Archbishop of Sydney

Aquinas commencement address On st. John fisher

At thomas aquinas college
Santa paula, ca. U.s.a.

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
10/5/2008

INTRODUCTION

It is always a privilege to deliver a Commencement Address to a group of new graduates, to congratulate them on their achievements and to thank their family, sponsors and friends who supported them during their studies.  We look forward with Christian hope and human optimism to the contribution they will make to society and the Church in the future.

I have been a long term admirer of St. Thomas Aquinas and was for eleven years the director of an Aquinas College in Ballarat, Australia, now a campus of Australian Catholic University, but my Aquinas College was not a Great Books College.

Students here have an unusual advantage from their direct engagement for four years with the profound thinkers who have shaped our Western civilization.  They have followed the traditional Socratic method of questioning and dialogue, continued their search for meaning and truth in a learning institution which is committed to the Catholic faith.  Faith and reason are offered for their acceptance or rejection as they rigorously examine the intellectual claims of these great authors, religious or otherwise.  I repeat that they have been unusually blessed and advantaged, because they have an ideal base for any professional course they might now choose to pursue.

HIS LIFE

A Commencement ceremony is a happy time.  Why then should I choose to speak of an obscure sixteenth century bishop from England, who spent his Episcopal life in Rochester diocese, England’s poorest, and then so misjudged his political situation that he was executed by his King on some theological point of principle, without the support of even one of his brother bishops?

St. John Fisher’s life story is told simply.  Born in Yorkshire in 1469, one of four children to a prosperous merchant, he went to Cambridge University at the age of 14 where he was introduced to the currents of intellectual reform springing from the Renaissance.  In 1491 he was ordained priest, gained his M.A. and elected a fellow of Michaelhouse.

An appointment which was to prove crucial for his later career occurred when he became confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort, the devout mother of Henry VII.  Probably as a result of her patronage he was appointed Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University in 1501 and in 1504 at the age of 35 he became Chancellor at Cambridge, an office which he held for the rest of his life.

Even in his early years he clashed mildly with the new King Henry VIII, who wanted to take the money his grandmother Lady Margaret had bequeathed for the development of new colleges at Cambridge and use it for his own purposes.

Luther’s Protestant Reformation had started in 1517, a development which Henry VIII strongly opposed, even earning from the Pope for himself and his successors to this day the title of “Defender of the Faith” for his defence of the seven sacraments.

Fisher became the best known defender of Catholic doctrines selected by Cardinal Wolsey, then Lord Chancellor to preach at an open air rally outside St. Paul’s Cathedral in London against Luther, when Luther’s books were burnt publicly in 1526.  Henry was so pleased with his two hour address delivered in English, a primitive language then not spoken outside England, that he ordered it to be translated into Latin so that it could be read and understood in continental Europe.

This united front was broken by the inability of Henry’s wife Catherine of Aragon to produce a male heir and Henry’s infatuation with the formidable Anne Boleyn, who was eventually also executed by her tyrant husband.  A good historian of the period claimed to me that a major reason for Henry’s determination to eliminate Anne was his resentment at her bitter hostility to both Fisher and Thomas More.

We all know that Henry wanted his first marriage to be annulled, that this was refused by Rome, so that he responded by declaring himself to be head of the Church in England.  After careful study, Fisher emerged as Catherine’s most public advocate and a resolute defender of the essential role of the pope as successor of St. Peter in Catholic life.  His detailed study convinced Thomas More, former speaker in the House of Commons and briefly Lord Chancellor, to refuse to take the oath of kingly supremacy.  A background piece of information which is often forgotten today (when we have been blessed with good popes for a long time) is that during the whole of Fisher’s lifetime the best of the popes then were worldly with limited religious enthusiasm, while some others had disgraceful private lives.  In short, the Papacy then was a scandal, but Fisher was prepared to die for the Catholic truth embodied in the papal office and not for the personal qualities of its office holders.

Most historians have now abandoned the view that Catholicism in England on the eve of the Reformation was weak and corrupt because Henry and his Protestant successors had to wage a bitter struggle for generations to strangle Catholic life.

Henry was regularly extravagant and short of money and in a masterstroke he commandeered the wealth of the monasteries not just for himself, but for many of the local nobility.  In other words he locked most of the establishment behind him with significant financial encouragement!

In those days when there was little effective separation of powers and no freedom of speech, Henry would tolerate no public opposition.  In April 1534 Fisher was confined in the Tower of London and the case against proceeded slowly.  In May 1535 Pope Paul III created him a cardinal in the hope of saving his life.  Henry VIII was not impressed declaring that Fisher would not have a head on his shoulders to wear the cardinal’s hat.  No head, no hat!

On June 22 of that year he was executed by beheading, rather than being hung, drawn and quartered; a remission due not to his age or office, but to his poor health.  Despite his frailty he announced in a loud voice that he was dying for the faith of the Catholic Church.

