How can we call Thomas Moore a saint?

[MtnDwellar]

I’ve never heard that martyrdom automatically makes someone a saint. A martyr yes, but not a saint…that would mean that one could commit all kinds of sins under the sun (fornication, etc) without remorse, and if they die because they won’t deny Christ, that person automatically go to heaven and is a saint. I’ve never heard of that before…

Here is another reference:

1258 The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.

 

[Rence]

It never really occurred to me before, but I guess I can understand now why so many people don’t even bother trying to understand or even bother trying to follow the rules anymore. At least one thing I really don’t have to question anymore is why it’s getting harder and harder to find fellow Catholics where I live. And I haven’t even met a practicing Catholic, according to this forum’s requirements for being a “practicing Catholic” – even when the ratio of Catholics:non-Catholic Christians was reversed. . Ah well, we all try to understand and hopefully eventually we will with time and Grace Thanks for the answers! Things are more clear now

 

[JReducation]

It never really occurred to me before, but I guess I can understand now why so many people don’t even bother trying to understand or even bother trying to follow the rules anymore. At least one thing I really don’t have to question anymore is why it’s getting harder and harder to find fellow Catholics where I live. And I haven’t even met a practicing Catholic, according to this forum’s requirements for being a “practicing Catholic” – even when the ratio of Catholics:non-Catholic Christians was reversed. . Ah well, we all try to understand and hopefully eventually we will with time and Grace Thanks for the answers! Things are more clear now

They are?

I don’t understand what you just said.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[PPeterson]

The key word in your post is “thinking”. We must be able to think through the cultural context of the time period. Moral relativism is not a temporal concept. Rather it is the idea that what is intrinsically evil in one situation ceases to be intrinsically evil in another. Capital punishment has not, now or ever, been intrinsically evil. Killing people because they pose a danger of spreading idolatry is also not intrinsically evil. Remember the city of Ai, the fall of Jericho and the instruction of Moses to put to death witches. Yes, these acts are primitive, but they are not intrinsically evil or God Himself would be evil. These acts are barbaric. They have no place in a civilized nation and they would be an evil act today. They are not however evil in and of themselves.

England was anything but civilized during the reign of Henry XVIII, as opposed to today, when the have McDonald’s.

The problem i have with your post, and the reason I lol’d before is that even in your attempts to offer an example of something that is not morally relative (the lack intrinsic evil in killing someone who may spread idolatry) you offer a great example of how the morality of killing itself is in fact relative to intent. It’s not that I think I’m catching you being a relativist. It’s that I think this discussion is a humorous example of why trotting out the morale relativism boogeyman as much as we to tends to makes us Catholics sound dumb and we should stop or at least find a better label for the phenomena we are trying to oppose.

As for the thread, I’m happy anytime someone is a saint. If you can supervise burnings and still make the cut that’s more good news for the rest of us.

 

[JReducation]

The problem i have with your post, and the reason I lol’d before is that even in your attempts to offer an example of something that is not morally relative (the lack intrinsic evil in killing someone who may spread idolatry) you offer a great example of how the morality of killing itself is in fact relative to intent. It’s not that I think I’m catching you being a relativist. It’s that I think this discussion is a humorous example of why trotting out the morale relativism boogeyman as much as we to tends to makes us Catholics sound dumb and we should stop or at least find a better label for the phenomena we are trying to oppose.

As for the thread, I’m happy anytime someone is a saint. If you can supervise burnings and still make the cut that’s more good news for the rest of us.

Let’s slow down here. What Pnewton is describing is not relativism. Something can be relative and not be relativism. Relativism is an accurate philosophical term that means something comepletely different from relative.

Relativism is the belief that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by the belief of the person or persons. In other words, actions do not have values in themselves, but only the value assigned to them by the executor of the action. This is the case today with an issue such as abortion. Some people will say that abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching. That is relativism In other words, abortion is wrong for Catholics, because we assign a moral value to it that makes it immoral. When a non-Catholic chooses an abortion, it may not be wrong, because he does not assign it the same value. This kind of thinking denies the fact that the act has a value that is independent of the person who is doing the act. In this case, abortion is always wrong, regardless of who is doing it and regardless of what the person believes.

