More About More: Joanne Paul's "Thomas More: A Life"

A reader of this blog sent me a copy of this review by Helen Castor in The Telegraph of Joanne Paul's new book Thomas More: A Life. Castor sets the parameters of the cultural issues with whichThomas More's story is told:

Over the last century, Thomas More has undergone three posthumous transmutations. In 1935 – exactly 400 years after he was executed for refusing to swear that Henry VIII was Supreme Head of the English Church – he was canonised by Pope Pius XI as a holy martyr. This declaration of his sanctity met a frosty reception in Anglican England, where the part More had played in putting Protestants to death for heresy before the break with Rome hadn’t yet disappeared from historical memory. [I'm not sure the linked book reviews have anything to do with her point.]

Then in 1967 came Paul Scofield’s moving performance as More in the film of Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons. Rooted in hagiographical accounts written by members of More’s family, it made him a hero, wise, erudite and humane, a man who chose to die rather than compromise his conscience in the face of tyranny. Yet a twist in the tale remained: the publication in 2009 of Hilary Mantel’s world-conquering Wolf Hall. In Mantel’s exquisite prose it’s Thomas Cromwell, not Thomas More, whose brilliant mind wrestles with the relationship between faith, integrity and power, while More, Cromwell’s opponent, becomes a callous, self-regarding zealot.

In Thomas More: A Life, her absorbing and deeply researched new biography, Joanne Paul sets out to rescue More from these violent swings of the historical pendulum. Her goal is to tell his story “forward”, using sources from More’s own lifetime, rather than “backward”, from texts indelibly coloured by the circumstances of his death. . . .

It seems to me I've heard this song before: in 2016, in fact, when Paul's Thomas More in the Classic Thinkers series was published and she had an article ("Thomas More: Saint or Sinner?"**) in the BBC History Magazine.

**The answer to that question: Yes.

Simon and Schuster, the U.S. publisher call Paul's book the "definitive biography" of More:

Born into the era of the Wars of the Roses, educated during the European Renaissance, rising to become Chancellor of England, and ultimately destroyed by Henry VIII, Thomas More was one of the most famous—and notorious—figures in English history.

Was he a saintly scholar, the visionary author of Utopia, and an inspiration for statesmen and intellectuals even today? Or was he the cruel zealot famously portrayed in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall? Thomas More: A Life is a monumental biography of this hypnotic, flawed figure. Overturning prior interpretations of this titan of the sixteenth century, Joanne Paul shows Thomas More to have been intellectually and politically central to the making of modern Europe.

Based on new archival discoveries and drawing on more than a decade of research into More’s life and work, this is a richly told story of faith and politics that illuminates a man who, more than four hundred years after his execution, remains one of the most brilliant minds of the Renaissance.

Castor's review seems to conflict with the S&S comment above that More was "intellectually and politically central to the making of modern Europe" as she notes that "Paul points out that, in his entire political career, “Thomas More did almost nothing to change the course of English history”. Nor did he want to take a public stand on the issue for which he is venerated as a martyr."

I'm not sure that I'll purchase this biography because although he doesn't call his book a biography at all, Travis Curtright seems to me to have presented an integrated and consistent view of More's life and works in The Controversial Thomas More.

The dichotomy between Bolt and Mantel is wearing thin with me, and I'm really done with the "saint or sinner?" trope. R.W. Chambers wasn't a Catholic and yet he rated More's reputation/fame as high with Englishmen: even Jonathan Swift (born in Ireland of English parents)! For Swift, More “was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced”.

Book Review: "The Fame of Blessed Thomas More" (1929)

Almost six years after the speeches in this book were delivered, Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More were canonized in Rome on May 19, 1935. The occasion of the speeches and the publication of them was the presentation of an exhibit of paintings, manuscripts, relics, and other materials related to Thomas More in Chelsea, where he had lived. It's also important to note that the year 1929 marked the 100th anniversary of the Catholic Emancipation Act, which was commemorated in this collection, Catholic Emancipation, 1829 to 1929: Essays by Various Writers with an Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal Bourne, which I reviewed in 2021.

Just to give you some context: Lillie Langtry, who might have been Edward VII then the Prince of Wales's mistress, died in 1929; Jean Simmons and Audrey Hepburn were born in 1929. George V, Edward VII's second son (1865-1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India; Ramsey MacDonald led a Labor government starting in June; and on October 18, the London Stock Exchange experienced a "sharp fall" after Black Friday in the USA. On December 15, Pope Pius XI beatified 136 Martyrs of England and Wales (29 of which were canonized in 1970; Chesterton attended that 1929 beatification and wrote about in The Resurrection of Rome).

