Tag Archives: England

September 19, 2012 · 10:24 am

Looking Back at London

If you have ever moved to another city, another country, or another continent for any extended period of time, gentle reader, then you know that the first few days you spend there are some of the most vivid memories you will take away from that place.  You may of course forget some of the later things that happened once you settled in, and began to see the place as your home.  However this is why I want to encourage those of my readers who are going to be living somewhere far from home for awhile, to make an effort to write down their experiences and observations now, in order to be able to draw upon them later.

Reading my updates on Facebook this morning I had a bit of a shock, realizing how quickly time seems to pass.  A good friend from here in the States had just arrived in London to begin a year of graduate school there, and I saw the news that he had safely arrived at Heathrow posted in my timeline.  It suddenly dawned on me that it was 15 years ago, in September of 1997, that I moved to London for the first time.  I could not help but sigh a little, as I thought about what my friend would be experiencing, as this was his first time ever in London.

To give you some context about what Britain was like at the time when I first went to live there, I arrived exactly one week after Princess Diana’s funeral on September 7, 1997.  The Labour MP Tony Blair had only been Prime Minister for four months, after decades of Tory government under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and the most popular British musical act at the time was The Spice Girls, who had only released their debut album in the U.S. earlier that year.  The Queen Mother was still going strong, mobile phones were seemingly all made by Nokia and about the size of a television remote control, and internet was exclusively of the dial-up variety (and very, very slow.)

As weird as it may sound, I can remember my entire first day in London on September 13, 1997, as if it were yesterday.  If you recall the expression of “having your wits about you,” I would say not only did I have all of mine about me, but they were firing on all cylinders.  Everything was new and interesting, and there was this strange sense of having landed on another planet.  For although the language was the same, many details of everyday life were handled completely differently.

For example, once my cab had dropped me off at my halls of residence on Regent’s Park – no Heathrow Express to Paddington in those days – I decided to see how long the walk was from there to where I would be studying, close to Piccadilly.  I remember looking at the words painted on the asphalt at intersections as I made my way through the car park and around the side of the building, which read, “Look Right” or “Look Left”.  I did not quite understand what they were for, until I started walking down Portland Place, and crossed an intersection without looking in the direction indicated.  As I did so a car came whizzing past honking its horn at me, and I had a near-miss with getting flattened within minutes of arriving in London.  From then on, I was quite careful to read what was on the ground before I stepped onto it.

Feeling a bit shaken and deciding I had better calm myself and call home, after a couple of blocks I spotted the BBC and All Souls Langham Place, both of which I knew from a lifetime of watching British television shows.  Across the street were three red telephone boxes in a row, standing at the side of a rather grandiose Victorian building, which I later came to learn was the Langham Hotel.  I chose one and made a telephone call to my parents, waking them up at about 5:00 a.m. Eastern to let them know that I was there and safe.

They were happy to hear from me, particularly my Father who is more the Anglophile of the two, and as I looked about from inside the phone box describing what I saw, I spotted a cafe across the road and down a little ways.  I told them I would head there to get some caffeine and try to call them again later, after I had done some exploring.  I could not have known it at the time, but later I ended up spending many, many hours in that Italian cafe/deli, using it as a place to study and write, and to meet up with friends, since it was centrally located but not a major tourist draw.

However rather than ordering their – excellent, as it later turned out – coffee, I must admit I bought a bottle of Snapple Iced Tea imported from the U.S.  It was warm, and the thought that I would be able to have American iced tea despite being far from home was rather encouraging.  As I continued down Regent Street sipping my beverage, I passed a news agent’s – which again, as time went on I would come to patronize regularly for magazines and for postcards – and noticed that they had that day’s New York Times for sale.  I realized that although I was in a different country and a different culture, there would still be plenty of things from home to keep me connected to the other side of the pond.

