevailed, and this, in some cases, broke out into open insurrection. It is curious enough to observe the excuses that Hume, in giving an account of these times, attempts to make for the plunderers and their "reformation." It was his constant aim to blacken the Catholic institutions, and particularly the character and conduct of the Catholic clergy. Yet he could not pass over these discontents and risings of the people; and, as there must have been a cause for these, he is under the necessity of ascribing them to the badness of the change, or to find out some other cause. He therefore goes to work in a very elaborate manner to make his readers believe that the people were in error as to the tendency of the change. He says that " scarce any institution can be imagined less favourable, in the main, to the interests of mankind," than that of the Catholic; yet, says he, "as it was followed by many good effects, which had ceased with the suppression of the monasteries, that suppression was very much regretted  by the people." He then proceeds to describe the many benefits of the monastic institutions; says that the monks, always residing on their estates, caused a diffusion of good constantly around them; that, "not having equal motives to avarice with other men, they were the best and most indulgent landlords"; that, when the church lands became private property, the rents were raised, the money spent at a distance from the estates, and the tenants exposed to the rapacity of stewards; that whole estates were laid waste; that the tenants were expelled, and that even the cottagers were deprived of the commons on which they formerly fed their cattle; that a great decay of the people, as well as a diminution of former plenty, was remarked in the kingdom; that at the same time the coin had been debased by Henry, and was now further debased; that the good coin was hoarded or exported; that the common people were thus robbed of part of their wages; that "complaints were heard in every part of the kingdom." (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, written between 1824 and 1827 and published by Benziger Brothers, pp. 137-167.)

Appendix B

William Cobbett On the Just Punishment of Heretics by Queen Mary

247. As a preliminary to the punishment of heretics, there was an Act of Parliament passed in December, 1554 (a year and a half after the Queen came to the throne), to restore the ancient statutes relative to heresy. These statutes were first passed against the Lollards in the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV., and they provided that heretics who were obstinate should be burnt. These statutes were altered in the reign of Henry VIII. in order that he might get the property of heretics, and in that of Edward they were repealed; not out of mercy, however, but because heresy was, according to those statutes, to promulgate opinions contrary to the Catholic faith, and this did, of course, not suit the state of things under the new Church "as by law established." Therefore it was then held that heresy was punishable by common law, and that, in case of obstinacy, heretics might be burnt; and accordingly many were punished and some burnt in that reign by process at common law; and these were, too, Protestants dissenting from Cranmer’s Church, who himself condemned them to the flames. Now, however, the Catholic religion being again the religion of the country, it was thought necessary to return to ancient statutes, which accordingly were re-enacted. That which had been the law during seven reigns, comprising nearly two centuries, and some of which reigns had been amongst the most glorious and most happy that England had ever known, one of the kings having won the title of King of France, and another of them having actually been crowned at Paris; that which had been the law for so long a period was now the law again, so that here was nothing new at any rate. And observe, though these statutes were again repealed when Elizabeth's policy induced her to be a Protestant, she enacted others to supply their place, and that both she and her successor, Tames I., burnt heretics; though they had, as we shall see, a much more expeditious and less noisy way of putting out of the world those who still had the constancy to adhere to the religion of their fathers.

