Posted on 06/22/2006 7:36:40 AM PDT by Pyro7480
When Henry VIII began to dally with the idea of putting away his Queen Catherine and replacing her with Anne Boleyn, it was only natural that one of his earliest bids for support should go to John Fisher, one of the most eminent men of the day. He had been a model bishop of the Diocese of Rochester for twenty-three years, in an age when the lives of many bishops were less than edifying. For the same length of time he had been Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and had guided it out of the doldrums into new learning of the Renaissance. Erasmus, whom he had brought to Cambridge to introduce the study of Greek, said of him, "He is the one man of this tune who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and greatness of soul."
Fisher had years ago been a favorite of Henry's father and grandmother. He had often been a member of the king's Privy Council, was a natural leader in the House of Lords and among the clergy, and was universally recognized for piety and learning. If at the outset the king had been able to engage the support of this venerable prelate, laden with years and honors, he could reasonably expect to avoid many difficulties.
To accomplish this treachery against his wife of 18 years, Henry affected religious scruples about the validity of his marriage. In particular, Henry's piety was troubled by the possibility that Pope Julius II had erred in granting the dispensation which made possible his marriage with Catherine. If the pope had exceeded his powers, then Henry and Catherine had been living in sin—and no wonder God had cursed them with only female issue! Henry had Wolsey, the ambitious and worldly Cardinal, put the matter to Fisher in June, 1527, after swearing the saint to secrecy. In September came his opinion: Henry and Catherine were true man and wife, their daughters were legitimate, and what God had joined no man should sunder. When Henry later objected that Fisher could not be so positive on a matter which was very obscure, Fisher replied that it was obscure only to those who had not looked into it but was quite plain to those who had studied it.
If Henry's devious purposes had not been apparent to John Fisher from the beginning, the king's ruthless determination to have his way soon became apparent to all. In the proceedings against the Queen, Fisher had been appointed one of her counsellors, yet he found it difficult to get to see her. Henry attacked from other directions. He apparently encouraged the House of Commons to raise complaints about the clergy (it was easy in those days to recite valid complaints) and to demand impossible reforms. When Bishop Fisher, spokesman for the hierarchy, rejected the reforms, Henry attacked him for being whimsical and arbitrary.
Another tactic Henry used concerned a religious visionary known as the Maid of Kent. This woman, who was probably demented, denounced the king's divorce proceedings to all and sundry, including the king himself on one occasion. When Henry learned that Fisher had once heard her denunciations, he demanded to know why the bishop had failed to report these treasonable utterances. Was he in some disloyal league with the woman?
These affronts were doubtless irksome but they in no way clouded St. John Fisher's clear perception of the issues. He had had many years of experience in which God had prepared him to confront this crucial phase of the Reformation. He was a model spiritual shepherd in his diocese, despite the demands of the university and the government—visiting his parishes, examining his clergy, inspecting religious institutions, promoting the sacraments, and preaching, a practice which he was always anxious to foster. At the end of a weary day of official duties in an out-of-the-way part of his diocese, the saintly bishop would search out the hovels of the poor, bringing the sacraments to the infirm and the healing words of the Gospel to all. And he was a man of prayer. When his goods were confiscated near the end of his life, the searchers were especially anxious to open a certain chest which Fisher had never allowed anyone to see the contents of. In it to their chagrin they found a scourge and, badly worn and crudely patched, a hair shirt.
As part of his episcopal duties Fisher had also acquired a particularly solid grasp of the new heretical ideas. He had watched the quaint old Lollard ideas dissolve into the more coherent and more pernicious Lutheran ones. To the first hand experience of these things he added the careful reflection entailed in writing half a dozen books refuting the Lutheran ideas—books which, incidentally, established his reputation for learning and wisdom throughout Europe.
A character so formed and a faith so strong was not to be deflected by Henry's intimidating ploys. Nor did the king use indirection for long. He had his new Archbishop of Canterbury grant his divorce in spite of Rome. He insisted that a convocation of England's hierarchy should confer on him the title "Protector and Supreme Head of the English Church and Clergy."
Fisher led the opposition to this, almost alone. When in his sickbed Fisher heard that nearly all the prelates had signed an oath affirming Henry's supremacy and repudiating the pope's authority, he said, "The fort is betrayed," thus laying the blame more on perfidious ecclesiastics than on the willful king. The bishops and clergy who betrayed the Church at this point—about 95%—did so sheepishly and reluctantly as men violating their consciences. Only later in the century, under Elizabeth, did there develop clerics who were zealous and self-confident protestantizers, the puritans. When someone asked Fisher why he made such a commotion about the king's bed partners, he replied that Saint John the Baptist had not disdained marriage as a cause worth giving his head for.
In April, 1534, St. John Fisher, along with St. Thomas More, were summoned to take the oath and, both refusing, were confined to London Tower. While More and Fisher were of one mind and faith, their conduct was different because of their different states in life. More, a lay lawyer and politician, could refuse to speak about a subject on everyone's lips, and his silence spoke volumes. Fisher on the other hand had a duty actively to resist the annulment of ecclesiastical authority, an especially binding duty since most ecclesiastics had refused it.
The clever chicanery which finally proved Fisher to be a traitor—why do they even bother with such travesties?—was this: In May, 1535, Richard Rich came to Fisher in the Tower with a tale that the king's tender conscience was deeply troubled about whether it was sinful for him to claim to be the supreme head of the church. He was, said Rich, a troubled Christian seeking spiritual counsel of his father in God, and Fisher's advice would reach no ears but the king's. Although a recent law had made it treasonable to say so, Fisher declared that Henry could not be supreme head. Well, naturally, a few days later Fisher's advice was paraded out in public court as evidence of a malicious defiance of royal prerogative, a treason for which the court ordered him hanged, drawn and quartered.