Reading this book requires an adjustment on the part of the reader because "Blessed" Thomas More's fame seemed more secure in 1929. Now we're still dealing with the images (on screen especially) of Saint Thomas More from Hilary Mantel's trilogy, based on what Travis Curtright contends are G.R. Elton's outdated and disproved views of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More:

Because the plot of Wolf Hall relies on Elton’s characterizations of Cromwell and More, Mantel writes as if the last thirty years of research in the Tudor period never happened. Though many prominent historians of the period—such as John Guy, Brendan Bradshaw, and Eamon Duffy—have refuted Elton’s claims about More already, George Logan most recently assembled a team of international scholars to reassess More’s life, writings, and political actions in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More (2011). These scholars put to rest the most inflammatory claims of Elton and his school. Instead, Logan’s team finds More to be a superlative humanist scholar and, as the chapter on statesmanship claims, the historical record reveals “a statesman of conscience” and one of “extraordinary insight and foresight.”

When reading, for example, R.W. Chamber's essay on "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen", we're made aware of how much has been accomplished since 1929 in the publication of Thomas More's works: the translations of his Latin works, the Yale University editions, the work of the Amici Thomae Mori societies, etc.  A new edition of More's works was forthcoming at the time from Eyre and Spottiswoode: The English Works of Thomas More, editors W.E. Campbell*, A.W. Reed, R. W. Chambers, and W.A.G. Doyle-Davidson, 2 volumes (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode Limited, 1931)

Contents and comments:

Introductory Essay: "Sir Thomas More's Fame Among His Countrymen" by R.W. Chambers (not part of the presentations made at the exhibition)

Chambers (1874-1942), was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and wrote Man's Unconquerable Mind, The Place of Thomas More in English Literature and History, and Thomas More.

"The Charge of Religious Intolerance" by Ronald Knox

In dealing with this accusation, Knox contrasts Cranmer with More: when Cranmer questioned Joan Bocher during the reign of Edward VI, they were comparing their private judgment as Joan was an Anabaptist. Cranmer brought her to the stake and even John Rogers thought burning at the stake appropriate for one found guilty of heresy. Knox argues that More was questioning--never with torture--those accused of violating heresy laws for the sake of the Common Good and the Church's "continuous tradition" (p. 52) He notes that Bocher, who pointed out that in 1546 Anne Askew had been found guilty of heresy for denying Transubstantiation, which by that time (1550) Cranmer also denied, saw "that complete toleration was the logical corollary of private judgment, and Cranmer did not." (p. 54)

"The Witness to Abstract Truth" by Hilaire Belloc

I think Belloc misses the mark slightly by not acknowledging that by upholding Papal Primacy More was upholding the Unity of the Church: that More knew once the Church in England was schismatic, the doctrines and Sacraments of the Catholic Church would fall away.

"A Turning Point in History" by G.K. Chesterton

The briefest and and best. Contains the famous line that Thomas More was "important today, but he is not as important now as he will be in 100 years from today.”

"A Great Lord Chancellor" by Lord Justice Russell

Russell (1867-1946), Frank Russell, Baron Russell of Killown, was Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Justice of Appeal, and Justice of the High Court (overlapping positions): he was a Catholic and argued for lifting the restriction on Catholics from including Masses for their Souls in their Wills in Parliament. That restriction was lifted in 1926.

He testifies that More was great Lord Chancellor because he heard and decided cases impartially and expeditiously; that he did not, unlike Wolsey before him, become wealthy through his office; not even his sons-in-law received any special treatment!

"A Catholic of the Renaissance" by Henry Browne, SJ

Browne (1853-1941) was a classical scholar; much interested in the Cause of the English Martyrs of England and Wales, he worked for the growth of Catholicism in England.

His essay contrasts the relative corruption of the hierarchy in England before the Reformation with the enduring devotion and practice of the Catholic Faith after Henry's break from the Church and the subsequent changes in doctrine and practice. There must have been, he avers, great devotion, in spite of bad examples, to the Church's practice in England for so many priests and laity to have remained true through decades and decades of persecution and prosecution. Thomas More is an example of that devotion.

"The Glory of Chelsea" by Reginald Blunt

Blunt, CBE, was the founder of the Chelsea Society (1927). 

He comments that he is not a Catholic, so does not concern himself with religious issues, but that he admires Thomas More as a good farmer, neighbor, and family man. He cites, in particular, when there was a fire on his farm and More was very concerned that the fire had harmed his neighbors. He wrote to Alice from Court, where he was detained on the King's business, to make sure they were taken care of, with supplies from his farm's store as needed.

"A National Bulwark against Tyranny" by Bede Jarrett, OP

Jarrett (1881-1934) was a historian and author; founder of Blackfriars Priory in Oxford (1921) and author of S. Antonino and Medieval Economics, Life of St. Dominic, and The English Dominicans, among many other works.

Why was it so necessary for Henry VIII to pursue the compliance of Thomas More and John Fisher? Why was Henry VIII afraid of More's silence? Jarrett suggests it was not because of political reasons; it was because of the national and international standing of More and Fisher as good, holy, and learned men, known far and wide as scholars. They were among the leaders of the Renaissance in England and like Colet, Linacre, Grocyn, and Lilly, they were devout Catholics. "He really was the head of the whole cultural society then existing in England" (p. 129). Remember that More had upheld the study of Greek and Latin pagan classics: he "shared to the full the Renaissance spirit" (ibid). Not to have More on his side--Henry could not abide that and had to get him out of the way--thus the particularly aimed Act of Attainder against him. It's Jarrett's judgment that More was "forced into prominence" (p. 131) even more through Henry's efforts, and that "his greatness came from the moment really that he went to prison" (p. 134), because before More had not sought such prominence and greatness, even as he worked to support his king and his Church and be the King's servant and God's first.

