Pilgrim Ways

Chapter Thirteen - Tyburn In 1910 Catholics decided to mark the execution of more than one hundred Catholic martyrs at London's Tyburn Tree by inaugurating an annual walk. Sadly, in the year 2000 the organisers announced that the walk was to be discontinued. Predictably enough, many have felt that this would allow the memory of those terrible events to fade. Yet, maybe the disappearance of an organised annual event should act as a spur to develop a new walk of witness which can be undertaken at any time by individuals, small groups or by parishes. In this chapter I suggest an outline for such a walk of witness and then some other locations which capture the spirit of the recusant families who refused to conform and were prepared to sacrifice everything, including their very lives, for the right to hold firm in their religious faith. The culmination of the pilgrimage - in every sense - is Tyburn Convent, home to a congregation of cloistered Benedictine nuns.

Westminster Cathedral And Abbey My starting point would be Westminster Cathedral and the chapel of the martyrs - where a glass case contains the remains of the Lancashire martyr, St.John Southworth, who died at Tyburn on June 28th, 1654 (see chapters Fifteen and Sixteen). Here, too, is the tomb of the late Cardinal Hume, where many people visiting the cathedral now stop and pray (see Chapter Sixteen). Walking along Victoria Street to Westminster Abbey, plinths on the western entrance house the statues of modern martyrs drawn from all denominations (see Chapter Sixteen). These include Oscar Romero, St.Maximillian Kolbe, Deitrich Bonhoffer and Martin Luther King. Inside the Abbey is the tomb of the sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, responsible for many of the deaths of Protestant and Catholic martyrs alike. During Tudor and Stuart times about 350 martyrs from both traditions died for their beliefs. Protestants died as heretics, and many were burnt at Smithfield under the Catholic Queen Mary. Her father, Henry VIII, as well as executing Catholics who stayed loyal to the papacy and disputed his divorce, also executed Nonconformists, and many others died under Elizabeth, James I, Charles I and Charles II. Under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, and during the Commonwealth, Catholics were executed for being illegal priests, for sheltering or helping priests, or for participating at Mass, or persisting in Catholic beliefs. In the Abbey an inscription appears on the tomb of the two sisters which reads: "Consorts both in throne and grave, here we rest, two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary in the hope of one resurrection." Perhaps that can be our own hope, today, as we consider the themes of suffering and penance which spring from these stories of religious intolerance and persecution: the hope of one resurrection. The word martyr has Greek roots and originally meant "witness." Predominantly the word has been used to describe a willingness to surrender life itself rather than disown faith in Christ. A walk of witness associated with the martyrs might usefully challenge us to consider what price we might be prepared to pay in upholding our faith today. The true witness has to learn how to walk the pilgrim's way in a spirit of tolerance and humility while steadfastly holding on to the central tenets of faith. In Life After Death, (Christian Democrat Press 1997), I illustrate the willingness of some of our contemporaries to pay a real price for their beliefs: Barbara Janaway, a secretary at a medical practice who lost her job for "gross misconduct" because she refused to process a green form requesting an abortion; Stephen Clark, an environmental scientist, who suffered a similar fate for refusing to monitor the stack of a hospital in Salford where the remains of unborn babies were being burnt; Patrick McCrystal, who lost his job as a pharmacist for refusing to dispense the morning after pill; Simon