Posted on 07/07/2013 4:05:57 AM PDT by markomalley
It was my first encounter with a "priest hole." I had read about that architectural feature of some great English manor houses in history, but I had never seen one.
Recently, my wife and I toured Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Va. It is not a reproduction of an English manor house. It is the very thing.
(snip)
That’s where the priest holes come in. Our guide, a young, bearded and most knowledgeable Falstaff of a fellow, noted that it was a capital crime to celebrate Mass in Elizabethan England. Priests were publicly hanged for doing it. Nobles and higher gentry could find their lands and estates confiscated by the Crown for the "crime" of worshipping as Roman Catholics.
So many of the great houses of England, especially in the North Country, were built with hiding places cleverly concealed from searchers. There, they could quickly pack away their clerics and rosaries, vestments, Douay Bibles and even the prie dieus on which devout Catholics knelt and prayed.
(snip)
All of this is in grave danger today. Under this administration and under the threat of militant atheizers, our liberty is endangered as it has not been since 1786. President Obama’s HHS mandate would force Catholic institutions to violate their consciences and discard the pro-life tenets of their religion.
So, will there be priest holes in America?
Will we see again the kind of religious persecution so many of our forebears came to America to escape?
It was England’s King James I, ostensibly a Protestant, who threatened religious dissenters of his day with the heaviest penalties. "They will conform, or I will harry them out of the land."
Is that what Christians in America today are being told?
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
My little opus is really directed at the guys in the pointy hats called miters. During the 2012 I organized a hand full of parishioners to put home made cartops on their cars with a save lives anti abortion message on their vehicles in the parking lot pre and post all (Catholic services) masses at the parish church I attend.
A chief usher (retired public school teacher)and a KC member Obama supporter objected and hassled members for those signs at the mass he was ushering. Yet he shows up with Obama signs and stickers all over his vehicle.
Now my opus is going to show up as a leaflet on every vehicle parked in that lot for all the masses when the time is right good Lord willing. And would urge others to do the same.
Will There Be ‘Priest Holes’ in the U.S.A.?
No need. We are better armed then those folks were in England.
What is a “coopted” ? Thank-you!
I think I forgot the dash (co-opted).
To neutralize or win over (an independent minority, for example) through assimilation into an established group or culture
In the case of the clergy, they are co-opted by the Left with rewards (gov't tax benefits and social acceptance) and punishments (media propaganda and social rejection).
For years, any time we were looking at houses for sale, my kids and I would talk about where in the house we could find or create priest holes. We got some strange looks from various real estate agents.
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