248. The laws being passed were not likely to remain a dead letter. They were put in execution chiefly in consequence of condemnations in the spiritual court by Bonner, Bishop of London. The punishment was inflicted in the usual manner, dragging to the place of execution and then burning to death, the sufferer being tied to a stake in the midst of a pile of faggots, which, when set on fire, consumed him. Bishop Gardiner, the Chancellor, has been by Protestant writers charged with being the adviser of this measure. I can find no ground for this charge, while all agree that Pole, who was now become Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Cranmer, disapproved of it. It is also undeniable that a Spanish friar, the confessor of Philip, preaching before the Queen, expressed his disapprobation of it. Now, as the Queen was much more likely to be influenced, if at all, by Pole, and especially by Philip, than by Gardiner, the fair presumption is that it was her own measure. And as to Bonner, on whom so much blame has been thrown on this account, he had indeed been most cruelly used by Cranmer and his Protestants, but there was the council continually accusing all the bishops (and he more than any of the rest) of being too slow in the performance of this part of their duty.  Indeed, it is manifest that in this respect the council spoke the almost then universal sentiment; for though the French ceased not to hatch rebellions against the Queen, none of the grounds of the rebels ever were that she punished heretics. Their complaints related almost solely to the connection with Spain, and never to the "flames of Smithfield," though we of later times have been made to believe that nothing else was thought of; but the fact is, the persons put to death were chiefly of very infamous character, many of them foreigners, almost the whole of them residing in London and called in derision by the people at large the "London Gospellers." Doubtless, out of two hundred and seventy-seven persons (the number stated by Hume on authority of Fox) who were thus punished, some may have been real martyrs to their opinions, and have been sincere and virtuous persons, but in this number of two hundred and seventy-seven many were convicted felons, some clearly traitors, as Ridley and Cranmer. These must be taken from the number ; and we may surely take such as were alive when Fox first published his book, and who expressly begged to decline the honour of being enrolled amongst its " Martyrs." As a proof of Fox's total disregard of truth, there was in the next reign a Protestant parson, as Anthony Wood (a Protestant) tells us, who in a sermon related, on authority of Fox, that a Catholic of the name of Grimwood had been, as Fox said, a great enemy of the Gospellers, had been " punished by a judgment of God," and that "his bowels fell out of his body." Grimwood was not only alive at the time when the sermon was preached, but happened to be present in the church to hear it, and he brought an action of defamation against the preacher! Another instance of Fox's falseness relates to the death of Bishop Gardiner. Fox and Burnet, and other vile calumniators of the acts and actors in Queen Mary's reign, say that Gardiner, on the day of the execution of Latimer and Ridley, kept dinner waiting till the news of their suffering should arrive, and that the Duke of Norfolk, who was to dine with him, expressed great chagrin at the delay; that when the news came, "transported with joy" they sat down to table, where Gardiner was suddenly seized with the disury, and died in horrible torments in a fortnight afterwards. Now Latimer and Ridley were put to death on the 16th of October, and Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, p. 386, states that Gardiner opened the Parliament on the 21st of October, that he attended in Parliament twice afterwards, that he died on the 12th of November of the gout, and not of disury, and that as to the Duke of Norfolk, he had been dead a year when this event took place! What a hypocrite, then, must that man be who pretends to believe in this Fox! Yet this infamous book has, by the arts of the plunderers and their descendants, been circulated to a boundless extent amongst the people of England, who have been taught to look upon all the thieves, felons and traitors whom Fox calls " Martyrs," as sufferers resembling St. Stephen, St. Peter and St. Paul!

249. The real truth about these  Martyrs" is that they were generally a set of most wicked wretches, who sought to destroy the Queen and her government, and, under the pretence of conscience and superior piety, to obtain the means of again preying upon the people. No mild means could reclaim them; those means had been tried: the Queen had to employ vigorous means, or to suffer her people to continue to be torn by the religious factions, created not by her but by her two immediate predecessors, who had been aided and abetted by many of those who now were punished, and who were worthy of ten thousand deaths each if ten thousand deaths could have been endured. They were, without a single exception, apostates, perjurers, or plunderers ; and the greater part of them had also been guilty of flagrant high treason against Mary herself, who had spared their lives, but whose lenity they had requited by every effort within their power to overset her authority and her government. To make particular mention of all the ruffians that perished upon this occasion would be a task as irksome as it would be useless; but there were amongst them three of Cramer's bishops and himself! For now justice at last overtook this most mischievous of all villains, who had justly to go to the same stake that he had unjustly caused so many others to be tied to; the three others were Hooper, Latimer and Ridley, each of whom was, indeed, inferior in villainy to Cranmer, but to few other men that have ever existed.

250. Hooper was a monk; he broke his vow of celibacy and married a Flandrican; he, being the ready tool of the Protector Somerset, whom he greatly aided in his plunder of the churches, got two bishoprics, though he himself had written against pluralities. He was a co-operator in all the monstrous cruelties inflicted on the people during the reign of Edward, and was particularly active in recommending the use of German troops to bend the necks of the English to the Protestant yoke. Latimer began his career, not only as a Catholic priest, but as a most furious assailant of the Reformation religion. By this he obtained from Henry VIII. the bishopric of Worcester. He next changed his opinions, but he did not give up his Catholic bishopric! Being suspected, he made abjuration of Protestantism; he thus kept his bishopric for twenty years while he inwardly reprobated the principles of the Church, and which bishopric he held in virtue of an oath to oppose to the utmost of his power all dissenters from the Catholic Church. In the reigns of Henry and Edward he sent to the stake Catholics and Protestants for holding opinions which he himself had before held openly, or that he held secretly at the time of his so sending them. Lastly, he was a chief tool in the hands of the tyrannical Protector Somerset in that black and unnatural act of bringing his brother, Lord Thomas Somerset, to the block. Ridley had been a Catholic bishop in the reign of Henry VIII., when he sent to the stake Catholics who denied the king's supremacy and Protestants who denied transubstantiation. In Edward's reign he was a Protestant bishop, and denied transubstantiation himself. He in Edward's reign got the bishopric of London by a most roguish agreement to transfer the greater part of its possessions to the rapacious ministers and courtiers of that day. Lastly, he was guilty of high treason against the Queen, in openly (as we have seen in paragraph 220) and from the pulpit exhorting the people to stand by the usurper, Lady Jane, and thus endeavouring to produce civil war and the death of his sovereign, in order that he might by treason be enabled to keep that bishopric which he had obtained by simony including perjury.

