Martyrs in England: God's Secret Agents

God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot 
by Alice Hogge

This book was recommended multiple times by a friend of mine (Sally Thomas) so I was thrilled when I was offered a copy on PaperBackSwap.com (not an affiliate link). 

How could you tell apart the man who behaved like a secret agent and was a secret agent, from the man who behaved like a secret agent, but was a man of God (even if you, yourself, had forced that mode of behaviour upon him by your laws)? (p. 296)

The answer, according to God's Secret Agents, is not very well. 

This book thoroughly explores the context and conditions of the Catholic priests of the English Reformation. The extensive research reveals thoughts and declared intentions of Catholics in England, government officials, Queen Elizabeth, and the priests caught between them all. It's an invaluable book for anyone interested in the Catholic Reformation, and an excellent background for books like Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh. The Gunpowder Plot is actually only a small part of the book, though as an American Catholic, I found those chapters as enlightening as the rest.

One of the interesting things I have noticed about English history and literature is how often being Catholic is just unacceptable to proper Englishmen. For example, Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples seems to frown worriedly at any Catholic he mentions. According to Ms. Hogge, it began centuries ago, as a Catholic invasion from Spain was thwarted on their very shores.

What remained unclear, though, was how many of their countrymen would still be prepared to welcome them in, now that Catholicism had been linked so strongly with un-Englishness in the public consciousness. For if to be Catholic was to be an unnatural Englishman, then to draw attention to that unnaturalness in the weeks and months following the Spanish Armada was tantamount to signing your own death warrant. (p. 98)

Late in the book, she argues such bias continues today. She recounts how newspapers published a flurry of worrying articles when the Prime Minister was spotted in a Catholic cathedral in 1998.

It was as though the voices of long dead Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian MPs, churchmen, and pamphleteers had suddenly crackled into life again and centuries on were venting their old bias. (p. 391) 

The author did a magnificent job presenting all sides of the issues arising in the course of the book. The martyrs are heroic in their service to their countrymen, the politicians are often simply trying to make peace and smooth things over, and the pope doesn't always ease the situation.

Pope Pius V, responsible for excommunicating Elizabeth in 1570, and releasing her subjects from their allegiance to her. This act, more than any other single event, defined the English Catholic dilemma of divided loyalty. (second photo insert)

It was a time when men and women of much and little learning were working out their salvation amidst uncertainty, mortal and immortal, with wise and trusted individuals often disagreeing about not just the proper response to questions, but the relative importance of the questions themselves. It is a reminder not just of the danger of easily vilifying (or idealizing) people of the past, but of the present as well.

St. Nicholas Owen was one of the most fascinating people in the book. A brilliant carpenter and devoted Catholic, he designed and crafted priest holes all over England. Eventually, he was captured and martyred under torture, apparently without divulging any of his secrets.

In life he had saved them, in death he would too: not a single name escaped him. (p. 365)

I love his example of humble craftsmanship in service to God, and he's now one of my new favorite saints. (Coincidentally, an artist recently recommended in the Mater Amabilis Facebook group, offers a lovely icon of him with St. Joseph.)

There are graphic depictions of torture and gruesome deaths, not for the faith of heart, though many of these public executions led to conversions of heart also described in the book.

I do wish there had been some sort of a list of people in the back of the book to reference. Many men appear and reappear in the pages, sometimes with different names (those English have a distressing habit of becoming Lords or something and getting a new name). If I had known how very many there were, I would have made my own list as I read.

I wouldn't assign this book to a high school student, but only because it's rather long. You would have to dedicate a substantial amount of time to the English Reformation to justify it. I will definitely include it on a list of recommended reading for an interested student.

I have received nothing in exchange for this post. I received this book from PaperBackSwap.com (not an affiliate link). Links to Bookshop are affiliate links.

