How Much Do You Know About St. Thomas More?

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Like a lot of people, I first found out about St. Thomas More from the movies. I was no older than 10, and my dad was watching the 1966 classic, A Man for All Seasons on the TV. At first, goofing off was more interesting than the movie, but eventually the storyline grabbed my attention. St. Thomas was brave and smart yet funny; he was religious without getting pompous in his piety. At the end, little Episcopalian me was enraged at Henry VIII, the founder of the Church of England and subsequently the Anglican Communion: How could the originator of my church kill such a good man?

My admiration for St. Thomas only grew over time, and as an adult Catholic, he's one of my favorite saints ever. As his feast approaches, on June 22nd, here is a portrait of his life in my words and his own words.

A hero when the world was torn in two...

Family of St. Thomas More

A friend of Erasmus and thorn in the side of Martin Luther, St. Thomas More held fast to the Faith when clerics and kings succumbed to the Protestant movement like moths in a campfire. He was a lawyer, and he was so valued by Henry VIII of England that Henry appointed More as Lord High Chancellor.

Although law was More's vocation, his avocation was theology. His deep love for the Church led him to take time to discern a religious life as a Carthusian. Although he realized that married life was his calling, he never stopped taking his spiritual life seriously.

More would read and write late into the night, stopping only to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  His most famous work is Utopia, which continues to be translated and read around the world. However, his writings in defense of the Catholic Church during the Reformation helped Catholics throughout Europe to keep the Faith. He acknowledged the legitimate concerns that Protestants brought to light, while rebutting with vigor the heresies being taught about scripture and the Church Fathers.

Henry VIII of England

Just six years after Pope Leo X awarded Henry VIII the title "Defender of the Faith," the king decided a new wife and a male heir were of greater importance than sticking around with the Church. More quietly stepped down from public service to avoid conflict, but Henry wasn't satisfied. Henry insisted that More publicly swear that the King of England has supreme political and religious authority, and More refused. After being imprisoned in the Tower of London for over a year, More was beheaded for treason on July 6, 1535.

More was canonized in the Catholic Church in 1935. In a fabulous bit of irony, in 1980 the Church of England (which is Protestant) commemorated More as a "Reformation martyr." He is the patron saint of lawyers, jurists, and politicians.

I personally think he should also be a patron saint of husbands and fathers. Despite his constant work, he maintained a sincere devotion to his family life. He made sure his daughters received the same education as his sons (a novelty of the time), and he was known to stop all activity and pray constantly whenever a woman of his family or friends went into labor.

Not only do we have his courageous example of faith staring down death at the scaffold, due to all that writing he did; we also have his wit and insight:

On Everyday Living

A 16th cent. etching of Utopia

"What part soever you take upon you, play that as well as you can and make the best of it."

"The ordinary arts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest."

"Saint Paul here [in Ephesians 5] exhorteth men to love their wives, so tenderly that they should be of the mind, that to bring them to heaven they could find in their hearts to die for them..."

"It is not so strange that I love you with my whole heart, for being a father is not a tie which can be ignored. Nature in her wisdom has attached the parent to the child and bound their minds together with a Herculean knot."

 

On Government

The Tower of London

"You must not abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the winds….What you cannot turn to good, you must at least make as little bad as you can."

"Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all."

“The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace."

"By reason of gifts and bribes the offices be given to rich men, which should rather have been executed by wise men."

On Education

Tomb of St. Thomas More

"One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated."

"The harvest [of learning] will not be affected, whether it be a man or a woman who sows the seed. Both are reasonable beings, distinguished in this from the beasts; both therefore are suited equally for those studies by which reason is cultivated, and like a ploughed field, becomes fruitful when the seed of good precepts is sown."

 

On Faith

" . . . so must reason not resist faith but walk with her, and as her handmaid wait upon her . . . a truth faith goeth never without her."

“We cannot go to heaven in feather beds."

"No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic."

"I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first."

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