Facing the Fiscal and Moral Cliff with Courage: We Need New Thomas More's for the Third Millennium

11/28/2012

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positive Law by which he proclaimed that he and Anne were lawfully married. He declared himself to be the Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus abrogating to himself the authority to determine that his lawful marital bond was dissolved and denying the authority of the successor of the Apostle Peter.

The Pope refused to collaborate with Henry's demand that he grant him an annulment from his lawful marriage so that he could pursue a different woman as his wife. He would not affirm Henry's decision to place his disordered desires over the objective truth. Thomas More knew the order of truth and applied a hierarchy of values in both his personal life and his public life. He lived as a faithful Catholic Christian, demonstrating a unity of life and moral coherence. He stayed faithful to the Truth.

In 1532, knowing that he could not enforce the declaration of his temporal King to usurp the authority of the Church which had been granted to it by the King of Kings, he resigned his political position. He tried to do so with the kind of integrity that had characterized his entire life. He withdrew from public life and bore the ridicule and taunts of those who once praised him. He offered the suffering to the Lord by joining it to the Cross of the Savior. He then tried to continue to care for his beloved family, the domestic church of the home, by teaching them how to live lives of virtue and simplicity.

He had lost his prestige and his considerable financial resources, but he gained the peace which always comes through fidelity to the Lord. His hopes for a life with his family, lived in simplicity and fidelity to the Church, were short lived. The King, by now drunk on his own power, insisted that Thomas take the oath under the Act of Succession, thereby acknowledging the legitimacy of his marriage to Anne and his authority over the Church.

Thomas would not do so because he refused to violate his truly formed conscience. So, the King had his former counselor imprisoned in the Tower of London. There he underwent intense tortures of both body and soul. These came not only from the henchmen of the State but even from some within his own family and circle of friends who failed to understand his actions because their minds had been dulled by compromise.

At the time, few would have even noticed if Thomas had succumbed to the Royal request. He could have "justified" the action through the exercise of his well honed rhetorical and logical skills by calling it a merely perfunctory action. He could have thereby restored his political position, some would have argued, in order to try to influence the King for the good over the long haul. He could have had his substantial properties restored if he had just sworn that oath, others would say, in order to provide material safety for his beloved family. Instead, this man who loved life, loved his family, loved his career and properly loved the world and all of its goods, loved the Lord first and would not compromise the Truth.

He was an ordinary Christian man who shows us ordinary Christian men the way to living a unity of life in the midst of the creeping darkness and distractions of our own age. He was a Catholic Christian man who held in harmony his vocation as the father of a family with his profession as a lawyer and his service in the highest of Political offices. He knew that there is a hierarchy of values which bring with them a hierarchy of duties and loyalties. His witness in life and in death challenges us to examine whether we do. How did he do it? Quite simply, he prayed. He lived in a communion with the Risen Lord as a faithful son of the Church which is His Body.

He was truly in love with the Lord and chose to live in the Heart of the Catholic Church for the sake of the world. He teaches us, that the Christian vocation requires our constant response to the Lord's invitation to follow him and that we cannot get by on yesterdays' decisions. During that brief time which he had with his family, after attempting to quietly resign rather than violate his formed conscience and before he was imprisoned, when his wife or children complained about their lack he would tell them that they could not expect to "go to heaven in featherbeds". He taught them regularly to reflect upon the privation and sufferings of Jesus on our behalf and he prayed with them for the grace to join their own to Him on the Cross. He would not compromise the truth.