251. A pretty trio of Protestant "saints;" quite worthy, however, of Martin Luther, who says in his own works that it was by the arguments of the devil (who, he says, frequently ate, drank and slept with him) that he was induced to turn Protestant; three worthy followers of that Luther who is by his disciple Melancthon called "a brutal man, void of piety and humanity, one more a Jew than a Christian; “three followers altogether worthy of this great founder of that Protestantism which has split the world into contending sects: but black as these are, they bleach the moment Cranmer appears in his true colours. But alas where is the pen or tongue to give us those colours? Of the sixty-five years that he lived, and of the thirty-five years of his manhood, twenty-nine years were spent in the commission of a series of acts which, for wickedness in their nature and for mischief in their consequences, are absolutely without anything approaching to a parallel in the annals of human infamy. Being a fellow of a college at Cambridge, and having, of course, made an engagement (as the fellows do to this day) not to marry while he was a fellow, he married secretly and still enjoyed his fellowship. While a married man he became a priest and took the oath of celibacy, and going to Germany he married another wife, the daughter of a Protestant "saint," though his oath bound him to have no wife at all. He, as archbishop, enforced the law of celibacy, while he himself secretly kept his German wife in the palace at Canterbury having, as we have seen in paragraph 104, imported her in a chest. He, as ecclesiastical judge, divorced Henry VIII. from three wives, the grounds of his decision in two of the cases being directly the contrary of those which he himself had laid down when he declared the marriages to be valid; and in the case of Anne Boleyn he, as ecclesiastical judge, pronounced that Anne had never been the king's wife; while as a member of the House of Peers he voted for her death, as having been an adulteress and thereby guilty of treason to her husband. As archbishop under Henry (which office he entered upon with a premeditated false oath on his lips) he sent men and women to the stake because they were not Catholics, and he sent Catholics to the stake because they would not acknowledge the king's supremacy and thereby perjure themselves as he had so often done. Become openly a Protestant in Edward's reign, and openly professing those very principles for the professing of which he had burnt others, he now punished his fellow Protestants because their grounds for protesting were different from his. As executor of the will of his old master, Henry, which gave the crown (after Edward) to his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, he conspired with others to rob those two daughters of their right, and to give the crown to Lady Jane, that queen of nine days, whom he with others ordered to be proclaimed. Confined, notwithstanding his many monstrous crimes, merely to the palace at Lambeth, he, in requital of the Queen's lenity, plotted with traitors in the pay of France to overset her government. Brought at last to trial and to condemnation as a heretic, he professed himself ready to recant. He was respited for six weeks, during which time he signed six different forms of recantation, each more ample than the former. He declared that the Protestant religion was false; that the Catholic religion was the only true one; that he now believed in all the doctrines of the Catholic Church; that he had been a horrid blasphemer against the Sacrament; that he was unworthy of forgiveness; that he prayed the people, the Queen and the Pope to have pity on and to pray for his wretched soul; and that he had made and signed this declaration without fear and without hope of favour, and for the discharge of his conscience, and as a warning to others. It was a question in the Queen's Council whether he should be pardoned, as other recanters had been; but it was resolved that his crimes were so enormous that it would be unjust to let him escape. Brought, therefore, to the public reading of his recantation on his way to the stake, seeing the pile ready, now finding that he must die, and carrying in his breast all his malignity undiminished, he recanted his recantation, thrust into the fire the hand that had signed it, and thus expired, protesting against that very religion in which, only nine hours before, he had called God to witness that he firmly believed." 

