A Los Angeles-based writer reflected in an October article that this year’s annual Catholic Mass at the now-Anglican Canterbury Cathedral in the United Kingdom was especially significant and “shows God is working.” For the first time since Henry VIII, the liturgy was celebrated by none other than the papal nuncio to the UK, Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia.
“The sound you may be hearing is Henry Tudor spinning in his tomb,” Robert Brennan joked in his article in Angelus News.
Canterbury Cathedral, Brennan wrote, “has been at the heart of the Reformation in Great Britain for 500 years, and even today serves as the seat of the main prelate of the Church of England.” However, he noted the church’s origins are much older — St. Augustine founded it in 597 A.D., according to the Tablet.
The annual July 7 Mass is in remembrance of St. Thomas Becket, who was martyred inside the church in 1170.
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Brennan argued that the history accompanied by the cathedral underscores God’s care for the faithful, even during intense persecution.
He reflected on the tumultuous time that Catholics in England lived through during the Tudor era, writing that for Catholic noblemen and commoners to witness their king “turn on the Church, reject that very Faith he once defended so well, and start his own church must have felt like the end of the world.”
Shortly after, Henry’s daughter Queen Elizabeth I severely persecuted and suppressed the Church.
“Priests were martyred, monasteries ransacked, and for many faithful Catholics it actually was the end of their world,” Brennan wrote. “And for all of those who survived the persecution, it was at best a terrible and utter sense of defeat. Yet, amidst it all, there stood Canterbury Cathedral.”
Though the Catholic Church seemed to be burned to the ground, Brennan emphasized, “the embers would not go out. Slowly, in God’s time, not ours, those embers were fanned, and the fire never went out.”
Continuing, Brennan wrote, “I can easily imagine saints like Thomas Becket and the great English martyr Edmund Campion smiling down just a little today seeing the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus being distributed within the confines of a cathedral whose origin dates back to St. Augustine.”
He observed, however, that there is discouraging data about how often Catholics today attend weekly Mass and on the decreasing numbers of people with religious beliefs. Brennan also writes at a time when many faithful today are up in arms about other events that have been allowed to take place at the cathedral like a disco party in 2024 and graffiti that dishonor the sacredness and heritage of the cathedral. However, Brennan argued there is reason for hope despite declining numbers.
The feelings of defeat that such statistics bring, he argued, is “Just the kind of hopelessness God responds to. And we can rest assured that God notices, and he will take care of business just like he seems to be doing at the Canterbury Cathedral.”
“We want answers now,” he wrote. “God, not a prisoner of either time or space, will get to it when he gets to it. So let us all rest easy. God will find a way to set things right, even if it takes 500 years.”
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