That was the beginning of a wonderful day, which included visiting my school and running into some of my classmates who were also figuring out the lay of the land; visiting what would come to be my parish in Mayfair for the first time; having my first gin and tonic in London at The Marlborough Head just north of Grosvenor Square; and coming back to my residence to find that a friend from high school was in town from Cambridge, and would be returning later that evening to meet up and go to dinner.  This is not a testament to any particularly astounding powers of memory on my part, mind you, but just an inkling of how much of an impact that first day in London had on my memory.  It is something I still treasure.

And if for some reason I should forget all of this, thank goodness I had the sense to keep a journal during both of my stints living in London.  It runs to many volumes, and though I must confess I have not sat down and cracked open these books in years, I do know they are there if I ever want to do so.  Perhaps with the realization of this anniversary, it might be a good time to revisit them, and recall some of the things I experienced, but have forgotten with the passage of time.

In the end that was the one piece advice I emailed to my friend today: that he makes sure to keep a journal for the year he will be living in Blighty.  No one knows what the future holds, and whether his experience will be as rewarding as mine, but having these memories to draw upon undoubtedly makes your life, and your understanding of the world in which you live, much richer.  Whether the city is London, Vienna, or Poughkeepsie, take the time now to write about what your impressions and thoughts are, so that you can relive those experiences later.


Phone boxes at the side of The Langham Hotel
Langham Place, London W1

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June 2, 2012 · 3:16 pm

Queen Elizabeth II: A Catholic Appreciation

This weekend world Anglophiles, such as yours truly, are enjoying the celebrations surrounding the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.  For those who wish to watch some of the events taking place this weekend in London, the BBC (including BBC America here in the U.S.) and the CBC are two of the best places to see live coverage of the numerous ceremonies.  I am particularly looking forward to seeing the Thames Pageant tomorrow morning before mass, in which over 1,000 vessels of all sorts will float down the Thames in London in honor of the Queen.

However as we discussed during the recording of the Catholic Weekend show today over at SQPN, one thing which is often overlooked with respect to the reign of the present Queen is the gracious effort she has made to reach out to Catholics.  She has done so in ways which some of her ancestors, such as Elizabeth I, would have found surprising, to say the least.  Anti-Catholicism has long been a problem in Britain, and it sill exists in some places. However in leading by example the Queen has shown what it means to be a true lady: someone who is welcoming, knows who she is, treats others with the respect they deserve and is deserving of respect in return.

The Queen is, of course, the head of the Church of England, which is something a bit hard for Americans to get their heads around, at times.  Imagine the President of the United States also being the head of your religion, and you get something of an idea.  The history of Catholicism in Britain since the split with Rome is one marked by a great deal of tragedy and centuries of legally-enshrined discrimination, which probably to the surprise of many of my readers still exists at the present time.

And yet despite this, it is worth pointing to the outreach that this Queen and the Popes have made to one another over the past several decades.  For example, she met with Pope Pius XII while she was still Princess Elizabeth; she also had a private visit with Blessed Pope John XXIII in 1962. In 1980 Elizabeth II made a state visit to meet with (now Blessed) Pope John Paul II, during the course of which she formally invited John Paul II to come on a pastoral visit to Britain.  Accordingly, Blessed John Paul II came to visit in 1982, an event which was considered an extraordinary success as well as an historic first, as the first sitting pope to visit the United Kingdom.

During the Church’s Jubilee year of 2000 the Queen came to visit Pope John Paul in the Vatican again, in commemoration of their first meeting twenty years earlier. By this time of course the Pope was already visibly suffering the long, painful decline in his health, but the Queen appeared as radiant and happy to see him as she had been twenty years earlier. At their meeting the Pope acknowledged the difficult past between the Vatican and Britain, but noted that “in recent years there has emerged between us a cordiality more in keeping with the harmony of earlier times and more genuinely expressive of our common spiritual roots.”  I daresay that part of that cordiality stemmed from the personality of the woman seated across from him as he gave his remarks.

When John Paul II died five years later, the Queen’s example was mirrored in the actions of her government and her son. Not only did the British Prime Minister attend the Pope’s funeral, which is something in and of itself, but many may not remember that Prince Charles actually postponed his wedding to Camilla Parker-Bowles so that he could attend the Pope’s funeral and represent the British Crown. The Queen herself issued a statement at his death offering her condolences, and noting the work that the Pope had done, trying to bring peace around the world. No doubt Henry VIII was spinning in his grave when he heard that.

