In a Word . . . Reformation

Be very afraid all you Papists out there. Current or lapsed, or both. Not because 500th anniversary celebratio….sorry, commemorations of the Reformation are almost upon us.

They appear to have begun even as Fr Luther's taking his hammer and 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenburg happened on October 31st, 1517. It was his defiant "non serviam" (I will not serve) to the Pope of the day which set in train a series of events we are still coping with.

In particular, the split in Western Christendom and the rise of capitalism with which Protestantism will be forever linked. And, as though to prove that nothing succeeds like success, who but Pope Francis himself, successor to Pope Leo X, so vigorously slighted by Fr Luther, attended celebratio….sorry, commemorations of the Reformation in Sweden last week.

But no. It is events tonight in our neighbour’s house we should be fearful of. There they will celebrate the failure of one `horrid popish plot’ to blow up the Houses of Parliament using gunpowder. Nowadays they are so much more sophisticated. They use referendums.

Yes, it is `Guy Fawkes Night’ when Londoners mark with unbridled joy the failure of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5th 1605. Then when a group of English Catholics tried to assassinate Protestant King James and replace him with a Catholic head.

Among them was one Guy Fawkes, placed in charge of gunpowder stockpiled under the House of Lords. Tipped off by an anonymous letter, the authorities found him with his explosives. "How do you do?" they said. "So good to see you. My name is John Johnson, " he replied, in that most polite English way. NOT.

Though he did say his name was John Johnson.

He was questioned, tortured, and confessed - in the very best fashion, already then perfected to an art by the already centuries-old Inquisition of the Catholic Church. So primitive.

We are more sophisticated now. "In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement, certainly," as Oscar Wilde observed. And that was just the men.

Guy Fawkes was executed on January 31st, 1606, only 89 years after the Reformation began. Such progress.

Reformation, meaning improvement or change for the better, originated in Mid 15h century English from the Old French reformacion, itself from the Latin reformationem.