5 November is a Roman Catholic feast day for all Jesuit saints and blesseds.
That a religious organisation has a feast day is unsurprising. What is interesting is, why 5 November?
One informed guess is that it is a payback for the far more famous celebration on the same day, Guy Fawkes Day aka Guy Fawkes Night aka Bonfire Night aka Fireworks Night aka the more formal Gunpowder Treason Day.
This is the day in 1605 when the plan by Guy Fawkes and other recusants to blow up the English parliament – and the king – was discovered. The conspirators and others were swiftly executed and the parliament soon passed “An act for a publick thanksgiving to Almighty God every year on the fifth day of November”. It remained on the books for over 250 years with a preamble calling out “many malignant and devilish Papists, Jesuits, and Seminary Priests”.
The saying “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man” is often attributed to Jesuit founder Ignatius de Loyola. Whatever the truth of the attribution – others say Aristotle – it does remind us that inculcation is education’s most powerful tool. For centuries, English children were instilled with the rhyme:
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot…
Where peace and forgiveness sits with a song ending “And what should we do with him? Burn him!” is a matter for others.
The day is still celebrated in the UK, although it has lost much of its political flavour and the new religion of health and safety makes bonfiring and fireworking more likely to be a community event.
The US experience has good irony. Pope Night was celebrated as early as 1623 in Plymouth and soon became a riotous affair for the lower classes. Come the revolution and Boston leaders had the bright idea of enlisting Ebenezer Mackintosh to unite gangs on Pope Night in protest against the Stamp Act.
The first irony is that “protestant” when we are talking about the Anglican Church is a very curious thing. Yes, it is “protestant” in the sense that it along with many European organisations “protested” against the long established Church of Rome. But it, ie the Anglican Church, then formalised its protest by making itself the established church of England, in turn breeding complaints about its rapid self-abasement and the need for “purification” by – you guessed it – “Puritans”.
The second irony is that the wicked English king was now German, of the Hanover family brought in by English leaders for the explicit purpose of ridding the regnal bloodline of the Catholic gene.
The third irony is that in 1774, the English parliament in a moment of tolerance passed the Quebec Act, giving French Canadians the right to practise catholicism. This, together with concern that the Roman church in Europe was anti-independence, led to a fresh interest in Pope Night. General Washington was having none of it, and announced in 1775:
As the Commander in Chief has been apprized of a design form’d for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the pope—He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this Juncture; at a Time when we are solliciting, and have really obtain’d, the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, whom we ought to consider as Brethren embarked in the same Cause.
So much for the first president. Almost two centuries later Mr Kennedy took his run and his catholicism was hugely controversial in a very tight campaign against Mr Nixon. The latter had to wait eight years to 5 November 1968 for the ultimate prize. Another half century on, it is doubtful whether more than a handful of voters turned their mind to the fact that Mr Biden had become the nation’s second catholic president.
