Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord January 3, 2021 ...

Saint Joseph Catholic Church P. O. Box 365 117 South Main St.

Loreauville, Louisiana 70552 (337) 229-4254 FAX (337) 229-4255

Rev. Barry F. Crochet, Pastor Rev. Godwin Nzeh CMF, Associate Pastor Deacon Christopher Doumit, Pastoral Assistant

[email protected] stjosephparishonline.org

MASS SCHEDULE Saturday Vigil Mass — 4:00 p.m. Sunday — 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. [Temporary] Monday and Friday — 6:45 a.m. at Our Lady of Victory Wednesday— 6:45 a.m. at Saint Joseph Tuesday and Thursday — 5:30 p.m. at Saint Joseph First Saturday — 8:00 a.m. at Our Lady of Victory

SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION Every Saturday from 3:00 p.m. to 3:40 p.m. and one-half hour before all weekday Masses, or by appointment during office hours.

OFFICE HOURS Monday through Thursday — 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. If possible please conduct parish business by phone or email.

RECEPTIONIST/BOOKKEEPER/CEMETERIAN Mrs. Gail Borel — [email protected]

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION Mrs. Sherry Hebert — [email protected]

EUCHARISTIC ADORATION The Adoration Chapel is closed until further notice. The Main Church is open from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. for your convenience.

FUNERALS A Funeral Service in church without Mass will be celebrated along with a graveside service at the cemetery.

SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM Baptism will be celebrated with godparents and immediate family only. Those with compromised immune systems should not attend. Families may opt to delay the baptism until the whole family can gather in celebration. In the case of an emergency Baptism is always permissible.

SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY Weddings are to be celebrated according to the Rite for celebrating marriage outside of Mass with immediate family only. Engaged couples may wish to consider rescheduling their weddings, if possible.

SACRAMENT OF ANOINTING OF THE SICK “Anointing of the Sick will remain available as needed by the faithful.”

Please pray for our parish family members who are sick: We invite you to submit the names of people who are in need of our prayers.

Please note that our office will purge the names on our sick list every quarter. We ask anyone who lists someone’s name to please call the parish office to add or remove a name.

Glenn Romero, Stuart Sandoz, Duffy Domingue, Eric Clements, David Louviere, Hayden Ransonet, Trevor Louviere, Vanessa Courville, Austin Willett, Willey Poirrier, Inez Barras, Helen Bastian, Butch and Debbie White, Guy Thibodeaux, Lydia May, Louis “CoCo” Landry Jr., Jerry Fruge, Jimmy Clifton, Rowena Borel, Megan Scully, Maxine Latiolais, Dawn Derouen, Falyn Sonnier, Rickey Sonnier, Caline Provost, Patricia Freyou, Lecia Broussard, Jason Walker, Michael Theriot, Roshondra Nora, Noah Abraham,

Jimmy LeBlanc, Chad Borel, Sophie Bonin, Ashley Hebert, Stephen Dugas, Bonnie Hebert, Jon-Luke Lancon, Jade Delcambre, Gail Louviere., Pat Villermin., Ira Bourque, Hailey Thomassee, Lon Prioux, Francis Crochet, Brennan Wingfield, Lawrence Albert, Betty Suire, Joe Judice., Lisa Adcock, Joan Arceneaux, Jamie Brady.

Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord January 3, 2021

O God, Who on this day revealed Your Only Begotten Son to the nations by the guidance of a star, grant in Your mercy that we, who know You already by faith, may be brought to behold the beauty of Your sublime glory.

Mass Intentions — 1/2 — 1/8

Saturday 4:00 p.m. — Rita Lou and Wayne Louviere, Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Aymar “Poon” and Beulah Dugas, Ide Dugas Family, Alexis Laviolette Family, Wayne LeBlanc, Lily Mae and Alvin LeBlanc, Otto Sr. and Laurence Girouard, Terradot Family, Theresa Girouard Allen, Chad Romero, Deyna Champagne, Audrey Crochet, Jordan Prince and Special Intention, Barry Eldridge and Ned Broussard Families, Melvin Dugas, Roy Sr. and Gladys Berard, Forbus and Myrtle Mestayer Sr., Granger and Mestayer Family, Ronald, Sr. and Mildred Gonsoulin, Leed and Mabel Gondron, Fred Laviolette, Louis and Grace Moran, Virginia Frioux, Lennet and Marie Antoinette Crochet, Clenie and Eve Segura and Billie, Sally Domingue, Cabrol and Domingue Family, Martha Escagne Rodriguez, Lloyd Broussard, Claude and Felicie Granger, Nancy Broussard, Clarence and Hilda Landry, Billie and Armance Barrilleaux, Kay Dooley and William and Dolores Dooley, Earl Mestayer, Kim Decuir, Ossie Romero, Jr., Dorothy T. Latiolais and Kathy Latiolais Holtzclaw, Dr. John Rellus Hebert, DDS, Renee’ Landry Hoffpauir, Phil Dore, Greg Bodin, Byrns Berard, Juliette B. Berard, Andrew Bonin, Jr., Brett and Clay Broussard, John Sonnier, Jr. and Marie and John Sonnier, Sr., Alma Jo Landry, Landry and Ryan Family, Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Peltier, Sr., Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Sunday 8:00 a.m. — John Michael Steiner, Jay Gonsoulin Family, Paul Sonnier Family and Clyde Warfel Family, Loto and Leah Louviere, Antoine “Boy” LeBlanc Family, Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Albert Sr., Champagne and Landry Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Maude Granger and Warren Granger, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Granger, Dr. Raymond Schneider, Elaine Schneider, Skip Schneider, Lolly Harbin, Breaux and Delcambre Families, Lenwood Delcambre, Emus Borel, Gwen Borel, Chataignier Family, Joe and Rita Habetz, Mary Kay Habetz, Tom Voorhies, Oris Cormier, Lloyd Dugas, Lovel Romero, Suzette Judice, Antoine and Marie Judice Family, Catherine Defelice and Tracey Defelice Guilbeau, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. 10:00 a.m. — Alvin and Faye Tauzin, Edmonia Tauzin, Marcel and Nadage Broussard, Jimmy Eldridge, Elaine Plessala and Eldridge Family, Cheryl Segura, Pliny Walet Family, Agnes Breaux, Louis and Elbay Judice, Boots Thomas, Joe Boudreaux and Justin Boudreaux, Katie Boutte, Sandra Angelle and Glenn Angelle, Solari Family, Clayson and Lillian Dugas, Loto Louviere, Jr., Gam and Velma Gondron Louto and Anite

