America Magazine Honors The Usurper Of Canterbury

From Whispers:

The Editorial Board of America is proud to announce that The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, is the 2009 recipient of the Campion Award. The award is given on a regular basis to a noted Christian person of letters. It is named after St. Edmund Campion, S.J., who is patron of America’s communications ministry.

America, which we've quoted here before, is a famous (infamous?) Jesuit publication. I think Rocco exaggerates by calling it American Catholicism's flagship publication, though.

Anyways, let's consider the above action. First, you've got an ostensibly Catholic publication handing our accolades to an avowed heretic and schismatic who plays at being a real bishop while, in the midst of complete pandemonium amongst his alleged flock, has the audacity to lecture the Vicar of Christ on correct doctrine and proper ecclesiastical government. Just do a search for Rowan's name on this blog for examples.

St. Ed Campion was a Jesuit himself, martyred by Elizabeth I during her quest to elevate herself and Rowan's ancestral pretenders above the Church established by God Himself. St. Edmund was famous for his "Brag" against Elizabeth and the Privy Council. it's clear from the Brag that he very much wanted a public disputation on the issues of the Faith:

I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

Of course, Liz and Company didn't give him any such thing and opted instead to torture him repeatedly, usually on the rack. This proved St. Edmund wrong on at least one point:

Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation.

You probably didn't get much of this in the Cate Blanchett BS hagiography of Liz.

Eventually, St. Edmund was hanged, drawn, and quartered.

And centuries later, his brothers, claiming to be faithful Sons of Ignatius, grant honors to the leader of the cause against which he fought. This is offensive to the point of blasphemy:

The prohibition of blasphemy extends to language against Christ's Church, the saints, and sacred things.

Catechism of the Catholic Church #2148.

And people wonder why the Jesuits are viewed in such a negative light. I wonder what St. Ignatius himself would think of such an action.

I conclude with some final bits from Campion's Brag, which the staff of America either haven't read or hold in complete disdain:

And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.