252. And Mary is to be called the "Bloody" because she put to death monsters of iniquity like this! It is surely time to do justice to the memory of this calumniated queen; and not to do it by halves, I must, contrary to my intention, employ part of the next chapter in giving the remainder of her history. (William Cobbett, A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, written between 1824 and 1827 and published by Benziger Brothers, pp. 203-211.)

Appendix C

Father Edward Cahill's History of the Effects of the English Protestant Revolution

Results of the Plunder of the Church.—Not only is the Protestant Revolt mainly responsible for the unsocial character of Britain’s economic system but it was the immediate cause of much of the degrading pauperism that has disfigured British civilisation for the past four centuries. We have already alluded to the plunder of the Church and the alienation of the revenues devoted to charitable and educational purposes, which took place as a result of the religious revolt. This led directly to dreadful hardship in the case of the poor, to whose benefit most of the ecclesiastical revenue had previously been applied. The confiscated wealth, which according to the law under which the confiscations were carried out should have been to the service of the State, was in very large measure appropriated by lawyers, court favourites and other greedy and avaricious adventurers. These henceforth formed a new class of wealthy and unscrupulous plutocrats who in the following centuries dominated the political and social life of their several countries. Nowhere did these robbery of Church goods produce such disastrous results as in Ireland and Britain. In both these countries the Protestant Reformation laid the foundations secure and deep, of extreme individualistic capitalism, with its hideous counterpart of pauperism and oppression of the poor, which forms one of the chief characteristics of their social history during the following centuries. On this aspect of the question, Cardinal Gasquet writes:

“Viewed in its social aspect the English Reformation was in reality an uprising of the rich against the poor. . . . Those in place and power were enabled to grow greater in wealth and position, while those who had before but a small share of the good things of this world came in the process to have less. . . . The supposed purification . . . of doctrine and practice was brought about . . .  at the cost of driving a wedge well into the heart of the nation, which . . . established the distinction which still exists and the masses.” (Preface to Cobbett’s History of the Reformation, p. 6.)

The history of this lamentable revolution in England, by which the whole face of a great Catholic nation became permanently disfigured, the great majority of her once happy children plunged in ever-increasing degradation and misery, and her ideals and principles conformed to a non-Christian instead of a Christian standard, is graphically told by the Protestant writer Cobbett, in his History of the Protestant Reformation. “Never,” he writes, “since the world began was there so rich a harvest of plunder.” He tells how gold and silver, books and manuscripts, ornaments, paintings and statuary of priceless value equally with church, monastery and convent fell a prey to the satellites of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell:

“The whole country was thus disfigured: it had the appearance of a land recently invaded by the most brutal barbarians: and this appearance it has . . . even to the present day. Nothing has ever come to supply the place of what has been destroyed.” (Cobbett—History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, edited by Cardinal Casquet (Art and Book Co., London, 1899), chap. vii, no. 182.)

Explaining the social effects of the plunder of the Church, Cobbett writes:

“The Catholic Church included in itself a great deal more than the business of teaching religion . . . and administering the Sacraments. It had a great deal to do with the temporal concerns of the people. It provided  . . . for all the wants of the poor and distressed. . . .  It contained a great body of land proprietors, whose revenues were distributed in various ways amongst the people upon terms always singularly favourable to the latter. It was a great and powerful estate, and naturally siding with the people. . . . By its charity and its benevolence towards its tenants it mitigated the rigour of proprietorship, and held society together by the ties of religion rather than by the trammels and terrors of the Law. (Cobbett, History of the Protestant Reformation, chap. vii, no. 206.)

Dissolution of the Monasteries.—The dissolution of the monasteries, with the resulting confiscation of their property, immediately produced overwhelming distress amongst the multitudes who had been maintained by the resources that the religious bodies had administered. It proved disastrous also to the tenants on the monastic lands, which were probably more than 2,000,000 statute acres in extent. The tenants who had been accustomed to an easy and sympathetic mode of treatment at the hands of the monks, now passed under the power of harsh and exacting landlords. Rack-rents were too often exacted and the numerous exemptions and privileges to which the tenants had been accustomed were withdrawn.

Enclosures and Confiscations.—Again, the common lands, in which the poor of the neighbourhood had from time immemorial possessed common rights, were seized and enclosed in the lords’ demenses; and numberless other hardships, hitherto unknown, now began to press upon the people.