December 27, 2020 Regular Sunday Offering Envelopes $ 3,636.00

Regular Sunday Offering Loose $ 2,566.00

Weekly Budget $ 7,385.00

Regular Collection Total $ 6,202.00

Difference - $ 1,183.00

Present Loan Balance $ 297,851.58

Donation Against Loan Balance $ 200.00

Insurance Balance 2020-2021 $ 30,581,00

Insurance Collection $ 376.00

Christmas Day $ 10,403.06

The Sanctuary Lamp is burning for Renee’ Landry Hoffpauir

The Vocation Chalice is in Church Please pray for vocations. If you would like to have the vocation chalice

in your home please call the rectory office at 229-4254

Flowers on the Altar Landry and Ryan Families, Judice and Richard Families

Dupoy and Lasseigne Families, Lancon and Thibeaux Families

The Bi-Monthly Statue is in the home of Parishioner

The Weekly Statue is in the home of Parishioner

Saint Joseph Altar Candles are burning for: Delcambre and Breaux Families, Jon-Luke Lancon

Deyna Champagne and Chad Romero Landry and Champagne Families

Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory Pope, Priests, Religious Protection from and end to Corona Virus

Charles and Jackie Poirrier Family, Wayne “Butch” Judice Perry M. Judice, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Crochet

Mike Thibodeaux, Liz and Glen Delahoussaye Mr. and Mrs. Collins Louviere and Kerney, Mr. and Mrs. Will Roberts

Gondron Family, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Monday 6:45 a.m. OLV — Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Tuesday 5:30 p.m. StJo — Steven and Donna Berard Family, Special Intention, Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Wednesday 6:45 a.m. StJo — Andrew “Tupee” Bonin, Jr., John Michael Steiner, Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Thurday 5:30 p.m. StJo — Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet. Friday 6:45 a.m. OLV— Gam and Velma Gondron, Landry and Champagne Families Ancestors and Descendants and Souls in Purgatory, Pope, Priest, Religious, Protection from and end to Corona Virus, Judice and Walet Families, Msgr. Richard Soseman, Ruben Rogers, Elizabeth Capps Rogers, Wayne Rogers, Alfred Crochet, Claude Hebert, Cecile Hebert, Deacon Jay Bergeron, Archbishop Harry Flynn, Sue Crochet.

We invite all of our parishioners to begin the New Year by consecrating themselves to the Virgin Mary according to the plan of Saint Louis de Montfort. Using this book by Father Michael Gaitley — 33 Days to Morning Glory — the method of Saint Louis has been updated with meditations from Saint Theresa of Calcutta, Pope Saint John Paul II and Saint Maximilian Kolbe. This book will lead you on a personal 33 day journey in preparation for Marian Consecration.

The book is available at the Saint Joseph parish office for $12.00.

Please pray for our priests, seminarians, deacons and religious

Eternal Father, we lift up to You these special sons and daughters. Sanctify them. Heal and guide them. Mold them into the likeness of Your Son, Jesus, the Eternal High Priest. May their lives be pleasing to You. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.

January 3 Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel/Seminary Faculty,

Parents and Benefactors of Seminarians Dcn. Thomas Richard/Sr. Mary John Billeaud, OCD

January 4 Bishop Emeritus Michael Jarrell/Luke Kirk Dcn. Charles Smith/Sr. Alberta Billeaud, OCD

January 5 Rev. Chaplain Col. Louis V. Ledoux/Alex Lancon Dcn. Tom Sommers/Sr. Aimee Bodin, OCD

January 6 Rev. Mark LeDoux/Jacob LeBlanc Dcn. David Vaughn/Sr. Jacinta Cormier, OCD

January 7 Rev. Austin Leger/Bret Lee Dcn. Michael Yenik/Sr. Mariette David, OCD

January 8 Rev. Lambertus Lein, SVD/Calvin LeMaire Dcn. Reggie Bollich/Sr. Teresa Benedicta Folmer, OCD

January 9 Abbot James Liprie, OSB/Rev. Mr. Seth Lemaire Dcn. Wade Broussard/Sr. Elizabeth Heredia, OCD

Please make an appointment for your home

Exorcism and Blessing Make it happen!

229-4254

Catholic Exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger Calls on Faithful to Recite Prayer to Bind the Evil Spirits

and Satanic Forces Until Election Oddities are Resolved

Prayer of Command

In His Name and by the power of His Cross and Blood, I ask Jesus to bind any evil spirits, forces and powers of the earth, air, fire, or water, of the netherworld and the satanic forces of nature. By the power of the Holy Spirit and by His authority, I ask Jesus Christ to break any curses, hexes, or spells and send them back to where they came from, if it be His Holy Will. I beseech Thee Lord Jesus to protect us by pouring Thy Precious Blood on us (my family, etc.), which Thou hast shed for us and I ask Thee to command that any departing spirits leave quietly, without disturbance, and go straight to Thy Cross to dispose of as Thou sees fit. I ask Thee to bind any demonic interaction, interplay, or communications. I place N. (Person, place or thing) under the protection of the Blood of Jesus Christ which He shed for us. Amen. Please put your family, the United States of America and the duly elected President as the intentions in the Prayer of Command. Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

