The Persecuted Church
Throughout the centuries the Church and her popes have always been target of incessant hatred and persecution, which is a continual fulfillment of Christ's prophecy.
"Another shall gird thee and lead thee whither thou wouldst not" (John 21: i8). This has been confirmed throughout the entire history of the popes.
Let us take the line of popes in their order. In the first centuries, to be a pope was equivalent to being a martyr. Up to the time of Constantine the Great, in the beginning of the fourth century, there were thirty-two popes. Of these, thirty suffered martyrdom; the other two ended their lives in exile. Where can you find a dynasty that began its dominion with thirty martyrs? Even after Constantine, suffering had a large part in the lives of the popes.
Persecutions of the Church have been unceasing. The mightiest man in Europe at one time was Frederick Barbarossa. He encompassed Rome with his army. Apparently the papacy was doomed to extinction. But look. Immense fires are seen in the camp surrounding Rome. What does this mean? Do they wish to set fire to the city? No. The plague has broken out in the camp, and thousands of soldiers' bodies are being burned. But the fires prove insufficient: thousands of corpses are cast into the sea. Not long afterward, Emperor Frederick comes barefoot to Canossa to do penance, begging pardon from the Pope.
Sultan Saladin sends this message to Pius II: "I am coming to turn St. Peter's Church into a mosque." The Pope replies: "The ship may be tossed about, but it cannot sink." And it did not sink.
Did later rulers learn from this? No. Napoleon humiliated Pope Pius VI and said haughtily: "Does the Pope think that my soldiers' weapons will fall from their hands because of his excommunication?" But then came Moscow and the freezing cold of Russia. And the weapons literally fell from the stiff fingers of the freezing soldiers. Then Waterloo, St. Helena, and the end. On the other hand, the papacy still stands with the triple crown upon its head.
B. It stands, for there is Christ's eternal promise, which has likewise been fulfilled: "And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matt. i6: i9). This has been true in the past and it will continue to be true in the future.
Christ's promise was fulfilled in the past. Pagan Rome has disappeared long ago. The altar of Jupiter Capitolinus has long since become a ruin. Today only a memory remains of emperors and kings who strove against the popes. But the papacy lives and flourishes in ever greater brilliancy.
The tomb of St. Peter, the Galilean fisherman, has remained an inexhaustible source of intellectual value for nineteen hundred years. History again and again has proved the truth of the French proverb : "Whoever bites the pope, dies."
How much the papacy has already seen and lived through! It saw the fury of the Roman emperors against the growing Church. And it saw most of them die in their own blood.
It saw victorious, fair-haired Teutons marching under Titus' arch of triumph, opening their blue eyes wide at Rome's splendor. And it saw the destruction of the Teutonic leaders and heard their funeral dirge.
It saw Charlemagne with the crown upon his head and it also saw the end of the Carlovingians. This same Church had long strifes with the Hohenstaufens, and saw the fair head of the last of them fall under the executioner's axe. It saw the ruling families of Europe come and go. It saw the Carlovin-gians, the Capets, the Valois; the Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman rulers, the Plantagenets, the Lancasters, the families of York, Tudor, and Stuart. It saw the Mongol leaders and the czars of Russia; it saw the Romanovs and Gottorps. It saw the houses of Arpad, Anjou, Habsburg; of Orleans, of Angouleme, and Bourbon. It saw the great Louis XIV in his glory, but it also heard the words spoken by a bishop, the great Massillon, at his grave: "Brethren, God alone is great." It saw the meteor of a Napoleon flash across European skies, and saw it expire. And this wonderful vitality of the papacy is maintained not by the might of arms; there are no cannons or bayonets at the Church's disposal. But a promise hovers over her, the words of her divine Founder: "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Persecution of Catholics by The Protestants in England (1535-1692):They suffered the extreme
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| A Catholic Preist Disemboweled Jesuits like John Ogilvie (Ogilby) (1580-1615) were under constant surveillance and threat from the Protestant governments of England and Scotland. Ogilvie was sentenced to death by a Glasgow court and hanged and mutilated on March 10, 1615. Engraving from Mathias Tanner, Prague: Typis Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae, 1675 |
penalty for maintaining the unity of the Church and the Supremacy of the Apostolic See, the doctrines most impugned by the reformation in all lands, and at all times. They maintained their faith almost entirely by the most modern methods, and they were the first to so maintain it, i.e., by education of the clergy in the
seminaries, and of Catholic youth in colleges, at the risk, and often at the cost of life. The tyranny they had to withstand was, as a rule, not the sudden violence of a tyrant, but the continuous oppression of laws, sanctioned by the people in Parliament, passed on the specious plea of political and national necessity, and operating for centuries with an almost irresistible force which the law acquires when acting for generations in conservative and law-abiding counties.
