(1) The Pilgrimage of Grace (Historic UK)

“The policies of Henry VIII did much to change the country and shape its future; those who resisted with the Pilgrimage of Grace have since fallen into the shadows of history.”

Have they really fallen into the shadows or are they more like the flickering flames of a candle? Many of the martyrs who resisted are memorialized in the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs at Westminster Cathedral and on Tyburn. But you could argue that England has lived in the shadows ever since the Dissolution, and certainly the version that exists today is a very dark place indeed.

If England has a pulse, it’s ALIVE in places like Walsingham, Canterbury (St. Thomas Becket), and in parishes all over England where the Eucharist is celebrated at Mass. Countless Anglican churches have been turned into coffee shops, galleries, and community centers, and in some local communities only open as museums when they can find volunteers from the parish community to open the doors.

(2) A related quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.” Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”