30 August – Feast of St. Margaret Clitherow.
Posted on 30 August 2020 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
Today is the Feast of the "Pearl of York", St. Margaret Clitherow, an English martyr, killed horribly by pressing in 1586.
She helped priests, which brought the terrible death they inflicted on her on 25 March, "Lady Day" which was also Good Friday.
They stripped her, layed her on her back, put a fist sized rock under her spinal column, placed the door of her house on top of her and then started to add weight. In 15 minutes, her back snapped and she died.
She was pregnant.
St. Margaret Clitherow, pray for us.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem about here. HERE
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Clinton R. says:
It is horrific the suffering inflicted upon St. Margaret Clitherow. And pregnant?! Planned Parenthood immediately comes to mind. May St. Margaret pray for the return of the English people to the Catholic Faith and for all of us to be courageous in the face of evil, which has become even more prevalent in recent months.
Tell me again how Christendom benefitted with the Protestant reformation? And Elizabethan England always struck me as a Western version of a Moslem area with its jihads, jiyza and persecutions
Thomas S says:
When asked, St. Margaret said it was *possible* she was pregnant. The law wouldn't allow for the execution of a pregnant woman, but the English "Reformers" were so debased in their savagery and heresy that they executed her anyway. The very ribs bursting through her skin. Absolutely heinous. What a wonderful woman.
The Horan of Babylon will never be even a third the woman Margaret Clitherow is.
Gaby Carmel says:
She refused to plead, because if she did plead, then her children and the young boy who lodged with them could be made legally to witness against her, and she would not allow them to undergo such an assault on their consciences. And yes, though the judges knew that she was probably with child, I imagine it was early enough in the pregnancy that it did not show: so they went ahead with the execution, designed to instill fear in everyone: after all, for them, her refusal to plead was a tremendous challenge against the Law and the legal system then in existence, and they wouldn't allow it to be challenged… Apparently her daughter eventually became a nun on the continent, and her two sons became priests.
mysticalrose says:
The only thing that I do t understand is that we always say, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith." I take it as a truism. But where is the faithful flowering of Catholicism in England these long centuries later?
mysticalrose,
It's smothered under the Novus Ordo imposition like everywhere else.
Indeed, Thomas S. Indeed.
Imrahil says:
Dear mysticalrose,
from what I hear, the English Catholic Church did make a splendid revival in the midst of the 19th century, about the time the hierarchy was triumphantly reestablished. To this day, our lot are sort-of stuck with* reading English Catholic controversialists like Mr Chesterton Fid.def., Msgr. Benson, and Msgr. Knox. St. John Henry is a prime example of the English gentleman and the Catholic philosopher in the meantime. And then there's of course Tolkien, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Alfred Hitchcock and, to give the "lighter muse" its due, Lord Fellowes. Also, we just can't get off quoting C. S. Lewis in and out, who, while rather desperately tried to sort-of singlehandedly keep of the Christian intellectual life of the Anglican Church, was brought up in his faith (in adult life, that is) in predominantly Catholic circles.
Even in our day, if you imagine "an Englishman who is a believing, practicing Christian", you will naturally assume again that he is a Roman Catholic. The Anglican Church, while having good music and possibly still more adherents on the books, has run its course. And if you think of a prime example of a Catholic parish in all the world, the answer still is "the Brompton Oratory, London".
While "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the faith" is a statistical observation, as it were, and certainly no deterministic law of nature – the Catholic Faith really has blossomed again in England.
[* I intend no disrespect to Professor Kreeft, who to all I hear (I have read little of him) really is one of the great apologists of our day and who is American, not English.]
Chris in Maryland 2 says:
What a courageous daughter of Jesus!
And what filthy pornographic murderers were the "Church of England."
Would that the Roman Catholic Church might wake up and show respectful memory of its own martyrs like Margaret Clitherow, and pray The Roman Canon at Holy Mass.
NOCatholic says:
mysticalrose: English Catholicism since the persecutions has produced one saint (St. John Henry Newman) and several noteworthy apologists like G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Ronald Knox.
The blood of St Margaret of Clitherow and the other English saints of the so-called "reformation" was not spilled in vain.
Sorry, I should have said "St Margaret Clitherow" (not "of Clitherow".
Imrahil and NOCatholic: I am duly chastened! That is good fruit indeed!