The wanton confiscation of the property of the guilds, hospitals and almshouses, unjust and indefensible even form the Protestant standpoint, was also disastrous to the interests of the poor. The destruction of the religious schools and colleges, in which so many children were educated free of cost, was still another blow. Even the introduction of married clergy, which diverted into another channel the energies and resources that would otherwise be expended on charity, aggravated further the lot of the poor.

Vagabondage in England.—Hence it was that the destruction of Catholicism in England gave rise to the sordid pauperism which has since disfigured English civilisation. Cobbett describes in his own eloquent and vigorous style how England, “once happy and hospitable, became a den of famishing robbers and slaves.” As a result of the plunder of the Church and the destruction of the institutions which had grown up under its influence, the country quickly became filled with the destitute. Immense numbers of these were drive to live as professional robbers. “There were,” writes Hume, “at least 300 or 400 able-bodied vagabonds in every country who lived by theft and rapine, and who sometimes met in troops to the number of sixty and committed spoil on the inhabitants.” As many as five hundred of this expropriated class were sometimes executed in a single year during the reign of Elizabeth.

English Poor Laws.—This state of affairs—a direct result of the Protestant revolt—gave rise to the celebrated Elizabethan leglsation on pauperism, “as novel as it was harsh,” which for the first time standardized pauperism as distinct from poverty. The former was henceforth the status of those who, being destitute of the prime necessities of life, are maintained at the public expense in the parish poorhouses. They are no longer “God’s poor,” to whom as the special representatives of Him Who became poor for men’s sake, special sympathy and even reverence are due. They are now despised outcasts, the pariahs of society. They usually live, or are supposed to live, in the poorhouses, segregated form their wives and children, under a harsh discipline, deprived of the franchise and compelled to wear a special uniform.

The following extracts from Pelgrave will convey a general idea of the spirit which animated the English post-Reformation legislation on mendicancy and poverty:

“It was only towards the middle and end of the 16^th century that measures against it [viz., mendicancy] were enforced, possibly in part owing to the sounder (sic) teachings of the Reformers on the subject. Then we find Southampton ordering that beggars should have their hair cut, and Parliament decreeing punishments on a progressive scale of severity. Whipping, branding, cutting off the gristle of the ear, even death, were the penalties assigned (!) . . . A Consolidating Act of 1713 lays it down that any person wandering about the country, on any one of a long list of pretences, is to be summarily arrested and removed to his settlement, or, if he have one, to be dealt with by the poor law authorities of the parish in which he is apprehened; but previously he may be flogged or set to hard labour, or committed for seven years to the custody of any person who will undertake to set him to work in Great Britain or the Colonies. By the Act of 1744 even women are to flogged for vagrancy and late as 1824 flogging is retained as punishment  for “incorrigible rogues.” (Palgrave—Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. iii. Art “Poor Law” p. 154; also art. “Pauperism,” p. 81.)

Such was the spirit introduced by Protestantism into the legislative system of a country that was once the “Dowry of Mary.” (Father Edward Cahill, The Framework of a Christian State, pp. 97-101.)

The assumption that Protestantism brought a higher and purer moral life to the nations that came under its influence does not need elaborate refutation. It is a fact of uncontroverted history that "public morality did at once deteriorate to an appalling degree wherever Protestantism was introduced. Not to mention robberies of church goods, brutal treatment meted out to the clergy, secular and regular, who remained faithful, and the horrors of so many wars of religion," we have the express testimony of [Martin] Luther himself and several other leaders of the revolt, such as [Martin] Bucer and [Philip] Melancthon, as to the evil effects of their teaching; and this testimony is confirmed by contemporaries. Luther's own avowals on this matter are numberless. Thus he writes:

"There is not one of our Evangelicals, who is not seven times worse than before he belonged to us, stealing the goods of others, lying, deceiving, eating, getting drunk, and indulging in every vice, as if he had not received the Holy Word. If we have been delivered from one spirit of evil, seven others worse than the first have come to take its place."

And again:

Men who live under the Gospel are more uncharitable, more irascible, more greedy, more avaricious than they were before as Papists."

Even Erasmus, who had at first favoured Luther's movement, was soon disillusioned. Thus he writes:

"The New Gospel has at least the advantage of showing us a new race of men, haughty, impudent, cunning, blasphemous . . . quarrellers, seditious, furious, to whom I have, to say truth, so great an antipathy that if I knew a place in the world free of them, I would not hesitate to take refuge therein." 

