Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 16
A FELLOW NAMED HANNIBAL RUNS OFF WITH BETTY CANTU
A man whose first language was Spanish attended a lecture about the Second Vatican Council, usually called “Vatican Two”. After the talk he asked “Who is this Betty Cantu and why did she write all those documents?” True story.
In recent thrilling episodes we learned all about American exceptionalism. The descendants of the Puritans genuinely believed that God had made them a superior race, entitled, even obliged, to Christianize the world. The 19th century Americans lost their Puritan faith, but somehow managed to retain a belief in their own exceptionalism. American exceptionalism certainly seemed vindicated when, at the end of the Second World War, American armies occupied much of Europe and Asia. Having defeated Hitler and Hirohito, it seemed that America was all that stood between the “free world” and Stalin. At least that’s how we saw it. Much of the world agreed. To be modern was to be American. Elvis Presley, blue jeans and big American cars followed in the wake of the troops. The post-war world fell in love with all things American.
The desire to be fully American and to share in that wonderful “modernness” was certainly a big part of my childhood. I remember the admonitions to patriotism regularly doled out by the Irish nuns who taught me to read and write. The flag hung near the cross in every classroom in my grade school. It was the fifties! Communists were everywhere. To be foreign, to be un-American, was to be dangerous. It was all hula-hoops and plastic covered furniture and modern architecture. My family hadn’t spoken German at home since the First World War. And with the election in 1960 of the most exceptional American, John F. Kennedy, we Catholics were finally as American as could be.
Then the council. Twenty-six hundred bishops attended the council, accompanied by their periti. Periti are theological experts, or so it is claimed. I have heard the Second Vatican council called the council of the periti, because at times it seemed that the periti, not the pope nor bishops were running things. Father, later bishop, Anibale Bugnini was one such peritus. Pope Pius XII appointed him Secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform, so he was a natural to head the committee for the reform of the Catholic liturgy during and after the Second Vatican Council.
In 1964, Pope Paul VI named Bugnini Secretary of the Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy, usually just called “the consilium.” Bugnini was certainly a special kind of Catholic priest. I doubt that he would have been at all uncomfortable during the French Enlightenment. Bugnini’s secretary, Abbot Boniface Luykx reports that “Bugnini once told Archbishop Malula (Cardinal Archbishop of Kinshasa,Congo) that the norm for the liturgy and for Church renewal is modern Western man, because he is the perfect man, and the final man, and the everlasting man, because he is the perfect and normative man.... adapting to Western culture is the great work in Church liturgical reform and renewal, and in theology, and in all other aspects of Church life... Secularization was, for him, a necessary process, something the Church needed to accept and embrace... He held to the modern philosophical view that man is made without God, and does not need God.”
Regarding his plans for the reform of the Mass, he was quoted by the Vatican newspaper, “L’Osservatore Romano,” as saying “We must strip... from the Catholic Liturgy everything which can be a shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren... the Protestants.” So ecumenical were Bugnini and the spirit of the times that six Protestant clerics helped rewrite the Mass of the Catholic liturgy. Enough Catholic theology was removed from the Mass that Brother Max Thurian (one of the six consultants) believed that Protestants could use the text without difficulty. Bugnini reasoned that, if Protestants said that Mass was not a real sacrifice, then we would just have to agree with that. We should take all the words out of the Rosary that are not from the Bible. Pope Paul responded, in effect, “Are you out of your mind?” The first versions of the reformed Mass were such radical departures from Catholic tradition that they were refused by the pope and the bishops. Words referring to the sacrificial nature of the Mass were reintroduced and the texts were finally published.
Another important conciliar idea: collegiality. Collegiality has always been part of Catholic teaching, but was emphasized by the council. It is the idea that bishops share responsibility for governing the Church with the pope, but always in submission to the papal authority. The idea was not new, but the encouragement of Episcopal conferences was new. (These are national or regional bishops’ conferences. They have nothing to do with the Episcopalian Church. At least they aren’t meant to.)
