Utopian Traditionalist

October 29, 1967
Plainfield

Utopian Traditionalist

"It is useless to send an army against ideas." This proverb by a Scandinavian philosopher (Georg Brandes) can be found to be true always. How does a government, no matter how powerful, send an army against a Buddhist nun in Saigon who burns herself to death to make the most emphatic declaration possible that the war there is wrong? Through history this has been true. The Protestant Reformation – and this is its 450th anniversary – was signed, sealed, and made functional not by documents alone, but by brave men and women who lived and many times died for their faith.

So with Thomas More who lived from 1578-1635, whose courageous devotion to beliefs was illustrated by the progression of his titles: born Thomas More, he became Sir Thomas More in his lifetime; and following the proper interval after his death, was canonized St. Thomas More.

Thomas More was born, lived, and died a Roman Catholic, executed because he would not yield a Roman Catholic dogma. You may think it odd that his life should be the theme for a Reformation Sunday Service. Yet the strange orbits of human events intersected with his character, wise, gentle but stubborn, providing us with an example of the integrity of a man who maintained his ways of private judgment. He died as well as lived inwardly made strong with a faith to live by. More than that, beyond the limitations of Catholic dogma, he had visions of religious freedom, of universalism and of a world of men and women whose life goals would be the greatest possible measure of human happiness. Truly Thomas More was a "man for all seasons," as Robert Bolt named his brilliant and sensitive play.

I would speak with you about his life, his ideas and his death, because not only may we acquire more knowledge about religion as a force in society thereby, but also examples of human bravery may encourage us to look within ourselves for the source of courage with which to meet and overcome the fears and troubles which beset everyone of us.

Son of a judge of the King's Bench, Thomas More was reared as a page in the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Brilliant of mind, it was with delight that Thomas More became a Renaissance scholar, recreating for his own the superb humanistic literature of classical Greece. His father wanted Thomas to study law. This he did, successfully; but never did he lose interest in that remarkable Renaissance climate – the revival of learning. He had wit; a love of life, unselfish, a capacity for joy as a lover, as a father, and as a friend.

As a young man, he won a celebrated lawsuit for the Pope against the Crown. He attracted the attention of Henry VIII. One must recall that England did not participate in or support the Reformation movements on the European Continent. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli and others were condemned by Henry VIII, who acquired the title of "Defender of the Faith."

But the "Defender of the Faith" had problems with his domestic affairs, and the laws of the Church were obstacles. Because Catherine, wife of Henry VIII had failed to produce a male heir, he wished to divorce her and marry Anne Boleyn, one of her maids-in-waiting. It was not only that the king wanted to change wives, but also it was of great importance that there be a male successor to the throne. Nationalistic feeling had become enthusiastic; patriotism was wide-spread. The Defender of the Faith was more passionate to be the King of an England free of foreign domination, whether by the Holy Roman Emperor or the Holy Roman Church.

But complications both of Church law and international diplomacy deterred the Pope from issuing the annulment which would be required. Thomas More, now the King's Chancellor, was pressured to influence the Pope to issue the annulment. But he refused to work and plan for that goal. Norfolk, an old friend, comes to attempt to persuade Thomas to the King's view (From Bolt's play):

More: (Indignant) Our King, Norfolk, has declared war on the Pope – because the Pope will not declare that our Queen is not his wife.

Norfolk: And is she?

More: (with cunning) I'll answer that question for one person only, the King. Aye, and that in private, too.

Norfolk: (contemptuously) Man, your' re cautious.

More: Yes cautious, I'm not one of your hawks.

Norfolk: (walks away and turns) All right – we're at war with the Pope! The Pope's a prince, isn't he?

More: He is.

Norfolk: And a bad one?

More: Bad enough. But the theory is that he's also the Vicar of God, the descendant of St. Peter, our only link with Christ.

Norfolk: (sneering) a tenuous link.

More: Oh, tenuous, indeed.

Norfolk: (to the others) Does this make sense? (no reply; they look at More) You'll forfeit all you’ve got – which includes the respect of your country – for a theory?

More: (hotly) The Apostolic Succession of the Pope is (stops interested) Why it's a theory, yes; you can't see it; can't touch it; it's theory. (To Norfolk, very rapidly but calmly) But what matters to me is not whether it's true or not but I believe it to be true, or rather, not that I BELIEVE it, but that I believe it... I trust I make myself obscure.

Norfolk: Perfectly.

But Thomas More was a Utopian as well as a loyal communicant of the Roman Catholic tradition. UTOPIA, which he began writing at the age of 37, is still remarkable for its ideas.

