Welcome

I'm just getting things started here at Recusant Corner. I'm a Roman Catholic convert from Anabaptist/Evangelical Protestantism and plan on writing my thoughts here (probably mostly theology, but other stuff as well).

It's hopefully going to be a refuge from Polemics where I can try to operate on the principle 'live and let live'.

Why Call it Recusant Corner?

I'm a history major and my niche in Catholicism is a movement known as Recusancy (wikipedia it). Recusants were the Catholics who refused to submit to the Established Church of England and resisted to the point of martyrdom and persecution at first, and in later years at least were forbidden from public worship.

I find it a fascinating movement and some English Catholics even today like to style themselves Recusants. St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion (and all the Tyburn martyrs), John Donne (for a while), William Shakespeare (probably), were Recusants, as well as later figures like: Alexander Pope, Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Lord Acton, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others.

Canada (where I live) is technically ruled by the English Monarch who is the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, so technically, and in a very vague impractical sense I am a Recusant.

Many Recusants were Jacobites, and on this blog, you'll find a strong support of the Stuart line rather than the Hanoverian usurpers of the inGlorious Revolution of 1688-9.

Some abbreviations you might want to know so they don't confuse you:

CofE : Church of England - Anglican Church - Established Church
R.C : Roman Catholic
Papist : Roman Catholic
Puritan : Reformed Protestant
Prelate : Anglican
Fr. : Father (indicating a Catholic Priest)
Bp. : Bishop
Abp. : Archbishop
Ven. : Venerable (Level in sainthood/canonization after blessed)
Bl. : Blessed (1st Level in canonization)