A new Mass and collegiality! At the time it felt like the Church was catching up with the times and that the superior American form of government, democracy, had at long last arrived, or even returned to the Church. After all, scholars and liturgists regularly told us that we were simply returning to the practices of the early Church. The council was just scraping off the medieval barnacles that weighed down the bark of Peter. We were going back to the Church as Jesus had planned it, before popes and stuffy rules and boring liturgies. Wait... we’ve heard this all before! It was called the Reformation!
Next week: A WEAK FAITH MAKES FOR A WEAK LAND
PS No one should think that I don’t like or approve of the Pauline liturgy (the Mass that most of us go to on Sunday). When it is done by the book, it is really very beautiful. It is the silliness of the improvisers that I am trying to explain. The so called “New Mass” is Mass, as is the so called “Old Mass.” The Holy Spirit knows what he is doing despite all the loons who say that the current Mass and the present popes are not valid. I believe that in the Second Vatican council, the Holy Spirit anticipated a world that we did not even imagine. Who of us in 1960 could have imagined cell phones and personal computers and E-mail? The problem is not and never was the council. The problem is the vultures who used the “Spirit of Vatican II” as a smoke screen for their own arrogance and sometimes for their own immorality. But what about Bugnini and that crowd? Remember the Biblical principal that God works all things for the good, though we might not understand that good at the time. As Joseph said to his brothers. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:20) Pope Benedict seems to be in the process for “reforming the reform.” It is the height of arrogance to say, as many aging progressives do, that the Pauline Mass is untouchable. As we look back on both the successes and the failures of the post conciliar era, we need to be honest with ourselves.
Showing posts with label Puritans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Puritans. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 13
Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 13
“THE POT OF BEANS AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW.”
Let us summarize. The English Puritans came to America with a lot of baggage:
Henry VIII opened the English Door to Calvin and Luther and their Puritan followers. Luther taught the Puritans, “Bible alone, Faith alone, Grace without works, predestination, or once saved always saved. Mass is not a sacrifice. It is a meal made for the instruction and consolation of the faithful.” Calvin taught them, “The individual inspired by the Holy Spirit needs no pope, nor priest nor bishop to interpret the Bible. The individual inspired by the Holy Spirit is sufficient for the interpretation of the Bible. Each individual congregation is the Church and can govern itself, hence Congregationalism. The congregation, being the Church, elects its own ministers. Man is totally corrupt, but the chosen are chosen, to hell, literally, with the rest of humanity.
With these high ideals 20,000 or 30,000 Puritans left old England for New England. If Catholic means universal, Puritanism was anti-Catholic to its core. Puritans fled England and its established Church which they considered too Catholic. And so they came to America to found, “the city on the hill”, in the words of their first governor, John Winthrop. That hill was Beacon Hill in Boston. The descendants of the Puritans established themselves as the aristocracy of New England, the Boston “Brahmins”, Yankee’s are upper class families with an exclusive life style, accent and alma mater: Harvard University (or as they call it Haaavuhd.) There are southern counterparts like the First Families of Virginia but remember they lost round four of the English Civil War, which they called the War of Northern Aggression (You may have heard it referred to as the Civil War.)
Harvard, established in 1636 at the height of the Great Puritan Migration to New England, was named for its first benefactor, the Puritan pastor, John Harvard. It is interesting to note that Harvard University is the first corporation chartered in this country. It is in fact more than a century older than this country. Harvard boasts a long list of this country’s leaders, Among them, George W. Bush and his cousin, Barak Obama, who attended the school founded by his Pilgrim ancestors, and of course John, Bobby and Teddy Kennedy attended. Although it was never formally affiliated with a church, at its beginning and for a long time there after, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. As the 18th and 19th centuries rolled on, Harvard became increasingly secular and yet somehow remained Puritan. It produces a kind of Puritanism without God. In fact, it sometimes seems entirely purified of the divine presence.
Some interesting comparisons: Harvard has 691 acres in three campuses. The Vatican has 110 acres. So Harvard is 6 times larger than the Vatican. The Vatican employs about 3,500 people, Harvard has about 21,000 students and about 11,000 employees... And now here’s the kicker: the Vatican, at least in 2007, had a surplus of $10 million dollars. ($10,000,000) Harvard has an endowment of $27.4 Billion ($27,400,000,000) so in a certain sense, Harvard is 2,740 times richer than the pope. Next time someone says to me why doesn’t the pope do more to help the poor, just say, “Maybe Harvard could kick in a little..”