Both Jarrett and Knox present cogent arguments and impressed me the most.

Appendix I: Catalogue of the More Memorial Exhibition

Appendix II: A Short Bibliography of Books Relating to the Martyr (Compiled by *W.E. Campbell)

One of the reasons the book was published was to support the building fund for the Beaufort Street Convent, where the Sisters of the Adoration Reparatrice at that time maintained "ceaseless adoration by day and by night in reparation for the national crime of the Blessed Martyr's execution." The convent was founded in 1898, but the Sisters left the convent in 1975 and now it's the site of Allen Hall.

It's good of Cluny to make this rarity available again, just four years before we see how Chesterton's prediction comes true in 2029. Please note that I purchased the book.

From "First Things": A Review of "God Is An Englishman"

Rhys Laverty reviews God is an Englishman*: Christianity and the Creation of England by Bijan Omrani for First Things. *Not to be confused with R.F. Delderfield's novel!

Of course, I particularly noticed the comments about the treatment of the English Reformation in the review:

While I would recommend Omrani’s book without hesitation, his treatment of the Reformation irked me a little. Omrani at one point refers to the “trauma” of the Reformation, alongside that of the English Civil War. This feels a lopsided term for how the English now see the Reformation, and even for how they saw it by the end of the sixteenth century, when Elizabethan England was a confident Protestant nation set self-consciously against its Catholic foes. Chapter 4 focuses on the history of religious art in England, with much lament over Reformation iconoclasm. Whatever one thinks of it, that iconoclasm and the resultant restrained aesthetic of most Anglican churches is now a part of Christianity’s formation of English identity, a fact Omrani doesn’t really acknowledge.

Furthermore, chapter 8, which outlines the English Reformation’s legacy of political liberty, contains two notable flaws. First, and somewhat pedantically: Omrani suggests that “the foundations were being laid for the divine right of kings” when Henry VIII argued that the fifth commandment (“Honor thy father and mother”) entailed obedience to the governing authorities. Yet this interpretation was novel neither to Henry nor even the Reformation. One can easily find it in Thomas Aquinas.

Second, Omrani fails to moderate his otherwise commendable account of Protestant political liberty with the English Reformation’s particular emphasis on conservatism and good order. . . .

With the comment that Omrani neglects to even mention Richard Hooker's Laws Ecclesiastical Polity, which Laverty notes "bridged the gap between medieval scholasticism and early modern political thought . . . and in a tumultuous time articulated the need for “orderly public judgment to prevail over private judgment” (to quote my friend Brad Littlejohn)." I think Robert Reilly would agree, as he included Hooker in his America on Trial.

Here's a link to the publisher's website; there's a preview offered there.

We're on a break from our 2025 anniversaries series on the Son Rise Morning Show for Memorial Day and the next week, but I'll be back soon with the double anniversaries this year for Saints John Fisher and Thomas More: Martyrdoms AND Canonizations!

Book Review: "The Controversial Thomas More"

As I commented before, this is an important book about Saint Thomas More--whose martyrdom took place 490 years ago this July 6 and whose canonization 90 years ago on May 19 (the day I'm writing this review)--because Curtright wants to adjust our view of More's last months in the Tower of London. Although I haven't read it, I can see that this volume is in continuity with another of Curtright's books, The One Thomas More in which he finds the unity among the usually applied divisions in More's life: "Thomas More" the humanist. "Sir Thomas More" the statesman. "Saint Thomas More" the martyr."  

In this book it's Thomas More the Humanist; Thomas More the Controversialist; Thomas More the Devotional writer: and through his analysis of the "Tower Works" Curtright argues for continuity: More writes as humanist, using classic Ciceronian and Erasmian methods and forms, rhetorical and literary, throughout these Tower Works. He continues to engage the crisis of England, through its monarch and parliament, separating itself from the universal Catholic Church by denying the primacy of the pope, at the same time that he comforts his family and prepares himself for death and martyrdom with meditation on the Agony in the Garden in De Tristitia Christi.

First, in chapter one, "The Creation of More's Tower Works", Curtright deals with how the More family and friends, Roper, Rastell, and Harpsfield framed More's last months in their biographies and crucially, how Rastell edited the Tower Works for the Catholic audience in England during Mary I's reign. He argues that these presentations have been very influential in the biographies and studies of More in the last century, and in the publication of the collected works by Yale University Press. One crucial issue is how Rastell conflated a work More wrote before he was taken to the Tower of London with one he did write during his imprisonment: A Treatise upon the Passion of Christ Reconsidered and De Tristitia Christi.

