For Greater Glory

In this post I described a film coming out about the Cristeros war (1926-1929) in Mexico.

The date for the release is June 1. The film's name is to be For Greater Glory. See http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566501/

Viva Christo Rey!

The picture below shows the martyrdom in early April of 1927 of Fr. Francisco Vera, parish Priest of Sangre y Cuerpo de Cristo in the city of Jalostotitlan, Jalisco.

Martyrdom of Fr. Francisco Vera

Padre was celebrating Mass in secret for his people when he was discovered by Freemasons and, with the support of a socialist and vehemently anti-Catholic government and media, executed on the spot. He was not allowed to remove his vestments, and this photograph was sent to President Calles by the leader of the squad to prove how zealous he was being against the Catholic Church. Father Vera's body was taken to a garbage dump outside the city, where it was further desecrated.

This scene was just one of numerous anti-religious atrocities committed by the Mexican government during the Cristero War, a period of Catholic resistance to state persecution comparable in sentiment if not in scale to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.

Battle Hymn of the Cristeros
La Virgen María es nuestra protectora y nuestra defensora cuando hay que temer,
Vencerá a los demonios gritando "¡Viva Cristo Rey!"
Vencerá a los demonios gritando "¡Viva Cristo Rey!"
Soldados de Cristo: ¡Sigamos la bandera que la Cruz enseña el ejército de Dios!
Sigamos la bandera gritando, "¡Viva Cristo Rey!"

For an upcoming film on the matter, see http://www.cristiadafilm.com

Campion Betrayed Again

Yesterday the Jesuit journal America made the announcement below. Edmund Campion is a saint in Heaven now and incapable of experiencing sorrow, but those of us still below in the Church Militant are grieved by this betrayal of the legacy of one of our heroes.

The Editorial Board of America is proud to announce that The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is the 2009 recipient of the Campion Award. The award is given on a regular basis to a noted Christian person of letters. It is named after St. Edmund Campion, S.J...

A martyr of the English Reformation, Edmund Campion stirred Elizabethan England with his daring missionary efforts and the great power of his pen. His “Brag” in defense of his faith has become a classic. He was known for his faith, chivalry and unusual literary talent—qualities shared by the Archbishop Williams...

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Campion's Challenge to the Privy Council
aka Campion's Brag

To the Right Honourable, the Lords of Her Majesty's Privy Council:

Whereas I have come out of Germany and Bohemia, being sent by my superiors, and adventured myself into this noble realm, my dear country, for the glory of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busy, watchful, and suspicious world, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertain what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this in writing in a readiness, desiring your good lordships to give it your reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plain confession. And to the intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these nine points or articles, directly, truly and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

i. I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of the Catholic Church, and through the great mercy of God vowed now these eight years into the religion [religious order] of the Society of Jesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity.

ii. At the voice of our General, which is to me a warrant from heaven and oracle of Christ, I took my voyage from Prague to Rome (where our General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendom or Heatheness, had I been thereto assigned.

iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors—in brief, to cry alarm spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are abused.

iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of state or policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, three sorts of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first, before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weal and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable—Scriptures, councils, Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons: the third, before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

vi. I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

vii. And because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Lady with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the second part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equity.

viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.

ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour. I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

St. Theodore

Today is the feast day of one of my personal favorites, St. Theodore (+ 304 AD), who hailed from the city of Tyre.

Theodore was an officer in the Roman army of the east, and was enjoined by his commander to offer sacrifices to the pagan gods. The young Christian refused, and so was allowed the night to think over his decision. Theodore took the opportunity to sneak out and set the local pagan temple of Cybel on fire. He was subsequently starved, beaten, and tortured, but he stuck by his guns; he was finally martyred by being burned alive. Pious witnesses saw his soul rise to heaven like a flash of light and fire.

Come Holy Ghost
Come, Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful, and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
V. Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created;
R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

The King's Good Servant

Thomas More (Holbein)

On this day and at about this time 473 years ago St. Thomas More was executed for treason on evidence of perjured testimony. More's opposition to Henry's anti-papal action and his silence regarding the English monarch's illicit marriage with Lady Ann Boleyn* grieved the King, whose less conscience-encumbered subjects saw to it that one source of the King's displeasure was empowered to remain permanently mum.

