St. Thomas More, Pray for us!

The following comes from Fr. McCloskey at The Catholic Thing:

Where in the United States of America are today’s followers of St. Thomas More? As we know, More was martyred for his faith after resisting Henry VIII’s co-option of the Catholic Church for his personal and political ends. For this resistance unto death, More received an eternal reward. In October of 2000, to Catholics in our contemporary civic struggles (which loom particularly large for Americans in this election year), St. John Paul II proclaimed him as the heavenly patron of statesmen and politicians.

In his proclamation, St. John Paul identified as one motive for his action “the need felt by the world of politics and public administration for credible role models able to indicate the path of truth at a time in history when difficult challenges and crucial responsibilities are increasing.” The pope specifically singled out “the need to defend human life at all its different stages,” given that today’s novel situations “urgently demand clear political decisions in favor of the family, young people, the elderly and the marginalized.”

Not long after that proclamation, I joined forces with Gerard Wegemer, a professor at the University of Dallas and a top expert on More in the United States, to produce a 13-part series on EWTN, Mother Angelica’s global Catholic network. (The series remains available from them in DVD form with the title “St. Thomas More: Faithful Statesman.”)

Professor Wegemer had a hand in prompting that proclamation by the Holy Father, as it happens. In the intervening years, surely if anything, the urgent need for St. Thomas More’s intercession and for his adoption as a role model has increased. As I write, we Catholics (I hope) are following the primary races and closely screening the men who are running for the presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the governorships of many states. If we take the model of St. Thomas More seriously, we will be looking, in the pope’s description, for a candidate who will “[distinguish] himself by his constant fidelity to legitimate authority and institutions precisely in his intention to serve not power but the supreme ideal of justice. His life teaches us that government is above all an exercise of virtue.”

One example of such a life just recently ended is that of the faithful Catholic and brilliant Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a man greatly devoted to St. Thomas More for his faithfulness to the Catholic Church, clear thinking, courage, and integrity. We have a great need of such men and women in public life: people who, in the words of Thomas More, know that, “The times are never so bad but that a good man can live in them.”

As we know from what happened to More (and what he knew from history had happened to a great many Christian martyrs in a great many difficult situations), a good man may be required at some point to give up his life. That doesn’t contradict what he said. We all live and we all die; it’s the way we do both and the decisions we make along the way that will determine whether we make it into the category of good men and women (and, God willing, maybe even saints!) or instead fall into the tragic category of people who have failed to make the kind of choices God calls us to make.

Such people can still repent and be saved, of course, while they live and breathe. But the wrong they have done and the good they have failed to do still affect the course of history, including the condition of their own country.

Our country and its political institutions need fine, faithful men and women who are loyal to our Constitution and who also realize the importance of the natural law. Thank God we Catholics have received in a special way the teaching that comes down to us from the Magisterium of the Catholic Church related to civic duties and the just state.

But in addition, it is up to us to intervene in the particular issues of our time, especially those concerning the value of human life from conception to natural death, and the primary role of the family in transmitting life, religion, morality, and culture.

Along those lines we should pray every Sunday in the prayers of the faithful that our country will become ever more aware of the dignity of human life, the beauty of God’s plan for marriage, and the significance of an authentic religious liberty. We also should pray for married couples, that God assist them in living their matrimonial vocation. And we should ask that the rights of individuals to act according to their religious convictions be respected by the state and its agents.

In addition, all Catholics should pray that we may have statesmen and politicians who will work for the good of society – and be ready to give their life if necessary, knowing what is ahead for us in our heavenly home. So in these challenging times for those who wish to be truly faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ, let us ask the intercession of St. Thomas More, the patron of statesman and politicians.

God in the Quiet

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Give me thy grace, good Lord,
To set the world at nought’,
To set my mind fast upon thee.
And not to hang upon the blast of men’s mouths.
~ St. Thomas More, A Godly Meditation (1534)

Thomas More wrote the above when he was in the slammer—the Tower of London, to be exact, and pretty much cut off from the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, he was asking for God’s grace to focus more on Him, and to eschew the “blast of men’s mouths.” Blast of men’s mouths? I’m guessing the only mouthy blast More endured in the Tower was halitosis of his warden and a guard or two.

So, if Thomas More, awaiting trial and a death sentence in a jail cell can be concerned about noise and distraction, how much more so those of us in a world full of blasting mouths. No need to go to jail, though, to focus my mind on the things of God. All I have to do is hit the “off” switch—maybe a dozen times or more. Whatever it takes.

Allan Ripp brought this home to me in his WSJ article about BlackBerry and smart phones. Ripp wistfully recalls his Motorola flip phone days, before he succumbed and gave in to the smart phone juggernaut:

Being partially incommunicado had its virtues, until inevitably one too many clients sent an email with nothing more than a lone question mark—or five—the universal sign of “Where the hell are you and why haven’t you responded to this mother-of-all demands I sent all of 30 seconds ago?”