Being Ever Present: The Shepherd Who Didn't Run

The Shepherd Who Didn't Run: Fr. Stanley Rother, Martyr from Oklahoma

by Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda

Father Stanley Rother was a priest of Oklahoma. Murdered while serving as a missionary in Guatemala, he is a martyr of the Church (and here) who will be beatified in a ceremony in Oklahoma City on September 23, 2017. This news is tremendously exciting for those of us in close proximity to Oklahoma and should be for all the American faithful as he will be the first American diocesan priest to be beatified.

After a little consideration, I decided I should see if there was an adequate book for First Son to read in Level 4 for the Catholic saints and martyrs, as suggested by Mater Amabilis™.

I think it would have been helpful to have a list of pronunciations in the front of the book. Many of the Guatemalan names, places, and words are Spanish, so they are probably familiar enough to Americans. The Mayan words are much more difficult, though they are usually defined in the book and easily "hummed" over.

Rother - row-ther
Okarche - oh-car-che (Father Stanley's hometown in Oklahoma)
Tz’utujil - dz- oot oo hēēl - I found a document that showed this pronunciation; this seems to match what I remember Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul S. Coakley saying when I heard him speak on Father Rother.

The first chapter is really more of an introduction (even though there's a separate introduction), with the narrator appearing not just as a voice, but as an integral character. The story switches focus to Father Rother in the second chapter, one that develops his character by describing how his great-grandparents migrated to Oklahoma and what life was like for them. The author does an excellent job showing how they survived in a difficult land through a difficult time.

This text is not meant to be a comprehensive collection or a definitive presentation on his life, or his death, or his cause for canonization. This book is meant to honor the faith and faithfulness of Stanley Francis Rother -- Padre Apla's -- as brilliant ray of light in the midst of a very dark period in the history of Guatemala and the Americas.

Apla's means Francis, the name Fr. Rother used because it was easier than Stanley in both Spanish and the Mayan dialect. Despite struggling with both Latin and Spanish, Fr. Rother devoted himself to successfully learning Tz-utujil. It doesn't take much of an internet search to discover for yourself how complicated the language is.

Fr. Rother's life as a missionary in Santiago Atitlan began with a group, and their discussions about how to live within the community introduce complications missionaries still face in walking the line between cultures, how much to become like those we evangelize and how to avoid imposing our culture while still teaching what may be new and yet necessary for health and safety as well as the faith.

The book quotes extensively from letters from Fr. Rother to his family and friends in the United States or in other missionary posts. He wrote one year after Easter about the Holy week liturgy at Cerro de Oro, one of the missionary parishes he served. 

The people elected to go back to the top of the Cerro again this year as last and it took 45 minutes to climb. It is the "hill of gold" and has special significance for them and their Mayan background. There are even timeworn stone carvings up there. We vested and just then the sun came up. All turned to the sun and adored it a few moments... (As Father Jude Pansini later explained, the "adoring" of the sun was adoration of the risen Jesus Christ, symbolized by the sun.) We then renewed our baptismal vows by having water poured on the heads of all... Before this, the lake was blessed from our lofty position about 1,000 feet above it.

The surge of support from Oklahoma dwindled over time. After beginning his mission as one of a team of twelve, Fr. Rother eventually found himself alone at Santiago Atitlan. He was undeterred and content.

"This kind of work, I hope, will be given special consideration for length of tenure. Maybe they'll let me retire here," he concluded. "I would stay if all support from Oklahoma were stopped."

Father Boyer was one of many visitors that trickled in and out of the mission over the years. He visited with Archbishop John Quinn in 1975. 

"He didn't go there to do anything. He went there to be there, with the people," Father Boyer emphasized. "And because he was there, other things happened ... like the school, and the clinic, and farming the fields."

The author recounts events leading up to his martyrdom, including some horrible attacks on members of the church as persecution by the government and guerrilla fighters intensified. These are disturbing, of course, but their descriptions are appropriate to the events and not exaggerated or glorified. Writing to his bishop in September 1980, Fr. Stanley showed he understood the dangers he faced.

