So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, June 9 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.
We'll mark the second significant anniversary, the 90th of their canonizations in 1935, the following Monday, June 16.
In preparing for these anniversaries, I've read two books about Saint Thomas, by Travis Curtright and from Cluny Press, and I'm still reading a great book by Saint John Fisher, defending the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. There's another new book translating Fisher's defense of Free Will against Martin Luther's ideas, but it's a little out of my price range (but very important). What these four books demonstrate is that these two martyrs were actively defending the teachings of the Catholic Church before and, in More's case, while they were already suffering for their defense of the Unity of the Church with the Vicar of Christ, the Pope.
What Travis Curtright's book emphasized for me is that Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell targeted Sir Thomas More in the November 1534 Supremacy Act and Treasons Act by eliminating his defense of Silence against disclosing his reasons for not swearing the required oaths. The Treasons Act described the reach of the law that silence could not protect, in the wish, the will, the desire, the imagination, the invention, the practice or attempt to harm Henry VIII's "dignity, title [Supreme Head of the Church in England] or name", finding guilty anyone who
As Curtright notes, Saint John Fisher, good and holy bishop that he was, was not the lawyer that More was, and thus Sir Richard Rich tricked him into speaking against the King's ecclesiastical title and control of the Church in/of England: Rich promised that "Fisher would suffer no harm for" giving his opinion about the King's new title because Henry VIII "desired to hear it". Offering an opinion could be charged as treason. (footnote #33 to page 112 on page 199). This was entrapment.
Thomas More protested at his trial not only that he was never malicious but that he and Richard Rich were only conducting a legal "moot"--arguing a case without reference to a real case, a "what if" conditional scenario in the Tower of London, and he famously commented:
We'll mark the second significant anniversary, the 90th of their canonizations in 1935, the following Monday, June 16.
In preparing for these anniversaries, I've read two books about Saint Thomas, by Travis Curtright and from Cluny Press, and I'm still reading a great book by Saint John Fisher, defending the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. There's another new book translating Fisher's defense of Free Will against Martin Luther's ideas, but it's a little out of my price range (but very important). What these four books demonstrate is that these two martyrs were actively defending the teachings of the Catholic Church before and, in More's case, while they were already suffering for their defense of the Unity of the Church with the Vicar of Christ, the Pope.
What Travis Curtright's book emphasized for me is that Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell targeted Sir Thomas More in the November 1534 Supremacy Act and Treasons Act by eliminating his defense of Silence against disclosing his reasons for not swearing the required oaths. The Treasons Act described the reach of the law that silence could not protect, in the wish, the will, the desire, the imagination, the invention, the practice or attempt to harm Henry VIII's "dignity, title [Supreme Head of the Church in England] or name", finding guilty anyone who
do [sic] maliciously wish, will or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's or the heirs apparent, or to deprive them of any of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel or usurper of the crown . . .thus they presumed to read his mind and the law implied treason IN his silence. Curtright's comment: "Spoken malice could be determined by any rejection of or refusal to admit to the king's title in the Treasons Act, and this same language of sedition was part of More's attainder . . ." (p. 113) Spoken malice need not be be stated out loud; it was implied and implicated by silence (?!?). Note that the publication and pronouncement of this harm of the king, queen, or heir is mentioned after the word "or": the first violation is as bad as the second.
As Curtright notes, Saint John Fisher, good and holy bishop that he was, was not the lawyer that More was, and thus Sir Richard Rich tricked him into speaking against the King's ecclesiastical title and control of the Church in/of England: Rich promised that "Fisher would suffer no harm for" giving his opinion about the King's new title because Henry VIII "desired to hear it". Offering an opinion could be charged as treason. (footnote #33 to page 112 on page 199). This was entrapment.
Thomas More protested at his trial not only that he was never malicious but that he and Richard Rich were only conducting a legal "moot"--arguing a case without reference to a real case, a "what if" conditional scenario in the Tower of London, and he famously commented:
Can it therefore seem likely to your Lordships, that I should in so weighty an Affair as this, act so unadvisedly, as to trust Mr. Rich, a Man I had always so mean an Opinion of, in reference to his Truth and Honesty, so very much before my Sovereign Lord the King, to whom I am so deeply indebted for his manifold Favours, or any of his noble and grave Counselors, that I should only impart to Mr. Rich the Secrets of my Conscience in respect to the King's Supremacy, the particular Secrets, and only Point about which I have been so long pressed to explain my self? which I never did, nor never would reveal; when the Act was once made, either to the King himself, or any of his Privy-Counselors, as is well known to your Honours, who have been sent upon no other account at several times by his Majesty to me in the Tower. I refer it to your Judgments, my Lords, whether this can seem credible to any of your Lordships.
But both Fisher and More were found guilty at their trials. Through the years I've contributed to the Son Rise Morning Show program we've described their martyrdoms, but here's some narration of Saint John Fisher's last moments:
When he came out of the Tower, a summer morning's mist hung over the river, wreathing the buildings in a golden haze. Two of the Lieutenant's men carried him in a chair to the gate, and there they set him down, while waiting for the Sheriffs. The cardinal stood up and leaning his shoulder against a wall for support, opened the little New Testament he carried in his hand. "O Lord," he said, so that all could hear him, "this is the last time I shall ever open this book. Let some comforting place now chance to me whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in my last hour"----and looking down at the page, he read
Now this is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou has sent I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do (John, 17:3-4).
Whereupon he shut the book, saying: "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end." His lips were moving in prayer, as they carried him to Tower Hill. . . .
He was offered a final chance to save his life by acknowledging the royal supremacy, but the Saint turned to the crowd, and from the front of the scaffold, he spoke these words:
"Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my courage hath served me well thereto, so that yet hitherto I have not feared death; wherefore I desire you help me and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of my death's stroke, and in the very moment of my death, I then faint not in any point of the Catholic Faith for fear; and I pray God save the king and the realm, and hold His holy hand over it, and send the king a good counsel."
Witnesses were shocked at how thin and weak he was and at how much blood poured out of his body after the beheading. His decollated body was left on the scaffold on Tower Hill.
Saint John Fisher, pray for us!
Saint Thomas More, pray for us!
Image Source (Public Domain): Drawing of one the frescoes by Niccolò Circignani in the Venerable English College in Rome, depicting the executions of Saint John Fisher, Saint Thomas More, and Blessed Margaret Pole (which did not take place at the same time!) A=Fisher beheaded; B=More being beheaded; C=Pole, next to be beheaded.
No comments:
Post a Comment