The former work is the subject of chapter two, "A Treatise upon the Passion of Christ Reconsidered, 1534" as Curtright untangles the circumstances of its composition while More was still at home in Chelsea--and how he continues the theme of defending the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament against the Sacramentarians of the time. More upholds the Scholastic explanation of Accidents and Substance in his own terms against Tyndale's view that what mattered was the recipient's belief, not the mysterious reality of the impassible being passable. 

In chapter three, Curtright examines "The (Auto) Biographical More and "A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation," 1534-1535. He posits that More writes this to prepare his family for what he and they and Catholic believers in England are facing, that is "A Dialogue of MORE Against Tribulation". Applying Ciceronian rhetoric tropes, "Deliberative Discourse" arguing for preparing and being willing to do the honorable thing in spite of the dangers faced, More is the uncle Anthony helping his nephew Vincent (Margaret and others) to endure pain and even death to be faithful and true. Thus, he's preparing Margaret for faithful resistance to the "Henrician schism" to come. (p. 77)

The words referring to More's exchange of letters with Margaret More Roper as "masterpiece of rhetorical self-fashioning" on page 85 of chapter four, "A Letter from Prison to Alice Allington, 1534" led me to the Bibliography where sure enough I found Stephen Greenblatt's Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare which I read in graduate school decades ago! In this chapter, Curtright looks back at More's Utopia and the crucial argument between "More" and Hythlodaeus about whether or not a humanist scholar should become an advisor to a monarch--an obvious sign of continuity of how More thought about and dealt with practical issues based on principles. Again, the forms of discourse, "Forensic Dialogue" and the "Familiar Letter" are important tools for Curtright in this chapter, explicating both method and medium.

In chapter five, "The True Martyr in De Tristitia Christi, c. 1535", the passage of the Bill of Attainder against More and Fisher made it clear that More could not use his strategy of silence for much longer, so his efforts to meditate on the Passion of Christ as preparation for suffering and the death of a traitor--hanging, drawing, and quartering--intensified. "Spoken malice" did not require words to be spoken--"More's intentions [treason and sedition] are declared for him in the bill" (p. 114) So More, figuratively in my words, thinks back to John Colet and Erasmus debating years ago (in 1498) about whether or not Jesus really felt fear and anguish even unto death in the Garden of Gethsemane or just "let" Himself express such agony. Colet said no; Erasmus said yes. (Again this is a subject I studied in an undergraduate class at WSU with J. Kelley Sowards, one of the great Erasmus scholars of that time.) More is also afraid, but he is also ready to chastise "the sleeping apostles" of his time, the bishops of England, who were then siding with the enemies of the Church (Judas). They're the shepherds of the flock and except for John Fisher, also in the Tower, they've abandoned both the flock and The Good Shepherd.

The "Conclusion: The Case of Malicious or Merry More" posed the cases of More's trial as presented in A Man for All Seasons and/or Wolf Hall. In the former, Richard Rich is the perjurer; in the latter, More! The real text to be dealt with is however the account and grounds of More's "moot" with Richard Rich in the Tower--a hypothetical exercise of "putting the case"--so again, More could argue that in that disputation with Rich he was not malicious or treasonous. He had not presented HIS case; he had argued A case. But the "regime's pursuit of More" (p. 137) ended with him unable to defend himself against the one indictment he lost at his trial.

But then Curtright demonstrates that More had really provided the regime with plenty of evidence to condemn if only Cromwell, Rich, Audley, et al., knew how to read in the controversial works he'd been writing in the Tower: Henry VIII was the tyrannous Turk of the Dialogue of Comfort; the Schism of England was the Passion of Christ repeated; the rebuke of the Greek Church at the Council of Florence was the rebuke of England's parliament and king; the bishops of England were "the sleeping Apostles," not praying and watching with Jesus . . . 

Finally Curtright directs us to More's final words in his defense--he is Stephen the Martyr; his judges and jury are Saul (who may repent like Paul):

More have I not to say, my lords, but that like as the blessed apostle Saint Paul, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of Saint Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now twain holy saints in heaven, and shall continue there friends forever: so I verily trust and shall therefore right heartily pray, that though your lordships have now in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation.

As Curtright notes, those words are "a customary mixture of humility and humor, irony and honesty" (p. 142), both excusing and accusing.

Did St. Swithun Wells know that More had said that? Before his execution on December 10, 1591, he said to Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth I's chief pursuivant and bloody torturer: "I pray God make you a Paul of a Saul, of a bloody persecutor one of the Catholic Church's children." Wells could have read the trial accounts or some of the works published before 1558.

This book is volume in "The Beginning and the Beyond of Politics" series from Notre Dame Unversity Press. There's a very helpful Appendix of Key Dates, Notes (I need to look at them again), an extensive Bibliography, and an Index. Highly recommended--reminder: I bought the book. 

Now I'm anticipating another delivery: an edition of 1929's The Fame of Blessed Thomas More from Cluny Media:

In 1929, seven of the leading men of the English Catholic Church gathered to give evidence of [More's] reputation, their words foreshadowing the message of Pope Pius XI in the years to come: that this star of sanctity, shining in a dark period of history, was a bright champion of the Christian people, undaunted by the fallacies of heretics and the threats of the powerful, willing to shed his blood in testimony of devotion to Jesus Christ and His Church.