Given the situation, I am not ready to leave here just yet. There is a chance the Government will back off. If I get a direct threat or am told to leave, then I will go. But if it is my destiny that I should give my life here, then so be it. Like the priest in the neighboring parish said to me, "I like martyrs, but just to read about them." I don't want to desert these people, and that is what will be said, even after all these years. There is still a lot of good that can be done under the circumstances.

He did travel to Oklahoma when he learned his name was on a list of targeted men, but he couldn't stay long. His heart was with his people at Santiago Atitlan.

The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger. Pray for us that we may be a sign of the love of Christ for our people, that our presence among them will fortify them to endure these sufferings in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom. 

It is almost described as a time during which he said goodbye to those he loved in the States. His sister, who belongs to a convent in Kansas, remembers talking with him during this last visit home. She said, "So, don't go."

Remembering his simple reply, "But I have to," Sister Marita says now, "And that was it. I knew enough about God's working to know that when it's there, you've got to do it."

The scene of Fr. Stanley's martyrdom is described starkly and is a gruesome one. If you are concerned for a gentle or young reader, you can find it on pp. 217-218.

There are quite a few little typographical errors that should have been caught by a copyeditor. To be honest, I worried a book from Our Sunday Visitor would be inadequate as a school book as I feel like their offerings are often inconsistent. This book, however, is excellent.

The author allows Father Stanley to speak for himself often through his letters. She shows restraint in describing the process for his canonization. (At the time it was published, he had not yet been declared a martyr.) Father Stanley's struggle to become a priest, his love for the people of his parish in Guatemala, his determination to learn their language and truly live with them, and his willingness to experience their fear even until death...all these aspects of his life speak to our modern lives. He is truly a Catholic hero.

By constantly striving to deliberately be present to the people in front of him, to the needs in front of him, Father Stanley proclaimed a God who lives and suffers with his people. For Father Stanley, the choice to die for his Tz'utujil was a natural extension of the daily choice he made to live for them, and in communion with them. His death was nothing less than a proclamation of God's love for the poor of Santiago Atitlan.

Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket: If All the Swords in England

If All the Swords in England: A Story of Thomas Becket

by Barbara Willard

This book is one of the recommended resources for Connecting with History volume 3 at the grammar level. First Daughter will be using mostly grammar level resources but I wanted to read this one ahead of time because I was afraid the martyr's death at the end might be upsetting to her.

The book is written from the points of view of twin boys, separated by service. Edmund serves the King of England while Simon serves the Archbishop. They see each other only rarely. In the end, Edmund realizes what is going to happen and attempts to warn the Archbishop. He arrives too late, but St. Thomas Becket knew already what would transpire. The hectic ride is the focus of the back cover which I thought was a little silly since anyone reading the book probably knows the book will end with a murder.

The title comes from St. Thomas Becket's own words as they are quoted in the novel.

"I know you have come to kill me." He rose, then. He pulled himself up to his immense height and his great powerful voice rang out over their heads. "I make God my shield. If all the swords in England were pointed against my head, your threats could not move me. Foot to foot you will find me in the battle of my Lord."

The moment of martyrdom is described and it is violent. The attackers hack at the holy man and a renegade monk deals the final blow.

He drew his sword and struck at the skull of the dead man, scattering brains and blood on the pavement.

It is only a few pages, though Simon's sorrow continues.

I think First Daughter can handle this book even if the ending may be a bit outside her comfort zone. It is an excellent introduction to conflict between earthly and heavenly kingdoms.


I purchased this book from the publisher (not an affiliate link) which often runs sales, but I've linked above to RC History (affiliate link) because I intend to use this book with Connecting with History. It is also available from Amazon (another affiliate link)

Sacrificing Everything for the Faith: Blessed Miguel Pro

Blessed Miguel Pro: 20th-Century Mexican Martyr

by Ann Ball

This is one of the possible saint biographies named in the Mater Amabilis™™ Level 4 lesson plans (8th grade). It coordinates with the 20th Century history plans. Our children are already familiar with the story of this mischievous priest from the Glory Story.

