January 2019
Thanks to Mr John Burke for this apologetical tour de force sent to Lambeth's current Anglican Pretender. A comprehensive rebuttal of the anti-Catholic propaganda forever dressed up and propagated as official "history," this first part of the letter also includes a rectification of spurious theological and liturgical views expressed by the 'Archbishop' in describing a Mass — offered by a real (albeit ecumenically compromised and heretical) Archbishop — that he attended at Westminster Cathedral. Educational and entertaining. (Also delightfully cheeky in parts!) Original bold, italic and underlined emphases throughout.
Canterbury Corrected: 1
12 September 2018
Mr Justin Welby,
Lambeth Palace,
London S.E.1.
Dear Mr Welby,
You had an article in the Evening Standard of 27 October 2017 to commemorate Luther’s revolt against the Catholic Church, an evil that you claim brought untold progress for mankind. Sadly, your delusion can be dismissed with a single quotation from Simon Winder in his Germania in 2010 — one of many academic rebuttals.
“Weber’s famously idiotic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism assigned specific virtues to Protestantism even as places such as Catholic Belgium appeared suspiciously able to handle heavy industry, research, financial planning and colonialism. The great majority of the world’s Christians — who of course always remained Catholic or Orthodox — looked on with mixed amusement and irritation at the mad conceit of Protestants.
So powerful remain the original roots of Luther’s appeal, however, that it is almost impossible to shake off this providential story: of a Germany mired in backwardness and corruption snapping suddenly into black-clothed, unshowy modernity.”
Unfortunately, your own short article falls far below the standard one would expect from any former schoolboy, whatever his faith, whose subjects included history; and it reminds me of the howler by David Cameron, another Old Etonian, that Edmund Burke was a Conservative (Tory) whereas he was actually a Whig (Liberal) yet still the father of conservative thought. Note your error below about political systems.
Burke heavily criticised churchmen who strayed into politics, which is something one occupant of Lambeth Palace after another has done in my lifetime, trying to show moral superiority over the civil powers by isolating a popular issue, using emotive abstractions, and demanding some solution that is beyond his own competence or, perhaps, anybody’s. Now, in addition, you try to rewrite history as holier-than-thou.
But a former Archbishop of Westminster warned in Through The Year With Cardinal Heenan (1972) that a churchman’s public statement was sometimes a matter of “self-indulgence”; in other words, trying to hit the headlines was the sin of pride through self-importance. When you pontificate politically, it can be left to the Daily Mail or Daily Telegraph to correct you, but in this article you have insidiously attacked the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church that is the one, true Church.
Somehow, you or maybe a ghost-writer has managed to get history and theology and liturgy wrong as well as art, science, publishing and economics. At first sight, your words read like a breakthrough in that so elusive Christian unification. Hey presto! You and Cardinal Nichols have nicely solved the problem and squared the circle, or rounded a rhomboid, with a kiss of peace whereas this is merely a heart-warming piece of good fellowship, and thus what Catholics call a snare of the Devil. Cheers!
Regrettably, it is vital to correct you, and to re-issue the correction whenever your make further sweeping generalisations or accusations on any subject, religious or political, so that laymen (in either sense) can immediately gauge your credibility.
First of all, you must be reminded that you do lack a valid title. Cardinal Pole, whom you mention, was the last true Archbishop of Canterbury. While on that subject, it was mischievous to mention something of which I have never heard, namely the allegation of malice regarding the execution of Cranmer. No proof is provided.
As to Anglican orders, they were declared “absolutely null and utterly void” by Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae in 1896, and that ought to come under papal infallibility. Despite that, I know historically and personally that many of your kind, having come over to Rome (as you could do), became very good priests and even cardinals.
Setting that aside, the whole thrust of your article was to hail the fifth centenary of what was disobedience by a failed priest who married an ex-nun. He can be painted hero or genius only until his words and deeds, plus times, are examined in detail. For example, I have seen a contemporary document in the museum of the abbey at Melk, in which Luther was described as a drunkard by someone visiting him.
Your praise of Luther is also at variance with Luther and His Progeny published by Angelico Press. Subtitled 500 years of Protestantism and its Consequences for Church, State and Society, it consists of 12 critical essays edited by John C. Rao, and reviewed by James Bogle, both of whom I know. Across two pages of the autumnal 2017 issue of Mass of Ages they pointed out that Luther approved of telling lies when convenient, and that he tried to suppress certain writings of the apostles.
He did so with the Epistle of St James which flatly contradicted his doctrine that man is saved by faith alone — what you hail as an “immense discovery”. In fact, Christ himself had said it was not just a matter of faith but of fruits. (Matt 7:20) And the fruits of Luther are sour and shrivelled, not the way you say.