January 1 1876 Cecile Say 1897 Irma Jones

1928 Euselieu Landry 1930 Gladys Ambroise 1934 Marcelite Latiolais

1938 Inez Gardner 1944 Celestine Prados 1948 Gloria Broussard

1950 Barbara Bonin 1958 Alida Barras

1966 Yola Broussard 1985 Darin Dressel 1990 Elise Lecamus

1992 Marcel Broussard 2009 Louis Judice

2010 Goldie Bonin

January 2 1895 Infant Vital

1904 Ms. Oscar Prumel 1905 Melanie Broussard

1915 Jean Lecamus 1933 Jerissa Bonhomme 1935 Victorin Crochet

1969 Lucie Dugas 2010 Thomas Eldridge

January 3

1898 Infant Provost 1904 Friville Doucet 1917 Ramsey Prosper

1930 Eugenie Gonsoulin 1931 Avery Gardener

1931 Rose Rice Antoine 1941 Marie Arnaud 1941 Carlos Dugas 1942 Renee Boutte

1981 Laurence Walet 2000 Ethel Broussard 2015 Elizabeth Boutte

January 4

1877 Marie Decuir 1884 Josephine Crochet 1902 Antoine Broussard 19076 J.B. Chalembert 1907 Paylonyre Louis

1933 Whitney Bonhomme 1940 Louis Landry

1948 Jean-Baptiste Tauzin 1969 Emile Gondron

1998 Felix Breaux 1999 Mable Mouton

2003 Louclae Faucheaux 2019 Arthur Joseph, Sr.

January 5

1893 Infant Bonin 1900 Infant Borel

1904 Infant Provost 1958 Harold Broussard 1958 Darrel Broussard 1968 Rhule Broussard

1980 Alex Seneca 1982 Elise Judice

1997 Ozaire Chatagnier 1999 Wilson Guillot Sr.

2006 Elvie Segura 2015 Vickie Prados 2017 Ury Louviere

January 6

1884 Cora Dupuis 1899 Ms. Louis Simon 1904 Alexandre Irma 1926 Olympe Dressel

1936 Clay Hebert 1942 Alfred Dugas 1950 Edward Vital 1999 Aline Guillot

2000 Louis Theriot Sr.

2005 Morgan Thomas 2005 Madison Thomas

2014 Pliny Walet 2018 Delores Fontenette

January 7

1900 W. Castilleau 1911 Eugine Plessela

1935 Felise Oubre 1941 Infant Washington

1942 George Judice 1954 Jeanne Trappe’

1981 Suberville Louviere 1989 Emerite Peltier 2003 Bernie Prados 2017 Theresa Pierre

January 8

1875 Jean Moulis 1895 Infant Belloy

1902 Auguste Vincent 1934 Arsene Sim

1935 Marie Celina Vital 1940 Eva Aristide 1951 Maria Louis

1967 Emile Gondron Sr. 1973 Delia Walet

1979 Otto Louviere 1991 Marcelle Judice

1992 Frances Townley 2002 William Ryan

2005 Iris Dugas 2014 Francis Trahan

2015 Anthony Broussard

January 9 1904 Alphonse Meyez 1906 Daisy Louviere 1910 Henry LeBlanc 1918 Revest Dugas