THE LAST WORDS AND THE DEATHS OF THE ENGLISH MARTYRS:Imprimatured 1878 "I am a Christian, and wear on my forehead the sign of the cross. By this sign I am confirmed against the devil and heretics—God’s enemies. I fear not your words nor your threats. I confess and adore on God. He created me to serve Him, and serve Him I cannot in any other but in the Catholic faith. This faith I profess. With the heart men believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For this faith I now desire to die more than I ever desired to live. No death can be more precious than that which is undergone for this faith, which faith Christ taught, and a hundred thousand martyred have sealed with their blood." (MARK BARKWORTH OR LAMBERT, PRIEST, O. P. B. AND ENGLISH MARTYR)A Partial List The Irish Martyrs:In 1669 Anthony Bruodin, O.S.F., published at Prague a thick octavo volume of about 800 pages, entitled "Propugnaculum Catholicĉ Veritatis", a catalogue of Irish martyrs under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth, and James, containing notices of about 200 martyrs,
Persecution Laws of Ireland and England(1558-1760 A.D...): These Unjust Penal (Persecution) Laws were imposed on a country ( Ireland ) that was 97% Catholic by the Anglican (Protestant) English
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| Persecution of Catholic Preists in England The Catholic priest, Ralph Corbington (Corby) (ca. 1599-1644), who was hanged by the English government in London, September 17, 1644, for professing his faith. Engraving from Mathias Tanner, Prague: Carlo Ferdinandeischen Universitat Buchdruckeren, 1683 |
Government
Ireland's Holocaust: As no Jew would ever refer to the "Jewish Oxygen Famine of 1939-1945," so nobody Irish ought ever, ever again refer to the "Irish Potato Famine."
Ireland’s Dishonored Marytrs: Their Mass Graves, THE LOCATION OF MASS GRAVES OF IRELAND 1845-1850 and the Identity of most of the British regiments that removed Ireland's food. Infantry regiments indicated by regiment number and county location.
The Suppression of English and Irish Monasteries under Henry VIII: From any point of view the destruction of the English and Irish monasteries by Henry VIII must be regarded as one of the great events of the sixteenth century. They were looked upon in England, at the time of Henry's breach with Rome, as one of the great bulwarks of the papal system. The monks had been called "the great standing army of Rome."
Suppression of the Catholic Monasteries in Continental Europe: Under the Protestant princes and the government of Napoleon.
The Persecution of Catholics in France by the Protestant Calvinists: By William Thomas Walsh 1937 Calvin: "Persons who persist in the superstitions of the Roman Antichrist . . . deserve to be repressed by the sword."
The Puritan Massacres of Catholics: BY Seumas MacManus 1921 "On October 2, 1649, the English Parliament appointed a national Thanksgiving Day in celebration of the dreadful slaughter—and by unanimous vote placed upon the Parliamentary records—"That the House does approve of the execution done at Drogheda as an act of both justice to them [the butchered ones] and mercy to others who may be warned by it."
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| Persecution of Catholic Priests in England In the image above is Brian Cansfield (1581-1643), a Jesuit priest seized while at prayer by English Protestant authorities in Yorkshire. Cansfield was beaten and imprisoned under harsh conditions. He died on August 3, 1643 from the effects of his ordeal. Engraving from Mathias Tanner, Prague: Carlo Ferdinandeischen Universitat Buchdruckeren, 1683 |
THE BLOODY CRUEL HANDS OF THE ANABAPTISTS:" The "New Jerusalem" (Münster), the founding of which was signalized by a reign of terror and indescribable orgies. Treasures of literature and art were destroyed; communism, polygamy, and community of women were introduced."
THE STAIN ON OLD GLORY: The hatred and persecution of the Catholic Church in America, "Now Archbishop John Hughes could answer the same bigotry that had driven his family from Ireland. 'If a single Catholic Church were burned in New York,' he thundered, 'the city would become a second Moscow."
The Priests of Dachau: For five years, Konzentrationslager Dachau, a short bicycle ride across the sodden moors northwest of Munich, was the site of the largest religious community in the world. Because many records were hurriedly burned as the American tanks approached in April 1945, the best estimate, based on clandestine lists kept by priest-prisoners in the work offices, is that 2,771 clergymen were interned at KZ Dachau — of whom at least 1,034 died in the camp. The 2,579 Catholic priests, lay brothers and seminarians came from 38 nations, from 134 dioceses and 29 religious orders and congregations.
Priests of the Holocaust: Seven hundred Polish priests were shot, and 3,000 were sent to camps, where 2,600 of them died. The majority perished slowly and methodically from medical experiments and starvation labor — compared to which a quick, horrible death in a gas chamber might have seemed a perverse kind of mercy.
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