Harry’s Place

I have a number of very close friendships, with people who are enormously dear to me: but only the one with my wife is sexual in nature. I’m not sure if I’d have any particular desire to be buried with somebody other than her, but people are entitled to be a little odd about these things.

Check out the grave of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He IS buried with his wife…but not only her.

Obviously a “great English converts to Catholicism” thing: to be laid to rest unconventionally.

No doubt ignorant and otherwise meddling and ill-informed and malicious anti-Catholic types will say “It is said that Chesterton went in for troilism”, and “we can only speculate about the nature of how they saw their relationship” (which, in accordance with the law of wikipedia about sourcing information, gives new weight to those who in the first place said “It is said that….”, whereas until that sentence had the been uttered the truth is hardly anyone had said that) .

But, ah, as the maiden name of his wife was Blogg, one will be gentle in this context

As for relics, I have it on good authority that the Birmingham Oratory Fathers have some of Newman’s hair.

I have also been led to believe that any decision about beatification is not imminent.

And death is not the end

“And death is not the end”

That would be nice, but I think you are wrong.

The thing I would most miss about being dead is not being able to see how things turn out.

The thing I’d miss about being dead is not having five minutes with the theists, in order to smugly tell them ‘I told you so!’ as we’d depart for eternal nothingness. I do hope it’s not the other way round.

However, we can only speculate about Cardinal Newman and Father Ambrose St John understood their relationship

I’m convinced, that though attracted to each other, the relationship was entirely platonic.

As a child I knew a priest and a nun that had a very close relationship, and were often seen together.

It was clear they were fond of each, had many common interest etc and had both been lay people, would perhaps have married.

But both just enjoyed a very close friendship ( still do, I believe), and nothing more.

As for the fact that only the Cardinal’s tassels remain, seeings the story behind all of this, it IS a miracle.

He is where he is meant to be, and those unscrupulous individuals seeking to remove his remains, against his last wishes, and put them on display for profit have been put out of business.

Geez, all they’ll find of me in 200 years will be two porcelain crowns

My entire existence, my being, reduced to two shards of pottery.

That said, we go somewhere after we die

JohnP - I’m glad you’re pleased about this.

The idea of digging him and sending his relics on tour is not especially grisly by the standards of the Catholic Church. Poor old Pope Formosus was dug up, his remains put into the Papal vestments and then put on trial. It was concluded that he was unfit to be pope, so the corpse thrown into the Tiber. (Though he was later buried properly, so that’s okay).

That said the whole idea of saints and relics is something of a hang over from the Middle Ages, when attitudes towards life and death were very different from how they are today.

JohnP - I’m glad you’re pleased about this.

Well, it is the height of arrogance to disrepect an individual’s dying wishes.

If I ask to burried under an oak tree, I’d kinda hope they wouldn’t dump me under some gummy old blue spruce.

I have many complaints about the catholic hierarchy in England, actually.

Also there are other pairs like Ambrose St-John and cardinal Newman in Church history.

And as for corpses and relics?

There is a Carmelite convent ( on Avenue des Carmelites) just blocks from where I live. It is cloistered. Its 5 acres of land and buildings hidden behind tall stone walls. I’ve often passed by it, but could never see in.

My room-mate’s work-friend is a nurse and practising Catholic. She knows these nuns well. Without asking either of us, she asked the mother superior if we could visit.

Mother Superior said yes.

Beautiful grounds, flower-beds, trees and such, and a wonderfully decorated chapel chock full of stained glass.

But it’s down in the crypt where things really get interesting.

There is a little-known prayer shrine deep under the chapel, accessed by a small wooden door that leads to a set of steep stone steps, where the order’s Quebec founder lay exposed.

They go down and pray every day.

She died in the 1780s ( I believe), is mommified, but yet still looks so incredibly life-like.

Her state of preservation had to be seen to be believed.

It was spooky and it just blew me away.

John P.

Well, it is the height of arrogance to disrepect an individual’s dying wishes.

It makes me sick.

I have to take issue with Peter Tatchell’s protest of the disinterment of the Cardinals remains.

Mr Tatchell’s view, that the Church is only doing this, in order to “cover up Newman’s homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man” (as he said to the Times in August), is quite simply another example of ignorance and obsession wrapping around themselves.

Leaving aside the issue of the Cardinals sexuality, Peter Tatchell clearly has no real understanding of the the role of saints and relics in the catholic church. This coupled with seeing almost everything through the prism of Gay activism, or dare I say it, crusading, has led him to yet again erroneous conclusions.