Blessed Miguel Pro is one of many priests, religious, and lay Catholics persecuted and executed by Mexican revolutionaries. Unlike many of them, there are plenty of photographs of his execution in 1927. Photographs of the execution, the moment of impact of the bullets, of a soldier standing over Father Miguel's body to shoot him in the head, and a photography of a bloody Father Miguel in death are included in this book, so be aware if you intend to share this book with younger children. Though disturbing, I don't think they are too graphic for my 13 1/2 year old son. He'll be reading this book first term next year.

This book is not a literary biography or historical fiction. The author draws on interviews and letters to present a basic history of Miguel Pro from this childhood through his disrupted studies for the priesthood (when the seminaries in Mexico were closed) and, finally, his return to his Mexico in the midst of the persecution of Catholics and the Church. Throughout the book, little stories and examples of his personality are woven into the more basic narrative.

It is appropriate for my 8th grade son to begin wrestling with martyrdom in the modern world. Living in the security of 2017 Kansas, it is easy to think the martyrdom of saints like St. Paul and St. Ignatius of Antioch are only found in the ancient world. Bl. Miguel Pro is, however, one of many Catholics and Christians killed because of their faith (explicitly or implicitly) in the past century and into the current year. Bl. Miguel gives us an example of how to live faithfully, joyfully, and devotedly in a modern world seeking our destruction. He did not take arms against an unjust government, instead serving the persecuted through the sacraments and gifts of food and clothing.

This book seems to be reasonably well-researched, though not as a scholarly work. There are quite a few resources in the bibliography, but they are not specifically referenced in the text. It also doesn't seem like there are original sources (like the letters), though it's likely those would be difficult to research by an American traveling in Mexico at the current time. There is no translator mentioned for either the letters or the prayers and poems included in the appendices, so I assume the author translated them herself. Despite these minor shortcomings, this is a good book for a late middle school or high school student on Bl. Miguel Pro.

I purchased this book directly from the publisher and received nothing in return for this review.

Gritty Martyrdom: The Power and the Glory

The Power and the Glory 

by Graham Greene

I only took two books on our big camping trip: The Man Who Was Thursday and The Power and the Glory. I'm not sure they are the most appropriate books for a camping trip, but they were both enthralling.

Graham Greene's book follows the last priest in a beleaguered state of Mexico during a recent persecution, a priest not of courage but one of fear and failure. Pursued by a lieutenant determined to rid his state of misleading Catholic priests and their lies, this priest becomes like an animal and yet is always something more by virtue of his priesthood. To the priest's dismay, villagers accept arrest and even execution rather than revealing him to the lieutenant.

The power of Reconciliation is a recurring theme of the book. Though the priest hears confessions wherever he goes, there is no priest to hear his.

Now that he no longer despaired it didn't mean, of course, that he wasn't damned -- it was simply that after a time the mystery became too great, a damned man putting God into the mouths of men: an odd sort of servant, that, for the devil. His mind was full of a simplified mythology: Michael dressed in armour slew a dragon, and the angels fell through space like comets with beautiful streaming hair because they were jealous, so one of the Fathers had said, of what God intended for men -- the enormous privilege of life -- this life.

During his wanderings and ill-fated attempts to leave the state, he encounters a poor filthy scheming man who discovers his secret and follows him in the hopes of a reward for leading authorities to him. He's not Catholic, but attempts a confession to lead the priest to reveal himself.

How often the priest had heard the same confession -- Man was so limited he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization -- it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt. 

One of his greatest sins lead to the birth of a daughter, one who scorns him and yet has his steady love. Her very existence brings him joy, a secret warmth in his heart.

He couldn't say to himself that he wished his sin has never exited, because the sin seemed to him now so unimportant and he loved the fruit of it. He needed a confessor to draw his mind slowly down the drab passages which led to grief and repentance.

As the book progresses, the priest appears to fall farther and farther from his previous life. He becomes dirty, disheveled, losing all of his Mass articles. At one point, he is arrested on a minor charge and believes he will be executed as soon as they figure out who he really is.

