The Underground Railroad of the English Reformation

March 26 is the feast of St. Margaret Clitherow, the “Pearl of York” and patron of the Catholic Women’s League.

Clitherow’s story is both earthy and cinematic, relatable and inspiring. A convert to Catholicism during the time of the English persecution, her husband, a butcher with whom she lived in the Shambles, was sympathetic to her because his brother was a Catholic priest, and would pay the fines she incurred for not attending Church of England liturgies. This was not enough to keep her from being imprisoned three times; she even had to give birth in a prison cell at one point.

But the threat of legal sanctions did not slow her down for a minute. Despite it being punishable by death, she hid priests in her home and in other properties she had rented, where she privately heard Mass from them. (This is what I mean about her story being both human and at the same time fantastic: Just picture this strong-willed woman furtively leading disguised priests through a bloody stench-choked butcher shop.) At one point, she may have been the most important figure who was giving shelter to priests, a kind of clerical Harriet Tubman. As Gerard Manley Hopkins described it in a poem about “Margaret Clitheroe,” “her will was bent at God” and she was not to be dissuaded from serving him. (In Hopkinsian fashion, he attributes this to “the Christ-ed beauty of her mind.”)

Bear in mind that, all this time, she was also running a household, which not only contained children (including her husband’s children from a previous marriage) but also her husband’s apprentices and servants. She showed such competence and skill in management that she was even allowed to run the butchery when her husband was away or busy. This was a very pragmatic and world-wise woman, yet one with enough curiosity and spiritual sensitivity to ask the kind of challenging questions that would lead her to join an illegal Church and engage in dangerous underground activities. Keep her in mind when reading Proverbs 31, or reading John Paul II talking about a “new feminism.”

When she sent her son to Reims to become a priest, this got the attention of authorities, who searched her home and discovered her priest hole. At trial, she calmly told the judges and jury, “I know of no offence of which I should confess myself guilty.” The death penalty fell upon her, to which she responded, “If this judgement be according to your own consciences, I pray God send you better judgement before him.” (Am I allowed to call this a badass one-liner?)

Although she was pregnant, she was forced to the ground and pressed down by her own door, which had been removed from its hinges so it could become an instrument of execution. Heavy weights were placed upon the door until it crushed her to death. Before going under the door, she firmly declined the offer of a Protestant minister to pray with her and instead prayed aloud for the conversion of the Queen to Catholicism. Her final words that she cried out from beneath the weights were, “Jesu! Jesu! Have mercy on me!”

Margaret Clitherow and her unborn child died on the Feast of the Annunciation, 1586, which happened to also be Good Friday that year. What a powerful convergence: Annunciation and Passion; a pious mother and the child living within her dying together, bound together in suffering, killed for following God. As John Donne put it in a poem 22 years later when Good Friday again fell on Lady Day, “At once a son is promised her, and gone…This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown/Death and conception in mankind is one.” She was, as the Orthodox call it, a “Passion bearer”; her death contained the whole mission of Jesus and Mary in a single powerful symbol. The door that crushed her was her gate to Paradise, because it was also her cross.

(Note that her surviving daughter became a nun, one son became a priest, another died before being ordained, and the other carried on his mother’s work hiding and protecting recusant priests.)

It is fitting that a woman as busy and active “in the world” as Margaret Clitherow is the patron of the CWL, a kind of Knights of Columbus for women. But we can also see in her an example of a believer who prayed right up to the end. Hopkins describes how, when she was held down to die, “She held her hands to, like in prayer;/They had them out and laid them wide/(Just like Jesus crucified).” If we hope to be as heroic as she was, we, too, need to be prayerful (and recognize that our heroism may take an invisible form). May we contemplate her and her baby in a way that always brings us ultimately to her Lord.

Ultimately, her mission and her faith probably cannot be summarized better than Hopkins did with this single simple line: “Christ lived in Margaret Clitheroe.”