Where was I? Oh yes, the City on the Hill. This Puritan Paradise was threatened beginning in 1820 with an immigration of Irish that swelled to a flood during the potato famine of the 1840's. Signs proliferated “Irish need not apply.” The Puritans had fled the very taint of Catholicism in England and here was Catholicism flooding in to the stronghold of Puritan Protestantism. The Irish Catholics, needless to say, were about as welcome as lice. The young aristocrats of Beacon Hill and their poor Irish neighbors enjoyed frequent street fights well into the 20th century.
Not all Catholics wanted to battle the Puritans. Some wanted to join their country clubs. There arose in the last half of the 1800's a heresy called Americanism. Many Catholics bought into the myth of the “city on the hill” -- American exceptionalism, the belief that somehow America was a nation founded by the direct intervention of Heaven, different and better than other nations, and bound to bring its democratic revolution to all the world. The more ambitious of the Irish Catholics of Boston longed for nothing more than admittance into New England, none more so than the grandson of a poor immigrant, Joseph P. Kennedy, Catholic, banker, statesman, bootlegger, philanderer, and, of course, Harvard graduate. Kennedy broke into the American aristocracy by supporting the bluest of the blue bloods, Franklin D. Roosevelt in his run for President in 1932 . Kennedy raised quite a bit of money for Roosevelt’s campaign, and in turn received an appointment as the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, though he had wanted a cabinet position for his troubles. When asked why he had hired such a crook, Roosevelt replied, “Takes one to catch one.”
In 1938, Roosevelt appointed Kennedy ambassador to England. In Boston he was still regarded an outsider, but in England he was the grand man. Imagine, the grandson of a potato farmer from county Wexford in southern Ireland being presented at court! Joe Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen, married the Duke of Devonshire, and joined the Kennedys of Wexford to one of England's most aristocratic families. It was nice, but it still wasn’t as good as being welcomed into the parlors of the mansions on Beacon Hill in Boston. If he could get one of his sons elected President of the United States, that would show them. His eldest son was killed in the war, but there was still Jack. In the 1952 senate race, John F. Kennedy successfully defeated Henry Cabot Lodge, heir to one of the most prestigious Puritan names in Boston. It is interesting to note that Henry Cabot Lodge’s grandfather had rebuked John F. Kennedy’s grandfather for a vote in the state senate that favored immigrants. Lodge said to Kennedy that “Jews and Italians had no right to this country,” and by implication, neither did the Irish Catholics. Well, when Joe got his son John elected president of the United States, the Kennedys had arrived, by hook or by crook, and there was a great deal of crook. Jack Kennedy said that his father had asked him the exact number of votes he would need to win because there “was no way I’m paying for a landslide.” Everyone mistakenly thought JFK was joking. Some joke. The family called in quite a few favors to win that election. Their Hollywood connections roped in Frank Sinatra who, in turn, roped in some of his friends in Chicago. “Hizzoner da Mare” as we say in Chicago (Mayor Richard J. Daley) was also very helpful in winning Illinois which along with Texas gave Kennedy the electoral college. Everything was done that had to be done to win the presidency for Jack and aristocracy for the family. And one thing that was done touches directly on the Hootenanny Mass.
Kennedy's Catholicism was a problem for the Puritans he wanted to govern and whose ranks his father so wanted to join politically and socially. JFK assured the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters, and the Church does not speak for me.” In other words, Kennedy could be one thing politically and another spiritually, and that compromise brought Catholicism into the mainstream of American life, or did it bring Puritan America into the heart of the Catholic Church?
By the way, about baked beans. It is theorized that Boston baked beans were a meal that could be made before the Sabbath and the Godly Puritan housewives of Boston could feed their families a hot, nourishing meal without violating their principles. There may not have been gold at the end of the immigration rainbow, but there were Puritan beans. Give me Italian Catholic food any day.