Afterwards of course, came the historic state visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain in 2010, when he met with the Queen for the first time at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, and later made his exceptional address in Westminster Hall at the Houses of Parliament in London. When they met, in her welcoming speech the Queen acknowledged that the Pope would be beatifying Cardinal John Henry Newman, probably the most seminal figure in the rebirth of Catholicism in Britain, during his visit. “I know that reconciliation was a central theme in the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman,” she noted, “for whom you will be holding a Mass of Beatification on Sunday. A man who struggled with doubt and uncertainty, his contribution to the understanding of Christianity continues to influence many. I am pleased that your visit will also provide an opportunity to deepen the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the established Church of England and the Church of Scotland.”

As pointed out on the Catholic Weekend show this morning, symbolism matters. The fact that this elderly woman in her 80′s continues to hold the fascination of so many people around the world I think has less to do with glamour and glitz, and more with an appreciation that she, too, understands the power of symbolism. She does what her country needs her to do, and while we may think that work is easy, or extraordinarily well-paid, the sacrifices and personal losses she has had to bear as a result of not being able to relax, take it easy, and be just a normal granny like everyone else her age, are things I daresay none of us could reasonably be capable of fathoming.

In the case of the present monarch and her outreach to the Catholic Church, unimaginable to previous generations of Britons, I think she “gets” it. She appreciates that her visits to Rome, and the Pontiff’s visits to her realm; the warmth both sides have shown to each other during those visits in trying to make sure everything goes perfectly; and the interaction that the Queen has made with the Catholic hierarchy in the UK – going so far as to refer to the late Cardinal Hume as “MY cardinal” and attending Vespers at the Catholic cathedral in London – have gone a long way toward normalizing relations between her country and the Catholic Church, after so many years of unhappiness.

I for one will be raising my glass to Her Majesty this evening, to thank her for her efforts to reach out to Catholics in her country: your very good health, Ma’am.

Queen Elizabeth II meeting Blessed Pope John Paul II at The Vatican,
October 17, 1980

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April 18, 2012 · 10:50 am

A Strange Trip: From the Coffin to the Bookshelf

Last evening while watching BBC World News I caught a report on the 1,300 year-old St. Cuthbert Gospel, which recently became the property of the British Library in London.  The story of how the earliest, completely preserved European book came into the collection of the Library is an extremely interesting one, as you shall see.  However it is also a rather sad, contemporary example of how many of the Christian art objects we enjoy in museums today have lost their original, intended purpose.

Last summer the British Library began a campaign to purchase the book known as the “St. Cuthbert Gospel” from the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College in England, who have owned it since the 18th century; the book is a beautifully handwritten, simple manuscript of the Gospel of St. John in the New Testament dating from the 7th century.  The Library announced yesterday that, with the assistance of Christie’s auctioneers and other experts on valuation, since the book was not actually on the open market, they had finally raised the agreed-upon $14.7 million price tag for the volume, through a combination of public grants and private contributions. The Library has been in possession of the book since the late 1970′s, when it was loaned by the Jesuits for exhibition and study.

St. Cuthbert (c. 634-687) is one of the most revered of the early English saints. He was born in the Kingdom of Northumbria, in the north of present-day England, and discerned a religious vocation after spending part of his youth as a shepherd and then as a soldier. He subsequently became a monk, and was eventually ordained the Bishop of Lindisfarne, one of the most important centers of Christianity in Britain during this period.

The process for canonization of saints as we understand it today had not been fully formalized at the time of St. Cuthbert’s death, but according to St. Bede, the great chronicler of the early Church in Britain – whose superb “An Ecclesiastical History of the English People” is a must-have for any serious student of history – when several miracles were attributed to St. Cuthbert’s intercession and his coffin was opened, his body was found to be incorrupt. This led to his popularly being declared a saint, and he was re-buried in a beautifully decorated coffin in about 698 A.D., behind the main altar at his cathedral in Lindisfarne. The Gospel copy which is now the property of the British Museum was a gift from a neighboring monastery, which created and donated it to be buried with St. Cuthbert when he was re-interred.