Relative is a completely different philosophical concept and morally acceptable. Relativity, which is different from relativism, speaks about culpability. The killing of innocent people is always a grave moral wrong. However, the culpability of the executor is relative to three conditions:

1. The act must be gravely immoral. Killing innocent people meats that criteria.
2. The person must know that that what he is doing is morally wrong.

This is where someone like Thomas More is not culpable. In his world, it was believed that killing a heretic was a good, because it protected the general population from false teachings. The belief was so ingraned in the culture of the time, that it was inconceivable to More that one could allow the spread of heresy. He does not meet the second criteria. He did not know the wrongness of the act, because the concept was foreign to him. Had he understood it as we understand it today, he would not have done it. We know this because we know him to be a man who always chose what he knew to be the highest good.

1. The person must have freedom to choose between executing and action and not doing it. This criterion does not apply to More, because he never gets past the first criterion.

That’s what is meant when we say that you cannot judge a person’s culpability based on your 21st century knowledge. You have to judge in relation to their knowledge.

This rule applies today as it did then. We judge an action, not a person. We do not know if the person meets all three criteria for culpability. Sin is predicated on culpability, not only on the rightness or wrongness of an action.

The Church can say what a person knew and did not know, because we know what people thought at a particular time in history. Based on that information, we say that they were or were not culpable of sin. We’re not saying that killing people was a good thing. It has never been a good thing. Killing is always objectively wrong. But not everyone who kills is culpable of doing wrong.

We can condemn relativism. Actions do have their own value, independent of the person who carries out the action. We cannot condemn people who are unaware of the gravity of the action of being guilty of sin. They are guilty of the action, but may be free of moral culpability.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[PPeterson]

Thank you Brother, that was a clear and helpful explanation.

 

[BGorski]

My understanding of that time period was that Henry VIII ultimately signed all execution orders, and authored many of them himself, then sending them to Thomas More. Now whether More was the orginator of the order to have them burned or not is unanswerable unless you dig deeper into English history.

Many people were burned at the stake by Henry the VIII, Elisabeth I, and Mary Queen of Scots, as the crown wrestled with both the aftermath of Henry’s hunger for new wives, and a male heir. As the focus of the throne flip-flopped back and forth between protestant and Catholic, many people were executed by several different ways, all of course fatal in their outcome. Many of the executions were in reality political and labeled religious in nature.

Thomas More is considered a saiint because he ultimately refused to take the oath of allegiance that recognized Henry as the head of the English Church. Many saints and non-saints alike are judged by how they end their lives and ultimately turn to God. As for me, i can only say thank God that He didn’t end my life earlier. With His grace i am farther along my path to Him than I was a few years back.

As for the charity of answers back at serious questions, I agree that we need to show compassion with the question, and love with the answer.

Stay blest in the New Year

 

[SunshineRose1]

Thomas More is regarded as a saint in part because of the way that he refused to support Henry VIII’s divorce of Catharine of Aragon, even though he was under tremendous political pressure to do so, and because he died refusing to accept Henry as the leader of the church within England instead of the Pope as the Act of Supremacy demanded him to do. By doing that, he not only sacrificed the high political office that he enjoyed under his former friend Henry VIII, but also ultimately lost his head. In doing so, he displayed an incredible devotion to his faith, an extraordinary amount of courage, and an admirable degree of integrity. Those of us who have never been in a position where we had to face the choice of dying for our faith should not presume to judge him, since many of us would probably not be willing to sacrifice our lives for our faith. Also, as far as I am concerned, More’s willingness to die for his beliefs, his strong faith, his courage, his determination, and his ability to not sacrifice his morals for his career in the end make him a very good patron saint for politicians. I think the world would be a better place if more politicians were willing to stick to their beliefs even if they have to suffer for it as More did.

