Jan 22 William Paterson d. 1592 bl. 1929

Thommy and John

Good morning
I love you

Today flew by, flew away - my circadian cycle is kerblewie. A greek salad with two pieces of bread was my highlight of the day. So, a brief walk with a William saint….



Jan 22
William Paterson d. 1592 bl. 1929

By name and date you can guess William Paterson is one of the English martyrs. His story fairly typical for these saints - as if saintly stories are typical, but they are. That’s why the church raised them up for us to emulate. Ordinary men who responded to their vocation and the grace given to them to fulfill the call.

William Paterson was born in Durham - England, not down the street from Duke, but maybe in a duke’s neighborhood…. Because of the law that made it treason to be ordained a Catholic priest at a Catholic Church seminary, William Paterson had to go into exile to study for the priesthood. Chew on that for a moment. We take pride in our heritage with England in the rule of law. The USA took a different tact of the use of law than England - our laws should be to protect the individual from the state; the monarchy, especially regarding religion, made laws for protecting the state and monarch from the individuals who might preach that the fundamental premise of their reign had become wrong. The monarch changed the divine right of kings principle to eliminate the ‘divine‘ component of their right to rule. [Obama may lead us in a more Franco direction]

William Paterson studied at Reims [now few versions of spelling for this] where he was ordained in 1587. A year later William Paterson returned home to Elizabethan England - might that be an oxymoron? But it’s not. Your home may be analogous to Elizabethan England. Then you too have the responsibility to bring the cause of our Catholicism to the home front. Because? The first question of the Baltimore Catechism - why did God create us? To knowloveandserve Him in this world so that we may be with Him forever in heaven: our responsibility is to do what is necessary to bring ourselves and our family to God and heaven…. As it was dangerous for William Paterson to return home with support and conversion as his responsibility, so it is for us….

The crown arrested William Paterson in 1591 because he was a priest, thus a treasonous person deserving of death. Of course, all he had to do was renege on his baptismal vows - that would put him back into the good graces of the queen of his homeland and thus have the life that she wanted for him. Instead, while in prison, William Paterson converted other prisoners.

I love you
dad