The Fame of Blessed Thomas More offers that evidence in these essays by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc; Bede Jarrett, O.P., and Ronald Knox; Henry Browne, S.J., and Reginald Blunt; R. W. Chambers and Lord Justice Russell .

Originally published in limited editions in 1929 and 1933, The Fame of Blessed Thomas More is a rare piece of Catholic literature and a profound tribute to a great saint by his own countrymen, celebrating—in the words of Monsignor Knox—“one of the most successful men who ever lived,” who sought, and won, the favor of Almighty God.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Preview: 350th anniversary of the Apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

On Monday, May 19 we'll discuss the next great 2025 Anniversary on the Son Rise Morning: the 350th anniversary of the Apparitions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary at Paray-le-Monial. The celebration of this anniversary began as a Jubilee on December 27, 2023, the anniversary of the first apparition and ends June 27, the date of the Solemnity of the feast of the Sacred Heart.

These apparitions at Paray-le-Monial are the source of modern devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus (which earlier saints like St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bonaventure, and St. Gertrude the Great had also promoted): First Fridays, the Litany of the Sacred Heart, the Twelve Promises, the dedication of the month of June, Consecration, and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart on the third Friday after Pentecost. In my experience, formed as I was in Catholic schools from Kindergarten through high school, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was encouraged enthusiastically in the last century. 

So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at the usual time at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

The great connection for me between this great feast/devotion and my interest in the history of the English Reformation and its aftermath is of course: Saint Claude de la Colombière, the Jesuit priest who helped Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque promote this devotion and served as her confessor in 1675 and 1676. According to this Vatican News website he was sent there to consult with her on the apparitions she'd been experiencing: 

After Father Colombière's arrival and her first conversations with him, Margaret Mary opened her spirit to him and told him of the many communications she believed she had received from the Lord. He assured her he accepted their authenticity and urged her to put in writing everything in their regard, and did all he could to orient and support her in carrying out the mission received. When, thanks to prayer and discernment, he became convinced that Christ wanted the spread of the devotion to his Heart, it is clear from Claude's spiritual notes that he pledged himself to this cause without reserve. In these notes it is also clear that, even before he became Margaret Mary's confessor, Claude's fidelity to the directives of St. Ignatius in the Exercises had brought him to the contemplation of the Heart of Christ as symbol of his love.

After his time at Paray-le-Monial he went to England in 1676. He was a chaplain at the Court of Saint James during the reign of King Charles II serving as a preacher for Mary of Modena, wife of James, the Duke of York. 

During his time in London, Saint Claude continued to correspond with Saint Margaret Mary. He preached in the chapel at Saint James and quietly worked to bring lapsed Catholics back to the Church at Court. As the Vatican News website notes:

And even if there were great dangers, he had the consolation of seeing many reconciled to it, so that after a year he said: "I could write a book about the mercy of God I've seen Him exercise since I arrived here!"

The intense pace of his work and the poor climate combined to undermine his health, and evidence of a serious pulmonary disease began to appear. Claude, however, made no changes in his work or life style.

Being in the household of the Duke and Duchess of York was probably the most dangerous place he could be once the machinations of the Popish Plot began. The whole point of the fictitious plot was for a Jesuit or Jesuit agent to assassinate Charles II so that his Catholic brother James--and his Catholic wife Mary of Modena--would succeed to the throne. 

So in 1678 he was arrested and held in the prison of the King's Bench for three weeks and his health declined precipitously. King Louis XIV negotiated his release but by the time he returned to Paray-le-Monial in the summer of 1681 he was very ill. He died on February 15, 1682.

In his homily for Saint Claude's canonization on May 31, 1992, Pope John Paul II referred to him as one of "the saints of Paray" and concluded:

For evangelization today the Heart of Christ must be recognized as the heart of the Church: it is he who calls us to conversion, to reconciliation. It is he who leads pure hearts and those hungering for justice along the way of the Beatitudes. It is he who achieves the warm communion of the members of the one Body. It is he who enables us to adhere to the Good News and to accept the promise of eternal life. It is he who sends us out on mission. The heart-to-heart with Jesus broadens the human heart on a global scale.

May the canonization of Claude La Colombiere be for the whole Church an appeal to live the consecration to the Heart of Christ, a consecration which is a self-giving that allows the charity of Christ to inspire us, pardon us and lead us in his ardent desire to open the ways of truth and life to all our brothers and sisters!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us!

St. Claude de la Colombière, pray for us!

Father Juan Velez is making a documentary about St. John Henry Newman!

Just a quick post about some notices I've received from Father Juan Velez, a Newman scholar, who is making a documentary about St. John Henry Newman--he's shared updates on visits to London and Oxford so far. Here's a sample from his second day in Oxford:

In the afternoon, we reunited with Dr. Paul Shrimpton, whose familiarity with Oriel College made our visit feel like stepping into a well-loved home. His insights into Newman’s life and legacy were both profound and engaging.