As far as him ordering the burning to death of many people, I think that you have to look at what he did in the context of his time. When More was alive, the punishment for heresy was burning, and so it probably never occurred to him that this was a horrible crime. Indeed, many religious authorities at the time perceived burning as a last minute method of salvation in hopeless cases, because it was believed that a person might, when feeling the flames that were supposedly a foretaste of hellfire, might repent and save themselves from eternal damnation. Thus, to a contemporary of More, burning could be regarded as a mercy insofar as a brief mortal agony might save an immortal soul from eternal agony. Therefore, More sentencing those people to be burned is not a mortal sin for him, because he didn’t knowingly commit an immoral action. Also, since he sentenced these people to death under a legitimate authority, I’m not certain I would call what he did murder. Judging More by the standards of our time isn’t fair. If future generations see animals as equal to humans, I shouldn’t be condemned as a slave owner because I own a pet dog when in the modern world there is nothing wrong with owning a pet dog, should I?

Also, I have to point out that More probably felt overwhelmed by the Protestant beliefs that he saw encroaching on England, and he probably sincerely believed that he was doing the right thing by eradicating those heresies from his country. Again, you might not agree with him, but I think you have to admire his conviction and his determination to act according to what he perceived as his Catholic duties.

Finally, if you want to drag Utopia into it as evidence that More knew execution was wrong, I have to point out that Utopia is a very complex work. It has been quoted by liberals and by conservatives alike, and by communists and capitalists. The many facets of the work are apparent even in its title, which means nowhere or no place. Using Utopia to prove that More had a particular social philosophy is a very challenging thing to do, probably because More had many different, sometimes even contradicting views on many issues. Therefore, it will probably be very hard to prove that Utopia clearly indicates that More was against execution or recognized that it was completely immoral.

All in all, I think I have provided enough reasons as to why the Catholic Church would call him a saint, and I would remind you that in a very real sense the Catholic Church doesn’t make anyone a saint; God does.

 

[JReducation]

Thomas More is regarded as a saint in part because of the way that he refused to support Henry VIII’s divorce of Catharine of Aragon, even though he was under tremendous political pressure to do so, and because he died refusing to accept Henry as the leader of the church within England instead of the Pope as the Act of Supremacy demanded him to do. By doing that, he not only sacrificed the high political office that he enjoyed under his former friend Henry VIII, but also ultimately lost his head. In doing so, he displayed an incredible devotion to his faith, an extraordinary amount of courage, and an admirable degree of integrity. Those of us who have never been in a position where we had to face the choice of dying for our faith should not presume to judge him, since many of us would probably not be willing to sacrifice our lives for our faith. Also, as far as I am concerned, More’s willingness to die for his beliefs, his strong faith, his courage, his determination, and his ability to not sacrifice his morals for his career in the end make him a very good patron saint for politicians. I think the world would be a better place if more politicians were willing to stick to their beliefs even if they have to suffer for it as More did.

As far as him ordering the burning to death of many people, I think that you have to look at what he did in the context of his time. When More was alive, the punishment for heresy was burning, and so it probably never occurred to him that this was a horrible crime. Indeed, many religious authorities at the time perceived burning as a last minute method of salvation in hopeless cases, because it was believed that a person might, when feeling the flames that were supposedly a foretaste of hellfire, might repent and save themselves from eternal damnation. Thus, to a contemporary of More, burning could be regarded as a mercy insofar as a brief mortal agony might save an immortal soul from eternal agony. Therefore, More sentencing those people to be burned is not a mortal sin for him, because he didn’t knowingly commit an immoral action. Also, since he sentenced these people to death under a legitimate authority, I’m not certain I would call what he did murder. Judging More by the standards of our time isn’t fair. If future generations see animals as equal to humans, I shouldn’t be condemned as a slave owner because I own a pet dog when in the modern world there is nothing wrong with owning a pet dog, should I?