That these evil effects of Protestantism were not merely temporary—the accidental the accidental results of the excitement and confusion which are peculiar to a stage of transition (although they were no doubt intensified thereby)—is shown from present-day [1932] statistics. The condition of domestic morality is usually best indicated by the statistics of divorce, and of illegitimate births, and by the proportion of legitimate children to the number of marriages; while statistics of general criminality, where they can be had, would convey a fair idea of the individual and public morality in any given place. According to these tests Protestant countries are at the present day much inferior to Catholic countries in domestic and public morality. (Father Edward Cahill, S.J., The Framework of a Christian State, first published in 1932, republished by Roman Catholic Books, pp. 102-104.)

Appendix D

A Few Words About Saint Eustace and His Companions (His Family)

Saint Eustace, also known as Saint Eustachius and Saint Placidus, is someone to whom those of us who are estranged from family members and former friends and associates because of the wreckage wrought by the conciliar revolutionaries such as Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis and/or by the mere state of the barbarous world in which we live that has descended rapidly into barbarism as a result of the loss of Sanctifying and Actual Graces that had once flowed so readily from Altars of Sacrifice in every Catholic Church in the world should be very devoted. Consider, yes, once again, the remarkable story of a Roman commander who was separated from his wife and two sons for many years, not being reunited with them until shortly before they were martyred together for the Holy Faith because they refused to offer any kind of recognition to the false idols of Rome, quite a contrast to conciliarism: 

It was one evening during these celebrations, that word was brought to the city that the army of Placidus had arrived, and was already on the Appian Way. A new impulse was given to the rejoicings, and a new triumph and procession were prepared for the victorious army. There is nothing so calculated to excite a people's enthusiasm as the return of its armies from a triumphant campaign. Those who remember the day on which the heroes of the Crimea landed on the shores of England can well picture the veteran armies of Rome entering the capital in triumph. According to custom the Emperor went out to meet the general, and embraced him. As the evening was far advanced, and the sun was already sinking beneath the blue Mediterranean, the Emperor gave orders that the army should encamp outside the walls for the night, in order to enter the city in triumph next morning. Placidus and his family returned with the Emperor to the Palatine, and were entertained at a sumptuous banquet. He gave the Emperor the history of his campaign, and spoke until a late hour of his battles, his conquests, the bravery of his two sons, and the extraordinary discover of his wife and family.

Loud, shrill and cheerful were the trumpet blasts that roused the sleeping army on the following morning. The cup of joy for these poor creatures was full to the brim. They knew of no greater reward for years of hardship and trial, for the scars and wounds which disabled them for life, than the shouts of a brutal and barbarous mob, who hailed them along the road of triumph.

As they poured in through the gates, each of them received a laurel crown, whose freshness and beauty contrasted deeply with the sunburnt features and tattered garments of the veterans. Round their necks and about their persons they carried a profusion of tinsel trinkets, which they took from the conquered people as ornaments for their wives and children. These were waggons drawn by oxen laded with spoils, that made the massive pavements of the Appian Way creak; armour, gold and brass ornaments, wild animals in cages, and everything that could show the habits and manners of the conquered people. The general, together with his wife and two sons, was in a gilt chariot, drawn by four white horses, in the rear of his army. None of the pride and flush of drunken joy that characterised the pagan conqueror was to be seen in the meek countenance of Placidus. All this rejoicing and gorgeous display was to him and his Christian family the funeral pomp that led them to their tomb. The king who, on this death-bed, had himself invested with his crown and royal robes to meet death as a monarch, was a picture of Placidus led in triumph to martyrdom--a tale of emptiness and instability of human greatness, often told in the vicissitudes of history! He was silent and collected; not even the deafening peals of applause from crowds of idle spectators, who made his name ring through the palaces and tombs that bend over the streets from the Capena gate to the Forum, induced him to look up with the smile of joyful approbation. He was well aware that in a few moments his belief in Christianity would be declared, for he could not sacrifice to the gods.

Whilst the procession was moving along, a murmur passed through the crowd. They asked one another where were the victims?--where the captive chiefs?--where the salves usually dragged at the chariot wheels of the conqueror?--where the wailing matrons and daughters of the conquered race to sound the mournful music of triumph? Arrived at the Forum, the procession halted as usual, and the executioners and keepers of the Mamertine prison looked in vain for their victims; it was the first time in the annals of triumph that axes had not bee steeped in the blood of heroes, whose only crime was that they fought bravely for their homes and their countries. They knew nothing of the sublime morality that can forgive an enemy. Placidus pardoned the moment he had conquered, and instead of dragging helpless victims from their country and family, to be immolated to the demons of Rome, he left his name in the traces of his march in love and benediction.