His headless naked body was left on the scaffold until 8pm, when it was then placed in a shallow grave without ceremony.  His head was boiled down and placed on London Bridge for two weeks, where his supporters were delighted by the fact “that it grew more florid and life-like, so that many expected it would speak.”  His head was then thrown into the Thames to make way for the head of Thomas More. 

Incidentally Fisher’s room in the Tower of London was renovated on Churchill’s orders towards the end of World War Two, not because of any reverence for Fisher’s memory, but because, if Hitler survived the War, Churchill was determined to imprison him, at least for a time, in the Tower of London.

LESSONS

Before I began my brief regime of St. John Fisher’s life, I asked why we might ponder his story on a happy occasion like this Commencement.  This question has been left hanging, although the simple telling of his story suggests many lessons for a Catholic audience.  Let me spell out a few further considerations.

A preliminary reason is that as a bishop I am keen to speak of a brave and farseeing fellow bishop, who was fated to live in a violent time of change, which laid the foundations for England’s rise to greatness and indeed the foundations of our contemporary English-speaking world.

Thomas More, the layman and martyr, Fisher’s contemporary, has the best lines, is a more interesting personality and has gained much more publicity through e.g. the film “A Man for All Seasons”.  I want to redress this balance.

St. John Fisher is remarkable for many reasons, but one might begin with a group of new graduates by reminding them that he was truly wise and wisdom is not coterminous with learning nor indeed with cunning.  Wisdom brings insight, the ability to analyse and devise new syntheses, something akin to Cardinal Newman’s criterion for an educated person, which is the ability to recognize the relative value of different truths.  Wise people can evaluate public opinion, identify what is central, discard what is irrelevant and downgrade what is secondary.

Cardinal Fisher was the only Bishop to resist Henry, to acknowledge publicly that the issue was not merely a disputed annulment case, not just another quarrel with Rome, which would soon be over to enable the situation to return to normal.

In fact the rejection of the crucial role of the Papacy split the universal Church and set in train the destruction of Christendom.  The subjection of the Church also opened the way to a royal despotism being exercised with fewer checks and balances.

A second point we should notice is that John Fisher was not only a learned man, but one who continued to study and learn throughout his life.  In middle age he settled down to study Hebrew and Greek as well as wrestling with and answering the new challenges thrown up by the Protestant rebellion.

He was also a patron of learning.  As Chancellor at Cambridge University he worked to attract the funds necessary to bring leading scholars from abroad and to introduce the new learning of the Continental Renaissance, the rediscovery of the ancient classical authors in Greek and Latin, as well as the study of Hebrew for the Old Testament scriptures.  He also played a major role in the establishment of Christ’s College and St. John’s College, new foundations at Cambridge, which are still thriving today.

St. John Fisher exemplifies the importance of courage, of a principled integrity, a determination to speak the truth whatever the consequences.  Courage is not universal; indeed it is rare and wonderful especially when the penalties, such as torture and execution, are extreme.

It is marginally easier to be courageous in a crowd, not merely because courage is infectious, but because friends, family and intellectual allies are great helps in times of trial, bolstering morale and providing reassurances on judgements and tactics.

Fisher, and More, were almost alone as they took their stand.  As we have mentioned, no English bishop supported Fisher and there was no family support for More, not even from Meg Roper his favourite daughter.  If courage is “grace under pressure”, the pressures were not sufficient to destroy the resolve of this sick, elderly bishop.

It might also be useful to state the obvious even here at Thomas Aquinas College (it certainly would be useful in Australia) and point out that Fisher and More (indeed the martyrs on both sides of the Reformation) did not die for conscience’s sake, i.e. for the inviolability of personal conscience or the primacy of conscience.  This is a contemporary way of speaking where public tolerance of different points of view is often regarded as the supreme virtue.

Fisher announced on the scaffold in a surprisingly strong voice “Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ’s holy Catholic Church”, and we well remember More’s famous words that he was “the King’s loyal servant, but God’s first”.  They both died for the truth and more particularly the Catholic insistence on the essential role of the papacy.

The final lesson we might draw from the life of St. John Fisher, and the most important one, is that we should be encouraged by his holiness, so that we imitate his faith and goodness, while we rejoice that we are not put to sterner tests.

Erasmus, one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance and no religious zealot described Fisher “as the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and for greatness of soul”.

He was noted for the devotion he exhibited during the celebration of Mass, uniting himself with Christ’s self offering on the Cross.  He had a replica of the severed head of John the Baptist on the altar in his episcopal residence, as he took very seriously indeed the teaching of Thomas Aquinas that the office of bishop requires a high degree of sanctity.

While all Catholics are not called to be priests or religious, all are called to follow Christ in a serious way, to imitate Christ’s wholeness of life, in what we traditionally call holiness.  Fisher is a good model.

I wish all the graduates of Thomas Aquinas College my repeated congratulations on their graduation and hope they receive every appropriate grace and blessing as they commence their new lives. 

I am sure that you have already met many good examples and mentors in this environment and in your families.  May you also be inspired by the learning, holiness and courage of St. John Fisher to devote your own life to some great and good cause.

link to Thomas Aquinas College's website