You call Luther a “German friar”. To start on a minor point, it would have provided more clarity, doubly so, to call Luther a Germanic or Saxon monk. Bearing in mind your claim that he strengthened nation-states, two things must be noted:
German-speaking lands have never quite become a single state because the Swiss broke free from the Holy Roman Empire two centuries before the Reformation, and Austria has had a separate history, apart from Hitler’s short-lived Anschluß. The other territories were united only in 1871, with some keeping their own rulers until 1918.
Luther was a monk and priest in the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt for six years rather than a wandering friar. He called himself “a monk” and has usually been described as a monk. He was a monk in Chamber’s Encyclopaedia of 1902, and still a monk in Harmsworth’s counterpart of 1922 as also in the Catholic Encyclopaedia published in 1935. To call him a friar confuses the issue, because Luther’s revolt was sparked off by his dispute with John Texel, who really was a friar — an itinerant preacher. Below are corrections to other parts of the article as quoted:
“He wanted to provoke debate about corruption
in the Roman Catholic Church”
There was already widespread discussion about this. The 392-page standard work on Renaissance Italy by a Protestant from Basle (quoted below) gives Luther two passing mentions, one of which shows that he was preceded by Savanarola in his reforming zeal. Erasmus of Rotterdam, a close friend of St Thomas More, criticised the corruption in his Encomium Moriae, printed eight years before Luther rebelled.
What you omit are two other key points. First, it was profiteering from indulgences that set Luther off whereas the Council of Trent in 1563 banned their misuse besides condemning many other bad practices. And whereas Rome disciplined its clergy, Luther broke his vow of celibacy to marry a nun who did the same.
Secondly, Luther did not just criticise corruption. He attacked the very basis of Catholic dogma, including papal authority, the Mass and some Biblical texts.
“Europe was split between Protestants and Catholics”
The true religious geography is fourfold: Catholic; schismatic; heathen; heretic. First, Christendom had already been split between Catholics of the western Church, ruled from Rome, and the eastern Orthodox since AD 1050. Islam held Iberian territory from 711 to 1492, leaving vestiges, and gained south-east Europe, including the eastern Mediterranean, from 1457 until long after the Reformation. Secondly, Catholicism was undermined or eradicated only in the west and north of Europe. Protestantism did not succeed below the Alps or Pyrenees or Carpathians, and hardly in central Europe — what are now Austria, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary … Eastern Europe remained as a bastion of Orthodoxy or Islam.
Thirdly, within a generation of the disobedience in 1517, the north and west of Europe were also divided between at least four interpretations of Protestantism under Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Knox … with more sects to come in succeeding centuries. The back cover of The Reformation notes “the reformers often disagreed among themselves as sharply as they did with Rome” and the author, Mgr Philip Hughes, writes “The most notorious of these differences is in their teaching about the Eucharist”. In Cranmer’s Godly Order, another Catholic expert, Michael Davies explains this in detail.
“the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral”
This suggests that Westminster has other cathedrals which are not Catholic. What you should have written is “Westminster Cathedral, which is Roman Catholic, as opposed to Westminister Abbey”. In fact, the vast majority of those capable of reading the leader page of the Evening Standard would know that our cathedral is Catholic and not to be confused with the nationalised Westminster Abbey.
“a service ... a communion service”
Those are technical words used for Protestant worship whereas the Catholic Church identifies the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as such. Catholics may use the word ‘service’ for lesser forms of devotion such as Compline, Benediction, Liturgy of the Word, etc. Moreover, the Mass is uniquely regarded as not just a service but also a sacrifice, whereas Cranmer denounced this as “the foulest and most heinous error that was ever imagined”.
“one of the most solemn services”
Again, this is inadequate and therefore incorrect. Holy Mass is held to be the supreme form of worship, as instituted by Christ Himself. Unfortunately, all other services outside the Catholic or Orthodox Churches are counterfeits or substitutes, led by churchmen who, barring a tiny number of High Anglicans, make no claim to replicating transubstantiation at the Last Supper.
Furthermore, as a true Anglican, you are not supposed to praise the Mass at all. The very subject of your Evening Standard encomium, Luther, called the Mass “a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit”, while Hooper stated, “... not to be made a mass of them that blasphemeth God.” It is according to your own lights, not mine, unless you do not know where you stand or whether you are coming or going.
“the Christian Church globally”
The only universal Church is the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church — the word ‘catholic’ is a synonym for universal. Outside are the schismatic Orthodox churches and at least 30,000 heretical sects. The National Catholic Register counts 35,496, while the evangelical Gordon-Conwell seminary goes up to 47,000, but even a few thousand would bear out St Paul’s “false brethren” to the Galatians and Corinthians. The only true Church, and it is worldwide, is the Catholic Church under a single authority, the papacy, in conformity with Christ’s words “upon this rock I will build my Church”. You are not permitted to consolidate RC and CoE.