Also, I have to point out that More probably felt overwhelmed by the Protestant beliefs that he saw encroaching on England, and he probably sincerely believed that he was doing the right thing by eradicating those heresies from his country. Again, you might not agree with him, but I think you have to admire his conviction and his determination to act according to what he perceived as his Catholic duties.

Finally, if you want to drag Utopia into it as evidence that More knew execution was wrong, I have to point out that Utopia is a very complex work. It has been quoted by liberals and by conservatives alike, and by communists and capitalists. The many facets of the work are apparent even in its title, which means nowhere or no place. Using Utopia to prove that More had a particular social philosophy is a very challenging thing to do, probably because More had many different, sometimes even contradicting views on many issues. Therefore, it will probably be very hard to prove that Utopia clearly indicates that More was against execution or recognized that it was completely immoral.

All in all, I think I have provided enough reasons as to why the Catholic Church would call him a saint, and I would remind you that in a very real sense the Catholic Church doesn’t make anyone a saint; God does.

Just add to all of this that More was canonized as a martyr. The Church needed nothing more on him. Once it could prove that he died a martyr’s death, then faith and sacred tradition tell us that he’s in heaven. All other discussions about his life and work are not important to the Church and were not even considered in the study. The Promoter of the Cause had to prove that More was a martyr. He did.

I don’t see why we are discussing his life from end to end, when the Church did not scrutinize it from end to end. She focussed on his martyrdom. The question on the table was, “Was he or was he not a martyr?” That was made very clear in the decree of canonization.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[SunshineRose1]

Just add to all of this that More was canonized as a martyr. The Church needed nothing more on him. Once it could prove that he died a martyr’s death, then faith and sacred tradition tell us that he’s in heaven. All other discussions about his life and work are not important to the Church and were not even considered in the study. The Promoter of the Cause had to prove that More was a martyr. He did.

I don’t see why we are discussing his life from end to end, when the Church did not scrutinize it from end to end. She focussed on his martyrdom. The question on the table was, “Was he or was he not a martyr?” That was made very clear in the decree of canonization.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

You make some good and interesting points here. More’s martyrdom is enough reason for the Church to know that he is in heaven and to canonize him. Very true. It just goes to show you how I overlook something like that focusing on the minor details of More’s life:blush: Maybe it’s because I love reading about this time period in history that I have a tendency to do that.

 

[EvanConnelly]

**there were six protestant “heretics” burned at the stake during More’s Chancellorship
**
Consider this:

*More wrote Utopia in 1516. He seems to have written its more liberal passages as a joke for the Humanistic scholars of Europe. The joke was over, however, when Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of Wittemburg’s cathedral. More was asked to help King Henry VIII write Defense of the Seven Sacraments. Luther counter-attacked with German Response to the Book of King Henry and More was asked to write a response. More wrote that Luther was a heretic and utterly evil, and his followers were criminals who “bespatter the most holy image of Christ crucified with the most foul excrement of their bodies destined to be burned.”[1]

After writing his Responsio ad Lutherum, More became Speaker of the House. In 1526, More and Chancellor Wolsey began to restrict the importation of Lutheran books into England. The next year, More personally oversaw a raid on the German Steelyard, a London neighborhood of Hanseatic League merchants. No heretical materials were found, but More issued a strong warning to the Germans the next day. In 1528, More interrogated and had sent to the Tower a financial supporter of Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible.[2] In response to Tyndale’s other works, More wrote his A Dialogue Concerning Heresies.

