Does anyone still want to talk about St. Thomas More

[floresco]

I was enjoying the earlier thread on St. Thomas More, but unfortunately it went too far astray from the topic. I would appreciate hearing what others have to say about this saint. I especially liked this prayer of his that amsjj quoted in the earlier thread: From: “A deuoute prayer”:

Almighty god, take from me al vaynglorious mindes, all appetites of myne owne praise, all enuye, couetyse, glotony, slouth and lecherye, al wrathfull affeccions, all appetite of reuengynge, al desire or delite of other folks harme, all pleasure in prouoking any parson to wrath and anger, al delite of exprobracion, or insultacion against anye parson in their affliccion and calamitie.

And geue me good Lorde an humble, lowlye, quiet, peasible, pacient, charytable, kinde, tender, and piteful minde, with all my workes, and al my wordes and all my thoughtes, to haue a taste of thy holy holy blessed spirite.

Geue me good Lorde, a full faythe, a firme hope, and a feruent charity, a loue to the good lorde incomparable aboue the loue to my selfe, and that I loue nothing to thy displeasure, but euery thing in an order to the.

Geue me good lord, a longing to be wt the, not for thauoiding of the calamities of this wretched world, nor so much for ye auoiding of the paines of purgatory nor of the paines of hel neither, nor so much for the atteining of ye ioyes of heauen, in respect of mine own commodity, as euen for a very loue of the.

pp. 229-230 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Volume 9: The Apology.

 

[MarkThompson]

I like “all pleasure in pro[v]oking any parson to wrath and anger.” May we all avoid such!

 

[amsjj]

I read aloud several books of St. Thomas More’s, and I enjoyed that one could get an idea of what he sounded like. I was also interested in noting that even in the same prayer, he didn’t necessarily spell the same word the same way. It made me appreciate dictionaries and the standardisation of spelling!

I do repeat my recommendation of reading the works. I remember being especially taken by his “Treatise on the Passion” and “Treatise on the Blessed Body”, though alas it’s been many years since I’ve read them. I wonder if these were the works meant when Father Newman said in the “Apologia”:
**
Macaulay thought it [Transubstantiation] so difficult to believe that he had need of a believer in it, of talents as eminent as Sir Thomas More, before he could bring himself to conceive that the Catholics of an enlightened age could resist the overwhelming force of the argument against it. “Sir Thomas More,” he says, “is one of the choice specimens of wisdom and virtue; and the doctrine of Transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands that test, will stand any test.” (Chapter 5. Position of my Mind since 1845)

take care,
amsjj

+++

Jesus, God and man,
imprisoned by love in Thy most holy Sacrament,
have mercy upon us.
– Venerable John Henry Newman, December 22, 1851
(LD, XIV, 511).

 

[StrawberryJam]

I wonder often about him. I don’t pick quotes to do so.

 

[Victorious]

Two great books by St. Thomas More:

• A Dialogue Concerning Heresies*
• A Dialogue on Comfort against Tribulation*

I recommend Mary Gottschalk’s renditions into modern English.

 

[Onegin]

St. Thomas More is my patron Saint, so I would definitely love to speak about him.

Has anyone read Utopia? I just finished it last year and thought that it was a very good book.

Here is a prayer that I love written by the Good Saint whilst he was imprisoned and awaiting execution. Apologies for those who have seen this before, I’ve posted it in the past but that was quite a while ago, so I’ll re-add it here:

Give me the grace, Good Lord to set the world at naught. To set my mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the blasts of men’s mouths.

To be content to be solitary. Not to long for worldly pleasures. Little by little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all its business.

Not to long to hear of earthly things, but that the hearing of worldly fancies may be displeasing to me.

Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help. To lean into the comfort of God. Busily to labor to love Him.

To know my own vileness and wretchedness. To humble myself under the mighty hand of God. To bewail my sins and, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.

Gladly to bear my purgatory here. To be joyful in tribulations. To walk the narrow way that leads to life.

To have the last thing in remembrance. To have ever before my eyes my death that is ever at hand. To make death no stranger to me. To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of Hell. To pray for pardon before the judge comes.

To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me. For His benefits unceasingly to give Him thanks.

To buy the time again that I have lost. To abstain from vain conversations. To shun foolish mirth and gladness. To cut off unnecessary recreations.

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at naught, for the winning of Christ.

To think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.

These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all in one heap.