First, if this was a so-called ecumenical service, as put out by your PR team, then it was sacrilege, as if something is not liturgically true, it must be heretical. There cannot be a service that is semi-Catholic, in which the priest says the words of transubstantiation over some hosts and some wine, while leaving the rest unconsecrated.
Probably, what you really mean is that you heard (the technical verb for being present at) the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass which, even in its modernised and vernacular form still includes transubstantiation, making it different from any Protestant symbolism, namely a token meal in commemoration.
“at that solemn moment in the service”
Now, administering Holy Communion (in the Catholic sense of the last two words) is certainly solemn, but it is not the most solemn moment. By omission, you imply that the Catholic act of consecration, when the celebrant quotes “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood which will be shed” are not solemn moments, or at least, not so solemn.
“lined up at the front with everyone else”
You mean where the nave meets the sanctuary. More importantly, not all the congregation takes Holy Communion or, at least, there are usually worshippers who should not, either because they have not fasted long enough or because they are in a state of what the Catholic Church calls mortal sin. They do not write to the Evening Standard to complain of a lack of inclusivity.
At this point, it is worth quoting The Eucharistic Meditations of the Curé d’Ars published by the Carmelites in Dublin in 1961, so you have had long enough to find and read it. “There are some people who go to Holy Communion to gain the esteem of the world. It avails them nothing. Others go out of habit. Poor Communicants, they have not the right intention” (XV.3). In other words, Everybody goes, so Everybody Else goes too.
Secondly, lining up is something that has come in since the Second Vatican Council, because that event was used as an excuse for removing altar-rails in most churches. Catholics at the old Mass, said in Latin, nonetheless kneel for Holy Communion, in one kind, received on the tongue rather than in the hand. See Rom 14:11 and Phil 2:10-11 echoing UIS 45:5-6, 18, 22.
“I could not put my hands out for the bread and wine”
Unfortunately, this confirms that you do not believe in transubstantiation, else you would have written: the body and blood of Christ. Therefore, why should you even want to partake of this, when your predecessor, Cranmer, never tired of supporting Zwingli, declared of Catholics, “For they teach, that Christ is in the bread and wine: but we say (according to the truth) that he is in them that worthily eat and drink the bread and wine.”?
Why not confine yourself to the commemorative bread and wine in the chief churches of various Protestant denominations? Or is our supernatural Host simply a coveted symbol of social status? Three further things are wrong with your above sentence.
First, many thinking Catholics have condemned taking the Host in the hand for very good reasons. Many authorities from St Sixtus I to St Basil the Great condemned receiving the Body of Christ other than in the mouth, and the practice of using the hand crept in illegally from Belgium during Paul VI’s pontificate. Secondly, communicants do not put hands out for the chalice that remains in the hands of the priest or a lay minister, though even that access to the chalice is regarded by conservative Catholics as sacrilegious on more than one count, again quoting ancient authorities. Thirdly, not all communicants go for what you call the wine. From local observation, I believe that less than two out of three take Holy Communion in both kinds.
“I knelt down to be blessed”
If you did kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, albeit not believing in transubstantiation, you are to be commended for your reverence. The sad thing is that, as noted above, Catholics at the so-called new Mass do not bother to kneel.
“He took me by the hand and lifted me to my feet”
Did you need lifting? And how could this be done if he held the ciborium in one hand and a host in the other. If he did have a free hand, it means that particles of the Body of Christ attached themselves to your hand, and that Nichols sullied his hand, which is supposed to be scrupulously clean between the Lavabo and the Cleansing of the Chalice. Sadly, the paten is no longer used in Westminster Cathedral.
“We are the closest of friends”
This suggests that you go to the same public-house such as the Windsor Castle between abbey and cathedral, and that you support the same football team on the terraces. ... play golf together ... And how much time does this leave for Caroline? At what time did this happen? Surely, not when you were at Eton or Cambridge or in Durham or Paris, and Nichols was in Crosby or Birmingham. Presumably, you thought about friendliness only when you got a national title that necessitates hobnobbing with the other Great and Good.
The phrase also implies that you are not so friendly with the heads of the Methodist, Baptist or other sects, let alone the Jehova’s Witnesses. I suggest that you do not have time to socialise with Nichols, and if you scrutinise his episcopal diary, he has no more time to socialise with you than with Smith of Southwark or Egan of Portsmouth. In fact, Lambeth Palace is nearer to St George’s Cathedral than Westminster Cathedral, and as our Archdiocese of Southwark covers Canterbury, why do you not cultivate Archbishop Smith instead of making up to Cardinal Nichols?
I suggest that what you really mean is that you are on good terms with leading churchmen (and this is all to the good as charity), and that the link with Nichols is particularly important to gain access to the Catholic with the grandest title of all, because hobnobbing with him provides prestige without requiring submission — plus the bonus of free trips to Italy which is usually warmer than Normandy.