In the Dialogue, More argued that heretics were anarchists who denied the right of the king of England to “make any law or statute for the punishment of theft or any other crime, by which law man should suffer death.”[3] Worse, according to More, heretics taught against pilgrimages, praying to saints, worshiping images, belief in miracles, and believed that reason was incompatible with faith and that scripture needed no authority to interpret.[4] More strongly believed that heretics should be punished by the state, as “there is no fault that more offendeth God.”[5]

King Henry made More Lord Chancellor of England in 1529. One of More’s top priorities was the elimination of heresy in England. The first effort he made was to issue a proclamation on 22 June 1530 forbidding specific heretical books and authors and the importation of any books in English. Everything printed in England had to be personally “examined and approved” by a bishop.[7] Six heretics were burned during More’s three years as Chancellor. Forty other heretics were punished in varying degrees.[8] For example, three distributors of Tyndale’s New Testament translation were imprisoned and forced to ride through the streets while being pelted with rotten fruit.[9] More even occasionally held heretics at his house for interrogation.*

johnreilly.info/tomo.htm
suite101.com/content/thomas-more-and-heresy-a61355

LA CONCIENCIA DE MORO

«Aunque soy de un natural tan enemigo del dolor que casi me asusta un pinchazo – le escribe Tomas Moro a su hija Margaret en la Navidad de 1534 desde la Torre de Londres y medio año antes de …

misiglo.es

Considering More was supposed to defend the pain and murdering of thieves in England…

why didn’t he defend the life when burning those who protested against the heresy of the church?

but catholics trust in catholic church ,

and no matter what it says, they always defend its heresy because that’s what church teaches.

and they trusted in in its saint inquisition in that time
http://www.piperpost.net/Images/f200burn.jpg

trust in Jesus Christ, the only salvation, no church
is not that heart to see, look at the bible, look at the cross
ask God open your eyes
ask God to take away your hypocrisy

read revelation 17 and 18
BABYLON THE GREAT

 

[EvanConnelly]

“These action did not happen “in our own time”. We simply can not hold people of other time eras to the same sensibility of our time. This is the mistake critics make when looking at the Old Testament and say that God is cruel. The historical context is essential in understanding any event.”

First of all…this arguement is an absolute moral and historical cop out! Wrong is wrong and right is right in every time. Burning another human alive is not a relative right or wrong. It is wrong. If we could not decern right or wrong in history, we are morally lost.

Second…God’s actions in the old testiment (or today) are not comparable with STM. He is a man. God is God. Right and wrong are his to determain and His actions are right. There is no “historical context” needed.

Why don’t you just admit it…burning people alive…IS NOT a saintly action, it is evil.

I agree.
This “historical context”
they refer is when catholic church murdering people had the “right” to kill heretics

 

[EvanConnelly]

Maybe even Obama will be a Saint one day. If STM could be…why not?

he won a nobel prize… in this world somepeople think he can be muslim, catholic, christian and atheist at the same time

what a joke

 

[Rharris10]

I don’t want to blaspheme, but I am having a hard time believing that someone who burned six “heretics” could be saint-like. I’m all the more struck with the idea that one can do bad things their whole life, and yet still be worthy of sainthood. If that is the case, I might as well indulge myself in every whim, and then repent later. I don’t know, just my two cents.

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

I don’t want to blaspheme, but I am having a hard time believing that someone who burned six “heretics” could be saint-like. I’m all the more struck with the idea that one can do bad things their whole life, and yet still be worthy of sainthood. If that is the case, I might as well indulge myself in every whim, and then repent later. I don’t know, just my two cents.

That’s called “presumption”–a mortal sin–the idea that can sin and trust in making a perfect contrition or have access to a priest to confess before its too late.

 

[Lion_of_Narnia]

I don’t want to blaspheme, but I am having a hard time believing that someone who burned six “heretics” could be saint-like. I’m all the more struck with the idea that one can do bad things their whole life, and yet still be worthy of sainthood. If that is the case, I might as well indulge myself in every whim, and then repent later. I don’t know, just my two cents.

And once again you seem determined to bring in the standards and the perspective of our era (“chronological snobbery” as Lewis would put it) down upon More, who was acting as a rigourously fair judge against a crime he saw as threatening other people’s salvation. And while we see prolounged painful execution as sadistic, they saw it under their perpective as merciful–allowing the condemned the chance to make a perfect act of private contrition before unconciousness made that impossible.