But now the process arrived at the entrance to the Temple of Jupiter. The priests were waiting in their robes, and snow-white oxen, with gilded horns and crowns of flowers, were held by the altar. Immense faggots were blazing in the heart of the temple to consume the victims, and fragrant incense was burning in golden vessels. Placidus and his family descended from their chariot and stepped on one side; they refused to enter; they would not sacrifice.

If an earthquake had shaken the temple to its foundations, or a sudden eclipse had darkened the sun, there could not have been given a greater shock or surprise to the assembled thousands. The news ran like fire in a train of powder through the vast crowd. A deep heavy murmur, like the swell of the troubled deep breaking on its boundaries, rose from the multitudes in the Forum. Indignation and fury were the passions that swayed the mob. The demon of paganism reigned in their hearts; pity, justice and liberty were virtues unknown. From shouts of applause with which they hailed Placidus as the conqueror, the glory of the Empire, and the beloved of the martial god, they know hooted him with groans and hisses; and loudly from the gilded temples of the Capitol were echoed the terrible cries of "Death to the Christians!"--"Away with the Christians!" But the hour of another and grander triumph had come for our hero. Let us hurry through the dark picture of cruelty and ingratitude that closed his career on this side of the grave, to usher in the triumph that was to last for ever.

The noble general and his family were brought before the Emperor. Was Adrian glad to have Placidus brought before him as a criminal? Doubtless he looked with a jealous eye on the glory, popularity and real triumph of one who, a few months before, was his equal as a commander of the army, and his acknowledged superior in skill and attainments, whilst his own triumph was but a mockery--the borrowed plumes of a deceased hero, whose panegyric he reluctantly preached from the chariot of triumph. Moreover, weak-minded and servile, he must have rejoiced in an opportunity of pandering to the depraved taste of a cruel and brutal mob, who were accustomed to look on all authority as usurpation and oppression, and who hated Christianity with satanic virulence. Like Trajan, he determined to prove his piety towards the gods by the public execution of the greatest man in the Empire. He received the old chief in the Temple of Apollo, and in a prepared speech, pretended what he never felt--sympathy for his folly. When asked by the haughty Adrian why he would not sacrifice to the gods, Placidus answered, bravely and fearlessly, "I am a Christian, and adore only the true God."

"Whence comes this infatuation?" asked the Emperor, quickly. "Why lose all the glory of the triumph, and bring the grey hairs to shame? Dost thou not know that I have the power to put thee to a miserable death?"

Placidus meekly replied: "My body is in your power, but my soul belongs to Him who created it. Never shall I forget the mercy He has down me in calling me to the knowledge of Himself, and I rejoice to be able to suffer for Him. You may command me to lead your legions against the enemies of the Empire, but never will I offer sacrifice to any other god than the One great and powerful God who created all thins, stretched out the heavens in their glory, decked the earth in its beauty, and created man to serve Him; He alone is worthy of sacrifice; all other gods are but demons who deceive men."

So also answered his wife and two sons. They bantered the Emperor himself for his folly in worshipping senseless pieces of marble and wood. In vain did Adrian try promises and threats, and all the silly arguments which were used in the defense of paganism. The faithful family were inflexible; the eloquence of Placidus was simple, but powerful and earnest; and the palpable defeat of Adrian in his attempt to reason with one gifted with the eloquence promised to those dragged before earthly tribunals, roused his pride and his cruelty, and the desire of revenge. the Coliseum stood but a few paces from them; the games were going on; the criminals and slaves of the Empire were the daily victims of its amusements. The condemnation of Placidus would be a stroke of policy to enhance the prosperity of his reign; it was the fullest gratification of the cruel passions of jealousy and revenge which the demon had stirred up in his heart; he ordered the Christian general and his family to be exposed to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre. [Father A. J. O'Reilly, The Martyrs of the Coliseum, pp. 105-109.]

"Death to the Christians!"--"Away with the Christians!" Chants and shouts of this kind will echo out anew in our own day, and much sooner than we think, as a new era of overt persecution, which will be the fruit of the convergence of the dark forces of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, will be received with joy by those who have "miseducated" in Chrisotphobic propaganda and ideology that characterize state-sponsored indoctrination institutions (public and most private schools, colleges, universities) today. 