“from the books you read, to the job you do,
to the political system you take”
None of these three things is due, as you claim to the Reformation, which was actually a revolt. First, the vast majority of books today is either secular or materialistic. It was mediaeval printing that broke the monopoly of monks as scribes. The very first book printed in English was Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in Bruges in 1473. St Thomas More’s Utopia was printed in Louvain in 1516 ... Erasmus’ Encomium Moriae was published in 1511. Both these authors were Catholics, and they wrote in the age-old Latin of their Church.
The first modern novel came from a product of the Jesuits in Spain. Cervantes published Don Quixote in 1615; its readership rivalled that for the writings of St Teresa of Avila, first published in 1567. Shakespeare is reckoned to have been secretly Catholic, while Corneille, a French dramatist, was a pious Catholic. One can hardly imagine that Protestantism inspired the creators of James Bond, Bertie Wooster, Winnie the Pooh, Percy Blakeney…
Secondly, the jobs we do today have become increasingly specialised over the past two centuries, thanks not to the Reformation but to the Industrial Revolution. Until then, economies were as agrarian as in mediaeval and classical times. Horse and sail were as important as in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. Wind and water continued to power mills owned by Protestants in England as well as Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics in the Low Countries as they had done in the Middle Ages.
Thirdly, as to our political system, Parliament owes its origins to Magna Carta. In 1649, Protestantism almost ended our monarchical system that dates back to AD 927. The emergence of parties cut across denominational lines; a clear development was a party inspired by the atheism of the French revolutionaries and Karl Marx, a Jew.
“developed our language and communication technologies”
You ascribe this to the Reformation, but the evidence is to the contrary regarding both subjects. I take it that you refer to the vernacular and technology worldwide, starting with English which has become a universal lingua franca.
Alfred the Great ordered primary education to be in Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin. Even a century before Luther’s revolt in 1517, the following happened: Edward III and his parliaments went from Norman-French to English, and the Courts added English to Latin. Chaucer standardised the language, and Wycliffe had the Bible translated into English. As noted below, there were other mediaeval translations.
In the fifteenth century, Gutenberg and Caxton introduced printing in Germany and England, something already invented by the Chinese to the horror of Jesuit missionaries who noted that it spawned secular, seditious and salacious literature. Seventeen years before the Wittenberg revolt, there were 77 printing shops in the towns of an Italy that was to remain Catholic, and printers throughout Christendom had produced 20 million copies of books.
Even the typewriter dates back to Francesco Rampazetto’s Scrittura Tattile in 1575. He was born, and presumably baptised, in Venice in 1510 which has remained Catholic. Joseph Niepce invented photography in 1816, having studied science at the Oratorian college in Angers, while the pioneers of the cinema came as much from Catholic countries as from America. The first practical facsimile machine, working on telegraphic lines, came from an Italian priest, Fr Giovanni Caselli, in 1856. Marconi was, essentially, Catholic.
Even where the latest technology helped spread copies of religious works such as the Bible, there was no Protestant primacy or priority. In 1454, Gutenberg printed a papal indulgence, and in 1455 he printed the Bible in Latin; then in 1466 (still before Luther was even born) Johannes Mentelin also published the Bible in German. Following three scriptural translations into French during the Middle Ages, the first printed ones were in 1476 and 1487. Catholics in France printed far more translations than Protestants during the sixteenth century.
The latter had a Dutch edition in 1522 and an English one in 1535, but for persecuted Catholics in England the New Testament came out of Rheims in 1582 and the Old Testament at Douay in 1609. The King James Bible, with all respect to its fine language, was published only two years later.
The Bible was first translated into Spanish about 1280 and there were three more translations a century before the Reformation. Spain’s first printed Bible was in 1500, and Ambrose de Montesian printed the first translation of Epistles and Gospels five years before Luther thought of revolting. Even then, his New Testament came out in 1522, and the whole Bible was published until 1534. St Teresa’s autobiography was published in 1567 two years before the first Protestant Bible for Spain.
In 1471, the translation by Nicolό Malermi was printed in Italy, 136 years before a Protestant version. To dispose further of your argument that the scriptural vernacular boosted languages and literacy as well as national consciousness, the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula standardised on the Tuscan dialect, thanks to Dante and Petrach two centuries before Luther’s day.
With this and much more evidence below, you will have an impossible job of proving that Protestant translations into the vernacular developed our language and communications technologies. It was the reverse — printing spread the Bible, and if England and elsewhere had not had written, widespread and word-rich languages, there would have been no point in translating! You have confused cause and effect.
In the second part of his letter, Mr Burke continues his romp through authentic history — for the education, edification and salvation of Mr Welby.