1918 Philomene Borel 1919 Ota Dugas

1920 Norbert Broussard 1940 Antoine Washington

1962 Elise Gondron 1963 O’Neil Dugas

1987 Vernon Gonsoulin 1994 Hervey Emonet

1996 Eddie Edler 2003 Charles Broussard

2007 Darnell Warfel 2011 Emmadell Freyou

January 10

1901 Ms. Morbert Prince 1910 Elmire Dugas

1919 Eugena Broussard 1944 Bertha Anthony

1953 Ms. Albert Lissard 1961 Dozite Broussard 1990 Viola Broussard 2013 Kayn Bourque

January 11

1898 Albert Gonsoulin 1910 Azel Champeaux 1911 Ellen Gonsoulin

1919 Moise Dugas 1931 Chester Myers

1933 Doristan Broussard 1948 Emaelius Lamperez

1967 Aurelie Lacamus 1976 Moise Courville 1983 Arnette Mestayer 1990 Addie Boudreaux 1990 Curley Boudreaux

1998 Marie Dupuis 2003 Noelon Broussard

2018 Walter Burke

January 12 1886 Bantatine Blanchard

1904 Infant Provost 1909 Pearl Guidry

1932 Infant Gonsoulin 1948 Octave Bonin

1968 Florence Broussard 1976 Egbert Domingue

1979 Clara Ransonet 1986 Leo Broussard 1989 Felicie Chastant 2010 Sybil Mullican

January 13

1875 Mathilde Dugas 1881 Abraham Warrick 1898 Infant Broussard

1901 Hipolyte Chatagnier 1910 Marie Braquet 1933 Oride Oubre

1939 Cornelius Pierre 1987 Mary Moulis

1990 Dewey Broussard 2016 Olan Mestayer

January 14

1910 Carmen Decuir 1919 Mayo Broussard 1919 Lucie Girouard

1919 Marie Prince 1933 Adonis Latiolais 1942 Frances Honore 1943 Louis LeBlanc

1948 Clovis Gregoire 1948 Lee Judice

1961 Annette Latiolais 1963 Louise Eldridge 1968 Mathilde Daly

1976 Breine Broussard 1976 Percy Chatagnier

1986 Otto Dressel 2002 Martha Bastian 2010 Venus Crochet 2014 Larry Rochon 2016 Gale Chastant

January 15

1887 Dumas Broussard 1895 Infant Bastien

1900 Ms. Aristole Ben 1907 Jeanne Pitre

1915 Louise Boutte 1919 Emile Toffier 1921 Infant Bonin

1936 Romain Crochet 1961 Alita Molbert 1968 Lifford Daigle

1973 Laurent Gondron 1978 Mercedes Dugas

1978 Lillian Walet 1978 Kenneth Louviere

2008 Theresa Walet 2012 Darryl Ransonet 2015 Annie Degeyter

January 16

1910 Ms. Pierre Villemot 1921 Ms. J.J. Dauterive

1928 Cecile Vaughn 1931 Felia Abraham 1948 Joseph LeBlanc

1968 Yola Bonin 1979 Anatole Bonin 2016 Agnes Romero 2019 Woodrow Ruiz

January 17

1878 Eliza Broussard 1932 Vernice Alexandre

1958 Cordelia Borrel 1962 Robert Gondron

1963 Henry Breaux

1975 Ms. Robert Vaughn 1993 Brian Dugas

2001 Noelie Seneca

January 18 1889 ? Dugas

1919 Emile Dugas 1925 Adele Demahi

1928 Celestin Harrogene 1938 Rita Landry

1964 Ella Ste. Marie 1965 Eli Daly

1999 Collins Louviere

January 19 1889 Uzine Hays

1893 Leonide Aucoin 1919 Laurence Eldridge

1920 W. Provost 1924 Arcade Ransonet 1931 Charley Johnston 1933 Leonard Anthony

1941 Jean-Baptiste Gesser 1942 Horteuse Warrick 1949 Laure Thibodeaux 1964 Ultima St. Martin 1971 Olivian Courville

2007 Kenneth Broussard

January 20 1887 Ulga Dominic

1888 Octave Richard 1893 Ms. Emile Decuir

1905 Viola Crochet 1906 Elina Bonin 1919 Eve Boutte

1919 Infant Gregoire 1929 ALizia LeBlanc

1929 J.B. Judice 1937 Elmire Judice 1948 Regina Hebert

1952 Ferdinand Ste. Marie 1953 Rudolph Escagne 1957 Eucile Broussard

1967 Rev. James McCarthy 1971 Bernadette Landry

1980 Selina Tuten 1992 Mark Braquet 2014 Levi Louviere

2014 William Louviere 2014 Perry Judice

January 21

1888 Sydney Judice 1888 Eusie Dugas 1902 Ms. Roy John 1908 Aurelea Borel

1912 Charles Mestayer 1918 Navy Gonsoulin 1937 Seymour Crochet

1938 Gabriel Gonsoulin 1942 Emma Broussard

1944 Cinetiere Chatagnier 1968 Willie Vaughn

2008 Cheryl Louviere 2009 Joseph Falgout

January 22

1887 Dumas Broussard 1905 Lezin Lecamus

1911 Arthur Broussard 1913 Mme Breaux 1927 Lacey Prince

1948 Louise Freyou 1959 Barbara Bonin 1963 Bertin Borel

1973 Anthony Meyers 1978 Felix Trahan 1990 Marie Berard

2001 Tilden Broussard

January 23 1906 Virginie Dressel

1915 Mathilde Broussard 1919 Rosine Bastien 1928 Dorsian Bonin

1930 Hazel Broussard 1933 Gaston Lafontaine

1943 Gabriel Dupoy

1970 Willie Broussard 1987 Ella Louviere

2000 Gertrude Ransonet 2001 Edna Walet

January 24

1909 Celestine Dugas 1912 Louis Simon

1917 Joseph Berard 1923 Infant Lecamus 1938 Leona Bastien

1940 Ulger Vital 1940 Henri Louis

1948 Edwin Bonin 1951 Louis Simon

1954 Charles Molbert 1956 Infant Broussard

1956 Raoul Boutte 1966 Pierre LaGrange

1964 Judy Barras 1981 Anna Gonsoulin 1994 Linda Derouen

1996 Howard Bourque 2004 Lester Migues

January 25

1894 Infant Magloire 1907 Dupleonm Savoie

1916 Paul Bassin 1920 Ms. Gilbert Vital

1921 Agnes Daniel 1924 Infant Anthony 1940 Mathilde Turner 1957 Lorrain Breaux

1957 Armand LeBlanc 1957 Weston LeBlanc 1960 Lorraine Tauzin

1964 Cora Oubre 1971 Dugare Dugas 1972 Harry Robin

1978 Victoria Judice 1981 Adley Boudreaux 1982 Anthony Bonin

1996 Stella Judice 2002 Cecile Vincent

2011 Katherine Eldridge 2014 Debra Louviere

2016 Florence Mestayer

January 26 1897 Edna DeBlanc 1902 Elmire Beaux

1909 Louisa Egleson 1931 Frank Parlow 1936 Alcide Aucoin

1946 Annette Gonsoulin 1952 Adrienne Pierre

1969 Edward Broussard 1973 Sarah Mestayer

1993 Constance Segura 1995 Isaure Amy

2000 Dennis Crochet 2007 Rita Emonet

2009 Roger Vicknair 2013 Duane Ste. Marie

January 27 1877 Pauline Toffier

1885 Eusebe Neuville 1889 Magen Broussard

1905 Ms. Felephore Broussard

1906 Lezin Dugas 1909 Martine Braud

1933 Adolphe Decoux 1938 Octave Ransonet 1939 Celeste Steckler

1940 Emma Broussard 1976 Dorothy Borel

1984 Mattie Broussard 2016 Gretchen Babin

January 28

1908 Jeanne Borel 1928 Florian Toffie’ 1933 Oscar Segura 1942 Lawrence Rias 1951 Linda Royes

1960 Luzie Gonsoulin 1988 Corinne Decuir 1993 Orela Rodriguez

2001 Octave Judice 2001 Lorena Gonsoulin

2017 Merlin Rose, Jr.

January 29 1875 Eusebe Breau

1925 Leon Broussard 1940 Celine Washington

1945 Alfred Mestayer 1946 Infant Dauterieve 1948 Adrienne Escagne

1963 Corinne Poole 1964 Joseph Oubre 1973 Delma Judice

1973 Jerome Chastant 1979 Jules Ste. Marie 1982 Clarence Landry

1995 Myrna Ryan 1997 Emmitte Dauterive 2003 Malcolm Braquet

January 30

1882 Dorestan Prince 1883 Ozer Eomo 1888 Luc Bonin

1897 Milton Dugas 1902 Oscar Neuville

1913 Victoria Crochet 1929 Aline Lissard 1939 Louis Tauzin 1940 Alice Bonin

1971 Robert Holtzclaw 1975 Charles Borres

1998 Ronald Broussard 2001 Hazel Feitel

2011 Joseph Pommier

January 31 1907 Manette Davis 1909 Francois Julien

1915 Gilma Broussard 1920 Irma Broussard 1920 Laurence Dugas

1922 Ms. Wilfred Breaux 1942 Ernest Vincent

1948 Aledeus Chataignier 1998 Marie Lawson

2004 Candide Breaux

Happy Birthday! May God richly bless you on your special day. It will be our privilege to remember you at the altar during the celebration of Holy Mass as we offer the Victim.