"...But never will I offer sacrifice to any other god than the One great and powerful God who created all thins, stretched out the heavens in their glory, decked the earth in its beauty, and created man to serve Him; He alone is worthy of sacrifice; all other gods are but demons who deceive men."

We must never offer any sacrifice to any "god" than the One great and powerful God Who is to be worshiped according to the rites He prescribed by the Catholic Church in the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, refusing to participate in the great deception that is the evil of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical abomination that enshrines a false religion, one of convenience, a quasi-Catholicism without the Cross and, all too frequently, that is perfectly comfortable with “papal” approbations of perverse sinful tendencies as pleasing in the sight of God (see Lifesite News and Novus Ordo  Watch). We must remain as faithful to the true Faith as Saint Eustace and his family at the point of their martyrdom, which Father A. J. O’Reilly described as follows:

No nation could be sunk more deeply in idolatry, sensuality and vices than the great Empire whose capital has been considered the Babylon of impiety spoken of in The Apocalypse. "Our wrestling," says St. Paul, "is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places" (Eph. vi. 12). It was not in an amphitheatre stained with the blood of wild beasts and gladiators, and filled with an exited and unfeeling crowd, that the voice of pity or reason could be heard; the impatient clamours of the multitude denounced the Christians as the enemies of the gods and men, and the public condemnation of the Christian general had already rung loudly and repeatedly through the benches of the Coliseum. The coming of the Emperor was announced, the buzz of conversation was hushed, and all eyes were turned towards the entrance on the side of the Esquiline, which was specially reserved for the royal cortege. As soon as he entered the amphitheatre, all rose; the lictors lowered their fasces, and the senators and vestals bowed profoundly. Shouts of "great," "immortal, "divine," resounded from every seat. The crowd of spectators was nothing more than an assembly of miscreant slaves, who trembled at the beck of their rulers. Although the spectators of the Coliseum frequently hated the Emperor as an oppressor and a tyrant, yet, in the wild frenzy of fear, they cried out with lying tongues that he alone was great and powerful. He carried a sceptre of ivory, surrounded with a golden eagle, and a slave followed, bearing over his head a crown of solid gold and precious stones. As soon as he was seated, the shrill blast of a trumpet called for silence and the commencement of the games. After the process of the unfortunate wretches who were to take part in the cruel sport of that day's programme and the sham fight of the gladiators, it was usual to commence with sports of agility and skill, but on this day the order was changed. The crowd called for the condemnation of the Christians, and the Emperor gave the order that Placidus and his family be exposed to the wild beasts.  [Father A. J. O'Reilly, The Martyrs of the Coliseum, p. 111.]

Dom Prosper Gueranger. O.S.B., inspired by the martyrdom of Saint Eustace and his family, offered a prayer to our saints in The Liturgical Year:

Our trials are light compared with yours, O blessed martyrs! Obtain for us the grace not to betray the confidence of our Lord when he calls us to suffer for him in this world. It is thus we must win the glory of heaven. How can we triumph with the God of armies unless we have marched under his standard? Now, that standard is the Cross. The Church knows it, and therefore she is not troubled even by the greatest calamities. She knows, too, that her Spouse is watching over her, even when he seems to sleep; and she looks to the protection of such of her sons as are already glorified. And yet, O martyrs, for how many years has the sorrowful shadow of a sacrilegious invasion hung over the day of your triumph! Rome honored you with so much love! Take vengeance on the audacity of hell, and deliver the holy city! (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

We should not fear anything in this world, not from the civil state and not from the counterfeit church of conciliarism, and not from our family members and'/or former friends and associates as we pray for happy reconciliation with them if not in this life then in eternity before the glory of the Beatific Vision of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost.

We must be prepared for martyrdom, both figuratively and literally, in order to remain steadfast apostles of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen, trusting that our few acts of reparation, offered in love to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, will help to plant a few seeds for the end of this era of chastisement and the resurrection of the Church Militant on earth.

There is great peace to be had when one recognizes that the Catholic Church is responsible for nothing of the outrages committed by its counterfeit ape, conciliarism. The jaws of Hell have not prevailed against the Church. We must simply do our part as the consecrated slaves of Our Lord through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to practice True Devotion to Mary as we endeavor to fulfill as best we can Our Lady's Fatima Message in our daily lives, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Eustace and Companions, pray for us.