"THESE FATHERS GO TO DEATH AS BRIDEGROOMS TO MARRIAGE"

BARRY BOSSA

The Rev. Barry Bossa, S.A.C, is stationed at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church in Yonkers, New York.

We hear often of Catholics who are unhappy with the Holy Father, both the man and the office. Some have been known to arrogate his authority to themselves in their own bailiwicks, where they have their minor entourages of disgruntled folk who are ambitious to remake the universal Church in their own image and likeness. This visible protest of today is nothing new. Its roots are in the Reformation of the 16th century, and its verbiage and self-righteousness are familiar. It might be good for us to return for a moment to London in the 1530s, when a king whose bedroom misbehavior was the talk of Europe took the lives of 18 men from a religious community because they would not mimic the time-serving clergy of their country andassert that the Vicar of Christ on the Throne of Peter is not the head of the Church.

Carthusian monks had been living just outside the walls of London since their Charterhouse of the Salutation of the Mother of God was founded in the late 1370s to pray for the souls of the thousands of Londoners who had perished in the Black Death plague. The monks were known for their devout rendition of the Liturgy of the Hours and were much sought after for their spiritual counsel and prayers. Fr. John Houghton, a man who had degrees in civil and canon law from Cambridge, was the Prior. Fr. William Exmew, also a Cambridge man, a specialist in Greek and Latin studies, was his assistant. Among the other monks were Fr. Humphrey Middlemore, Fr. James Walworth, Fr. John Rochester, Fr. Thomas Johnson, Fr. Richard Bere, Fr. Sebastian Newdigate, Deacon John Davy, and several lay brothers. All in all, it was a thriving little community filled with talent and holiness, but it was about to run afoul of an ambitious and powerful movement for "reform."

What started the monks of the Salutation Charterhouse toward their untimely and unjust end was King Henry VIII's inability to obtain an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, to whom he had been wed for twenty years without having a surviving male child to succeed him. Surrounded by clergymen such as Cardinal Wolsey who bent all the bendable rules of the Church in his favor, Henry could not take the Pope's no as a final answer. Henry had been named "Defender of the Faith" in 1521 by Pope Leo X for his treatise in defense of the seven sacraments. And now the pampered potentate invented for himself a new position and title: "Supreme Head of the Church in England." Having thumbed his nose at the Pope, Henry obtained from his new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer (who was not of the same mettle as Lanfranc, Becket, Langton, or Edmund Rich), the divorce he so longed for, and he crowned Anne Boleyn as the new Queen.

Henry now made it law that Anne's children were to be the successors to the English throne. Even Thomas More could come to accept this as a matter of politics, though he disliked it. But Henry went far beyond the bounds of his competence, summoning Parliament to pass acts putting Church affairs in royal hands and requiring all to swear an oath by God Almighty that Henry was "the only supreme head in earth of the Church in England." Egged on by the rising and ambitious Thomas Cromwell, a strong advocate of Protestantism, Henry sent royal commissioners out to secure the taking of the oath. in the spring of 1534 the London Carthusians received their visit..

Prior Houghton and Fr. Middlemore refused in conscience to sign and were immediately imprisoned in the Tower of London. "Learned" churchmen visited them to see if some compromise could be found, some common ground. The King's churchmen concluded that the Supremacy Oath could be taken and accepted if the phrase "in so far as the law of God permits" were added to the Oath. Upon release from prison a month later, Fr. Houghton and several monks signed the Oath with many misgivings. Several days later an armed troop of soldiers entered the Charterhouse and forced all the monks to sign the Oath. Twenty-seven priests, a deacon, two seminarians, and 13 lay brothers signed under grave duress.

On February 1, 1535, new legislation was forced through Parliament demanding that the Supremacy Oath be taken as it stood and without additional clauses. The common-ground phase was over. To refuse the Oath was to commit treason against the King and to incur execution by being hanged, drawn (disemboweled), and quartered (hacked into pieces).

Prior John sought the advice of the nearby Brigittines, who counseled him to remain firm in support of the Church teaching that Peter was put in charge of the whole Church by Jesus Christ and that his successors, as bishops of Rome, inherit that office, and that no king on earth could ever have supreme power over any section of Christendom instead of the pope.

Prior Houghton announced a triduum of prayer in preparation for the disaster sure to come. On the first day all the monks went to confession. On the second they knelt before one another asking forgiveness from one another for any offenses committed. On the third day Prior Houghton sang the Solemn Mass of the Holy Spirit. As he elevated the consecrated Host there came a soft, gentle movement of air which all felt, and a shared sentiment that God was with them in this terrible hour. The celebrant was so overcome that it was several minutes before he could elevate the chalice and proceed with the Mass.

Every night thereafter, when Matins was over, the monks prostrated themselves before the Blessed Sacrament to pray for safety and the courage to follow God's will.

Prior Robert Lawrence of Beauvale and Prior Augustine Webster of Axholme were in London on business for their Charterhouses. Prior Houghton welcomed his visitors, and the three priests decided to go together to Thomas Cromwell to seek a dispensation from the Oath. Cromwell was infuriated. They and a fourth priest, Fr. Richard Reynolds, a Brigittine, were sent to the Tower of London, interrogated, and charged with treacherous machinations intended to deprive the King of his title of Supreme Head of the Church in England. At trial each argued reasonably, citing the teaching of the Church as presented by Fathers and Doctors through the centuries. The jury was unable to return a guilty verdict because there was no malice against the King intended. Cromwell went personally to the jury and threatened to hang them all if they did not give a verdict of guilty. Thus intimidated, they gave in and returned the desired finding.

