Madmen and Englishmen

Tony Blair was one of my favorite politicians in the world.  He was British Prime Minister from 1994 to 2007 as a member of the Labour Party. He was a most eloquent speaker and a true leader.  I used to watch the British Parliament on cable TV some Sunday nights and marveled at how he could make his adversaries look so small by the power of his argument.  A great man, in my estimation.  After he left office he converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 2009 to join the faith of his wife.   I recall reading that he waited to convert until after he left office because he would have caused a scandal to do it while he was still British Prime Minister. 

I've often wondered why there is so much hate, discrimination and outright animus against certain people and certain religions.  Catholics and Protestants distrust each other, as if we worshiped a different God; we don't.  I've heard both Catholics and Protestants make the most silly arguments against the other.  One friend of mine, regards evangelicals as some kind of odd fringe group; they're not.  So what drives this bias?  

I love reading the monthly magazine, First Things, a magazine that deals with issues of the day, especially those that touch on religion and the public square.  In the February 2021 issue there is a story about Edmund Campion (1540-81) and Elizabeth Anscombe.  Campion was born a Catholic but became an Anglican, since in his day, to be anything other than an Anglican in England was akin to being a bank robber or a murder.  King Henry the VIII had left the Catholic Church in 1533 in order to fulfill his madness of marrying multiple women so he could have the heir he wanted.  Henry, I believe, was totally insane.  All you have to do to verify this is look at what he did, the people he had executed for no reason other than he got up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to take it out on innocent people, many times people close to him.  To name just a few, he murdered two of his wives, Ann Boleyn and  Catherine Howard on fraudulent charges.  Click here for details.  Can you just imagine, today for instance, if the the king or Queen of England could order the execution of anyone he wanted?

Back to Edmund Campion.  After he converted back to the Roman Catholic Church he became persona non grata and a wanted, hunted fugitive. After being ordained a priest in 1578 in Rome, he secretly returned to England and joined a Jesuit order.   As the piece in First Things states, this was akin to being a British agent in a German occupied territory in WW II.  He was finally arrested and, along with two other priests convicted of "treason" and hanged.  As if being killed was not enough, he was then drawn and quartered; all for being a Roman Catholic.  Can you say that madness was rampant in those days?  Again, let's not be too bewildered.  Severe animus against people of other religion is still strong in England as it is in many other places.  God help us.

Edmund Campion was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886 and canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970.