The Grand Inquisitor Who Stood With the Oppressed

The great advocate of the American indigenous against Spanish colonialism was the leader of the Inqusition.

March 23 is the feast of St. Turibius of Mogrovejo, who might seem like an improbable hero to the downtrodden, considering his upbringing as part of the Spanish nobility, but we should note that he was recognized as a pious youth with a strong Marian devotion; the Magnificat (“He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”) must have held a special place for him. Growing into a distinguished lawyer, his renown for virtue and intelligence led to Philip II of Spain (for whom the Philippines is named) to appoint him as the Grand Inquisitor. He was still a layman at this point, which should qualify the way we usually perceive the Spanish Inquisition.

Of course, we know of the Inquisition’s reputation for severe and exacting standards of orthodoxy and morality. Keep that reputation in mind.

Like Ambrose, Turibius was a layman who was abruptly promoted to the episcopacy; when the Church needed an archbishop in Lima, Philip and the Pope decided Turibius was the man for the job. (His legally and theologically correct objection that only clerics could become bishops was politely refuted by the Pope, who promptly endowed him with the Sacrament of Orders.)

When he arrived to his see in Lima in 1581, he was shocked and disgusted by the moral laxity of the priests and their appalling mistreatment of the native people. Many clerics were in open violation of the Council of Trent’s prohibition of priests engaging in business–specifically because they could exploit the cheap slave labour of the indigenous people. Turibius was not going to stand for this sacrilege against the Gospel.

He promptly set about reforming the diocese, excommunicating the mercantile priests and undertaking pastoral visits to the parishes with the goal of reforming the clergy. This made him unpopular with lazy and abusive priests, which is perhaps the highest compliment a bishop can receive. As part of this reform, Turibius established the first seminary in the Americas–indeed, in the Western Hemisphere–along with new church buildings, hospitals, convents and schools. This was all in the service of preaching the Gospel and upholding the rights of the indigenous people (which Bartolomé de las Casas had already recognized was entailed by Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on natural law), whom he allied with against the corrupt colonial Spanish government.

As part of this project of upholding the dignity of the native peoples and ensuring that the Gospel was proclaimed, Turibius traveled among them on foot (despite the dangers from the heat and the wild animals), learned their languages, and produced a Spanish/Quechuan/Aymara catechism. (Let it not be imagined he was not also an advocate for Latin, though; part of his parish visitation program was ensuring that everyone was using the recently prescribed Tridentine Rite.) By God’s grace, his efforts paid off, and he reportedly baptized or confirmed half a million people during his episcopacy.

Turibius was uncompromising in demanding that the humanity of aboriginal people be respected and that immoral priests should be punished. But is this really different from his work as Grand Inquisitor, which also insisted on strict doctrinal purity (including adherence to the teaching that all people are created in the image of God) and unrelenting moral standards from the clergy? It is certainly worth reflecting on the fact that, in the era of Spain’s empire, the Inquisition can, at least here, be more closely associated with the oppressed than the oppressors.

It should be obvious that Turibius was very active in promoting righteousness. This surely stemmed from his adage, “Time is not our own, and we must give a strict account of it.” (As a judge, perhaps he appreciated the importance of being able to give a good testimony about your behaviour.) He was known to confess each morning, say the Mass passionately, and to have communed St. Rose of Lima (and possibly St. Martin de Porres, along with some other saints of the new world).

Lent is a time when we remember our mortality. Turibius had a unique advantage in this way, since he prophetically foretold the date and hour of his death. This turned out to be during a pastoral visit, where he contracted a fever (a constant danger throughout his ministry) but refused to stop working until the time he had forecast arrived. When the fateful hour struck, he received the Eucharist one last time and prayed his final words: “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.” A moment later, he proceeded into the particular judgment to give an account for how he had used his time on earth.

May he pray that we Lenten pilgrims also learn to use our time to work for the salvation of souls, to stand with the poor, to remember that we are working towards our own deaths, and to come closer to Christ.