- Feb 5, 2002
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The Friday Pillar Post
Happy Friday friends,
There are many feasts marked in the calendar today, if you’re keeping track.
It’s the feast of the seven holy founders of the Servites — the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
If your festal tastes run to the Celtic, today is also the feast of St. Fintan of Clonenagh, who was one of those sixth-century Irish monastics whose faith wasn’t so much formed as forged under severe religious rule and penitential practice, and who did so much to make Ireland a thriving center of evangelization in subsequent centuries.
It is also the feast of Blessed William Richardson of Hallam. Born in Yorkshire, he studied for the priesthood in Spain before being sent back to England at the height of the Elizabethan persecution. Once he was back home, he traveled under the name William Anderson but he was soon betrayed and arrested at Gray’s Inn in London.
He was convicted within a week and, according to the enlightened English common law custom, hanged, drawn, and quartered — probably the only method of execution to give the Roman practice of crucifixion and the Chinese death by a thousand cuts a run for their money for sheer barbarity.
Blessed William enjoys the distinction of being the last Catholic to be martyred under the reign of Bloody Queen Bess, who died barely a month after him, in 1603.
I mention William mostly because I had never heard of him until I came to write this newsletter, and yet his martyrdom has surely worked towards the salvation of England — or at least the country’s sparing from Almighty annihilation.
The saints and the martyrs are all around us friends, and they are greater in number than we realize.
But you would be wrong.
Continued below.
www.pillarcatholic.com
Happy Friday friends,
There are many feasts marked in the calendar today, if you’re keeping track.
It’s the feast of the seven holy founders of the Servites — the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
If your festal tastes run to the Celtic, today is also the feast of St. Fintan of Clonenagh, who was one of those sixth-century Irish monastics whose faith wasn’t so much formed as forged under severe religious rule and penitential practice, and who did so much to make Ireland a thriving center of evangelization in subsequent centuries.
It is also the feast of Blessed William Richardson of Hallam. Born in Yorkshire, he studied for the priesthood in Spain before being sent back to England at the height of the Elizabethan persecution. Once he was back home, he traveled under the name William Anderson but he was soon betrayed and arrested at Gray’s Inn in London.
He was convicted within a week and, according to the enlightened English common law custom, hanged, drawn, and quartered — probably the only method of execution to give the Roman practice of crucifixion and the Chinese death by a thousand cuts a run for their money for sheer barbarity.
Blessed William enjoys the distinction of being the last Catholic to be martyred under the reign of Bloody Queen Bess, who died barely a month after him, in 1603.
I mention William mostly because I had never heard of him until I came to write this newsletter, and yet his martyrdom has surely worked towards the salvation of England — or at least the country’s sparing from Almighty annihilation.
The saints and the martyrs are all around us friends, and they are greater in number than we realize.
The News
Maybe you think you know something about the political situation in Venezuela. If so, you might think that a story about the country’s senior archbishop getting into a very public fight with a very senior politician is par for the course.But you would be wrong.
Continued below.
Martyrs everywhere, journalism in Venezuela, and the ‘truth’ on YouTube
The Friday Pillar Post
www.pillarcatholic.com