Father Crochet and Father Godwin

January 1 Emily Bird

Karen LeBlanc Christie Durand

Kyle Clifton

January 2 Cody Prejean

Breia Dauphine Aidan Dooley Victoria Gary

Alyssa Romero Olivia Breaux Myles Haik Kayla Judice

Caroline Pommier

January 3 Kimberly Judice Megan Fouquier Matthew Belaire

Todd Simon

January 4 Jordan Hebert Darian Burke Austin Dugas

Rhealeen Berard Ray Dees

Emerson DuBose Kathleen Gondron

Ricky LeBlanc

January 5 Raymond Bergeron

Saydi Landry Taige Evans

Haiden Gautreaux Karson McGee Genee’ Romero Jennifer Neuville

January 6

Zachary Armentor Brittany Broussard

Michael Louviere, Jr. Drake Romero

Baidan Courville Nicholas Broussard

Saidan Courville Sadie Boudreaux

Zack Bridges

January 7 Tricia Boutte

Gracie Ransonet Susan Thibodeaux

Jake Foster Kevin Freman

January 8

Betty Guidry Christina Neuville

Blaise Landry Jesse Bergeron Nathan Bodin Piper Provost Lacie Borne

Harrison Rauschenbach

January 9 Christina Breaux

Elaine Chataignier Karen Verret April Greaux

Marti Rae Viator Jenna Adcock Jack Landry

January 10

Daniel Horton, Jr. Sydni Duplechain Emma LeBlanc Julian Stevens

Greyson Kilgore Bris Barras

January 11 Dan Miller

Magen Tucker Michael Weber Caden Bridges

January 12

Chad Guillotte Cody Frederick Maci Landry Lexi Theriot

Kacie Delcambre Mark Landry

Nicolas Daigle Mitchell Folse

Morgan Habetz

January 13 Cecile Lassalle Ryan Richard Nicole Daniels Cole Badeaux

Kaden Badeaux Ava Dautreuil

January 14

Brandi Richard Abbie Grivat

Hunter Freyou Brenner Babineaux

Sherry Guillot Adeline Watston Kinzley Watson

January 15

Richard Delaune Ronnie DeRouen Ashley Duplechain

Allen Gondron Donna Neuville Skylar Bourque Jacob Breaux Coy Evans Max Patout

Virginia Prados

January 16 Amy Judice

Austin Bonin Kevin Douet

January 17 David Etie

Andrew LeBlanc Moxin Charpentier

January 18

Jackson Edler Amelia Chastant Harper Courville

Warren Hulin

January 19 Sherry Prioux Kailey Boutte Connor Walet Cassie Latiolais

January 20 Blake Robin

Colin Boudreaux Elizabeth Gondron Benjamin Tauzin

Chloe Stelly Lilly Hebert

January 21

Brennon Dugas Doris Elliot

Meredith Norris Audrey Courville Elise Fontenot

Isela Kerne

January 22 Tommy Delahoussaye, Jr.

Emersyn Dworaczyk Lacey Hitter

Anna Angelle Emma Ackal Parker Bonin Lane LaBry

January 23

Jessica Worsham Isaac LeJeune Gerald Bonin

Ambrie Angelle Kyle Norris

January 24

Willa Boudreaux Glenn Monteaux Fawn Williams Kipp Brown

Courtney Landry Luke Etie

Peyton Patin Blair Segura

Taylor Habetz Robert Prados, Jr.

January 25

Ashley Girouard John Comeaux Jake Neuville, Jr. Seth Babineaux

January 26 Ron Angelle

Zachary David Richard Phillips

Lon Angelle Harriet Boudreaux

Jefferson Shackelford

January 27 Jennifer Berard Alex LeBlanc Shelby Foti

Harrison Hymel Archie Hulin

Hubert Landry Brittney Lasseigne

Brock Romero Garett Blanchard

Ty Segura Brielle LeBlanc Bayson Carline John Catanzaro

January 28

Robert Arceneaux Erin Castillo Taylor Suire

Carson Gondron Elaine Bienvenu

January 29

Thomas Broussard Beau Dees

Dakota Derouen Mindy Douet

Alyse Etie Bralyn Eldridge

Woodrow Gondron, III Ainsley Kaiser Nathan Varker Maddox Nacol

Charlie Gondron Lyndsie Ronsonet

Irvin Stevens

January 30 Loto Louviere, Jr.

Brad Bonin Dalaina Gerace

Ian Neuville Seth Leleux

Neely Duplantis Madeline Goudeau

January 31

Travis Louviere Damien Hebert Landon Westcott Madeline Weber

David Barras Camille Bonin Jayci Migues Eli Lancon

If your name does not occur in our birthday list, please call the parish office so that we can update our census information.

BECKET AND HIS CRITICS by Dan Hitchens The late philosopher Roger Scruton once told a Guardian journalist that he thought he had been “too soft” over the course of his life. The interviewer was taken aback: Scruton was known as a scourge of political correctness and academic fashion. But as Scruton explained: “I’ve tended to overlook the actual underlying … precariousness of human life, so thinking we could all just arrange things by sticking to nice, agreeable procedures, being the decent stiff-upper-lip Englishmen that we’ve always been, and let the whole thing manage itself. I think that is a kind of softness, because the more I live, the more I see that humanity is always poised on the brink, and can fall into chaos and disaster at any time.”

That view of human existence, as threatened at all times by the forces of disorder, came naturally to the twelfth-century English archbishop Thomas Becket. Nobody has ever accused Becket of being soft: The common criticism is that he was too harsh, too rigid, too ready to see apocalyptic possibilities around every corner. One of the battles he fought, late in life, was for his right to anoint the king’s heir: The pope had decreed that Becket would perform the ceremony, as the traditional duty of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the king asked the Archbishop of York to do it, which Becket took so badly that he convinced the pope to excommunicate his fellow-bishop. At the time, and for centuries since, Becket has been seen by many as an extremist, a man who could start a fight in an empty room.