In the Senior Common Room, beneath a portrait of Newman, Paul recounted the significance of this space—a place where Fellows and Tutors once engaged in conversations, debates, and celebrations.

Oriel College was central to Newman’s life. He was elected a Fellow on April 12, 1822, at the age of 21—a prestigious academic position that marked the beginning of his influence in Oxford’s intellectual life. In 1826, he was appointed a Tutor at Oriel, becoming directly involved in the teaching and moral supervision of undergraduates. This role became central to his attempt to reform the tutorial system and promote a more personal and formative model of education. He continued as a Tutor until the end of 1832, when the Provost ceased to assign him new students. This was the result of a controversy with the provost over the tutorial system. . . .

When I went to Oxford in 2010 I was not able to enter Oriel College and see the stained-glass window of Newman in the chapel nor his portrait in the Senior Common Room, so I enjoyed seeing pictures of them at least. 

Here's the post for Newman sites in London and here's the one for the first day in Oxford!

You could follow the journey here.

Either Mark or I took the picture of the pulpit in the University Church of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford when we visited together with our great friend Monsignor Bill Carr years and years ago!

Preview: The 80th Anniversaries of VE and VJ Day

Since the Papal Conclave has concluded with the Cardinals electing a new pope--I was at Adoration before Mass at St. Paul's Wichita State University and Mass was delayed while the students waited downstairs for Pope Leo XIV to come on the balcony and speak--we'll continue our anniversary series on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, May 12, at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. (If Matt and Anna needed more time for conclave analysis etc. I would have yielded my time.)

Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here. Our topic this week will be the 80th anniversaries of the end of World War II: Victory in Europe (May 8) and Victory in Japan (August 15 for England--the date of Japan's stated surrender--and September 2--the date of the formal surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri for the USA).

When victory was declared in Europe--with the German surrender--both Winston Churchill in England and Pope Pius XII in Rome remarked that the second World War wasn't over while the Allies were still fighting the Japanese military.

From Winston Churchill, lauding the English spirit:

"God bless you all. This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this.

"Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy, have in any way weakened the independent resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.

"My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class. It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole. . . .

"The lights went out and the bombs came down. But every man, woman and child in the country had no thought of quitting the struggle. London can take it.

"So we came back after long months from the jaws of death, out of the mouth of hell, while all the world wondered. When shall the reputation and faith of this generation of English men and women fail? . . .

"Now we have emerged from one deadly struggle – a terrible foe has been cast on the ground and awaits our judgment and our mercy.

"But there is another foe who occupies large portions of the British Empire, a foe stained with cruelty and greed – the Japanese. I rejoice we can all take a night off today and another day tomorrow.

"Tomorrow our great Russian allies will also be celebrating victory and after that we must begin the task of rebuilding our hearth and homes, doing our utmost to make this country a land in which all have a chance, in which all have a duty, and we must turn ourselves to fulfill our duty to our own countrymen, and to our gallant allies of the United States who were so foully and treacherously attacked by Japan. . . . "

From Pope Pius XII: 

Here at last we behold the end of this war, which, during almost six years, has held Europe in the grip of the most atrocious suffering and most bitter sorrow

A cry of humble and ardent gratitude arises from the very depths of our heart to "the Father of Mercies and the God of All Consolation."

But our canticle of thanksgiving is accompanied with the suppliant prayer to implore also of divine omnipotence and goodness the termination, in accord with justice, of the sanguinary warfare in the Far East.

On our knees in spirit before the tombs, before the ravines disturbed and reddened by blood, where repose the innumerable corpses of those who have fallen, victims of the fighting or of inhuman massacres, of hunger or of misery, we recommend them all in our prayers, and especially in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice, to the merciful love of Jesus Christ, their Saviour and their judge.

And it seems to us that they, the fallen, are giving warning to the survivors of this cruel scourge and are saying to them: Let there arise from the earth, wherein we have been placed as grains of wheat, the molders and builders of a new and better Europe, of a new and better universe, founded on the filial fear of God, on fidelity to His Holy Commandments, on respect for human dignity, on the sacred principle of equality of the rights of all peoples and all states, large and small, weak and strong.

The war has created on all sides chaotic ruin, both material and moral, such as mankind has never known in the entire course of human history. The task of this hour is to rebuild the world. . . .

The war has aroused everywhere discord, suspicion and hatred. If, therefore the world wishes to regain peace, it is necessary that falsehood and rancor should vanish and in their stead that sovereign truth and charity should reign.

Above all, however, in our daily prayers, we should beseech God constantly to fulfill his promise made by the mouth of the Prophet Ezekiel, "And I will give them one heart, and will put a new spirit in their bowels; and I will take away the stony heart out of their flesh: that they may walk in my commandments, and keep my judgments, and do them: and that they may be my people, and I may be their God."

May the Lord God deign to create this new spirit, His spirit, in peoples, and particularly in the hearts of those to whom he has entrusted the responsibility of establishing the future peace.

Then and only then will the reborn world avoid the return of the thunderous scourge of war and there will reign a true, stable and universal brotherhood, and that peace guaranteed by Christ even on earth to those who are willing to believe and trust in His law of love.