Next week: HE WHO MARRIES THE SPIRIT OF AN AGE SOON FINDS HIMSELF A WIDOWER or DOESN’T THE ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW MAKE YOU REGRET DUMPING ALL THAT OLD STUFF IN GRANDMA’S ATTIC?
“THE POT OF BEANS AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW.”
Let us summarize. The English Puritans came to America with a lot of baggage:
Henry VIII opened the English Door to Calvin and Luther and their Puritan followers. Luther taught the Puritans, “Bible alone, Faith alone, Grace without works, predestination, or once saved always saved. Mass is not a sacrifice. It is a meal made for the instruction and consolation of the faithful.” Calvin taught them, “The individual inspired by the Holy Spirit needs no pope, nor priest nor bishop to interpret the Bible. The individual inspired by the Holy Spirit is sufficient for the interpretation of the Bible. Each individual congregation is the Church and can govern itself, hence Congregationalism. The congregation, being the Church, elects its own ministers. Man is totally corrupt, but the chosen are chosen, to hell, literally, with the rest of humanity.
With these high ideals 20,000 or 30,000 Puritans left old England for New England. If Catholic means universal, Puritanism was anti-Catholic to its core. Puritans fled England and its established Church which they considered too Catholic. And so they came to America to found, “the city on the hill”, in the words of their first governor, John Winthrop. That hill was Beacon Hill in Boston. The descendants of the Puritans established themselves as the aristocracy of New England, the Boston “Brahmins”, Yankee’s are upper class families with an exclusive life style, accent and alma mater: Harvard University (or as they call it Haaavuhd.) There are southern counterparts like the First Families of Virginia but remember they lost round four of the English Civil War, which they called the War of Northern Aggression (You may have heard it referred to as the Civil War.)
Harvard, established in 1636 at the height of the Great Puritan Migration to New England, was named for its first benefactor, the Puritan pastor, John Harvard. It is interesting to note that Harvard University is the first corporation chartered in this country. It is in fact more than a century older than this country. Harvard boasts a long list of this country’s leaders, Among them, George W. Bush and his cousin, Barak Obama, who attended the school founded by his Pilgrim ancestors, and of course John, Bobby and Teddy Kennedy attended. Although it was never formally affiliated with a church, at its beginning and for a long time there after, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. As the 18th and 19th centuries rolled on, Harvard became increasingly secular and yet somehow remained Puritan. It produces a kind of Puritanism without God. In fact, it sometimes seems entirely purified of the divine presence.
Some interesting comparisons: Harvard has 691 acres in three campuses. The Vatican has 110 acres. So Harvard is 6 times larger than the Vatican. The Vatican employs about 3,500 people, Harvard has about 21,000 students and about 11,000 employees... And now here’s the kicker: the Vatican, at least in 2007, had a surplus of $10 million dollars. ($10,000,000) Harvard has an endowment of $27.4 Billion ($27,400,000,000) so in a certain sense, Harvard is 2,740 times richer than the pope. Next time someone says to me why doesn’t the pope do more to help the poor, just say, “Maybe Harvard could kick in a little..”
Where was I? Oh yes, the City on the Hill. This Puritan Paradise was threatened beginning in 1820 with an immigration of Irish that swelled to a flood during the potato famine of the 1840's. Signs proliferated “Irish need not apply.” The Puritans had fled the very taint of Catholicism in England and here was Catholicism flooding in to the stronghold of Puritan Protestantism. The Irish Catholics, needless to say, were about as welcome as lice. The young aristocrats of Beacon Hill and their poor Irish neighbors enjoyed frequent street fights well into the 20th century.
Not all Catholics wanted to battle the Puritans. Some wanted to join their country clubs. There arose in the last half of the 1800's a heresy called Americanism. Many Catholics bought into the myth of the “city on the hill” -- American exceptionalism, the belief that somehow America was a nation founded by the direct intervention of Heaven, different and better than other nations, and bound to bring its democratic revolution to all the world. The more ambitious of the Irish Catholics of Boston longed for nothing more than admittance into New England, none more so than the grandson of a poor immigrant, Joseph P. Kennedy, Catholic, banker, statesman, bootlegger, philanderer, and, of course, Harvard graduate. Kennedy broke into the American aristocracy by supporting the bluest of the blue bloods, Franklin D. Roosevelt in his run for President in 1932 . Kennedy raised quite a bit of money for Roosevelt’s campaign, and in turn received an appointment as the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, though he had wanted a cabinet position for his troubles. When asked why he had hired such a crook, Roosevelt replied, “Takes one to catch one.”
