Bulletins

March, 1, 2015

The storyline of Come Rack! Come Rope! revolves around our hero and heroine, who are growing up in recusant England. “Recusant England” refers to the years between 1593 and 1650 during which time it was legal to be Catholic in the realm but heavy penalties were imposed on those who did not attend Sunday services of the Church of England. This was something of an uneasy truce after the war. Catholics were being killed for their fidelity to the ancient Christian faith on British soil earlier than the beheadings of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More in 1535 on June 22 and July 5 respectively. The Carthusian monks of the London Charterhouse were slaughtered on May 2 of that same year. Over three hundred other Catholic martyrs shed their blood subsequently. After 1650 the worse of the laws discriminating against Catholicism were repealed but priests and were not safe, especially in Ireland. Such would remain the case until Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829.

What precipitated this outpouring of terror? It all began with prominent Catholics refusing to acknowledge the illegitimate marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Declining to acknowledge the king’s claim to supremacy over the Church in England would result in the same end. Eventually all it would take to merit martyrdom was a failure to renounce the Holy Father in Rome.

Remember that St. John the Baptist lost his life because he dared to declare that Herod Antipas was not married legitimately. He had divorced his first wife Phasaelis to be able to take Herodias as his wife, she who had been married to Herod’s brother Philip I (Matthew 14,1-12)

Isn’t it ironic that the sexual revolution, which sought freedom from laws and even rejected the normative value of law, would now utilize the legal system in order to force society to approve of libertinism?

The federal courts’ inevitable mandate that all States grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples will not change the lives of these individuals as much as it promises to change the lives of everyone else. For how many decades have Americans been free to pursue whatever romantic life with the adult they desire without fear of legal reprisal? The ones who are going to feel the threat of law are we who stand with St. John the Baptist and St. John Fisher.

They did not choose their places in history but they did choose how to respond to the crisis of their times. Our fellow Catholics who do not yet care soon will. This journey is not over.

God bless you.

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard

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