In the USA, Harry Truman had succeeded FDR as President only in April that year upon FDR's death. The Truman Library Institute provides this commentary:

President Truman was the Vice-President to FDR for less than 90 days before stepping into the role of President and Commander in Chief. This was April 12, 1945, a mere five months before the world war would come to an end. However, at the time, while the end of the war was longed for and looked by some to be imminent, there was no sure-end of the war in sight. It required a great deal of Presidential action and severe decisions to bring about the conclusion of World War II. While FDR was the President in charge at the beginning of the war, it was Truman’s actions that brought the war to an end.

Within 15 days of taking Presidential office, both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met their death. A day before Hitler’s death and only two days after the death of Mussolini, German forces in Italy surrendered. This accelerated the end of the war, as German forces in Berlin surrendered to the Allies on May 2nd, marking the third week of Truman’s presidency.

Over the next week German forces would continue to surrender, but that did not bring an end to the war. There was still tension with Japan and Russia, and funding for the war was growing thin.

At this time the three heads of state from the United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR, Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, respectively, met at the Potsdam Conference. This is where the fate of Germany and much of Europe was decided.

The site also reviews his decisions to force Japan's surrender by the use of the atomic bomb.

One essential aspect for me is that because of the August/September surrenders of Japan, my father was honorably discharged from the Army of the United States in October of 1945. He'd been based in England in 203rd Army Air Force as a gunner in a B-17 and might have been sent to the ongoing war against Japan! He came home, settled down in Wichita, Kansas with Rita, bought a house, worked at Boeing, and raised three children, including me.

The motto of his B-17 was "Heaven Can Wait"!

Photo Credits (Public Domain): Winston Churchill waves to crowds in Whitehall in London as they celebrate VE Day, 8 May 1945. From the the balcony of the Ministry of Health, Prime Minister Winston Churchill gives his famous 'V for Victory' sign to crowds in Whitehall on the day he broadcast to the nation that the war with Germany had been won, 8 May 1945 (VE Day); Pius XII with tabard, by Michael Pitcairn, 1951.

Family photo, scanned and retouched (Copyright Stephanie A. Mann, 2025)--Wasn't he handsome? No wonder my mother fell for him on a blind date!

Progress Report: "The Controversial Thomas More"

I tell you what: Travis Curtright--based on the first few chapters I've read--has written an extraordinary book about Saint Thomas More. It highlights crucial problems caused by the presentation of his "Tower Works" by his heirs, Rastell and Roper and Harpsfield, and how they--especially Rastell who edited More's works--have influenced biographers and even the modern editors of the collected works from Yale University Press. 

The received argument is that More eschewed controversy, about papal/Church and royal authority, about the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, and other matters once he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. As he prepared for death, either natural or judicial, he is thought to be completely focused on spiritual matters, meditating on the Four Last Things and preparing for Judgment.

But authority in the Church and the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist are spiritual matters, and as he cared passionately about the Truth, More had to continue to defend those Truths. For example, when I read The Sadness of Christ in the Vintage Spiritual Classics edition ten years ago, I noted:

Even as he devoted himself to meditating on the Agony in the Garden, with the drama of Jesus's three prayers to His Father to let the cup of suffering pass by, the sleeping Apostles neglecting His vigil, and the betrayal of Judas, More was thinking of his own day. He compares the sleeping Apostles to their negligent successors, the Bishops, in the midst of the attacks on the Church and  at the same time he contrasts the negligence of the Apostles to the activity and decision of Judas, betraying Jesus and turning Him over to the Sanhedrin. He was as much concerned by the betrayal of Jesus in the 16th century as he was [about] Judas' betraying kiss that first Holy Thursday night. He was concerned about the growing disbelief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and also about those "autodidacts" who interpreted Scripture on their own authority, not based on the teaching and Tradition of the universal Catholic Church.

(As Curtright states on page 23, in his discussion of how firmly More upheld the authority of the Pope and the Councils, Henry VIII had been such an autodidact when he argued that the passages from Leviticus condemning a brother marrying his brother's widow trumped the command from Deuteronomy for the brother to marry his brother's widow if she was childless "to continue the family line." Henry chose his interpretation over "the Church's traditional practice and . . . canon laws" in weighing the authority of these passages.)

Scholars through the centuries may have relied too much on Rastell's publication of More's works during the reign of Mary I and how he edited and interpreted them, Curtis explains. It's clear that Rastell produced these works for the Marian reign, even revising More's comments on the Nun of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, in that context. Since Barton had upheld the validity of Henry and Katherine of Aragon's marriage, More couldn't be seen as disparaging her. That's just an example of how Rastell "framed" More's involvement in the controversial issues of his last years as a private citizen and then prisoner in the Tower.