In 1938, Roosevelt appointed Kennedy ambassador to England. In Boston he was still regarded an outsider, but in England he was the grand man. Imagine, the grandson of a potato farmer from county Wexford in southern Ireland being presented at court! Joe Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen, married the Duke of Devonshire, and joined the Kennedys of Wexford to one of England's most aristocratic families. It was nice, but it still wasn’t as good as being welcomed into the parlors of the mansions on Beacon Hill in Boston. If he could get one of his sons elected President of the United States, that would show them. His eldest son was killed in the war, but there was still Jack. In the 1952 senate race, John F. Kennedy successfully defeated Henry Cabot Lodge, heir to one of the most prestigious Puritan names in Boston. It is interesting to note that Henry Cabot Lodge’s grandfather had rebuked John F. Kennedy’s grandfather for a vote in the state senate that favored immigrants. Lodge said to Kennedy that “Jews and Italians had no right to this country,” and by implication, neither did the Irish Catholics. Well, when Joe got his son John elected president of the United States, the Kennedys had arrived, by hook or by crook, and there was a great deal of crook. Jack Kennedy said that his father had asked him the exact number of votes he would need to win because there “was no way I’m paying for a landslide.” Everyone mistakenly thought JFK was joking. Some joke. The family called in quite a few favors to win that election. Their Hollywood connections roped in Frank Sinatra who, in turn, roped in some of his friends in Chicago. “Hizzoner da Mare” as we say in Chicago (Mayor Richard J. Daley) was also very helpful in winning Illinois which along with Texas gave Kennedy the electoral college. Everything was done that had to be done to win the presidency for Jack and aristocracy for the family. And one thing that was done touches directly on the Hootenanny Mass.
Kennedy's Catholicism was a problem for the Puritans he wanted to govern and whose ranks his father so wanted to join politically and socially. JFK assured the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters, and the Church does not speak for me.” In other words, Kennedy could be one thing politically and another spiritually, and that compromise brought Catholicism into the mainstream of American life, or did it bring Puritan America into the heart of the Catholic Church?
By the way, about baked beans. It is theorized that Boston baked beans were a meal that could be made before the Sabbath and the Godly Puritan housewives of Boston could feed their families a hot, nourishing meal without violating their principles. There may not have been gold at the end of the immigration rainbow, but there were Puritan beans. Give me Italian Catholic food any day.
Next week: HE WHO MARRIES THE SPIRIT OF AN AGE SOON FINDS HIMSELF A WIDOWER or DOESN’T THE ANTIQUES ROAD SHOW MAKE YOU REGRET DUMPING ALL THAT OLD STUFF IN GRANDMA’S ATTIC?
Saturday, January 22, 2011
A short history of the Hootenanny Mass & other absurdities... part 11
Letter to Harold “Hoot” and Annie Gibson cont. part 11
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD. A PROBLEM WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS
Let us pause to look at some dates, not the edible kind. Queen Elizabeth I (Tudor) ruled England from 1558 to1603. King James ruled England from 1603 to 1625 and his son, Charles Stuart, a.k.a. King Charles I of England, ruled from 1625 to 1649. So, you have 100 years of the Church of England and Tudors/Stuarts, and what a century it was!
Elizabeth wanted a church that looked Catholic but thought Protestant, as had her father, Henry, before her. Her cousins the Stuarts thought that was just fine. Beginning in 1559, all English citizens were required to attend Church of England services on Sundays and holy days. One was fined for each service missed. Those conducting unauthorized services were fined more heavily, imprisoned and occasionally executed for sedition.