From there the travels of this book, and indeed St. Cuthbert himself, become exceedingly strange. The coffin had to be moved multiple times due to invasions by the Vikings, until in the 10th century it finally came to rest at Durham Cathedral. During construction of a shrine to house the saint’s remains, his coffin was opened and this volume was re-discovered. It was then removed from the coffin, and kept in the cathedral priory for select visitors to examine and use as an aid to prayer; it remained there for the next 500 years.

When Henry VIII decided that he was not disgusting enough already, and decided to destroy the monastic communities in Britain so he could take their wealth and possessions for himself and his cronies, many books such as this were lost. Fortunately, someone managed to preserve this little volume from destruction, and it eventually came into the possession of the Earls of Lichfield.  The 3rd Earl, in turn, presented it in the middle of the 18th century to the Reverend Thomas Phillips who, in most of the news articles I have read in researching this story, list him as a “Canon”, meaning a priest attached to a cathedral.

However it turns out that Thomas Phillips was not a Protestant dressing up and playing Catholic in property stolen from Rome, but rather the real thing: a Catholic priest. He was private chaplain to the recusant Berkeley family, who were instrumental in getting the remaining English Catholic nobility and gentry together to petition King George III for his support of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. This Act was the first, small step toward the emancipation of Catholics following the Reformation, who up until the passage of this Act could be prosecuted, for example, for being or housing a Catholic priest, or teaching the Catholic faith in a school. Catholics were forbidden from buying or selling land, and they could in fact lose their property if a Protestant relative wished to take possession of it. Of course, legally enshrined prejudice against Catholics is still in fact part of English law today, but we will save that for another post.

For his part Father Phillips was the first English biographer of Reginald Cardinal Pole (1500-1588), the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, and published a two-volume study of this rather interesting prelate at Oxford in 1767. As an aside, Cardinal Pole was perhaps not always a saintly bishop, but he and I share a mutual dislike for Machiavelli and a preference for Count Castiglione, who is of course the patron of this blog. Cardinal Pole once described Machiavelli’s “The Prince” thusly: “I found this type of book to be written by an enemy of the human race. It explains every means whereby religion, justice and any inclination toward virtue could be destroyed”.

In 1769, Father Phillips presented the St. Cuthbert Gospel as a gift to the English Jesuit College in Liège, Belgium, where many of the English Jesuits who had been killed by Elizabeth I received their education. It then traveled back across the Channel, after the Jesuits were suppressed in Catholic Belgium and, ironically, found refuge in Protestant England in 1794. The book had remained at their school, Stonyhurst College, until it went on loan to the British Library, which now owns the well-traveled and ancient volume.

As interesting as all of this history is, I cannot help but think it a shame that this book is not still resting with the relics of St. Cuthbert. Of course it was not a book which he personally owned, since it was created several years after his death. Yet it was a mark of love, gratitude, and respect from his fellow monks, in recognition of how much he had done for them, and indeed for all early Christians in the north of England.

It also demonstrates yet again something which I have talked about periodically in these pages over the years. As much as I love things like beautifully made, historic paintings, statues, illuminated books, and other Catholic religious objects, there is something very tragic about seeing said objects in secular hands. I am of course not naive on this point: no doubt they are being better cared for than they would be if they were kept in regular use, or if they were simply gathering dust in some ancient and leaky church.

However when these things stop being ways of giving glory to God, and become little more than pretty baubles to be looked at, or remains like fossils or pottery shards to be studied scientifically, there is a type of sadness that arises for those of us who not only appreciate these things aesthetically, but also as spiritual expressions of the Catholic Faith made tangible. They were created by Catholic artisans for Catholic communities, but have been removed from the practice of the Faith, never to return.  I cannot walk into the National Gallery for example, and kneel down in front of the tranquil, meditative, and magnificent 15th century Perugino altarpiece of the Crucifixion to pray and reflect on Christ’s suffering. Well, I suppose I could, but then I would probably be chased away or arrested.