Personally I think dividing up the bodies of the deceased and scattering them around the world, for the reverence of the faithful, morally wrong. I think this wrong is compounded if it defies the stated will of the deceased.

Syd Walker,

Harry’s Place does not have to give you a platform to spout your vile ignorant hatred, on a topic concerning Cardinal Newman.

You make quite a bit of fuss about Free speech, but it seems that along with many other subjects, you understanding is limited.

Tim Allon - ‘The thing I’d miss about being dead is not having five minutes with the theists, in order to smugly tell them ‘I told you so!’ as we’d depart for eternal nothingness. I do hope it’s not the other way round.’

Tim, though I wholeheartedly agree that eternal nothingness is our destiny, surely, this is one time when it might be good to be proved wrong!

As for relics, I have it on good authority that the Birmingham Oratory Fathers have some of Newman’s hair.

Is hair a relic? That is amazing on so many levels.

David T: Did you see in the JC there is an argument among the disciples of Nachman about whether to dig up his remains from Uman and transfer them to Jerusalem.
http://www.thejc.com/node/5410.
With your fascination for Nachman, look out for the Mazurski film mentioned in this report.
I had only dimly heard of this Nachman phenomenon before your HP post on him, and never dreamt that weeks later, I would get news of the husband of a cousin of mine in SA, who has just returned to SA after spending Rosh Hashana in Uman at the grave. He had promised his family who are in dire financial straits, that he would bring back miracles, presumably the result of endless chanting of Na na nachman. The rest of us feel strongly he would have been better placed back home helping his wife tend to their failing business.

David, it all depends on which direction the theists told you you were going in. Even if I was given the golden ticket to paradise, it would be hell dealing with the embarrassment of having been so wrong. I’d probably have to wear a hoodie or something.

I think a contemporary Dante would present purgatory as being not entirely dissimilar to an average comments thread at Harry’s Place…one would hope it would not endure for all eternity…

“Church officials exhuming the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman were surprised to discover that his grave was almost empty when it was opened on Thursday”

Surely, to qualify as a Saint, his body would have had to remain in perfect condition after all this time? Sounds to me like standards may be dropping in the Church.

Venichka, have you actually read Dante?

St Augustine is right, one of teh signs for santification is incorruptible flesh and the sweet smell of roses when the grave is opened. Did Cardinal Newman meet those criteria?

The whole thing about relics and pilgrimages is one of the dividing lines between the Roman Catholic and Anglican Church. Anglicans/Protestants don’t go in for such superstitious mumbo-jumbo. By the way there’s a very funny short story by Somerset Maughan about a pompously pious man who dies and goes up to heaven. As he is waiting in line to be introduced to God, God accidentally squashes him beneath his heel. Can’t remember the name of the story, but has anyone else read it?

St Augustine is right, one of teh signs for santification is incorruptible flesh and the sweet smell of roses when the grave is opened. Did Cardinal Newman meet those criteria?

I think that may be what the Russian Orthodox Church require

Anglicans/Protestants don’t go in for such superstitious mumbo-jumbo
Walsingham….anyone?

have you actually read Dante?
In the original as well as in translation, yes

Oh, and Somerset Maugham was one of the favourite English authors to be taught in the Soviet education system

Actually, Boccaccio writes quite a lot of funny stuff about the Catholic Church (his own Church, of course) in the Decameron. One of the stories is about a criminal friar or monk who dies in a boarding house and is forced to lie about his past while confessing his sins, to avoid causing any distress or bad publicity to his hosts. For of the sake of his hosts’ honour, he denies himself any salvation and knows he will therefore go to Hell. But his confessor is so impressed with the innocent life he presents that he is eventually canonised and his bones turned into holy relics.

I think the whole thing is a load of Papal Bull!

I’m sorry, but it’s just not true, this Venichka has never read any of my works.

JP wrote:

As for the fact that only the Cardinal’s tassels remain, seeings the story behind all of this, it IS a miracle.

Oh I dunno, I reckon I can come up with a couple of natural explanations which would be altogether more parsimonious than any supernatural ‘explanation’.

As for the Catholic church not respecting folks wishes, that’s quite common. Another recent example that springs to mind…. I’m less than convinced that ‘Mother Teressa’ wanted her private letters to her church mentor published that detailed her atheism, even if they were comedy gold.

Venichka: What are you suggesting? Of-course Smoerset Maugham was beloved by the Soviet Educational system. He wrote English like it should be writ. Pellucidly. Agatha Christie is the same.