Owing to the former Chancellor's years of faithful service to the crown, King Henry commuted the sentence of being hanged, drawn, and quartered to beheading. "The King is good unto me," More said in humble acknowledgement of His Majesty's benevolence.

From the scaffold Thomas asked prayers of the witnesses, both for himself and for the King -- that it might please God to give him good counsel. More added that he "died the King's good servant but God's first."

When Thomas kneeled a few stray hairs of his beard fell across the executioner's block. As he adjusted his errant whiskers More addressed himself to the axeman: "Don't cut my beard -- it has not been accused of treason." More pardoned the executioner, who then removed his head from his body with a single stroke of the axe.

There is a tendency these days to see in More merely a single individual standing up against institutionalized tyrannical authority. Such are the fashions and prejudices of our democratic age that it presumes monarchy is synonymous with despotism and that the man who stands firm against it for the sake of his conscience is to be commended on that ground alone.

Sir Thomas loved his country and his king; he was no rebel, no anarchist, no allegedly reforming revolutionary throwing off an oppressor. He would have dismissed as absurd the notion that his individual conscience was in itself worthy of admiration simply because it was his own. More knew that what made his conscience worth mounting the scaffold for was its conformity to Truth itself. A man was responsible for the formation of his own conscience, and it was his obligation to see that it is formed properly. But dying for a conscience just because it was the individual's? That would not be even utopian, it would simply be preposterous. God gave man an intellect by means of which he can know truth from falsehood and right from wrong.

The accepted messenger of Truth in More's era was the Catholic Church, an institution to which Thomas was joyfully devoted. And not that he looked the other way at the failings of individual Churchmen: it was More himself who said, "The world is tired of the clergy, but the clergy are not tired of the world." More was also an accomplished statesman, seasoned diplomat, and witty humanist who quickly penetrated to the heart of a matter -- thus, at his execution there was for him no anesthetic of a fanatic's wide-eyed stare. He met his end with an innocent mirth, an unaffected and steady gaze, and a soul at peace after having performed its duty of doing the right thing at the right time for Christ's sake.

Thomas More was canonized in 1935 -- the 400th anniversary of his martyrdom. In raising St. Thomas to the altar Pope Pius XI not only commended to our attention a holy and heroic model, he pointed to an example of how to conduct one's self in the face of absolutist governments (e.g. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia). God has His rights in society and His claims on our allegiance, our affections, and our intellect, the Church was saying. Just ask St. Thomas More.

* For all his concern over securing a dynasty, Henry's six marriages produced only one sickly son (Edward) and an insecure succession with two princesses (Mary and Elizabeth). None of them produced heirs -- thus, in spite of Henry's machinations and politicking and murders and schism, his line ended within a generation.

The Georgia Martyrs

In September of 1597 five Spanish Franciscan missionaries were slain by American Indians on the islands off what would later become the Georgia coast. These gentle sons of St. Francis suffered and died for love of the sacrament of matrimony, becoming heroes of the Catholic faith. Like St. John the Baptist who was martyred for protesting King Herod taking for himself the wife of his brother, the five Georgia Martyrs are an eloquent rebuke – then as now – to an age that believes men can make use of marriage with no regard for public morality or for the spiritual character of the institution.

Era of the Spanish Missions in the American Southeast 
The Spanish missions on the southeast American continent – what Juan Ponce de León discovered in the Easter season of 1513 and named La Florida – initially extended from the Florida Keys along the Gulf of Mexico west to Texas and then north to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada.

By the end of the 16th century Spanish influence over most of this area had diminished, but colonies were well-entrenched in northern Florida and coastal Georgia: from a base on the east coast in St. Augustine, missions stretched west across the peninsula to Tallahassee and north along the coast to the Island of St. Catherine (Santa Catalina).