In the end it is certainly a good thing that more people will be able to study this remarkable book – which by the way has been digitized and will be available to examine online – and that it will be preserved for future generations.  However in isolation from its context, i.e. the shrine of a great Catholic saint, it loses some of its impact.  It is no longer an ex-voto, as it was originally intended to be, but an ex-ex-voto.  And for those of us who are aware of this fact, we cannot help but be a bit disappointed that it is not remaining in at least some kind of a Catholic setting.

Beginning of the Gospel of St. John from the St. Cuthbert Gospel (c. 698 A.D.)
British Library, London

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June 22, 2011 · 1:35 pm

St. John Fisher: The Cardinal Who Said, “No.”

Today marks the Feast Days of both St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, two of the great English saints to challenge King Henry VIII and lose their heads, only to gain a halo.  While at present Sir Thomas More is perhaps the better known of the two, thanks to there being more literary and cinematic treatments of his life, Cardinal Fisher is a figure whose life provides us with a number of points on which to reflect. Please note that I will refer to him as “Cardinal” Fisher, even though in some places he is often referred to simply as “Bishop”.  Pope Paul III raised him to the cardinalate, but Henry VIII refused to allow the cardinal’s hat to arrive from Rome, promising instead to send the pope the cardinal’s head.  As I do not recognize any such nonsense on the part of Henry, one of the great turds of history, I will of course defer to the wishes of Pope Paul.

The parallels between Cardinal Fisher and his namesake, St. John the Baptist, are very apparent, as a friend pointed out last evening on Twitter. Like the Baptist challenging King Herod’s marriage, Cardinal Fisher dared to dispute Henry’s divorce of Queen Catherine of Aragon and marriage to his whore, Anne Boelyn, speaking out about the sacramental nature of marriage, and later against Henry’s attempt to make himself head of the Church in England.  The symbolic parallels were certainly even more apparent in the Cardinal’s own day, when the Faith was much more integrated into daily life than it is at present.  In fact, Cardinal Fisher was executed on this date in 1535 specifically because Henry did not want the Cardinal to be executed on the Vigil of St. John the Baptist’s birthday, i.e. June 23rd, which occurs tomorrow evening.  Presumably the Night of St. John in 16th century London, as in Barcelona, was a night of fire and revelry, and a drunken populace might have gotten out of control.

During his trial, Cardinal Fisher was challenged for being singularly obstinate, given that all of the other English bishops had given in to Henry’s demands.  To this the cardinal replied, according to an eyewitness, that, having on his side “all the other bishops and all of the Catholics of the world, from Christ’s Ascension until now, joined with the entire consent of Christ’s universal Church, he must needs, he said, account his own side much the surer.”  Needless to say, such statements did not help him much with those assembled for the purpose of killing him.

After sentence had been passed, the Cardinal made a closing statement proclaiming his innocence, asking forgiveness of those who condemned them, and paraphrasing the words of Jesus as he did so, “for I think, they know not what they have done.”   He also left Henry with a warning, which unfortunately went unheeded. “If the King will now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange and unwonted case, no doubt but he shall deeply incur the grievous displeasure of Almighty God, to the great damage of his own soul, and that of many others, and to the utter ruin of this realm committed to his charge. “

It would be a great thing if more of the bishops in this country, where things are getting to a very bad place indeed with respect to moral relativism, would pray to Cardinal Fisher for his intercession, and follow his example.  So often St. Thomas More is held up to those of us who are lay professionals such as lawyers, government officials, and business leaders, as a model whom we ought to follow, in standing up and saying, “No.”  Yet let not our prelates forget the example of his friend, Cardinal Fisher who, alone among his synod, stood up and called a spade a spade, as he was supposed to do.


St. John Fisher by Francesco Bartolozzi, engraving after a c. 1525 original by Hans Holbein
Stapleton Collection, London

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