More (!) to come of course, as Curtis re-examines four major works:

A Treatise upon the Passion (1534, before entry to the Tower)
A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 1534-1535
A Letter from Prison to Alice Alington, 1534
De tristitia Christi, c. 1535 (The Sadness of Christ)

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Preview: The 30th Anniversary of "The Gospel of Life"

In 1995, Pope Saint John Paul II issued his 11th (out of 14) Encyclical, titled Evangelium vitae (On Human Life), so this year we celebrate the 30th anniversary of this landmark event--and it will be our next topic on the Son Rise Morning Show, on Monday, May 5. You know that I'll be on the air at my usual time at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

In 2020, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the encyclical, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a Compendium offering summaries of its 105 paragraphs via

the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities has developed a condensed version of this landmark pro-life encyclical. This thorough summary makes Pope St. John Paul II’s prophetic writing more concise for those looking to deepen their understanding of the Church’s beautiful teachings on the sacredness of human life. An introductory foreword provides background and context to help readers better understand The Gospel of Life. 

The encyclical begins:

The Gospel of life is at the heart of Jesus' message. Lovingly received day after day by the Church, it is to be preached with dauntless fidelity as "good news" to the people of every age and culture.

At the dawn of salvation, it is the Birth of a Child which is proclaimed as joyful news: "I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord" (Lk 2:10-11). The source of this "great joy" is the Birth of the Saviour; but Christmas also reveals the full meaning of every human birth, and the joy which accompanies the Birth of the Messiah is thus seen to be the foundation and fulfilment of joy at every child born into the world (cf. Jn 16:21).

When he presents the heart of his redemptive mission, Jesus says: "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (Jn 10:10). In truth, he is referring to that "new" and "eternal" life which consists in communion with the Father, to which every person is freely called in the Son by the power of the Sanctifying Spirit. It is precisely in this "life" that all the aspects and stages of human life achieve their full significance.

And it's clear that John Paul bases his teaching statements on the threats to human life (Murder, Abortion, Euthanasia, Contraception and Sterilization, and Capital Punishment) on a heightened, supernatural vision of the dignity of human life:

Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual's earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an "ultimate" but a "penultimate" reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters.

The Church knows that this Gospel of life, which she has received from her Lord, 1 has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person-believer and non-believer alike-because it marvelously fulfils all the heart's expectations while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize in the natural law written in the heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15) the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree. Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.

I've turned to George Weigel's Witness to Hope biography of John Paul for context (pages 756-760 in the 1999 First Edition):

• John Paul II wrote the encyclical at the request of those meeting at the "fourth plenary meeting of the College of Cardinals" in April of 1991 [the month Mark and I were married!!] after they'd gathered to "discuss threats to the dignity of human life."
• Then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argued that the case of the moral relativism of the Weimar Republic was a warning example: "If moral relativism was legally absolutized in the name of tolerance, basic rights were also relativized and the door was open to totalitarianism. . . . in a society that no longer knew how to make public arguments for absolute values."
• The Cardinals then asked the Pope to write an authoritative statement on "the dignity of human life."
• Thus, he wrote Evangelium Vitae! He wrote a letter to every bishop in the world to get their suggestions, with four years of consultation before issuing the encyclical on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation.

Weigel states that this work "broke new ground in historical analysis, doctrine, moral teaching, and the practical application of moral norms to the complexities of democratic politics" and that it should be read in conjunction with Centesimus Annus (1991) and Veritatis Splendor (1993) as it "argued that democracies risked self-destruction if moral wrongs were legally defended as rights."

For example in paragraph 18, John Paul wrote:

On the one hand, the various declarations of human rights and the many initiatives inspired by these declarations show that at the global level there is a growing moral sensitivity, more alert to acknowledging the value and dignity of every individual as a human being, without any distinction of race, nationality, religion, political opinion or social class.

On the other hand, these noble proclamations are unfortunately contradicted by a tragic repudiation of them in practice. This denial is still more distressing, indeed more scandalous, precisely because it is occurring in a society which makes the affirmation and protection of human rights its primary objective and its boast. How can these repeated affirmations of principle be reconciled with the continual increase and widespread justification of attacks on human life? How can we reconcile these declarations with the refusal to accept those who are weak and needy, or elderly, or those who have just been conceived? These attacks go directly against respect for life and they represent a direct threat to the entire culture of human rights.

In a long encyclical like this, covering several issues and threats, we can't go into detail during our segment Monday morning, but the context of the inspiration and the method of the encyclical are essential to understanding Pope John Paul's 1995 response to the Cardinals' 1991 request. 

As Weigel also comments, when John Paul warned that denying "the right to life from conception until natural death" makes democracies "tyrant states" this was not a nineteenth-century kind of reaction:

This was a critique from inside. A Church that had identified law-governed democracies as the best available expression of basic social ethics was trying to prevent democracies from self-destructing. John Paul, a longtime critic of utilitarianism, was trying to alert democracies old and new to the danger that reducing human beings to useful (or useless) objects did to the cause of freedom.

Thus, the Church was not interfering or imposing on "law-governed democracies" but trying help them remain true to the standards of their own declarations of human rights, including conscience rights.

There are several resources for more analysis of The Gospel of Life, including this De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame discussion on March 25 this year, and from the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life document on the Pastoral Care for Human Life.

Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us!