The pinnacle of the Spanish missionary age arrived in 1667 when 70 missions served by 40 priests and brothers were active from Florida as far north to St. Catherine’s Island. It had a longer life-span and involved an even greater numbers of religious and converts than its more famous counterpart in the American west a century and a half later under the “Apostle of California,” Fr. Junípero Serra. This era ended in 1742 when the English Lord (later General) James Oglethorpe defeated Spanish troops at the Battle of Bloody Marsh on St. Simon’s Island.

Life in the Missions
The Spanish missions of coastal Georgia were trying: salt marshes and tidal freshwater wetlands abounded; stone was scarce, and the soil was poor, wet, and acidic, making crops difficult to grow; in the submerged saw-grass terrain mosquitoes buzzed and bit constantly.

Spanish families were reluctant to settle there, preferring the more hospitable lands of Cuba and Mexico to the south. Soldiers considered assignments in the area hardship duty.

One tribe of aborigines controlled the terrain along the 100-mile strip of land and islands that would become the Georgia coast. This group of semi-nomadic worshipers of sun and sky practiced polygamy, wore little clothing, and were lazy, erratic, and warlike. These natives were disinclined to accept Christianity, showing open contempt and even violence: priests who greeted them with charity were not-infrequently slaughtered.

The Indians supplemented their diet of wildlife by planting crops of maize, beans, and tobacco. They built villages of wattle, daub, and tabby for maintaining their farms, but they did not live permanently in them. Each village was ruled by a chief, or mico; over all the micos was a mico mayer, or head chief. In their native tongue they called themselves the Guale (pronounced by the Spanish “Walley”), which was the title of their chief and the name of their main village. The Spanish applied the term to their land as well.

The beginning of the missions among the Guale is credited to the Jesuits, who began their efforts in 1569; one of the missionaries, Domingo Augustin, also wrote a grammar of the Guale language. The unpredictability of the natives and the migratory life of neighboring tribes proved too much for the few Jesuits to serve, however, and a year after a 1571 Indian uprising and massacre the Jesuits withdrew from that mission field.

In 1573 missions were resumed by the Franciscans, who had greater success. The main Franciscan mission was based in the Guale capital on St. Catherine's Island. Deep into the wilderness, far from the safety of military protection, these preachers of the Gospel built missions, taught and catechized, administered the sacraments, and offered the sacrifice of the Mass.

Catechizing the Guale was a slow process, but in time the missionaries taught the Indians the catechism in their native tongue, introduced them to European methods of agriculture, and reminded them of the necessity of wearing clothes, working diligently, and living peacefully. Though the Franciscans adapted themselves where they could to many Indian customs, they held firm that a Catholic man could not divorce, and that he could have only one wife. The missionaries would not baptize a Guale adult who refused to promise to live in a permanent marriage with only one spouse. Through entreaties, patience, and gifts the friars converted a number of the Guale, who were baptized, confirmed, and buried as Catholics.

Five Martyrs
In 1595, during the reign of Spain’s King Philip II, the Guale Christians numbered 1,500 souls when they received a new community of friars.

The recent arrivals were escorted by the local governor to the several missions. At each village the governor reverently knelt to kiss the hands of the missionaries in the presence of the assembled Indians, an act that made a great impression on the inhabitants. A new mission was soon established at the important Guale village of Tolomato, just north of present day Brunswick. The spot was named Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de Tolomato -- Our Lady of Guadalupe of Tolomato.

The Franciscans’ work continued with no little success, and two years later 22 Guale tribal chiefs traveled south to St. Augustine to pledge their allegiance to the governor. This jewel in the crown of the Franciscan missionary efforts meant that friars could be sent safely almost anywhere among the Indians from the southern tip of Florida north to the border of English-held lands.

Then came a sudden Indian revolt with bloodshed. The ensuing problems had far-reaching consequences which precipitated a change in Spanish rule and marked the beginning of the end of Spanish sovereignty in that region of the New World.

The instigator was Juanillo, a belligerent son of the Tolomato mico. Juanillo married a second wife, and to the great scandal of the Indian Christians he refused the admonitions of the Franciscan in charge of the Tolomato mission, Fr. Pedro de Corpa, a wise and holy Castilian preacher and confessor. A Catholic can have only one wife, the friar said: if a man would remain a Christian he must give up the life of the polygamist as he had promised at his baptism.

