Saint Thomas More (1478-1535) is the Patron Saint of our parish community.  He was a confident, self-possessed man of extraordinary gifts and accomplishments in many fields, including law, philosophy, social commentary, and statesmanship.  He is best remembered and honored as a man of remarkable intellect, stalwart integrity, and an unflinching fidelity to Christ and His Church, a faithfulness that led to his martyrdom.

Saint Thomas More’s story was told in the play, A Man For All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, and in the 1966 Oscar-winning film starring Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw, based on that play.  Bolt described Thomas More as …

Robert Whittington, one of More’s literary friends, wrote of him in 1520:

“More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning.    I know not his fellow.  For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability?  And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity.  A man for all seasons.”

In the early 18^th century, author Jonathan Swift observed that More was “the person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [England] ever produced.”  And in 1977, historian Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote that More was “the first great Englishman whom we feel that we know, the most saintly of humanists, the most human of saints, the universal man of our cool northern renaissance.”

Historian Fr. Marvin O’Connell (1930-2016) of the University of Notre Dame, wrote that the play, A Man for All Seasons, and More’s life,  

“... pose questions about the nature of law and the love of God and the demands of honor, questions which are appropriately posed at every human season, because they touch at every season the human spirit stirring to unravel the mysteries it finds itself wrapped in.”

More's Early Life

Born in London in 1478, Thomas More’s great intellect was apparent very early on.  He excelled in all his studies.  As a young teenager he was placed with Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, who sent Thomas, at age 14, to Oxford University.  Thomas studied languages, history, mathematics, theology and the classics.  In 1494, at age 16, he returned to London to study law and at a very young age, even for the times, became a well-known lecturer in law.  

Thomas had wide interests in music, poetry and philosophy, as well as the writings of the Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine.  In his early 20’s More considered a possible calling to the priesthood but he discerned his vocation was to serve God as layman, husband, father and lawyer.  Thomas More married Jane Colt in 1505, a “supremely happy” union.  They had four children, Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecilia and John, but wife Jane died in 1511.  Thomas soon after married Alice Middleton, a widow seven years his senior, “a good woman who was devoted to the care of More’s young children.”  

Thomas became a greatly respected lawyer and his circle of friends included scholars, writers, philosophers and bishops.  In 1501 he was elected to Parliament.  His thoughts and writings influenced not only his friends but drew the attention of other scholars of the time, such as Erasmus in Holland.  His influence continued to grow and he published his most famous book, Utopia, in 1516.  “Utopia,” a word More coined, has come to mean a place where everything is perfect.  But ironically, More constructed the word from Greek roots that literally mean “nowhere.”
 
Thomas and the King

Soon Thomas More attracted the attention of King Henry VIII.  Henry enjoyed Thomas’ company and quickly promoted him to several high positions in his government.  Henry knighted Thomas (i.e., made him a “Peer of the Realm”) and so he became “Sir” Thomas More.  Sir Thomas was appointed Under-Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1521, became Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and was appointed by Henry to be Lord Chancellor of England in 1529.  Thomas worked in that position until 1532 when he resigned as a matter of conscience.  He left government at the height of his political influence because he disagreed with Henry over the king’s position regarding his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, as well as Henry’s presumptuous usurpation of the authority of the Pope and his claim of “supremacy” over religious matters in England.  Sir Thomas continued to defend the Roman Catholic Church against the influence of the king while adroitly, for some time at least, avoiding legal and political entanglements that were then fracturing the Church in England.

Thomas More spent the remainder of his life writing in defense of the Catholic Church.  King Henry demanded oaths of allegiance from both More and Bishop John Fisher, a theologian and More’s good friend.  They both refused to give their allegiance to Henry who was claiming to be the "head" of his newly declared Church of England.  In 1534, Henry had More and Fisher arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London (see photo of his cell).  Thomas was eventually put on trial for treason and found guilty based on perjured testimony.  Sir Thomas told the court that he could not go against his conscience when it came to matters of the Church and the King.  More and Fisher were condemned to death.