Calvinists and Catholics were not happy with the Elizabethan compromise. For Catholics it was too Protestant. For Calvinists it was too Catholic, or as they would say “popish.” (I’ve always thought that was a swell word.) Calvinists were not one cohesive group. There was a spectrum of Calvinist opinion. Some Puritans could put up with Anglican worship, but others, called Separatists or non-conformists, would have none of it. An Anglican Archbishop, Matthew Hutton, could not abide Calvin’s separatist followers, but showed some sympathy for Puritans expressed in a letter to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:
A particular group of radical Separatists in the town of Scrooby (name not made up) in Nottinghamshire, England, were persecuted by King James’ government. In 1607 Tobias Matthew, Archbishop of York, raided homes and imprisoned several members of the Separatist Puritan congregation, so they abandoned England with its established church that smacked of popery, with its priests and bishops and vestments and superstitious rituals that looked suspiciously like Mass. They fled to Holland, where they found themselves second class citizens even among their Dutch Calvinist co-religionists. They were unable to speak the language and could barely get work and, heaven forfend, their children were becoming just too Dutch! So it was off to the wilderness of America to invent Thanksgiving and televised football.
In 1620, the Scrooby Separatists, later called Pilgrims by William Bradford, arrived in what is now Massachusetts aboard the Mayflower. Upon landing they found some mounds that turned out to be native graves which they promptly robbed. Taking some of the provisions for the dead which had been placed in the graves, they also found an iron kettle in which they placed some of the corn they found and re-buried the rest to use later as seed corn. William Bradford wrote: “They also found two of the Indian's houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. They also found more corn, and beans of various colors. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction (repayment) when they should meet with any of them, - as about six months afterwards they did.”
So began the story of the first Thanksgiving: grave robbing and home invasion. It all sounds a little like a Calvinist version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In a short time most of the settlers had become ill, and ridden with scurvy. It was December and there had already been snow. As they explored the area, they saw their first native people, who fled from them. It was not the first time that the locals had met the English. The English had already been there for fishing and trade even before Mayflower. One local tribe, the Pokanoket really disliked the English after a bunch of them had been rounded up, taken on board ship and shot.
Captain Thomas Hunt, a slave hunter also came calling and captured a couple dozen natives to sell as slaves back home in Europe. One of them was the famous Squanto. Admittedly, he sold his captives in Catholic Spain, but when some Franciscan friars found out what he was up to, they freed the Americans, and taught them Christianity. Squanto convinced the friars to let him try to return home. He made his way to London, worked on his English, and managed to sail back home. There he found his entire village dead of European diseases and pilgrims living on his family farm. He spoke English well and was able to mediate between native and thus insured the colonists’ survival. The colonists returned the favor by almost completely wiping out the native population who, as the years went by, had the temerity to fight for the land that they had once owned.
Let us briefly return to merrye olde England, which was becoming less and less merrye. King James was not the Separatists’ idea of a Godly sovereign and so more of them decided to move to America. In 1621, a second ship carrying more colonists came from England, boosting the population to 85. In 1623, it was up to 180. In 1630 it was around 300 and in 1643, around 2000. Between 1630 and 1640, in the so-called Great Migration, 20,000 settlers arrived in Massachusetts. Perhaps the Indians should have put up a fence or something at the border.
The Puritans were abandoning England by the boat load, literally. James was bad enough but his son, Charles, was worse. He wanted to move the Church of England away from Calvinism and even married a Catholic French Princess in 1525, and that was the last straw. A series of events began that eventually ended in Charles being beheaded by the parliamentary Puritans; a king of England losing his head over a woman. Now there’s a switch.
The Calvinists in Parliament decided that they could manage without the King and his popish relatives, and so in a series of civil wars that lasted from 1642 to 1655, they overthrew the royalist government and, in 1649, cut off Charles’ head. They declared a Commonwealth ruled by a Council of State, which included Oliver Cromwell, a general of the Puritan forces. The royalists were finally completely defeated in one more Civil War and during which Cromwell conquered Catholic Ireland. The butcher's bill for keeping England Calvinist and Protestant was incalculable, almost one million people in England Scotland and Ireland taken as a whole, lands of which Cromwell was the Lord “Protector”. Forty percent of Ireland’s population died of war and manufactured famine in one of the most brutal ethnic cleansings in history. At the Siege of Drogheda in September 1649, Cromwell's troops massacred nearly 3,500 people after the town's capture, soldiers, civilians, prisoners, and Roman Catholic priests, burning many of them alive in their church. Cromwell wrote of the event:
This was just one of many massacres. In addition to the starvation and murder of at least 600,000, some 50,000 Irish were sold as slaves during the time of the English Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell is certainly among the greatest mass murderers in human history. Curiously enough, the last battle of the English civil wars was fought in America. In 1655, at the Battle of the Severn, Puritans defeated the governor of Maryland, William Stone who was fighting to restore his government in the colony and its policy of religious toleration.