“Oh, and Somerset Maugham was one of the favourite English authors to be taught in the Soviet education system”

That’s interesting - he was a spy in Russia during the Kerensky era. Perhaps they liked him because the English in his stories are imperialist adulterers.

Have there been any instances where governments have refused to allow disinternment?

Ridiculous medieval nonsense. And these people are allowed to run schools…

I’m not sure in general that governments (who not infrequently cause disinternments to construct roads, housing, industrial buildings, etc) historically have had much say-so over such matters: I could be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that in England & Wales that the authority in such matters has lay (possibly until very recently) with the religious body in charge of the burial grounds, not the state.

Certainly, this story (which may or may not be representative, but was the best thing that some quick web searching brought up) , from 2003 would seem to suggest as much: although it is always possible that the CofE has different prerogatives from anyone else, at least in England

Yvonne Ridley Alby Seligman (Edited by Brett) - look here (I can’t vouch for the veracity of anything therein, but, it’s the BBC, so should be fairly reliable…)

EDITOR’S NOTE TO “Albert” (aka “Alby Siligman”)

I have asked you several times in the past to stop posting under other people’s names.

I am asking you again. It confuses the discussion and is an act of bad faith. Please stop it.

I gather that there are circumstances in which exhumations may be carried out when grave yards are built upon (I’ve seen museums display corpses, so the rights of the dead not be be dug and and exhibited do not necessarily apply). But if someone who is recently deceased - like Mother Teresa - and was canonised by the Vatican, are there any cases where this would be refused by a government?

My heart said that Cardinal Newman should remain where he is and that the government should defy the Catholic Church, but my head said that displaying corpses has been carried out previously without any outcry and that once there is no-one alive that remembers the deceased the bones no longer have any emotional or legal claim over the body. As the man has now been eaten by worms, it doesn’t really matter any more.

If Hitler had expressed the wish to be buried in Israel, would it have been arrogant of us to have refused?

It only takes a few comments before the “H” word appears.

Never fails.

From Tassles to Fürhers with an economy of bandwidth.

JP wrote:As for the fact that only the Cardinal’s tassels remain, seeings the story behind all of this, it IS a miracle.

Look, Im assuming the tassles in question were the kind one would stick onto a Cardinal’s hat.

There’s tassels, and then there’s ‘tassels’, ya know.

Have there been any instances where governments have refused to allow disinternment?

Not sure, but in this instance it was a grave mistake!

Even if I was given the golden ticket to paradise, it would be hell dealing with the embarrassment of having been so wrong.

I’d be more worried about an eternity of praising The Lord. Eternity is an inconceivably long time and I’ve never enjoyed singing hymns.

Nick: Groan.

Eternity is an inconceivably long time and I’ve never enjoyed singing hymns.

What a peculiarly English (or more generally North-western European) thing to say.

Well if the hymns are better elsewhere, or eternity shorter, then I may reconsider.

All that remained were a brass plate and handles from Newman’s coffin, along with a few red tassels from his cardinal’s hat.

Perhaps the rest of him was bodily assumed into Heaven? I mean, being Catholic and all.

Well, you could go to a low mass, where you’d get no hymns, or a missa cantana (with Gregorian chant), or almost any kind of “tridentine”/extraordinary form of the roman rite service (ie “latin mass”) in which participation is largely internal. Far more aesthetically pleasing and duly reverent IMHO.

Then there is always the Orthodox Church.

The report on Nachman says the reason he chose to die there was
There were two pogroms here, in 1749 and 1768, which had left behind upwards of 20,000 martyrs, mainly, in his words, of “simple Jews.”

Rabbi Nachman felt obliged to “rectify” these souls. In addition, he said, Uman was a centre of the nascent Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement. The souls of those caught in this trap also needed “rectification”.

The reason his followers want to move him to Jerusalem now is:
“Ukraine is one of the world centres of prostitution. It is not a seemly place for those who visit the grave on Rosh Hashanah.”

Also as pilgrim numbers have swelled to 20,000 facilities in the village are inadequate.

“Pope Pius who conspired with the Nazis is on his way to sainthood.”

Pope Pius who conspired with the Nazis is on his way to sainthood against Stalin.

There; fixed that for you.

“It makes me sick.”

Come on now. You didn’t need any help with that.

Not the old “Pius XII and the Nazis” line, please!

As someone once said, “Tell a lie big enough…” In fact, Pius XII was first ever called “Hitler’s Pope” by John Cornwell, in his 1999 book of that name, a thinly disguised liberal rant against John Paul II with the ‘thesis’ that the future Pius XII, while a diplomat in Germany, could have rallied Catholic opposition and toppled Hitler. Pure fantasy, like the origin of the whole “Pope supported Hitler” craze: the 1963 play ‘The Deputy’ by Rolf Hochhuth, who was later successfully prosecuted for suggesting that Churchill had arranged the 1944 air crash that killed General Sikorsky.

