The saintly queen and our great nation
The Friday Pillar Post
Ed Condon is on vacation this week, so for a change of pace, we’ve asked our good friend and Pillar columnist Steve White to write The Friday Pillar Post.
Steve is the author of “Red, White, Blue, and Catholic,” so we thought he’d be just the right guy for the Fourth of July.
Happy Friday friends,
And a very happy Independence Day to each and every one of you!
Ed of the House of Condon is out on vacation this week.
Hopefully Ed is detonating some marginally legal fireworks in order to ensure the King of England doesn’t sail across the Pond and put tax stamps on our Mountain Dew or attempt to quarter redcoats in our McMansions.
Then again, Ed is fairly well English himself, so maybe his absence today is really just a way to avoid having to declare his true loyalties.
Either way, today you are stuck with me, Stephen White, and this is your Fourth of July Pillar Post!
In addition to being the 249th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, today is also, in most parts of the Church, the memorial of Queen St. Elizabeth of Portugal, canonized in 1626.
Queen St. Elizabeth was born in the late 13th century to the royal family of Aragon, in what is now Spain. She married Denis, the farmer-poet King of Portugal, who reigned for almost half a century.
Queen St. Elizabeth was notable for her piety and her profound love for the poor. When King Denis died, she entered a convent of Poor Clares as a Franciscan tertiary.
With the exception of a few occasions when she had to settle political rivalries between her son, King Alfonso IV, and the king’s illegitimate half-brother, Afonso Sanches (blessed are the peacemakers) Elizabeth spent the remainder of her days caring for the poor and sick.
Elizabeth’s great aunt, Elizabeth of Hungary (for whom Elizabeth of Portugal was named) was also a third order Franciscan, and a canonized saint.
Elizabeth of Portugal’s mother was Constance II of Sicily who gets a brief mention in Dante’s “Purgatorio” — when Dante encounters King Manfred, Constance’s father and Elizabeth’s grandfather.
Manfred has a unique claim to fame: He managed to get himself excommunicated by three successive popes in life, but at least in Dante’s telling, he repented on his deathbed.
The point is, Queen St. Elizabeth had some interesting ancestors. And she had some very interesting descendants, too.
One of her direct descendants was Catherine of Aragon.
Catherine, of course, was the first (though hardly the last) wife of Henry VIII of England. Royal lineages being what they often were, St. Elizabeth also counts among her direct descendants one Philip II of Spain. Philip is mostly remembered by Americans (if he is at all) as the king who sent the ill-fated Spanish Armada against England in 1588.
But before the unpleasant armada affair, Philip had been married to Mary Tudor, the only child of the aforementioned Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to survive past infancy.
Henry was a boor and a tyrant. He had little compunction about lopping the heads off his wives (two of the six), off his friends (Thomas More, among them) and off the Catholic Church in England (the dissolution of the monasteries begun under Henry is one of the greatest religious and cultural atrocities of the last 500 years). He had declared himself head of the Church in England but had not really embraced the Reformed theology of the day. In short, Henry had made England not-Catholic, but he had not quite made England Protestant.
When Henry finally died, his only living son, Edward VI, succeeded him. Edward would die before the age of 16, but it was during his reign, and with help from his regents, that Protestantism began to take root in England in earnest. And it was during Edward’s reign that Mary and Philip were wed.
Eventually it was Mary, a Catholic with a Hapsburg king for a husband, who ascended to the throne and became Queen of England. Catholicism was restored, but briefly.
Mary died without an heir after a reign of just four years. Her half-sister, Elizabeth, took over and the rest, as they say, is history. England became ever more deeply Protestant and Philip set about building his armada to sail against his great rivals and erstwhile in-laws. That, as we’ve established, ended badly.
And so it was English Protestants, for the most part, who established and settled the British colonies of North American in the 17th and 18th centuries, even as Catholic Spain colonized most of the Caribbean, Mexico and central America, and much of South America.
Now, this being the 4th of July, you’re probably wondering, “Why is this schmuck rehashing so much arcane, royal nonsense on the Fourth of July of all days! Doesn’t he know about freedom? And fireworks? We ditched the royals long ago, on purpose! When is Ed coming back from vacation?”
And I get all that. I even share the sentiment. But bear with me, because we’re just now coming to America.
See, it was under Philip II that Spain established the first settlement at St. Augustine, in what is now the state of Florida. And there, on September 8, 1565, was celebrated the first Holy Mass in what would eventually become the territory of the United States of America.
That’s the point: The history of Catholicism in the territory of these United States predates our beloved Declaration of Independence by more than 200 years.
And one of the most significant days in American Catholic history happened because St. Elizabeth of Portugal’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson wanted to create a buffer between the colonies of New Spain (in Mexico and the Caribbean) and the colonies of those perfidious English Protestants who were also, sort of, his in-laws.
While St. Elizabeth of Portugal is not well known in the US today (her feast is actually moved to July 5 here in the US to make room for Independence Day) the saintly queen and her many descendants have shaped Catholic life here in the United States in ways very much worth remembering.
At the very least, we American Catholics, in this great, mostly-Protestant nation of ours, can ask for her intercession. And as citizens of a rich and powerful nation, we can follow her example, by acknowledging our greater responsibility to caring for the poor, the sick, and the lowly.
“Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required.”
The news
Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the prefect for the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith, announced Monday that judges for the long-anticipated canonical trial of Fr. Marko Rupnik have finally been selected.
Fr. Rupnik is accused by some 30 women of sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse over the course of several decades.
