24 November 2013

Article 26

Fr Barry Tomlinson comments upon my piece 'Intention' by drawing our attention to the XXVIth of the Articles of Religion. I did not quote this, because, anxious to reassure fellow Traditionalists, I thought a quotation from the Articles of the Church of England might muddy the water! But Father is absolutely right. That Article was in fact more or less the Fifth of the Thirteen Articles of of 1538, penned in the days of Henrician 'non-Papal Catholicism'. During the 'Reunion' fervour of the 1630s, the Franciscan Francis a Sancta Clara*, in his very interesting discussion of the agreements between the Articles and the Decrees of Trent, had nothing whatsoever to say about this Article except "This is the very doctrine of the Church and of all the Fathers". Although a critic might suggest that this is to forget S Cyprian ...

Ahhh ... did I mention the council of Trent? Interesting to read the recent (Rorate) document on Trent by our Holy Father Pope Francis. It would be splendid if the English Bishops were to follow his lead in encouraging recommitment to the Magisterium of Trent.

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*AKA Christopher Davenport, who was an undergraduate at the antecedent of my own college at Oxford and was reconciled to full communion with See of Peter by a priest working probably out of the Recusant centre at Waterperry near Oxford; had a distinguished academic career; was chaplain to Queens Henrietta Maria and Catharine of Braganza; reconciled the first wife of James II to Full Communion. He was acquuainted with the martyred Archbishop Laud and with Richard Montagu, the Anglo-Papalist Bishop of Chichester and Norwich.

Deserves to be better known. His brother, a puritan minister, ended up in Connecticut (is that somewhere in North America?) ... a counter-cultural family?

3 comments:

Matthew Roth said...

Interesting post Father!
Yes, Connecticut is one of these United States, just south of Massachusetts and east of New York. It and its eastern neighbor Rhode Island, for what it is worth, were founded by Protestants who did not conform to the Puritan theology and practice of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

GOR said...

”Is that somewhere in North America?”

A tongue-in-cheek answer to your tongue-in-cheek question, Father (and I’ll probably get a hundred lines for this…), would be to consult the film industry and: “A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur”.

The clue here is ‘Yankee’

…....:)

Anonymous said...

Davenport College, one of the residences at Yale University, is named for his brother. That Puritan brother also founded the City of New Haven Connecticut where Yale is located. Two of the regicide "judges" who condemned Charles I to death were hidden by that same Puritan brother in New Haven when pursued by Charles II.