Juanillo scoffed at and ridiculed Fr. Corpa. The young Indian’s status as a village leader meant that his recalcitrance endangered the spiritual well-being of the entire mission. Taking counsel with Fr. Blas de Rodríguez, the Spanish superior of all the Guale missions, Fr. Corpa deprived Juanillo of his right to succeed his father as the Guale mico mayer. The right of succession would instead descend upon a relative.

Martyrdom of Fray Pedro de Corpa
The furious Juanillo gathered about him a group of conspirators. Several days later, on the morning of September 14 – the feast day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross – while Fr. Corpa prepared for morning mass, Juanillo and his men, adorned in war-paint, rushed the priest and killed him with their macana, or stone hatchets. They severed Fr. Corpa’s head and impaled it on a stick by the river amid pagan celebrations. The body was exposed to the elements for several days before being buried in an unmarked grave in the woods.
 
Martyrdom of Fray Blas de Rodríguez
The next day Juanillo recruited other Guale chiefs to his cause. The marauders sent word to the Guale chief on St. Catherine’s Island to kill the missionaries there. Juanillo himself remained on the mainland, and with his enlarged force he moved north to the village of Tupiqui. Here lived the Alcantaran Fr. Blas de Rodríguez, with whom Fr. Corpa had conferred. Fr. Rodríguez was surrounded by Juanillo’s men and told that his death was at hand. The friar was held hostage for two days. On September 16 he offered a last Mass and gave a sermon.
 
My sons, for me it is not difficult to die. Even if you do not cause it, the death of this body is inevitable. We must be ready at all times, for we, all of us, have to die someday. But what does pain me is that the Evil One has persuaded you to do this offensive thing against your God and Creator. It is a further source of deep grief to me that you are unmindful of what we missionaries have done for you in teaching you the way to eternal life and happiness.
 
After the Mass Fr. Rodríguez distributed his belongings to his faithful children and gave them instructions to always obey God’s law. The priest was bound, and in this posture he watched the Indians profane the chapel. Having reduced the chapel to ruins, the Indians turned their rage on the helpless priest, whom they clubbed to death. Fr. Rodríguez’s body was left in the woods for several days until it was buried by a Guale Christian; the remains were later recovered by Spanish soldiers.

Martyrdom of Fray Miguel de Añon and Fray Antonio de Bádajoz
The missionaries on St. Catherine’s Island were Fr. Miguel de Añon, a Spanish noble with a reputation as a preacher who was in charge of the St. Catherine’s mission, and his assistant and interpreter Br. Antonio de Bádajoz. Although sympathetic Indians warned the two missionaries of the impending attack, they did not flee; perhaps there was not time, or they did not believe the warning, or they hoped for martyrdom – none today can say. Rather than seek escape, they offered a Mass. Fr. Añon gave Br. Bádajoz communion, and then they were killed, the lay-brother first and then the priest. The date was September 17 – the anniversary of St. Francis’s reception of the Stigmata. Their mutilated bodies lay under the hot the sun until Christian Indians buried them at the base of a large wooden cross that Fr. Añon had erected.

St. Francis Receives the Stigmata (Giotto)

Martyrdom of Fray Francisco de Veráscola
Juanillo’s war party proceeded south to St. Simon’s Island. There they killed Fr. Francisco de Veráscola as he was returning in a canoe from St. Augustine with supplies. The Indians, much afraid of Fr. Veráscola’s great physical strength – he had been nicknamed the “Catabrian Giant” – feigned friendship: two of the warriors took him into their arms at the riverbank while the rest set upon him with their stone axes. After killing Fr. Veráscola – the date is uncertain, but fell before the end of September – the warriors mutilated and buried his body. Father’s Franciscan hood and sombrero were later retrieved from the Guale who had claimed them as trophies, but his body was never found.