But he can also be seen as a model of heroic courage, one of the most admirable figures in medieval history. As archbishop, Becket defended the independence of the English Church against King Henry II’s attempts to suborn it, leading eventually to the famous scene in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170 — eight hundred fifty years ago. Four knights, thinking they were doing the king’s will, confronted Becket. They may have intended only to arrest him, but they ended up brutally murdering the archbishop in his own cathedral. Becket was recognized almost at once as a great martyr. Two years after his death he was canonized, and soon thereafter King Henry himself repented publicly, going to Canterbury to be penitentially whipped by the cathedral monks. Becket’s tomb became one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations of the Middle Ages, with as many as a hundred thousand visitors in some years. Hundreds of miraculous healings were reported. Becket was honored all over Christendom, in stained glass windows and statues, in literary retellings of his life, and on the new universal feast of Saint Thomas the Martyr. In Iceland alone, eleven churches were named in his honor; there’s a district of the Hungarian city

of Esztergom called Szenttamás. Unlike most medieval cults, Becket’s has

survived and even thrived in the modern era. T. S. Eliot’s best-loved play, Murder in the Cathedral, is one long tribute to Becket’s sanctity. Richard Burton played a brave, brooding archbishop in the ludicrous but effective 1964 film Becket. Had it not been for COVID-19, this 850th anniversary would have been a year of commemoration, with conferences, performances, and liturgies, plus a major exhibition at the British Museum. Perhaps because the twentieth century saw so many examples of resistance to authoritarianism — Mandela and Havel, Bonhoeffer and Solzhenitsyn, Kolbe and Romero — Becket still speaks to our age.

Yet alongside the centuries-long devotion to Becket is a rival tradition, summed up by one of his fellow-bishops, Gilbert Foliot, who was heard to remark: “He always was a fool and he always will be.” In the sixteenth century, Pope Paul III wrote privately that he couldn’t understand why Becket was venerated as a martyr. As far as Paul could tell, the archbishop had been motivated not by high principle but by self-interested vanity. To early Protestant writers, Becket was an egregious example of blind loyalty to the papacy; to Enlightenment historians, the Dark Ages personified; to sober-minded Victorians — as the medievalist Nicholas Vincent puts it — a “weird Romish extremist.” In 2006, BBC History magazine ran a readers’ poll to find the “worst Briton of the last 1,000 years”: Becket was nominated for being divisive, hypocritical, and the “founder of gesture politics,” and eventually came in second behind Jack the Ripper. The Dictionary of National Biography, from which you might expect more sympathy, gives the verdict that Becket’s “brilliant, if chequered, career had a mostly harmful effect on all those connected with it.” On a 2017 episode of the BBC radio program In Our Time, the historian Danica Summerlin was asked to gauge Becket’s honesty,

and said: “It depends how cynical you want to be.” “Well,” replied the program’s no-nonsense host, Melvyn Bragg, “how cynical do you want to be?” That is the question for every observer of Becket’s life.

If the cynics have not managed entirely to demolish Becket’s reputation, it is thanks to one image: the archbishop in his cathedral, defenseless, being cut down by four armed men. At the time, it seemed an unspeakable sacrilege. Even as Henry’s knights fled through the cloisters, they feared that the earth would swallow them up. The details, recorded by five eyewitnesses, are horrendous: The knights’ blows were all directed to the head, and after one knight had sliced off the top of Becket’s skull, a servant of another scooped his brains onto the floor. The moment has an archetypal quality: the soaring cathedral invaded by the insane passions of hatred and violence.

Yet Becket was not only a victim; he displayed a kind of swagger, a mastery of the situation. The archbishop had a series of opportunities to escape or surrender, and he refused them all. The four knights arrived at the cathedral on the afternoon of December 29, weighed down with armor and weaponry and accompanied by a large retinue. They were not acting on King Henry’s orders, but they hoped to please the king by confronting Becket. Yet there was violence in the air from the start, which Becket met with cool defiance. First, he kept the visitors waiting while dinner was cleared away. “God help you,” began one of the knights, Reginald Fitzurse, when they were finally ushered in. “We have brought you a message from the king. Will you hear it in public or in private?” Becket: “Whichever you choose.” Fitzurse accused Becket of insulting the king in the recent dispute over the anointing of Henry’s heir. As Fitzurse warmed to his theme, Becket replied bluntly that he would excommunicate anyone who trespassed on the Church’s rights. The knights told him: “You’ve risked your head by saying that.” Becket was unmoved: “Find someone else to frighten — you will find me steadfast in the battle of the Lord.”

The knights went to get their weapons, and the cathedral monks urged Becket to rush to safety. He dismissed their advice and entered the cathedral to officiate at Vespers. The monks slammed the door behind him, whereupon the archbishop ordered them to open it. Soon the knights were in the sanctuary, openly threatening to kill him. “I am ready to die for my Lord,” Becket told them, “so that in my blood the Church may obtain peace and liberty.”

Becket’s devotees see, in these extraordinary scenes, a man so on fire with the love of God that it had burned up the possibility of fear; a man who, quite conscious that he was giving up his life, thought it a small thing if he could do something for his Redeemer. Becket’s critics take a different view. Why couldn’t the archbishop

speak more gently to the knights, if he was such a saint? Why did he so strenuously avoid taking the simple precautions that would have saved his life? And why did he keep making such grand declarations? Doesn’t it suggest that he was acting a part, that he was so vain that nothing could satisfy his self-regard except the ultimate accolade of martyrdom?

The debate over Becket’s character is not the same as the debate over his principles, but they are related. If you think that Henry II’s policies were basically justified — or that the medieval Church was too powerful for its own good, or that bishops have no place in politics, or that the Age of Faith was a cruel and stagnant era — you will probably find it harder to sympathize with Thomas Becket. This is one reason he continues to fascinate: When we argue about Becket, we are arguing about questions that will never go away. When, in the 1830s, John Henry Newman and John Keble published an account of the Becket dispute by their late friend Hurrell Froude, Newman wrote to Keble: “The Becket papers might frighten people considerably — on Church and State.”