Amen *

 

[Shin]

Quotations of St. Thomas More:

‘Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.’

‘Let us therefore leave the devil’s deceitful service and take nothing at his hand. For he nothing giveth but trifles; nor giveth half an inch of pleasure without one whole ell of pain.’

‘My lord, for one bishop of your opinion, I have a hundred saints of mine; for one parliament of yours, and God knows of what kind, I have all the General Councils of the Church for a thousand years.’

‘If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.’

'O Lord, give us a mind that is humble, quiet, peaceable, patient and charitable, and a taste of your Holy Spirit in all our thoughts, words, and deeds.

O Lord, give us a lively faith, a firm hope, a fervent charity, a love of you. Take from us all lukewarmness in meditation and all dullness in prayer. Give us fervor and delight in thinking of you, your grace, and your tender compassion toward us. Give us, good Lord, the grace to work for the things we pray for.’

 

[SunnaB16]

In case it wasn`t mentioned earlier:

He`s the patron saint of Statesmen (What are they?!!!) and politicians, so we desperately need to pray for his intercession.

If we all had his backbone, the Enemy would be in full retreat.

 

[Alexander_Roman]

St Thomas More is the patron saint of politicians and also all the various roles people occupy in legislatures and courts of law. As an executive assistant to a legislator, he is also a patron saint of mine.

What is perhaps most attractive about More is the way he united his secular profession with a very devout and ascetical personal spirituality. He lived at the London Charterhouse and adopted their strict life of prayer and fasting together with a Spartan sleeping schedule that stayed with him throughout his life.

He would go above and beyond the call of duty and would wander through the back-streets of London asking if anyone needed particular help. Mothers-to-be were particular objects of his intercessory prayer. He was known as someone who could pray for people tempted to suicide and save them from that evil spirit (two such individuals approached him as he walked to his martyric death and asked for his help - he told them that “from now on, I shall pray for you always.”).

A lawyer by profession, he was a theologian by necessity in the times he lived in. His correspondence with Luther was quite terse and even obscene at times as he grew angry at the reformer’s theological conclusions (both More and Luther agreed, however, that King Henry VIII was in the wrong over his divorce).

Robert Bolt’s play took some historical liberalities about More. For example, although a Protestant, Archbishop Cranmer did all he could to rescue More from death. And Thomas Cromwell, who is always portrayed as More’ antagonist, did likewise. In fact, after More’s death, his family invited Cromwell to be a godparent to one of his daughters’ children.

As someone once said, “For Thomas More, when it came to defining and teaching theology, the Pope was first and the king was . . . nowhere.”

Alex

 

[djeter]

Fr. Richard John Neuhaus speaks to Thomas More’s sorrow here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/06/02/thomas-more%e2%80%99s-sorrow/

dj

 

[1234]

I am sorry, but I am no fan of Sir Thomas More.

I saw the Broadway version of “A Man for All Seasons” with Paul Scofield, who was later knighted, and Leo Kern. I thought that it was wonderful. I still have a bronze paperweight with More on it, and had a copy of the Holbein portrait for years. sigh

Then I learned that as Lord Chancellor, the chief law enforcer in England, he burned six people, imprisoned, tortured and harassed many others, some to their deaths, the latter a man who was rumored to possess and English Bible, tho’ none was found (Thomas Petyt)

Here are excepts from various books about More and his times:

From Sir Thomas More: A Man for One Season James Wood

Re Thomas “Little” Bilney (burned):

Thomas Bilney, the Cambridge scholar converted to Christ through the reading of the New Testament, was seized while distributing New Testaments. A writ for his burning was quickly procured from More, who dispatched Bilney to the flames with a* joke* remarking the proper course would have been to** “burn him first and procure a writ afterwards”**(***Hugh Latimer ***R. Demaus). Bilney was burnt at the Lollards Pit near the gate of the City of Norwich in 1531.