Once again what has this to do with the Hootenanny Mass? The heart of the matter is found in the Mayflower compact. It is the foundational document of the country even more than the Declaration of Independence and almost no one has ever heard of it. Before getting off the ship the colonists created a form of government that depended on nothing but its own will. “(We) Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic...” the document read. Not God not King, not custom nor law, but, “(we) the body politic.” In this document, the modern world was born, and nothing is so modern as the Hootenanny Mass and all that came with it. We will govern ourselves. Not popes nor bishops, nor kings nor customs.
NEXT WEEK: THE MAYFLOWER GOES TO SEED: THE MAYFLOWER’S DESCENDANTS AND THE PRESBYTERIAN REVOLT
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD. A PROBLEM WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS
Let us pause to look at some dates, not the edible kind. Queen Elizabeth I (Tudor) ruled England from 1558 to1603. King James ruled England from 1603 to 1625 and his son, Charles Stuart, a.k.a. King Charles I of England, ruled from 1625 to 1649. So, you have 100 years of the Church of England and Tudors/Stuarts, and what a century it was!
Elizabeth wanted a church that looked Catholic but thought Protestant, as had her father, Henry, before her. Her cousins the Stuarts thought that was just fine. Beginning in 1559, all English citizens were required to attend Church of England services on Sundays and holy days. One was fined for each service missed. Those conducting unauthorized services were fined more heavily, imprisoned and occasionally executed for sedition.
Calvinists and Catholics were not happy with the Elizabethan compromise. For Catholics it was too Protestant. For Calvinists it was too Catholic, or as they would say “popish.” (I’ve always thought that was a swell word.) Calvinists were not one cohesive group. There was a spectrum of Calvinist opinion. Some Puritans could put up with Anglican worship, but others, called Separatists or non-conformists, would have none of it. An Anglican Archbishop, Matthew Hutton, could not abide Calvin’s separatist followers, but showed some sympathy for Puritans expressed in a letter to Robert Cecil, Secretary of State to James I in 1604:
“The Puritans, whose phantasticall zeale I mislike, though they differ in Ceremonies and accidentes, yet they agree with us in substance of religion, and I thinke all or the moste parte of them love his Majestie, and the presente state, and I hope will yield to conformitie. But the Papistes are opposite and contrarie in very many substantiall pointes of religion, and cannot but wishe the Popes authoritie and popish religion to be established.” (Apparently people in merrye olde England had an odd way of spelling.)
A particular group of radical Separatists in the town of Scrooby (name not made up) in Nottinghamshire, England, were persecuted by King James’ government. In 1607 Tobias Matthew, Archbishop of York, raided homes and imprisoned several members of the Separatist Puritan congregation, so they abandoned England with its established church that smacked of popery, with its priests and bishops and vestments and superstitious rituals that looked suspiciously like Mass. They fled to Holland, where they found themselves second class citizens even among their Dutch Calvinist co-religionists. They were unable to speak the language and could barely get work and, heaven forfend, their children were becoming just too Dutch! So it was off to the wilderness of America to invent Thanksgiving and televised football.
In 1620, the Scrooby Separatists, later called Pilgrims by William Bradford, arrived in what is now Massachusetts aboard the Mayflower. Upon landing they found some mounds that turned out to be native graves which they promptly robbed. Taking some of the provisions for the dead which had been placed in the graves, they also found an iron kettle in which they placed some of the corn they found and re-buried the rest to use later as seed corn. William Bradford wrote: “They also found two of the Indian's houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. They also found more corn, and beans of various colors. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction (repayment) when they should meet with any of them, - as about six months afterwards they did.”