The first puzzle about Becket’s life concerns what happened to him in his early forties. Until then, he had been England’s most successful social climber. Born around 1120 to comfortably-off but not noble parents, he networked his way into a job with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Theobald. So impressive was young Thomas in the role — omnicompetent, a natural leader, photographic memory — that when the position of the King’s Chancellor became available, Theobald nominated him for it. Now Henry’s second-in-command, Becket excelled again. Did the king need a French town captured? Becket would lead thousands of troops in seizing it, then carry out the standard ravaging of the countryside. Did the king want to relax? Becket, a connoisseur of field sports, was there to go hunting with him. Did the king hope to raise war funds through an extortionate tax on the Church? Becket would put it into effect. (His lifelong friend John of Salisbury later said this incident showed Becket to be “the servant of wickedness.”)

When Archbishop Theobald died in 1161, Henry had to choose a successor. (Technically the archbishop was elected by the clergy, but in reality, Henry’s word was decisive.) Becket was the obvious pick: He could be relied upon, surely, to do the king’s will. It made sense for Becket, already England’s most powerful civil servant, to become its most powerful churchman too. Becket recognized that his career did not exactly suggest a vocation as archbishop. Though he was Archdeacon of Canterbury, he had hardly displayed the necessary virtues of a successor to the apostles. When Henry first proposed it, Becket joked: “How religious, how saintly is the man you

would appoint to that holy see!” True, Becket as chancellor had been known as a prayerful man; there were no rumors against his chastity; he sometimes showed genuine integrity. But as he later recalled, to be chancellor was to “luxuriate in the riches and delights of the realm, feared, courted, and honoured by all.” And he loved it.

When Becket became archbishop, everything changed. No longer the loyal servant of the crown Henry had come to know, this Becket seemed single-mindedly focused on the duties of an archbishop: He resigned the chancellorship (which struck Henry as an insult) and showed a new willingness to annoy the king in disputes over land and appointments. When Henry unveiled a set of legal reforms, proposing to take power out of the Church’s hands and give it to the royal bureaucracy, Becket opposed him. The friendship of the two men was broken for good.

This metamorphosis can be read in two ways. For the cynics, Becket had simply found a new role. Once he had starred as a pragmatic politician; now he was ready to play the pious and steadfast archbishop. On another reading, this was Becket’s moment of conversion. In his biography, David Knowles argued that Becket had long been “fundamentally dissatisfied with himself.” When he was offered the archbishopric, he realized he was “for the first time free to follow the call which he had long heard and neglected.” Becket’s life, Knowles wrote, presents:

a striking example of the acceptance of a vocation by one who has long delayed in giving all to the service of Christ, and who has seemed to onlookers to be giving all to the world till the moment of resolve came. It is a shape of life far from uncommon: Thomas rendered it uncommon by the force and perseverance with which he drove himself along the new path, with the sense of his long refusal always before him.

The other turning point in Becket’s life was in 1164, at the Council of Clarendon, where he made a complete fool of himself. A storm had been brewing ever since Becket accepted the archbishopric. It broke when Henry decided to untangle the complicated relationship between the king’s authority and the Church’s. Henry was a politician of great gifts: Having inherited a country traumatized by civil war, he united old enemies, crushed the opposition, expanded his territories by a series of military conquests, and carefully reformed the laws of the land. In Henry’s view, the situation with the Church needed straightening out. The Church courts were failing to prosecute crimes — a hundred homicides, he was informed, had gone unpunished because the suspects were priests or in minor clerical orders — and even when the courts did act, the punishments were soft ones

like defrocking or being sent to do penance. Moreover, previous Kings of England had claimed the right to supervise the bishops’ link with Rome. It was time to set that in stone.

Henry formalized his proposals in sixteen “Constitutions,” some of them fairly uncontroversial, others shocking to the English bishops whose assent he demanded. Two of the Constitutions were especially audacious. First, legal cases could not be referred to the pope except with the king’s permission. Second, the king would have unprecedented authority over cases that had previously belonged to the Church, so that — as the Constitutions put it in a suspiciously vague formulation — “Clerks cited and accused of any matter shall, when summoned by the king’s justice, come before the king’s court to answer there concerning matters which shall seem to the king’s court to be answerable there, and before the ecclesiastical court for what shall seem to be answerable there.”

Henry was a difficult man to contradict: He was both intimidating — Becket was the only person who ever stood up to him — and manipulative. Nevertheless, most of the bishops recognized that the Constitutions would trespass on the Church’s rights, and Becket, as the bishops’ de facto leader, had strong support. Somehow, he turned this promising situation into a comprehensive defeat. He led the bishops in opposing the reforms; then, without consulting them, suddenly gave in to the king; then, as suddenly, went back on his capitulation. Through this erratic series of unexplained judgments, Becket managed to alienate the bishops, who had until then trusted his leadership, and infuriate the king, who responded by launching a trial of Becket on trumped-up charges of financial wrongdoing. The archbishop fled the country.

After his failure at Clarendon, Becket was sunk in gloom. He thought he had ruined everything. “I begin to see,” he told his companions on the journey home after a long silence, “that it is through me, and because of my sins, that the English church is reduced to slavery.” Becket’s staff were in no mood to console him. Some of them compared his surrender to Saint Peter’s denial of Christ, while his cross-bearer said aloud: “What virtue is left to a man who has betrayed his conscience and his reputation?” Becket was so ashamed that he suspended himself from saying Mass.

For the rest of his days, Becket remembered this as his lowest point. He referred to it when the knights came to kill him in the cathedral. (“Once I fled like a timid priest. Now I have returned to my Church in the counsel and obedience of the lord Pope. Never again will I desert Her.”) When the Bishop of Chichester needled him about the episode, Becket replied: “If we lapsed at Clarendon, if the flesh is weak, we must take heart again and with all the

strength of the Holy Spirit fight the old enemy who hopes that those who stand will fall, and those who have fallen will not get up again.”