Rupnik, a world-famous mosaicist, was previously convicted by the DDF of sexual crimes related to the sacrament of penance and briefly excommunicated, expelled from the Jesuit order, and then incardinated into a diocese in his native Slovenia as a priest in good standing. It was only after a major outcry from abuse survivors that Pope Francis agreed, in 2022, to waive the statute of limitations on the charges against Rupnik.
The details of Cardinal Fernandez’s updates on the case are reported here.
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He talked with The Pillar about his concerns for an Africa without help from its American partner.
Still, Luke Coppen took a crack at answering a critical demographic question.
The program is having great success and is growing quickly. But the focus remains on the dignity of those they serve. “I want everyone to feel welcome and loved when they walk through the doors,” says the program’s director, Steve Havemann. “I want the service to always be with dignity and respect.”
Read about the inspiring work being done in Des Moines, here.
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A years-long dispute between Opus Dei and the Spanish Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón may be nearing a resolution. At issue is the administration and finances of a shrine at Torreciudad which was significant to St. Jose Maria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, and which has been under the care of the prelature since the 1960s. Hopefully this kerfuffle finds a happy resolution.
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According to The Pillar’s sources, Pope Leo XIV is expected to appoint on Saturday a new president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
In an analysis published yesterday, JD Flynn gives some insight into who that might be, and why it matters.
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In this week’s Pillar Columns:
I asked about the “synodality endgame,”
And Dan Lipinski wrote, very well, about faith and patriotism.
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Maybe you have heard. Maybe you haven’t.
Earlier this week Rome-based American journalist Diane Montagna published selections of leaked Vatican documents which appear to indicate that the world’s bishops did not favor a clampdown on the Traditional Latin Mass when they were surveyed in 2020. These documents appear (there’s that word again) to contradict one of the primary justifications Pope Francis gave for his restriction of the TLM through the 2021 motu proprio, Traditionis custodes.
On Thursday, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, specifically declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the leaked documents, but insisted that, if they are authentic, the documents represent “a contribution to a very partial and incomplete reconstruction of the decision-making process.”
You can read The Pillar’s report on the Vatican press conference, here.
The leak has kicked off a round of furious speculation about whether Pope Leo XIV will rescind Traditiones custodes in full or in part. Whether that will happen or not is anyone’s guess, but in the meantime, when liturgy is up for discussion, one can always expect fireworks.
Speaking of fireworks…
Happy Birthday, America!
Twelve score and nine years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We haven’t always been exemplary in living up to that proposition. Yet it is just this proposition which remains the animating principle of American life.
For all its faults–and there are many–the American republic remains an extraordinary and improbable achievement. It is an achievement well worth celebrating.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…
These days, it is easy to be cynical about our public life. Over time, this cynicism can eat away at the sort of civic friendship which holds us together. When that happens, it is bad for us, bad for our neighbors, bad for the whole community. Love takes effort. That’s true whether we’re talking about personal relationships, our relationship with God, or our civic relationships.
In this sense, celebrating the Fourth of July is to citizenship what a good date night is to a happy marriage. It’s a chance to deliberately set aside the everyday anxieties and stresses (those will still be there tomorrow) and celebrate the one we love. The Fourth of July is a chance to revel in what is best in America. It is a chance to be grateful for the incredible blessings we so easily take for granted. And it is a chance to refresh and strengthen our love for a country that not only deserves but needs our love.
Chesterton wrote, “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” Our country needs citizens who love her. America needs citizens who love her enough to defend her, to make her stronger, to heal her wounds, to correct her injustices, and to build her up into the best version of herself. The love we show for our country is not the fruit of our country's greatness; it is the cause of her greatness.
As it happens, I am rarely in the States on the 4th of July. Work requires me to travel to Poland each July, so over the past 20 years, I have spent exactly one Independence Day in my native land. This year will be my second. I love the Fourth of July, but I also miss it.
Not this year.
My family and neighbors have plans. Fireworks have been procured. Beer is being chilled. Our flag is flying. And my amazing wife has collected sufficient ingredients to feed Chicago-style hotdogs to the entire neighborhood. There will even be a Cubs-Cardinals game to listen to on the radio.
Today I pray in thanksgiving for the blessings of this great nation. I pray that our many sins and failings be corrected and forgiven. And I pray that we, her citizens, will always love her well enough to make her what she ought to be.
Have a great Fourth of July. And finally, if you can, become a subscriber to The Pillar. Ed and JD would really appreciate it:
God bless,
Stephen P. White
Supreme-editor-in-chief-for-the-day
The Pillar
Well done Supreme-editor-in-chief-for-the-day!
Long Live the Grand Republic!
I keep saying, again and again, that America has always really been a Catholic country. With minor exceptions in some central plains areas, the Catholics were “always there first”. Catholics explored and settled and evangelized the Northeast, the Great Lakes and Midwest, the Deep South, the South and Southwest, the West Coast, the Rockies, and even Alaska (vis-a-vis an Apostolic link through the EO) before significant protestant presence arose. A conquistador, de Soto, was the first to cross into Arkansas - Arkansas! Squanto was a Catholic! Our Glorious Republic is built on Aquinas’ principles of ideal government.
I mean, Canada never fought for its independence, and it’s the only North American country that the Virgin Mary has not stopped by to visit and say hello. Just remember, canucks: we fought and bled for our independence, so that you wouldn’t have to.
So, three hearty cheers for our fine and noble Union, indivisible and under God as our trust! In Deo Speramus!