Conscience

Fr. O’Connell wrote that “Thomas More was killed in defense of his conscience. He was asked, in Mr. Bolt’s words, ‘to state that he believed what he didn't believe.’  He refused, and he died.”  With courage.  Thomas told the judges that “We may yet, hereafter in heaven, merrily all meet together and enjoy everlasting life.”  As an “act of mercy” on King Henry’s part, Thomas was beheaded (rather than “hung, drawn and quartered”) on July 6, 1535.  He told the crowd of spectators at his execution that he was dying as “the King’s good servant – but God’s first.” 

It is important to understand that More did not die in defense of freedom of conscience per se, in some personal sense as commonly thought of today.  Rather, it was out of the conviction that because his conscience was well formed to be consistent with the Law of God, he could not – in good conscience – “conform” it to King Henry’s Act of Supremacy.  When Thomas saw that the verdict at his trial was determined against him, he essentially declared the court's illegitimacy regarding the teachings of the Catholic Church:       

“I will now in discharge of my conscience speak my mind plainly … forasmuch as this indictment is grounded upon an Act of Parliament directly repugnant to the Laws of God and his Holy Church, the supreme government of which … may no temporal prince presume by any law to take upon him, as rightfully belonging to the See of Rome [i.e., the Papacy], a spiritual pre-eminence by the mouth of our Savior himself, personally present upon the earth, only to St. Peter and his successors, bishops of the same See, by special prerogative granted; it is therefore in law amongst Christian men insufficient to charge any Christian man.”

When the judge replied that bishops, universities “and best learnéd of this realm” had already approved the Act of Supremacy and taken the oath of loyalty, More answered:

“… I not bounden, my lord, to conform my conscience to the Council of one realm against the general council of Christendom.  For of the foresaid holy bishops I have for every bishop of yours, above one hundred; and for one council or Parliament of yours (God knoweth what manner of one), I have all the councils made these thousand years.  And for this one kingdom, I have all other    Christian realms.”

In Fr. O’Connell’s view, “conscience for More was the right to be right, not the right to be wrong” and “was far removed from bland personal preference,” that is, not merely some vague “voice deep within ourselves which no one else can hear.”  Thomas was not a hero of “selfhood” above the law, but of the Law of God written on his heart.


Thomas More: A Patron for Our Seasons

Saint Thomas More remains a highly relevant model today, amidst a culture that glorifies secularism, relativism and scientific fundamentalism, denies the existence of real objective Truth, promotes “personal conscience” or "freedom of choice" as some  ultimate arbiter of “right action,” and whose states, governments, leaders and courts often presume supremacy in attempting to redefine human nature and human rights.  Saint Thomas More remains relevant in this current season when Christendom, that is the Western Civilization founded on the principles of Christianity, has largely given way to a season “at this moment of our history [when] the real problem … is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings…” (Pope Benedict XVI, 2009).  Saint Thomas More never lost his bearings and never failed in fidelity to his one true King of Kings.  
   
Thomas More was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886, and he was canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in Vatican City by Pope Pius XI on May 19, 1935, 400 years after his death.  This means that this parish was named for St. Thomas More only 28 years after he was recognized as a saint (and 3 years before the movie, A Man for All Seasons, came out). 

We celebrate the feast day of Saint Thomas More on June 22^nd. 

He is the patron saint of adopted children, lawyers, civil servants, politicians, and difficult marriages.

St. Thomas More, Pray for us
 
 


Based on material from:

• A version of part of this essay found on an older STM website.
• The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1917 (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14689c.htm ), downloaded May 5, 2018.
• Marvin O’Connell, A Man for all Seasons: an Historian's Demur, The Catholic Education Resource Center (https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/politics-and-the-church/a-man-for-all-seasons-an-historian-s-demur.html), downloaded July 5, 2018.   Originally published in Catholic Dossier 8 no. 2 (March-April, 2002): 16-19.
• Pope Benedict XVI, To the Bishops of the Catholic Church Concerning the Remission of the Excommunication of the Four Bishops Consecrated by Archbishop Lefebvre, from the Vatican, March 10, 2009.