Venite Prandete

ST CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA 25th NOVEMBER   St Catherine was a young noble woman from Alexandria who had consecrated her virginity to Our Lord and, like St Catherine of Siena, had a mystical vision in which Christ placed a ring on her finger. She must have had a great deal of courage, for she upbraided the Emperor Maximinus for his persecution of Christians. The Emperor assembled seventy pagan scholars to refute her arguments regarding the faith. She however, in her learning and articulate discussion, converted the pagan scholars to the faith instead. The Emperor then attempted to execute her on a spiked wheel, but, when she ascended to the gallows, a bolt of lightening destroyed the wheel and killed the executioner. In the end she was beheaded. She was named as one of the fourteen Holy Helpers and is invoked against sudden death. She, of course, was the inspiration for the fireworks called the Catherine Wheel and is the Patron saint of philosophers. Michael P Foley, in his book, “D...

SHAKESPEARE AND ANNE LINE THE CATHOLIC RESISTANCE Anne Line is one of the Forty Martyrs of the Reformation whose collective feast day is 25th October. Her individual feast day is the date of her execution - 27th February. She was executed for the crime of harbouring priests, an offence of treason under legislation of 1585. Her story is set out in a previous post. Martin Dodwell, in his biography of Anne Line, “The Neat-herd’s Daughter Anne Line: Shakespeare’s Tragic Muse”, observed that she was considered to be “in the words of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, ‘both the Martha and the Mary’” of the clandestine and dangerous Catholic mission. She dedicated her life and her meagre resources to supporting the underground network of Catholic clergy in England, protected and assisted by aristocratic Catholic families, until her arrest at a Mass and her subsequent execution. Sonnet 74 is a memorial to Anne Line and her execution, where, before being hanged, she borrowed the executioner's knife ...

ANNE LINE ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS INDIVIDUAL FEAST DAY 28th FEBRUARY As a response to the training of priests at Douai and other seminaries that had developed in Europe and their effective mission in England, in 1585 legislation was passed by Parliament, under the rule of Elizabeth I, by which harbouring, maintaining or sheltering priests was deemed high treason and, as such, punishable by death and forefeiture of all property to the Crown.* Anne Line was executed by hanging on 27th February 1601 for harbouring Catholic priests. She was canonised as one of the Forty Martyrs on 25th October 1970. Martin Dodwell, in “The Neat-Herd’s Daughter, Anne Line, Shakespeare’s Tragic Muse” * introduces us to Anne Line: “The story of Anne Line, at least as it was passed on by the Jesuit John Gerard who knew her well, starts with her marriage to Roger Line of Ringwood. Both husband and wife were from Protestant families of minor landed-gentry, and Roger Line, the eldest son, was heir both to his fa...

MARGARET CLITHEROW ONE OF THE FORTY MARTYRS CANONISED ON 25th OCTOBER 1970 By the terms of the Act of Uniformity (1559), all the distinctive Catholic doctrines, the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Real Presence, the seven sacraments- were abolished and the new Protestant service of Cranmer was instituted in it’s stead. Any clergyman refusing to perform divine service according to the Protestant Prayer Book under the legislation was liable, for a first offence, to lose a year’s income and to be imprisoned for six months. A third offence was to be punished with imprisonment for life. Any lay person who criticized the new service was to be fined a hundred marks. Everyone in the country was now bound, under pain of a fine of twelve pence, (12d), to attend the Protestant service every Sunday in his own parish church. Gerard Culkin observed, The English Reformation, Pater Noster Publications, 1952, at p. 72: “Thus, as far as legislation could do so, these two Acts made England a Protestant count...

FEAST DAY OF THE MATERNITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY; 11th OCTOBER There are some who look at the consequences of the sexual revolution, feminism and the cultural narratives surrounding us today and see a sophisticated form of slavery, where women, in being told they can "have it all," have traded and lost the very essence of what is beautiful about being female. When we look around us, do we see the cost described by Father Rutler, who said: "Our world has become an orphanage, which is what happens when we get rid of the cross and the 'Woman who stood by it'"?* Carrie Gress, "The Anti-Mary Exposed", Tan, (2019), at p. 83. The Feast Day this Sunday is a celebration of motherhood and those features of the feminine that are fundamental and innate to a fulfilling and enriched experience of life. That Woman, the icon of whom is imprinted on the body and soul of every woman, gives us the capacity to reach up to build a personal bond with her Son, one ...