James Bainham was the son of a Gloucestershire Knight. He was a man well read in the classics and a distinguished lawyer of Middle Temple. He was an earnest reader of scripture. He was arrested by order of More, taken to his house in Chelsea, tied to the “tree of truth” where More caused him to be whipped in the hope of discovering other “heretics”. More forfeited his goods and threw his wife into prison. Bainham was taken to the Tower where he was racked on two separate occasions until he couldn’t walk. When he was taken (in a chair) to the stake at Smithfield on 30th April 1531, he said “I die for having said it is lawful for every man and woman to have God’s book . . …that the true key of Heaven is not that of the bishop of Rome, but the preaching of the Gospel.” At the stake, as the train of gunpowder ran towards him, Bainham lifted up his eyes towards Heaven and cried “God forgive thee and show thee more mercy than thou showest to me!** The Lord forgive Sir Thomas More.”**

William Tyndale considered Thomas More the great enemy of the free circulation of the Scriptures in the English tongue. More had singled him out by name on the title-page of The Dialogue in which he attacks Tyndale’s New Testament and the Reformers. Tyndale had not sought controversy, but More’s book left him no alternative but to reply, and in Tyndale’s Answer, he tackles in a straightforward manner the real essence of the controversy between the Roman Church and the Reformers. In More’s Confutation however, More states Tyndale is no longer a "heretic swollen with pride"- he is "a beast discharging filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish beastly mouth "- a “railing ribald” - a "drowsy drudge that has drunken deep in the devil’s dregs". (William Tyndale, R. Demaus).

Further burnings followed at More’s instigation, including that of the priest and writer John Frith in 1533. In The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, More described him as “the devil’s stinking martyr”**

Michael Farris in his*** From Tyndale to Madison*** (2007) states : that in April 1529 a heretic, John Tewkesbury, was taken by More to his house in Chelsea and so badly tortured on the rack that he was almost unable to walk. Tewkesbury also had to be carried to the stake when he was burned.

from Peter Ackroyd and James Wood:

With the help of John Stokesley, the Bishop of London, More personally broke into the houses of suspected heretics, arresting them on the spot and sometimes interrogating them in his own home. He imprisoned one man in the porter’s lodge of his house, and had him put in the stocks. He raided the home of a businessman called John Petyt, who was suspected of financing Tyndale; Petyt died in the Tower. Six rebellious Oxford students were kept for months in a fish cellar; three of them died in prison…

In the** Dialogue Concerning Heresies,** More attempted to answer the charge of the reformers that it was not Christian for the church to burn heretics. The church did not burn people, replied More; the state burned them. This was strictly true, because the ecclesiastical courts tried heretics and the state courts sentenced them. But More’s language is disingenuous. The church, he writes, would never want to kill anyone. “It is not the clergy that laboreth to have them punished to death.” The “spiritual law” is “good, reasonable, piteous, and charitable, and nothing desiring the death of any therein.” The church asks the heretic to repent; if he does not, the church excommunicates him, at which point “the clergy giveth knowledge to the temporalty, not exhorting the prince, or any man else, either, to kill him or to punish him.”

This is the worst and most vicious form of sophistry.

Enjoy Hans Holbein’s portrait as a great work of art.

Enjoy Robert Bolt’s play, “A Man For All Seasons” as a great work of—fiction.

 

[Victorious]

Thanks, but I will trust the Church’s assessment of St. Thomas More over that of your disgruntled literary critics and novelists.

 

[1234]

Thanks, but I will trust the Church’s assessment of St. Thomas More over that of your disgruntled literary critics and novelists.

Solid historians, more likely.

You miss the point. Robert Bolt, the writer of the play,** A Man for All Seasons,** (a very complimentary look at Sir Thomas) was closer to being a literary critic than a historian.

The historians know better.

Not only was Sir Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor, responsible for the hounding, torture and burning of heretics, he appeared to relish it. He showed them no mercy. Then, when his turn came and he accused of treason, he was not shown any, except that he was cleanly beheaded, as was Cardinal Fisher, by the way. Neither was drawn and quartered, the usual punishment for treason.

 

[Victorious]

The historians know better.

The “historians” do not know better than the Catholic Church (one, holy, Catholic, apostolic, founded by Jesus Christ), who passed a contrary judgment. So sorry: no sale.

 

[1234]

The “historians” do not know better than the Catholic Church (one, holy, Catholic, apostolic, founded by Jesus Christ), who passed a contrary judgment. So sorry: no sale.

Sorry, I stand corrected.

So–

harassment, torture, and burning is OK now.

Or, actually, come to think of it,

…it always *was *OK.

 

[Victorious]

Sorry, I stand corrected.

So–

harassment, torture, and burning is OK now.

Or, actually, come to think of it,

…it always *was *OK.

You know…the only honest thing in this whole commentary is that you come out and reveal openly that your attack on St. Thomas More is nothing more than an attack on the Church.

I won’t see your response, or any other response you post to anything from now on.