The king in his mercy remitted the sentence to beheading. Accordingly, on June 22, 1535, Saint John Fisher was led under powerful armed guard from the Tower to nearby Tower Hill. He was seventy-one years old, marvelously emaciated, hardly able to walk. An early biographer reports that upon the scaffold he spoke: I am come here to die for Christ's Catholic Church. And I thank God…”
"These words, or words to like effect, he then spoke with a cheerful countenance and with such a stout and constant courage as one no wit afraid but glad to suffer death. And these words spoke he so distinctly and perceivably and also with such a strong and loud voice that it made all the people astonished, and noted it in a manner as a miracle to hear so plain, strong and loud a voice come out of so old, weak and sickly a carcass.
"[When his sermon and prayers were done] he laid him down on his belly, flat on the floor of the scaffold, and laid his lean neck upon a little block....And then came quickly the executioner with a sharp and heavy ax cut asunder his neck, and so severed the head from the body, his holy soul departing to the bliss of heaven.
"Then the executioner took away his bishop's clothes and his shirt and left his headless body lying there naked upon the scaffold almost all day after. Yet one at last for pity and for humanity cast a little straw upon the dead man's privities."
His body was buried, finally, without ceremony, coffin or shroud, in the bare earth, but it soon had to be removed because of the crowds which came to venerate him.
The head was parboiled and mounted on a pole on London Bridge. There it remained for two weeks "very fresh and lively " until it was thrown into the river and its place taken by the head of St. Thomas More.
St. John Fisher was beatified on 9 December 1886 and canonized on 19 April 1935.
Sancte Johannes, ora pro nobis.
Sooner or later the debate always ends with the labels.
Why didn't we just surrender to the Nazis and promote democracy in secret when we wasted all those lives? If God doesn't want us to die for our faith, why should my government ask me to die for my nation?
Relativism, is reality. Isn't what you believe to be true, relative to your religious beliefs, as are others? Is what a Hindu believes to be true, the same as what a Jewish person believes to be true?
As I said, I understand laying down one's life for a friend or loved one, to keep them from physical harm....this is not the same as laying down one's life for a belief.
I know, it's inevitable.....but amusing.
War and invasion, results in physical harm....not the same as dying for a belief.
So all those that died in the American Revolution were just chumps?
What a sad, empty world you live in, where there's no real truth, nothing more compelling that opinion, and nothing worth dying for.
By the way, does it ever occur to you that your philosophical platitudes, like this one:
The difference between right and wrong, are completely dependent on the individuals involved.
... are just as unprovable and just as much a matter of personal opinion as you claim ours are ... if not more so? Go ahead, prove to me that "the difference between right and wrong (etc.)." You can't. I do know that men much smarter than either you or I (Thomas Aquinas and J. Budziszewski are two I can think of off the top of my head) have used a lot of ink arguing against your position.
Except that ours aren't just opinion.
You know, in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, a miracle occurred in which the sun appeared to dance in the sky and then hurtle toward the earth. 70,000 people witnessed the miracle in person. It was seen as far away as the Azores. It was reported in secular newspapers in Portugal the next day.
That's not a matter of opinion, but of verifiable historical fact.
Not necessarily. In the traditional rules of warfare, surrender mitigates destruction. If we surrendered to the Nazis, D-Day would never have occurred.
Relativism is chaos. If there is order in the universe, there has to be universal truth, not relative truth. If I stop believing you exist, do you stop existing?
I would think that establishing a new nation and and revolting against the king, are more physical, and a lot more than a religious belief.
You are correct, in that I do not believe that a religious belief, or an intangible idea, is worth dying over.
As I have said, defending/protecting loved one's or one's country, is not the same.
Of course it has occured to me, that is why I always say that none of this is provable....it's all a matter of belief.
Miracle...or phenomena? Thousands have seen UFOs also. Prove any of them.
But we would have physically lost our land....not at all like a religious belief.
If the shoe fits... Not really. God is.... whether we can prove it or not.
To an atheist, it's just an opinion, not a fact. In which case, according to the relativist, the atheist is equally correct.
Society seems better without homosexuality.
Since people have differing views, the opposite must be true as well.
I know you can't. Be that as it may, did somebody (stuart) say a child in the womb is not a person? I must have missed it. Matter of fact, I read where he's ok with fighting for his family.
You're unclear on the concept. The point is, it doesn't matter what you or anyone else thinks if there's no universal truth.
Speak for yourself (the p--sy part of it that is)
Actually, I was addressing you but forgot the ping.
I think we'd all die for certain principles.
But that's just dumb.
So you've added "real estate" to "family" as things worth dying for?
he died rather than compromise his beliefs. St. John Fisher was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Henry the VIII as head of the Catholic Church in England. He refused and Henry killed him.
I too would rather die than betray my faith, and in doing so, betray my Lord.
"So it's better to die, and never be able to express your beliefs, even in secret and maybe bring others to your way of thinking, than it is to bow to some stupid city, say praise allah, and continue on believing as you did?"
What's the point of faith, if you are unwilling to embrace it fully? I will die before I ever, even in appearance only, worship the false god allah the the man Muhammed. God required His only Son to lay down His life, there is a chance He will require the same of others.
This is not the same as a religious belief that is relative to the individual.
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