For the Crime of Being a Priest

In addition to being the first Thursday of Advent this year, today is also historically the memorial of Saint Edmund Campion. If the paintings of him are to be believed, he is a man to whom I bear more than a passing resemblance.

We are approaching the five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation this year. Many continue to see this as a good thing. I don’t.

Here is one of many, many reasons why.

The matter-of-fact beginning to Edmund Campion’s entry on Wikipedia reads as follows:

Saint Edmund Campion, S.J., (24 January 1540 – 1 December 1581) was an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and martyr. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Anglican England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. Convicted of high treason, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

So there are some things to unpack here. I’ve spoken on this site any number of times of King Henry VIII (that bum) and his English Reformation. In brief, Henry (that scoundrel) seized the Church and monastic lands to enrich himself and his cronies, and he made belonging to any religion that didn’t recognize the King as its head an act of treason.

Catholicism was outlawed, and priests were hunted down and killed, for celebrating Mass was a crime against the state.

How very “reforming” of him.

Edmund Campion was, in his younger days, an academic who was apparently serene with taking the Oath of Supremacy to that most Protestant Queen, Elisabeth I. At some point he became reconciled with the Catholicism of his childhood and fled to Ireland, and then to the English Seminary in Douai, France.

He eventually went to Rome and became a priest of the Society of Jesus. He returned to England in disguise and began to preach.

He was hunted by the law, suspected of fomenting revolution or worse – Catholicism. He clandestinely published several pamphlets refuting the errors of the Church of England.

After preaching in Oxfordshire, he was captured by government agents. He was taken to London in chains with a paper sign pinned to him that said “Campion, the Seditious Jesuit.”

He was questioned by royal officials and offered the title of Archbishop of Canterbury if he would but recant his Catholicism¹. He refused and so was put to torture for several months before being arraigned and indicted on charges of conspiracy with several other priests.

The trial lasted four hours in total before the priests were found guilty of treason and the sentence handed down:

You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.

The priests joined in singing the Te Deum when they heard the verdict.

The sentence was carried out 11 days later. Edmund Campion was 41 years old.

One of the other executed priests, Rev. Alexander Briant, S.J., was 25 years old.

So there’s your reform.

(Edited and updated version of an older post)

1. I am reminded here of Matthew 4:8-10