ST. THOMAS MORE DIED 473 years ago today, July 6, 1535. He is, aptly, the patron saint of the Arlington Diocese, Virginia, nestled across the Potomac River from the greatest seat of worldly power, Washington, D.C. The excerpt (below) comes from a panegyric given by Monsignor Ronald Knox 73 years ago in honor of this great saint of England.King Henry's moment of Decisionism in ordering the death of his friend was shocking and stunning, like Alexander the Great's cutting of the Gordian knot. It opened the flood gates to ever-increasing numbers of murders under both Mary's and Elizabeth's reigns in a spiral of pagan-like frenzy. It began the downward spiral into a void of faith and morals we see in the bare ruined choirs of today's England. May the great English saint pray for us and for all of western civilization. Monsignor Knox:
St. Thomas More had no lack of plausible excuses if he had wanted to avoid the crown of martyrdom; no lack of sincere people who urged him to take refuge in them. Never, I suppose, was man so tempted both by friends and foes to abandon his purpose. His own wife, his own daughter took the part of his enemies, and entered into a loving conspiracy to save him from himself. But to friend and foe alike he opposed the impenetrable wall of his good-natured banter.
You see, he realized, long before other men of his time, that what stood before England was a complete parting of the ways. He saw that, in the conditions of his time, you must needs throw in your lot either with the old faith or with the heresies that were beginning to spring up all over Europe; that a nation which defied the authority of the Pope, although it might do so merely in the name of national independence, would be forced, sooner or later, into the camp of the heretic.
It is amazing to us, looking back upon all the intervening centuries have brought, that so many good men of that age – men who were afterwards confessors for the faith – were hoodwinked for the moment into following the King when he incurred the guilt of schism. But perhaps if were could think ourselves back rather more successfully into the conditions of the time, we should pardon them the more readily; and for that reason we should feel even greater admiration for the few men who, like our martyr, were wise enough to see what was happening. It was a time of national crisis, a time of intellectual ferment. There were only a few people who kept their heads, and those few who kept their heads lost their heads, like St. Thomas More.
… Let us thank God’s mercy for giving us the example and the protection of a great Saint, our own fellow-countryman, who knew how to absorb all that was best in the restless culture of his day, yet knew at once, when the time came, that he must make a stand here; that he must give no quarter to the modern world here. His remembrance has long been secure in the praise of posterity; it only remained for us to be assured by the infallible voice of the Church, what we could not doubt already, that he is with our Blessed Lady and the Saints in heaven. He knows our modern needs, let us turn to him in our modern troubles; his prayers will not be lacking for the great country he loved so, for the great city in which he lived and died.
- Monsignor Ronald Knox, Captive Flames