We all live this life these days, regardless of the devices we’ve incorporated into our lives. Cell phones, smart phones, tablets, or whatever (including blogs!), we’re rarely far from being connected and “on.”

Perhaps there are some who relish the connected life—probably the same folks who wear those Bluetooth things in their ears no matter where they go. But I’m guessing there are plenty of people like me who paused a moment when they heard the NPR story last week about the National Radio Quiet Zone in West Virginia—thousands of square miles surrounding the National Radio Astronomy Observatory completely devoid of cell phone service.

Yes. Completely. A veritable paradise of unconnectedness.

But then, you don’t need a federally enforced Quiet Zone for that. Just ask the monks.

St. Benedict wrote about silence in his Rule way back in the sixth century:

Let us do what the Prophet saith: “I said, I will take heed of my ways, that I sin not with my tongue:I have set a guard to my mouth, I was dumb, and was humbled, and kept silence even from good things” (Ps 38[39]:2-3).

And the silence was supposed to go both ways in the monastery—i.e., the monks kept quiet themselves, but they also expected to coexist in quiet. In fact, keeping quiet was considered a matter of justice according to Benedict:

When the Work of God is finished, let all go out with the deepest silence, and let reverence be shown to God; that a brother who perhaps desireth to pray especially by himself is not prevented by another’s misconduct (52).

That the noisy world we ourselves inhabit hungers for this kind of calm and quiet is evident from the popularity of the 2005 film Into Great Silence, or even the more recent Of Gods and Men (2011). What is it about monks and their separateness that we find so fascinating?

Maybe we get a clue from the Carthusians and their Statutes:

The primary application of our vocation is to give ourselves to the silence and solitude of the cell. It is holy ground, the area where God and his servant hold frequent conversations, as between friends.

The silence and solitude aren’t ends in and of themselves and it’s not just to guard against being polluted by the outside world.

Instead, it’s about finding the space to have a relationship with the Almighty, and like any relationship, it requires focus on the other. No distractions. No beeps and buzzes and ring tones and vibrates. Just quiet and focus, and room for conversation with God.

Thomas More, a mover and shaker, and definitely a player, actually lived with the Carthusians of London for a few years during his law school days, so it’s no wonder he had a different perspective on what constitutes blasty mouths than we do. Despite his place in the world, he knew what really fed him and sustained him, and yet even in the solitude of his cell, it somehow escaped him.

In any case, I don’t need to go to jail to focus my mind on God. All I have to do is hit the “off” switch—maybe a dozen times or more. Whatever it takes.

Fr. George Rutler: The surest way to persecution is to say, “It can't happen here”

By Father George Rutler at New Advent:

Our parish is blessed with a shrine to Saint Thomas More. The young artist who painted it after Holbein was a refugee from communist Eastern Europe. He did such a good job that Cardinal Egan, dedicating it, said that he would not be surprised if this were the original. 

We recently celebrated the joint feasts of Thomas More, who was Chancellor of England, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Their personalities were different in many ways, and it was almost a miracle that an Oxford man and a Cambridge man got on so well and eventually were canonized together. The Act of Succession and the Act of Supremacy were the challenges that King Henry VIII threw at them, and the saints returned the challenge. The issues were rooted in natural law: the meaning of marriage and the claims of government. These are the same issues that loom large today. Whatever our courts of law may decide about these matters, Saint Thomas says: “I am not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.” In 1919, G. K. Chesterton predicted with powerful precision that great as More’s witness was then, “he is not quite so important as he will be in a hundred years’ time.” 

For every courageous saint back then, there were many who instead took the safe path of complacency. More’s own family begged him to find some loophole, and — after the sudden deaths of eight other bishops — Fisher was the only one left who acted like an apostle. Those who opted for comfort and wove the lies of their world into a simulation of truth had a banal and shallow faith that Pope Francis has called “rose water.” It is a good image, for rose water is not blood and cannot wash away sin. 

The “Man for All Seasons” wrote to his beloved Margaret from his cell in the Tower of London: “And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best.” 

The “Fortnight for Freedom” extended from the vigil of the feasts of Fisher and More to July 4, but its prayers continue, as the Church’s many charitable and evangelical works are threatened by our present government’s disdain for the religious conscience, most immediately evident in the Health and Human Services mandate and the redefinition of marriage. In 1534 Henry VIII’s arrogation of authority over the Church was quickly followed by a Treasons Act which made it a high crime to criticize the King. In contemporary America as in Tudor England, the surest way to let that happen is to say, “It can't happen here.”