Cast in dialogue form, the book is ostensibly a series of conversations between Thomas More and a much traveled seaman who has lived in Utopia – a distant island – and who describes the beliefs and practices prevailing in Utopia.

The social and economic theories of "Utopia" are forerunners of later radical thought. One historian, at least, believes that More’s UTOPIA converted more Englishmen to socialism than did the later writings of Marx and Engels in the 19th century. More's mythical traveler described how private property was not permitted in Utopia, "this wise sage early foresaw that the one and only road to the general welfare lies in the maintenance of equality in all respects. I have my doubts that the latter could ever be preserved where the individual's possessions are his own property.” p.52-3

More spelled out many provocative ideas. Because I want to give more time to his visions of what religions might be, just a sentence or so on other ideas will give those unfamiliar with More's UTOPIA a glimpse of the sweep of his thought.

He had enlightened views on punishment for crime, "the object of public anger is to destroy the vices but to save the persons and so treat them that they necessarily become good and that, for the rest of their lives, they repair all the damage done before."

He believed in the right of a suffering person to choose to die. Euthanasia, we call it now. More wrote, “But if a disease is not only incurable but also distressing and agonizing without any cessation, then the priests and public officials exhort the man, since he is now unequal to all life's duties, a burden to himself, and a trouble to others, and is living beyond the time of his death, to make up his mind not to foster the pest and plague any longer nor to hesitate to die now that life is torture to him, but relying on good hope, to free himself from this bitter life as from prison and rack or else voluntarily to permit others to free him."

Thomas More's UTOPIA provided a six-hour working day, three hours before noon, then after a two-hour lunch period, three hours in the afternoon. (70)

In a time when the prevailing religion considered this life to be one of misery and trial, with first purgatory and following that heaven for a few and hell for the most, More argued that pleasure is the end and goal of the Utopian State. No variety of pleasure is forbidden provided no harm comes of it. As the Utopian writes,"When Nature bids you to be good to others, she does not command you conversely to be cruel and merciless to yourself. So nature herself, they maintain, prescribes to us a joyous life, or in other words, pleasure as the end of all our operations." (p. 93)

But most intriguing to me are the ideas of religion discussed in More's UTOPIA, because the case for reason, freedom, and universalism is defended by this loyal Roman Catholic who was to die for the particularity of his faith.

Basic to religion in Utopia is that one's religious beliefs should be reached by reason, independently of divine revelation. More has an appreciation that religion has many, varied expressions – nature religion, hero-worship, etc. But interestingly, what is essentially a Unitarian argument is advanced when he writes, "But by far the majority, and those far the wiser believe... in a single being, unknown, eternal, immense, inexplicable, far above the reach of the human mind, diffused throughout the universe, not in mass, but in power. Him they call father. To him alone they attribute the beginnings, growth, the increase, the changes and the ends of all things, as they have perceived them. To no other do they give divine honors." (p. 130)

More argues strongly for religious freedom. In Utopia, one who advocated the denial of religious freedom was arrested for such encroachment on liberty. In contrast to the Roman Catholic dogma of apostolic succession in the Church, where only a Bishop in apostolic succession could ordain the clergy, in Utopia the priests were elected by the people. This is a practice developing later among the Puritans and incorporated, of course, in Unitarian procedures.

In the temples of religion in Utopia, "no image of the gods is seen, so that the individual may be free to conceive of God with the most ardent devotion in any form he pleases." (p. 142)

With such open, radical views about religion and life, how could Sir Thomas More, the King’s Chancellor, defy the King's wishes because of unyielding allegiance to the dogmatic structure of the Roman Catholic Church?

Underlying his stubborn refusal to support Henry VIII was not only his steadfast integrity but his thorough belief in the right of private judgment. This shining integrity was the principal reason why Henry tried to persuade More. Thomas More had not condemned the King publicly for his marriage plans. More just remained silent. Thomas was seeking no untimely martyr’s death. He loved life. He just was silent; as someone has said, the silence of Thomas More was ringing through Europe.

As Bolt dramatized the dialogue in the garden scene, after Henry’s arguments fail to persuade Thomas More, the King expostulates:

Henry: "It is my bounden duty to put away the Queen, and all the Popes back to St. Peter shall not come between me and my duty! How is it that you cannot see? Everyone else does."

More: (eagerly) "Then why does your Grace need my poor support?"

Henry: "Because you are honest. What's more to the purpose, you're known to be honest...There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I wear the crown, and there are those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I am their lion, and there is a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves – and there is you."