Pius XII directly or indirectly saved between 8500 and 9600 Jews in Rome; 40,000 throughout Italy; 15,000 in the Netherlands; 65,000 in Belgium; 200,000 in France; 200,000 in Hungary; and 250,000 in Romania. This list is not exhaustive, and the Dutch figure would have been much higher had not the Dutch Bishops antagonised the Nazis by issuing the sort of public denunciation that Pius is castigated for failing to have issued.

After the War, Pius was godfather when the Chief Rabbi of Rome became a Catholic, and was declared a Righteous Gentile by the State of Israel, whose future Prime Minister (Moshe Sharrett) told him that it was his “duty to thank you, and through you the Catholic Church, for all they had done for the Jews.” When Pius died in 1958, tributes to him from Jewish organisations had to be printed over three days by the New York Times, and even then limited to the names of individuals and their organisations.

All of this is contained in works of serious scholarship by Margherita Marchione, Ralph McInerny, Ronald J Rychlak, and others, most recently the superlative Rabbi Professor David G Dalin.

I think a contemporary Dante would present purgatory as being not entirely dissimilar to an average comments thread at Harry’s Place…one would hope it would not endure for all eternity…

If Venichka really has read Dante, he clearly failed to understand it. The whole point of the punishments inflicted on the sinners is that they are contrapassi: in other words they are tailored to the crime. The best example is Betrand de Born who, in Inferno, is punished for having divided the Young King Henry from his father by encouraging him to rebel. As he observes “Così s’osserva in me lo contrapasso”.

The punishments follow the same principles in Purgatory, although of course the idea is to understand the nature of one’s sin (and atone for it, of course) so that one can enter paradise. Therefore if Venichka were to endure a purgatory of an HP comments thread it would be a punishment for having wasted his time spouting specious and heretical drivel across the internet.

Diogging up Newman is completely pointless unless you can persuade David Baddiel to revive the partnership.

See those ratlines leading out of the vatican? That’s you that is.

Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust was shameful and cowardly, but to say he conspired with the Nazis is wrong. He did contribute to the clandestine saving of a significant number of Jews, but was never quite able to bring himself to make public proclamations against the Nazis. It is fantasy to suggest that his authority could have toppled the Nazis, but he certainly could have exerted some influence on those Catholics who were happy to participate in the murder of Jews.

That said, introducing his supporting role in the very public conversion to Catholicism of a high profile Italian Jew, would not normally be considered the strongest defence of his reputation against the charge of antisemitism.

His inability to condemn the expulsions and forced conversions to Catholicism of the Ustasha (whose leader Ante Pavelić was granted a private audience with the Pope) was not his finest hour either.

Erm, Bill, that was precisely my point, old boy, as would be obvious to anyone of sensitivity and intelligence (ie a fairly high proportion of the other commenters on this thread)

Well its not all bad - the tassels (probably) qualify as 2nd class relics and can be distributed as needed.

ami David T: Did you see in the JC there is an argument among the disciples of Nachman about whether to dig up his remains from Uman and transfer them to Jerusalem.

Fortunately for us, the Ukranian government doesn’t want to give up the remains because they enjoy financial re-imbursement from the air-head Jews who journey there to ‘pay their respects’ to the old codger.

Ven is purging himself of sin merely by reading these threads.

The shriving effect of HP eh Graham?

mea maxima culpa…domine non sum dignus

Ven
You’ve got to stop giving it away that your a softy for the Extraordinary Form. People will start talking you know :)

Yeah, but more often that not one wouldn’t say that stuff aloud in the EF, you know. Latin novus ordo - sure, you would….

I’ve been to EF’s here in Australia with friends where the laity recite the “mea culpa” aloud - I’m not sure what the participation is like where you are?
(Noting that I am not a Christian though so I could have misunderstood what was going on)

….an atheist ‘Thought for Today’….

the definition of ‘dead air’?

Christianity, SFAIUI frowns on homosexuality being practiced not homosexuals. Curse the sin, not the sinner, something like that.

Judaism sees it is unhygenic and, like animal cruelty, an introduction and beginning of other far worse and dangerous behaviours (and sometimes it is). Except for those Jews that don’t see it that way of course.

BTW If you could open your mind to what is miraculous at all times then you could not function for being both in wondrous awe and abject terror at the same time. The truth hurts you see.