Passion of Fray Francisco de Avila
The Indians continued south in search of Fr. Francisco de Avila, who dwelled in the Talapo mission on present-day Jekyll Island. When Juanillo’s band arrived with news they said they carried a message from Fr. Rodríguez. Having received word of the death of Fr. Corpa, Fr. Avila refused to come outside. The Indians broke into Fr. Avila’s hut; the priest attempted to escape, but he was pierced by three arrows and captured. Wounded and beaten, Fr. Avila was forced to walk a long distance to an Indian village where he was tortured further and condemned to die. The Indians abruptly changed their minds, however, and decided to keep the friar as a slave.

Fr. Avila was mistreated in captivity for nine months: in pain from his wounds, he was forced to serve even the village children. He endured cold and hunger, living off what food he could forage for himself in the bleak terrain and wearing only scraps for clothing. To spite the priest’s faith, the Indians tried to make him take a wife and perform other acts against his vows.

There the friar would have died, abandoned to the malice of his enemies, but he was rescued by a Spanish military patrol. Father was borne to St. Augustine, where he recovered his health. The lone survivor of the Guale massacres, Fr. Avila invoked clerical immunity when the Spanish governor asked him to testify: the friar feared that his words would be used as grounds to execute his abductors, and he was unwilling to incriminate them. It was only years later, after Fr. Avila went to Havana, that he wrote of his ordeal, and even then he did so only under obedience to his superior.

Aftermath
The initial slaughter grew into a general uprising, which was put down by Spanish soldiers in a great battle at Cumberland Island. Subsequent retaliatory raids against the Indians finally reduced them to total submission in 1601. By the end of 1603 the mission among the Guale were completely restored, though Spanish rule had been shaken and its forces depleted.

After the uprising a Spanish military force exhumed the remains of Fr. Añon and Br. Bádajoz on St. Catherine’s Island. The relics we transported to St. Augustine, where they were re-interred at the central friary with great honor and ceremony. Today that building is now the National Guard Armory, and is known as “The St. Francis Barracks.” A skull that could be that of Fr. Corpa was discovered by archeologists in 1950.

In 1612 the superior of the custody of Saint Helen (Santa Elena) reported to the Spanish king:

Although the Indians did not martyr the friars for the faith (that is, because of any doctrine or article of faith which they preached), it is certain that they martyred them because of the law of God which the religious taught them. This is the reason the Indians themselves gave and still attest to...

The Guale and the other coastal tribes remained under Spanish governorship for the next 75 years. These subject tribes were finally dispersed at the end of the 17th century by English-armed Indians on slave raids for the Charles Town traders. All surviving Guale were incorporated into the growing Creek Indian Confederacy.

St. Catherine’s Island Today
St. Catherine’s is now owned and operated by a private foundation: one can travel to the beaches, but visitation to the interior is not permitted. The island serves as a zoological sanctuary for breeding endangered species: the subtropical haven now hosts colonies of lemurs, gazelles, zebras, hartebeests, parrots, cockatoos, and Madagascar turtles.

Archeologists have visited the island to search for remains of the Indian villages and Spanish settlements. After copious excavation, the mission chapel was unearthed, and numerous medals, rosaries, crucifixes, and other artifacts were discovered. The archaeologists also discovered a large cemetery beneath the floor of the mission chapel. Upon completion of the excavation, the site was re-covered; the location of the site is not publicized to discourage unauthorized digging.

The Cause for the Georgia Martyrs
Four centuries later, the cause for canonization of the five Franciscan martyrs has been submitted to Rome by the Archdiocese of Savannah. If raised to the altar, these Spanish missionaries would join the three 17th century Jesuits martyred near present-day Auriesville as the only beatified martyrs slain on American soil.

Sources
* The Cross in the Sand by Michael V. Gannon (1993, 3rd printing, University Presses of Florida)
* St. Catherine’s Island: An Island in Time by David Hurst Thomas (1988, Georgia Endowment for the Humanities)
* The Franciscan Missions of Coastal Georgia by Gillian Brown (1985, The Cause of the Georgia Martyrs)
* “Man seeks sainthood for 16th-century friars” by Russ Bynum (April 08, 2007, Associated Press)
* “The Five Franciscan Martyrs of Georgia” web site - http://www.georgiamartyrs.org/