In 1534, the Supremacy Act was passed by Parliament, entitling Henry VIII and all his successors, "the only supreme head on earth of the Church of England, (without qualifying clauses and with full power to redress heresies.)" Thomas More, among a few others, refused to take the oath required by this Supremacy Act. It was not that More was an uncompromising believer in the supreme authority of the Pope. One scholar (Dr. Marius, Christian Century, 7/19/67) argues that More believed the Pope to be the chief administrator and pastor of the whole Church. But also More believed a general church council had the power and right, if it chose, to depose one Pope and substitute another. In UTOPIA, all political offices are elective and all officers were continually and directly responsive to the people. This was undoubtedly a foundation belief that More cherished.

But the patience of any all-powerful King is short. More was imprisoned in the Tower, Henry hoping that confinement would bring More to heel. His wife and daughter were enlisted to persuade him, His wife’s horror at the filth in which he was forced to live pained More but did not change his conviction. His daughter's pleas were more moving. She was very dear to Thomas – he called her his beloved Eve, She tested his reason as well as his faith, arguing that his conscience could be mistaken, or relative, saying (in Bolt's play), “God more regards the thoughts of the heart than the words of the mouth." Or so you've always told me. Then say the words of the oath, and in your heart think otherwise."

But More answers, "When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. (cups his hands) And if he opens his fingers then – he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this, but I'd be loathe to think your father one of them."

Other reports of the scene have Thomas saying to her, "the high judge might exalt others who swore in good conscience and yet, for the same consign him to the devil because he did not think as they thought. Daughter I never intend to pin my soul to another man's back."

Another central conviction in More's stand: he believed not only in the right of private judgment but also that matters of religious belief could not be determined by an act of Parliament. Nowhere was organized religion more compliant to the State and controlled by the State than in the England of Henry VIII. The King was not only the Defender of the Faith but also the Dictator of the Faith. More than a century would pass before religion, through the Puritan revolution, would nourish the seeds of democracy in English soil. So Thomas More was resisting that most powerful of tides in modern times – the waves of nationalistic feeling which proclaimed that religion was subservient to the State and dissent from that attitude was unpatriotic, subversive, and deserving punishment. The myth of the omniscience and omnipotence of the government in power is still the most powerful tide that drags at conscience and conviction.

Because they would not place their religious convictions in bondage to the government, Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were beheaded. Members of monastic orders were killed in even more repulsive fashion.

The lesson for us is not that they were loyal to a Church whose dogmas and authority we reject, but they held that religion should be an overview of life. They believed religion to be a system of values, beliefs, and practices which related to one's family and nation but at the same time was a religious system which was the bondservant neither of family nor nation. Such an overview is basic to religion that is permanent rather than transient, then and now and in any time to come. Any faith to live by must be an overview of all of life.

St. Thomas More's loyalty was that of medieval Christendom – loyalty to the Church transcending all other loyalties. But we know from his UTOPIA that he held precious the rights of freedom, private judgment, reason and that he was responsive to the attitudes of all religions. His fellow Englishman of two centuries later, Samuel Johnson, said of Thomas More, “He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands have produced.” Thomas More's life and death were spectacular instances of the cost and worth of an overview of all life – a faith to live by. Each of us would do well to find out how his faith matches that, not in the particularities of dogma but in the fundamental of conviction maintained with integrity.

In Robert Bolt's play, the execution scene is powerful, even shocking. Near the [end], More says to the headsman, “Friend, be not afraid of your office, you send me to God."

As the Headsman shouts, "Behold the head of a traitor," the Common Man, who in the play has been a commentator to the audience steps to center stage,

"I'm breathing...Are you breathing, too?...It's nice, isn't it? It isn't difficult to keep alive, friends – just don't make trouble – or if you must make trouble, make the sort of trouble that's expected. Well, I don't need to tell you that. Good night. If we should bump into one another, recognize me, "(he exits)

***

[Editor’s note: on a separate sheet appear these words, apparently CJW’s reflections on the sermon]

At any rate, Thomas More, as I wrote about him, became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of himself he could yield to the encroachments of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of those he loved. It was a substantial area in both cases, for he had a proper sense of fear and was a busy lover. Since he was a clever man and a great lawyer he was able to retire from those areas in wonderfully good order, but at length he was asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person set like metal, was overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigor, and could no more be budged than a cliff.

This account of him developed as I wrote: what first attracted me was a person who could not be accused of any incapacity for life, who indeed seized life in great variety and almost greedy quantities, who nevertheless found something in himself without which life was valueless and when that was denied him was able to grasp his death.