I am always astonished that so many people come. And then, pondering the importance of the thing, I’m puzzled at my astonishment.
We always get a good crowd for the Martyrs’ Walk, held now for several years on the Sunday nearest to the feast of Ss John Fisher and Thomas More. It follows the route of martyrs from Newgate to Tyburn. Like the Tyburn Walk organised by the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom, which for many years followed this same route, we conclude with Benediction at Tyburn Convent.
We are not the only group that walks the route during the course of the year and certainly not the only pilgrimage honouring the martyrs – Tyburn has a constant stream of visitors from all over the world. But I am still touched and impressed that a good number of people will turn out on a summer Sunday to walk through London, praying the rosary and stopping at Catholic churches, to commemorate the heroism and sacrifices of four centuries ago.
One paradox of recent times is that the English martyrs are now better known to younger Catholics than they have ever been. Following their canonisation in 1970 by Paul VI, the English martyrs began to give their names to schools and colleges. Thus pupils at, for example, St John Payne School in Essex or the new St Richard Reynolds College in Richmond-on-Thames think of these saints as their own, in a very open and public way. The Catholic aspects of our country’s history have, as it were, come out of the shadows and into everyday life.
Two papal visits undoubtedly helped – especially Benedict XVI’s visit in 2010 with that dramatic candlelit vigil before the Blessed Sacrament in Hyde Park – just yards away from where Catholic priests were hung, drawn and quartered for affirming and proclaiming their belief in that Sacrament.
And there is a sense in which the old “Protestant version” of Britain’s history now longer quite works: the notion of Elizabeth I as Gloriana and Britain as a bastion of Protestant splendour against the evils of Roman superstition, with God definitely on Britain’s side and our whole national identity resting on a break with Rome. Rather, following the Catholic revival of the 19th century, a different understanding soaked into the national consciousness: a sense of continuity as being valuable rather than an emphasis on a break in the story, a feeling that Gothic churches had a natural place in the landscape, that tales of old saints were acceptable alongside those of kings and heroes. And with that came Gothic Revival architecture – notably our Parliament with its church-like spires and mosaics of our national saints.
Today, following the collapse of Empire, the changes following two world wars and the 1960s social revolution, and decades of immigration, the old notion of a Protestant island has gone. Catholicism in Britain has lost all its aura of strangeness and is simply a part of the jigsaw that is modern British life.
Opposition to the Church does not come from earnest Protestants but from campaigners who dislike any form of Christianity that makes serious moral claims. It is our defence of marriage as the lifelong union of a man and a woman, and our commitment to the sanctity of human life in the womb, that arouse anger and passion, rather than, for example, our recognition of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament that we venerated in Hyde Park.
And so the Martyrs’ Walk today has a different feel from the walks of even the recent past, when a proclamation of Catholic faith was an assertion against a Protestant establishment. At this year’s Martyrs’ Walk a spontaneous outbreak of applause greeted the speaker who affirmed that, even if it meant facing penal action, it was necessary to affirm that marriage is, of its very nature, the union of one man and one woman, and cannot be a union of two members of the same sex. The very fact that it is indeed possible that the speaker could face legal action for making such a statement would have seemed incredible just a few years ago.
Of course we want to walk to proclaim our faith. Of course we want to honour our martyrs. We need to draw from their example, to celebrate their courage, to have a sense of unity with their prayers and to know that they can intercede for us in our own struggles.
And more. We begin our annual walk in the churchyard of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. Only when I checked on a bit more of that church’s history did I realise that it too has its martyr: a Protestant clergyman from that church was burnt alive in the reign of Queen Mary, doubtless to the same heckling mob that could be rallied to jeer as a Catholic martyr was dragged on a hurdle to Tyburn a few years later. Today, the vicar and team at St Sepulchre’s allows us use of the churchyard with graciousness and we respond in the same spirit.
At the turn of the millennium St John Paul II asked movingly for forgiveness for wrongs done in the past and urged a new message of Christian unity for the future.
As we are now in that future with all its challenges, walking in prayer through the streets of our ancient capital city seems a wise and not an astonishing thing to do.
Joanna Bogle organises the annual Martyrs’ Walk and regular Catholic History Walks through London. For more information, visit catholichistorywalks.com
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