 

[Rharris10]

That’s called “presumption”–a mortal sin–the idea that can sin and trust in making a perfect contrition or have access to a priest to confess before its too late.

So I’d be committing the mortal sin of “presumption?”

IDK, this whole Thomas More being a Saint thing kind of scares me a bit, as it has shaken my faith in the legitimacy of the Catholic Church (I know I probably blasphemed in that last comment, but nonetheless, I felt the need to honestly post what I am feeling)

 

[LilyM]

So I’d be committing the mortal sin of “presumption?”

IDK, this whole Thomas More being a Saint thing kind of scares me a bit, as it has shaken my faith in the legitimacy of the Catholic Church (I know I probably blasphemed in that last comment, but nonetheless, I felt the need to honestly post what I am feeling)

Why? St Paul probably hounded many more people to their deaths. All it takes is an instantaneous conversion and repentance - a la the Good Thief - to be saved. It’s a wonderfully comforting thought, true, but none of us, including More and the thief, really know beforehand the precise moment when we will die. So we cannot count on being able to genuinely repent - and sin no more - in our last hour.

 

[Rharris10]

Why? St Paul probably hounded many more people to their deaths. All it takes is an instantaneous conversion and repentance - a la the Good Thief - to be saved. It’s a wonderfully comforting thought, true, but none of us, including More and the thief, really know beforehand the precise moment when we will die. So we cannot count on being able to genuinely repent - and sin no more - in our last hour.

That’s a good point. Admittedly, when I wrote that last response, I was being pretentious (thinking: how could someone like that get into heaven??? it shouldn’t be THAT easy!) However, after reading your response, Jeffery Dahmer immediately came to mind, as his story was one of repentance before his murder which occurred not long after. Still, I have always said - and I realize that this is a non sequitur - that it would be logically inconsistent that someone like Dahmer would be in God’s good graces due to his repentance, but Ghandi, who was a life-long Hindu, could very well be damned to hell for not accepting Christ. Again, just my two cents.

 

[Mintaka]

To be exact, the civil government punishment for high treason was drawing and quartering, or burning alive, or simple beheading (if you were a noble). Because of this association with crimes of betrayal, the civil government punishment for a spouse killing a spouse was the same as for treason (although usually beheading or hanging replaced burning, unless you’d killed your spouse in a really heinous and notorious way).

Spreading heresy was also considered a civil crime of treason, because it subverted the citizenry against God and hence against the government. (Also, a fair number of medieval and Reformation heresies claimed that all kinds of oaths, laws, obedience, and contracts were against God, so such people couldn’t be trusted as subjects or in business, and were basically seen as trying to destroy law and order as well as their country.)

The whole point of medieval states proposing horrible punishments was to encourage people not to commit crimes in the first place. The government didn’t have the money to run nice prisons wherein they could keep people for life. Inmates had to buy their own food, for goodness’ sake. Whenever good order could be kept, there were few people in the prisons, most of whom didn’t spend long there, and few people getting executed. That’s the way most medieval states liked it. You can’t stay afloat as a country when everybody is getting fined and imprisoned and executed.

The English government occasionally executed a very few people by burning, after giving them full trials and every opportunity to change their minds or leave the country. Sir Thomas More was one of these judges. It was not his business to change the laws of the death penalties, except by lobbying Parliament. “Activist judges” were not something that was possible in that day.

(Later on, when judges were often paid by property, goods, and the wardship of the property of orphan children confiscated from those they executed, there were plenty of “activist judges” making up their own penalties and leaning on the scales. Henry and Elizabeth had tons of them, and then there’s the infamous Judge Jeffreys.)

However, even his bitterest opponents acknowledged that Sir Thomas More was a scrupulously fair judge, and kind when he could be. That’s why they wanted him on their side so badly. They wanted him to legitimate their cause.