So began the story of the first Thanksgiving: grave robbing and home invasion. It all sounds a little like a Calvinist version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In a short time most of the settlers had become ill, and ridden with scurvy. It was December and there had already been snow. As they explored the area, they saw their first native people, who fled from them. It was not the first time that the locals had met the English. The English had already been there for fishing and trade even before Mayflower. One local tribe, the Pokanoket really disliked the English after a bunch of them had been rounded up, taken on board ship and shot.
Captain Thomas Hunt, a slave hunter also came calling and captured a couple dozen natives to sell as slaves back home in Europe. One of them was the famous Squanto. Admittedly, he sold his captives in Catholic Spain, but when some Franciscan friars found out what he was up to, they freed the Americans, and taught them Christianity. Squanto convinced the friars to let him try to return home. He made his way to London, worked on his English, and managed to sail back home. There he found his entire village dead of European diseases and pilgrims living on his family farm. He spoke English well and was able to mediate between native and thus insured the colonists’ survival. The colonists returned the favor by almost completely wiping out the native population who, as the years went by, had the temerity to fight for the land that they had once owned.
Let us briefly return to merrye olde England, which was becoming less and less merrye. King James was not the Separatists’ idea of a Godly sovereign and so more of them decided to move to America. In 1621, a second ship carrying more colonists came from England, boosting the population to 85. In 1623, it was up to 180. In 1630 it was around 300 and in 1643, around 2000. Between 1630 and 1640, in the so-called Great Migration, 20,000 settlers arrived in Massachusetts. Perhaps the Indians should have put up a fence or something at the border.
The Puritans were abandoning England by the boat load, literally. James was bad enough but his son, Charles, was worse. He wanted to move the Church of England away from Calvinism and even married a Catholic French Princess in 1525, and that was the last straw. A series of events began that eventually ended in Charles being beheaded by the parliamentary Puritans; a king of England losing his head over a woman. Now there’s a switch.
The Calvinists in Parliament decided that they could manage without the King and his popish relatives, and so in a series of civil wars that lasted from 1642 to 1655, they overthrew the royalist government and, in 1649, cut off Charles’ head. They declared a Commonwealth ruled by a Council of State, which included Oliver Cromwell, a general of the Puritan forces. The royalists were finally completely defeated in one more Civil War and during which Cromwell conquered Catholic Ireland. The butcher's bill for keeping England Calvinist and Protestant was incalculable, almost one million people in England Scotland and Ireland taken as a whole, lands of which Cromwell was the Lord “Protector”. Forty percent of Ireland’s population died of war and manufactured famine in one of the most brutal ethnic cleansings in history. At the Siege of Drogheda in September 1649, Cromwell's troops massacred nearly 3,500 people after the town's capture, soldiers, civilians, prisoners, and Roman Catholic priests, burning many of them alive in their church. Cromwell wrote of the event:
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbued their hands in so much innocent blood and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are satisfactory grounds for such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.”
This was just one of many massacres. In addition to the starvation and murder of at least 600,000, some 50,000 Irish were sold as slaves during the time of the English Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell is certainly among the greatest mass murderers in human history. Curiously enough, the last battle of the English civil wars was fought in America. In 1655, at the Battle of the Severn, Puritans defeated the governor of Maryland, William Stone who was fighting to restore his government in the colony and its policy of religious toleration.
Once again what has this to do with the Hootenanny Mass? The heart of the matter is found in the Mayflower compact. It is the foundational document of the country even more than the Declaration of Independence and almost no one has ever heard of it. Before getting off the ship the colonists created a form of government that depended on nothing but its own will. “(We) Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic...” the document read. Not God not King, not custom nor law, but, “(we) the body politic.” In this document, the modern world was born, and nothing is so modern as the Hootenanny Mass and all that came with it. We will govern ourselves. Not popes nor bishops, nor kings nor customs.
NEXT WEEK: THE MAYFLOWER GOES TO SEED: THE MAYFLOWER’S DESCENDANTS AND THE PRESBYTERIAN REVOLT
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