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.
Thousand said they saw the Virgin Mary at Mother Cabrini shrine in Colorado as well. Big whoop.
Sure. Let's poll the audience.
God has his own reasons for denying all of us certainty with regard to His existence and nature. Those with faith ought not to feel superior.
Who hijacked this thread again with their smug superiority?
From what I'm reading I'm gonna have to say you.
Seems to me it was the group insisting that dying for one's faith was stupid. If you want to start a thread on the wonders of "I'm right, you're right", we won't intrude.
Group? Start a new one? Naw, this one is fine. Very amusing.
Those wouldn't be in the majority so if it turns out their point of view is closer to the truth it wouldn't matter anyway. Ask Robert Smith of Maryland whether the 1% of homosexuals (and their agenda) in the United States have impacted his life.
Don't know him. I'll have to take your word for it.
You have adopted the "either/or", position in the debate that so many dogmatists are fond of.
Dogma is absolute, not negotiable.
That's sad.
The fact that we exist in the universe is evidence of some kind of universal truth.
You can't prove that we exist.
Neither can you. I guess that makes you a relativist.
That was my point. You picked up on that. Very good.
All lying is forbidden by God. However the seriousness of such an action can be mitigated by certain circumstances such as fear.
No, all lying is not forbidden by God. Two Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah, risked their lives by lying to the Pharaoh in order to save the newborn Israelite babies in Egypt (Exodus 1: 19-21)
Being fairly new here, I haven't a clue to your beliefs on Jesus, but if you would like to share them, go ahead.
I think a soldier fighting for defense of his country is the same thing. He is fighting for what he believes in and he is willing to lay his life on the line for those beliefs. I don't really see any difference between fighting for those beliefs and a Christian willing to lay down their life for theirs. Just my take on it.
Just because the two women lied in order to achieve a greater good doesn't mean that they got the a-okay from God. It just means that He will judge their actions in light of the mitigating circumstances.
You're right. God would have been much happier if a few thousand more babies were murdered.
Actually, their lies had nothing to do with sparing the lives of anyone save Moses.
Anyway, there are results of the gift of free will. And many people abuse it. I simply choose to avoid, as often as possible, making choices that break the laws of the Creator.
What is a country? Invisible lines on a map drawn by others that symbolize the boundaries of a patch of earth even birds disregard because it isn't 'real?'
We have different beliefs, as I have said before. I do not believe we have a calling.
I believe we are here to enjoy the life that God gave us.
I have not named or demeaned anyone's faith, I have just asked questions.
We each have our own opinions, and can believe anyone or anything we wish. I have merely asked questions, trying to find out why people do what they do.
While it was not the desired end, he knew it was the inevitable end. It appears that taking one's own life, whether directly or not, is relative to the situation.
People lie daily, I think lying to save a life, would be acceptable, don't you?
I tend to believe all that is written about Jesus, except the Trinity part, that He came back from the dead, was born of a virgin, and that He died for our sins.
The taking of a human life, is relative to the circumstance...self-defense, war, stuff like that - OK....abortion, murder - not OK
They all have the same result - a death
I have to leave now, for the weekend. Thank you all for the discussions. I may pick this up again monday.
Not true. You're obviously not famiar with Jewish tradition.
True, but it was not through his actions that he lost his life. He was not the proximate cause of his own death.
So, then, what you are saying is that if the article had been written 10 years later it would be invalid? wrong? in error? Or that because it was written 10 years prior to the very necessary consecration of Bishops its ok to read? But that if one is to read articles off the SSPX Angelus Website, one should make sure to only read articles prior to the consecration? Because the scholarship becomes deficient then?
Just what do the consecrations have to do with whether or not the article was written?
No, my entire comment was basically a disclaimer, because they're a lot of Catholics on here who are wary of the SSPX.
Or that because it was written 10 years prior to the very necessary consecration of Bishops its ok to read?
Of course, it's "ok" to read. In my opinion, most articles from SSPX publications should be given fair treatment, since most deal with historical information (for example, events or saints) or traditional Catholic devotions.
But that if one is to read articles off the SSPX Angelus Website, one should make sure to only read articles prior to the consecration? Because the scholarship becomes deficient then?
No, that is absurd.
Just what do the consecrations have to do with whether or not the article was written?
Again, as I mentioned above in this post, the comment was basically a disclaimer. In fact, I own the Angelus Press book that compiles the essays Malcolm Brennan wrote on the Martyrs of the English Reformation, among other books that I purchased from Angelus.
If I am to interpret your post correctly, it seems that you are being rather defensive about my comment. Why?
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