On May 4,1535, Fr. Houghton, Fr. Lawrence, and Fr. Webster were led to the Tower Gate. Thomas More, who had been in prison for a year already and would soon win his crown of martyrdom, was looking on with his daughter from his cell window.  "Look, Meg," he said, "these blessed Fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage!" The martyrs, still dressed in their white religious habits, were tied to a sled and dragged by horses through the dirty streets to the public gallows at Tyburn, a spot not far from the present
Buckingham Palace. (Today the location of the gallows is covered by the chapel of Benedictine Sisters
of Perpetual Adoration.)

Prior Houghton was hanged first. He dangled for a few moments, then was cut down and disemboweled as he prayed, "0 Jesus, have mercy on me!" His last words, as the executioner ripped out his heart, were "Good Jesus, what will you do with my heart?" The Prior was dead. Priors Lawrence and Webster suffered the same. Each had been offered a full pardon if he would accept Henry VIII as head of the Church, but they could not in conscience before God and would not. They were beheaded and their dismembered bodies displayed, with Prior Houghton's limbs nailed over his monastery gate to persuade the Carthusians to yield.

That very day Archdeacon Thomas Bedyll, an agent of the royal commissioner, showed up at the Charterhouse with books and writings against the Pope, intending to convert the monks from Catholics into Henricians. He got nowhere with the Carthusians. A few weeks later Bedyll denounced Fr. Middlemore, Fr. Exmew, and Fr. Newdigate for refusing the Oath. They were sent to Marshalsea Prison and chained to the wall with iron fetters in a standing position.

Henry VIII himself came in disguise to Marshalsea because Fr. Sebastian Newdigate had once been his favorite pageboy. "Sebastian, give in, for God's sake, and acknowledge me as head of the Church in England and I will reward you richly." "I cannot! Jesus has shed his precious blood for my soul and I cannot lose it and let his blood be shed in vain." "Are you smarter than all the clergy and the Archbishop of Canterbury who side with
me?" "I cannot deny what Jesus has established."

Thomas More had been dead little more than a week when, on July 19, 1535, these next three Carthusians were barbarously executed at Tyburn. Henry VIII and some noblemen watched the proceedings from the edge of the crowd, perplexed by the obstinacy of the Fathers. No more Carthusians were killed for nearly two years until two of them, Fr. John Rochester and Fr. William Walworth, were hanged at Hull, in Yorkshire, where they had been sent from London. They died on May 11, 1537.

The London Carthusians were given a new prior whose task was to undermine the community. Food rations were reduced; spiritual books, even the writings of their founder St. Bruno, were removed. On May 18, 1537, the Supremacy Oath was re-administered. Fourteen monks signed it with seven others. Fr. Johnson, Fr. Bere, and Fr. Green would not sign. Neither would Deacon Davy and Brothers Salt Greenwood, Redding, Scriven, Pierson, and Horne. These ten were thrust into Marshalsea Prison, chained to the wall with iron fetters and collars, and starved to death. Hidden from the world, these monks died one by one between June and September.

The remaining London Carthusians saw the writing on the wall and resigned from religious life altogether. They turned over what was left of their Charterhouse to the King and his cronies. Their surrender and expulsion took place on November 14, 1538. Each departing ex-monk was given an annual pension of five pounds. Friends of Henry VIII received the property, and the "Supreme Head of the Church in England" used the Charterhouse's church to store his hunting tents. By 1540 every abbey, priory, and convent of every religious order in the land was closed and their religious turned out. Many of the houses were torn down, church and all. The London Charterhouse became a hospice for elderly male residents and a Protestant school for boys, with the cloister garth as the playground.

Fr. Maurice Chauncey, one of the expelled monks, went to Belgium and rejoined the Carthusians there, as did Fr. John Fox. When Mary Tudor, Henry's Catholic daughter, came to the throne in 1553, she allowed Fr. Chauncey and a few colleagues to refound the Charterhouse near London, but her half-sister Elizabeth succeeded her
as Queen in 1558 and ordered the monastery closed. Fr. Chauncey relocated to Belgium. It was he who wrote the first accounts of the martyrdom of his confreres, and to his dying day he regretted that he had not won with them the martyr's palm and crown. (They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 in a group of 54 English martyrs of the Reformation, and the three Priors - Houghton, Lawrence, and Webster -were canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.)
What have these men to teach those today who protest the papacy, who call it an anachronism, an error, and an obstacle to ecumenism? These men stood for the universal headship of the pope against a reform that resulted in the fragmentation and then dissolution of Christendom. They stood for obedience to divinely appointed authority amid a whirlwind of spiritual vanity and ambition. They knew their place in the order of God's plan, as they knew Henry's place too - and they knew that even the greatest king may not sit also on the Throne of Peter.

Well, there are no more kings like Henry and no more Christendom. So is there any lesson here for today's Catholic? The lesson is that just as the Carthusians stood firm against Henry VIII, we have to stand firm against those legions of little King Henrys in today's Catholic Church who are planning their own little papacies in their own little domains.

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