 

[floresco]

Not only was Sir Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor, responsible for the hounding, torture and burning of heretics, he appeared to relish it. He showed them no mercy. Then, when his turn came and he accused of treason, he was not shown any, except that he was cleanly beheaded, as was Cardinal Fisher, by the way. Neither was drawn and quartered, the usual punishment for treason.

You are using the values of our culture to judge a very different one. To most people now, heresy just means having an unsanctioned opinion. It is not a big deal. For St. Thomas it was a serious sin that endangered immortal souls. He did not love torture; he hated sin. He hated the idea of people being eternally separated from God. He used the commonly accepted means of fighting heresy available to him.

While I don’t approve of torture and execution, I don’t see our culture as fit to make judgments about St. Thomas More’s time. The usual response to heresy in our time is to be tolerant and accepting. We have gone just as far wrong in the other direction.

 

[1234]

The problem with More is that he aggressively sought out and persecuted heretics, above and beyond the call. He wasn’t a clergyman. And he enjoyed doing it–he admitted so in his own words, which I quoted, with their sources.

He was also rather contemptible to his own family and household. He married a young girl, had several children by her-- quickly; she died and he married a wealthy older widow very fast. He is known to have insulted his wife publicly–she was illiterate, like most women of her time. More took in a young man, an orphan, Dick Purser, son of John Purser, who died after being imprisoned by More in the Tower; Dick, understandably influenced by his father, questioned the Eucharist. More had him stripped, flogged and turned out, a boy he had taken in himself after destroying his father. He was taken in by Thomas Cromwell.

The point is that Thomas More has been much idealized in recent times (thanks to “A Man For All Seasons”), and he doesn’t deserve it. He was a product of his times, no more and no less.

Now we know much more about Thomas More, thanks to public interest in the Tudors, fueled by the bestselling novel and winner of the Man Booker prize, England’s highest literary honor, “Wolf Hall”, and the popularized and inaccurate “The Tudors” as well as Masterpiece Theater, and the amazing availability of knowledge on the web.

“Wolf Hall” is a great read for fans of Tudor history, and astonishingly well researched. It starts at under $8.00 pus $4.00 shipping on amazon.

In reviewing CAF threads about Thomas More, I have spotted some inaccuracies:

Both Thomas More and Cardinal John Fisher were beheaded. Neither was hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment for treason, which they were convicted of.

Treason is the most serious of crimes. In 1952, the US electrocuted the Rosenbergs, a married couple with two small children–for treason. Jonathan Pollard, a spy for Israel, our ally, was caught in the US and sentenced to life. During WWII, when the English caught spies and abettors in England, they were hanged on the spot.

Rome was raped and pillaged by the Holy Roman Emperor’s Catholic troops, not by Lutherans. The very troops which the Emperor threatened to use to invade England and kill Henry, and later Edward and Elizabeth, Henry’s non-Catholic heirs.

 

[floresco]

He was also rather contemptible to his own family and household. He married a young girl, had several children by her-- quickly; she died and he married a wealthy older widow very fast. He is known to have insulted his wife publicly–she was illiterate, like most women of her time.

I did a great deal of research on St. Thomas’s family life for a paper once. I came to opposite conclusion. It seemed to me that he was an exemplary father and husband. I’m not sure what you see as so contemptible about remarrying quickly. He had young children who needed a mother. Everything that I read seemed to indicate that he had good relationships with both wives. And he was outstanding for his involvement in his children’s education. That you describe this aspect of his life as contemptible leads me to question your credibility. I find it difficult to imagine an unbiased person reaching such a conclusion.

I agree that Man for All Seasons is not especially historically accurate but that is not our basis for believing that Thomas More was a Saint. He was canonized by the Church. You seem to be claiming that She was wrong to do so and the more you write the more I question your judgment on this topic.

 

[1234]

If anyone reading this thread is looking for a Reformation saint to emulate who was also a scholar, consider Francis de Sales. He was well-educated, brilliant, founded the Salesian communities, co-founded the Visitation, campaigned and preached against reformed ideas, but shoved arguments under people’s doors instead of burning them alive. He was developed devotion to Mary and the Sacred Hearts. He produced a lot of writings and letters which have been translated into English, the most famous being “An Introduction to the Devout Life”. He was a great preacher, and almost unbelievably kind and affable, at a time when few religious partisans were.

He is a Doctor of the Church.

…and he didn’t burn anyone.