There is, as always, a more cynical way to read Becket’s response to his failure at Clarendon. He had been made to look like an idiot once: His pride would not let it happen again. Certainly, out of either conviction or psychological rigidity, Becket was unyielding. From France, where King Louis had allowed him to stay, the exiled archbishop continued to resist the Constitutions for six years. As hard as Henry pushed, Becket pushed back. The king sent a party of bishops to the papal court, to make the case that Becket was blowing a minor issue out of all proportion; shortly afterward, Becket himself arrived and persuaded Pope Alexander III to condemn the Constitutions. The king decided to up the pressure: He confiscated Becket’s English lands, handing them over to an asset-stripping nobleman; expelled all Becket’s — and his household’s — family from England (about four hundred men, women, and children, some in poor health, instantly deported); and, in a blatant attempt to intimidate the pope, publicly flirted with recognizing the antipope, Paschal.

In June 1166, Becket responded with a fire­breathing sermon at the Benedictine abbey in ­Vézelay. He denounced the king’s recent outrages, then excommunicated those who had abetted them. The conflict continued to escalate: At one stage, Henry was on the brink of schism, and Becket was threatening to place the Kingdom under interdict. They eventually patched up an agreement that allowed Becket to return to England; but it was always a fragile deal. Becket was fairly sure that if he returned to Canterbury he would be martyred, and less than a month after he came back to his cathedral, he was.

Becket’s actions in exile are, to his critics, evidence of a mind too neurotic to seek peace even when peace was readily available. Yes, the Constitutions were a power grab; yes, the king’s brutal treatment of Becket was a real persecution, and his anger led directly to Becket’s murder; but before it got to that stage, couldn’t Becket have tried harder to find a compromise? The pope thought so, and continually reined in Becket, reversing some of his excommunications and urging him to keep his head down. But throughout these years, Becket continued to threaten, excommunicate, and lobby for Rome to condemn Henry more forcefully. When Alexander advised Becket to “humble himself” before Henry to regain the king’s favor, Becket wrote back: “The Church’s persecutor and ours is taking advantage of your patience.” If Alexander did not punish Henry, Becket warned, the pope would be called to account on Judgment Day. As the historian Beryl Smalley wryly noted, “Becket was not the first or the last Catholic to think he knew better than the pope what was good for the Church,

though few have acted more obstinately on their belief.”

Becket acted as he did because of two intuitions. The first was that Henry could not be trusted: He would lie his way through any peace talks. Many people who dealt with Henry came to the same conclusion. One of the pope’s envoys was reported as saying “that he could not recall ever having seen or heard a man so mendacious.” What Henry needed, Becket thought, was fatherly correction, the firm and loving hand of the Church.

Above all, Henry needed to be reminded of the source of his own authority. A king’s power was a divine gift; if Henry defied God’s Church, invading its courts, taking away its privileges, and destroying the most senior churchman in the land, he was making nonsense of his own kingship. As Becket wrote to Henry: “You enjoy the privileges of the power bestowed on you by God for the administration of public laws, so that, grateful for his favours, you should not appropriate anything against the dispositions of the heavenly ordinance.” This helps explain why Becket was so quick to condemn and punish apparently minor breaches of custom — as when he had the Archbishop of York excommunicated for anointing Henry’s heir. It really mattered that Canterbury was senior to York, just as it mattered that the pope was senior to the bishops and that God was senior to the king. Becket believed that “Christ commanded obedience to us as the effective, indeed the most effective remedy for all ills.”

This remark may seem a bit rich, given Becket’s relationship with his king and his pope. But Becket felt intuitively that the world could easily spin out of control once the right order of authority was rejected. For Becket, humanity was always poised on the brink, and if the pope did not intervene, Henry would bring about chaos. “If he should succeed in establishing such great wrongs with the consent or dissimulation of the Roman Church,” Becket wrote to two cardinals in 1167, “who will dare to speak out against him in future?” And if that happened, then Henry’s descendants, and monarchs elsewhere, would follow his example, and then, “There will be few or none in the future who will not follow the princes’ will entirely, who will keep faith with the Roman Church … who will not spurn the Law of God as a fable, empty words without truth or meaning.” Either human authorities would respect God and the world would be at peace, or those authorities would set themselves up as the ultimate source of power and God would be driven out of society.

The last decade has provided a few more reasons to sympathize with Becket’s dramatic worldview. In the persecution of China’s Christians, in the mob violence against churches from Chile to Poland, in the spectacle of a harmless group of nuns being summoned to

the Supreme Court of the United States, there is clear evidence that when the powerful begin to trespass on the Church’s ground, nobody can tell where they will stop.

It was because of that intuition that Becket, once a wealthy celebrity with the world at his feet, was prepared to give up everything. Seen in this light, his severe language and trigger-happy excommunications seem less like a self-indulgent display of power and more like a last-ditch rearguard action. By the closing stages of the conflict he was, as John Guy puts it, “Pale and gaunt-faced, thin as a knife, prone to bouts of depression and ravaged by a crippling sense of failure and isolation,” to which one could add that he was troubled in physical health, shut out of his country and the protection of its laws, abandoned by his brother bishops, hated by the man who had made him great, given only tepid support by the pope, guilty over his past, anxious over the future, with his reputation in tatters, his lands and wealth confiscated, his family and friends punished and dispossessed. Having lost almost everything, he nevertheless took up what weapons he had, a David facing down Goliath.

The film Becket, for all its historical inaccuracies, does capture something of this in the famous excommunication scene: We see a man who will do anything to defend the Church, and who now has no choice but to fight. We are used to hearing about the virtues of self-abnegation and patience and trusting in God and obeying authorities even when you’re fairly sure they’re wrong; and these are all real virtues. But in Becket, we see the other side of the picture, which also needs to be given its place: the virtue of making a stubborn effort to set things right, to subdue evil and make room for good.

Dan Hitchens is editor of the Catholic Herald.