Once he glanced quickly and nervously up at the old crumpled newspaper cutting and thought, It's not very like me now. What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days -- and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins -- impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity -- cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt...[His thoughts are interrupted here by the lieutenant.]

In the end, he is captured. He had traveled to a lonely spot, a trap, but there was a hardened criminal who wanted to confess. Even he seems unsure whether it was courage or pride that led him to the trap. As they journey back to the city, the lieutenant and the priest talk, of the people.

The lieutenant said, 'Those men I shot. They were my own people. I wanted to give them the whole world.'

'Well, who knows? Perhaps that's what you did.'

They talk of love. The priest says:

God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us -- God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.

Confused, the lieutenant can't understand why the priest feels he is damned. If he were his "boss" (as God is), he'd give him a promotion or honor him for the sacrifice he is making.

'I'm not as dishonest as you think I am. Why do you think I tell people out of the pulpit that they're in danger of damnation if death catches them unawares? I'm not telling them fairy stories I don't believe myself. I don't know a thing about the mercy of God: I don't know how awful the human heart looks to Him. But I do know this -- that if there's ever been a single man in this state damned, then I'll be damned too.' He said slowly, 'I wouldn't want it to be any different. I just want justice, that's all.'

In the end, he feels himself a failure, a failure as a person, a failure as a priest. His end is ignominious, not a glorious martyr's death.

What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled. What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived. His parents were dead -- soon he wouldn't even be a memory -- perhaps after all he was not at the moment afraid of damnation -- even the fear of pain was in the background. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted -- to be a saint.

Though perhaps it is a martyr's death. A young boy is the city, one who mostly scorned the saint stories his mother reads, is intrigued by the whiskey priest's execution. His mother, discomfited by the priest when he was alive, acknowledges him as a martyr. The idea of faith grows in the boy's eyes and he is emboldened and proud when a new priest arrives at their door.

Unlike books on saints or biographies of saints, this fictionalized account of the situation in Mexico (with which the author was familiar as journalist) provides a gritty reality of a sinful man who happens to be a priest. His pride and his despair, his courage and his cowardice, intermingle throughout the book.

The figure of Coral Fellows seems minor but is fascinating. She's a young American girl living with her disillusioned parents (a father who fails to manage the business well and a mother who fails to manage life well). She's an atheist, but instinctively knows it is right to protect the priest from the authorities. The reader can only guess at the events that transpire outside of the book that lead to her presumed death, but it seems clear the American criminal to whom the priest travels for his final confession was involved. Perhaps she sheltered him as well, and suffered death at his hands. Or perhaps she was sheltering the criminal and was killed by Mexican authorities in the crossfire. What does it mean that this young girl was willing to risk her own life for the priest? What does it mean that her life was taken? I wonder.

Book Review: Quo Vadis

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz

This novel tells the story of a young couple that falls in love in Rome, during the time of Nero. With their story as the main thread, it explores the decadent life of the Augustans and Caesar in Rome and the drastically different life proposed by the early Christians. It can be slow at times for modern readers as many of the arguments against the faith of Christ are proposed by philosophers of Rome within the text. For the same reason, it is a powerful record of the revolutionary ideas within the Christian faith, ideas that led early Christians to be nearly incomprehensible to the Romans, and yet indescribably attractive for many.

Peter and Paul are both important characters in the book. Peter's legendary encounter with Christ as he flees Rome is the source of the title. It means "Where are you going?" Peter asks the question of Christ who replies that he is going to Rome to be crucified (again). Peter immediately turns around to face his own eventual execution. It is, of course, a question we should all ask ourselves.

As a warning, this book is only for mature readers. The scenes of  Roman life include all of its immorality. Also, after the great fire, the torture and slaughter of Christians in the Games is described in detail. I found myself weeping as I read those parts and even had to stop a few times. The martyrs of the early Church should not be forgotten, but their deaths were indeed horrible.

I read the version linked above, translated by W. S. Kuniczak, available at our library, but I noticed there is a translation available to read for free on the Kindle.