Thomas More was a morally coherent Catholic Christian. That is the lesson of his life and of his Martyrs death. He beckons millions, across the expanse of time unto today, to follow his example as he followed the example of the Lord. This champion of heroic courage in the face of a State which has lost its soul never wavered in his fidelity to the Truth. He would not betray the truth or compromise it on the altar of public opinion or for political opportunism. He knew ...
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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Thomas More, Courage, courageous, fiscal cliff, moral cliff, marriage, Right to Life, human dignity, HHS Mandate, culture war, men, manly spirituality, religious freedom, Deacon Keith Fournier

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

blacksheep09
5 months ago
I reflect in these dark times St. Pauls 2nd letter to St. Timothy Ch. 3 para 1- para 9; we are neck deep in goat dropings and need to secure the close targets, our families, our neighbors, and the people whom fill the pews. I still want to throw-up when I pass a vehicle in the parking lot boasting with a bumper sticker voting for evil, yet the owner is attending Gods worship services.
Bill Sr.
5 months ago
There should be a name for these people who claim to be Catholic and consistently vote for candidates who espouse the abolition of every moral value and precept held by the Church as essential to our faith. I am told there are also Christians of other denominations who fall into the same category of misguided or misinformed loyal subjects of big government.
How long will it take for us to admit Christian values had to be dismantled and our sacred trust in gospel truth had to be distorted if evil could ever enter our ranks disguised somehow as promoting tolerance, fairness, or social justice? This is exactly how it always happens.
In this case Progressive Liberalism posing as a benevolent arm of government took over the once proud party of the poor man turning the Democratic machine into the mouthpiece for the clever perversion of Christian charity. How else could we have ever come to the new normal where mothers are given the RIGHT to kill their babies?
Virginity and chastity are now considered weird scruples of the past and the sanctity of marriage is irrelevant with most couples living together until they feel comfortable with the arrangement. Parents today send their children off to government schools where they are indoctrinated into accepting the notion that what they are being taught may be contrary to what their mothers and fathers think or believe but they should be thankful because this is a new and enlightened age they are becoming a part of which offers freedom from the constraints of outdated moral concepts.
Christians who are either actually unaware of these facts or have chosen to ignore the obvious change in direction our nation are not followers of Christ, they are wanderers in the wilderness of worldly confusion and delusion purposely constructed for them by the prince of darkness and his legions of elitists who have bought into the humanistic myth of a godless Utopia.
Maybe that is what we should call the lost or wandering Christians of today, Christians Looking for Utopia on Earth... less Christ or…….. CLUEless.
Staff
5 months ago
We had a Thomas More and we spat on him and mocked him every step of the way... And he was only humbly doing the will of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum - the Magna Carta for the working man - and the will of its reiteration in Pope Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno! What to do for the fiscal cliff is all there! You can read more about it at the site of the most neglected American saint and most like Thomas More in America with over 40 million weekly listeners! Father Coughlin! Go now to www.FatherCoughlin.com
Emma
5 months ago
"We were warriors on the frontlines, standing unafraid
Now we're watchers on the sidelines
While our families slip away
Where are you, men of courage?
You were made for so much more!
Let the pounding of our hearts cry
We will serve the Lord!
We were made to be couraaaaaageous! ".....(Casting Crowns)

So, where are you men of courage? God bless you all!!
mike robertson
5 months ago
Catholic democrats, based on their voting record, must dislike More. He put God first. His first obedience was to God's laws. Getting another person's money at the hands of the government was not the most important thing. I assume I speak for many Catholics when I say I feel like More would feel if he had been around today. I still believe what my parents and Church taught me fifty years ago. But the world has fallen so far from obeying God, I no longer feel like I am in the majority-as I did feel half a century ago. I am made to feel like a bigot because I believe no one has the right to take innocent human life. The man Catholic democrats voted for advocates killing kids even after they survive the attempt to kill them in their mom's womb. I am called a phobe because I accept what God calls true marriage. Catholic democrats voted for one who says God is wrong on the subject. And I stand with God's Church as it fights against the Catholic democrats' candidate who is ordering the Church to abandon her adherence to God's laws under the guise of health care. Catholic democrats can continue to stand on the opposite side of the Church on these matters and remain loyal to the administration they supported. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
rafaelmarie
5 months ago
IT IS IMMORAL TO SPEND MORE THAN YOU HAVE.

IT IS IMMORAL TO BE A SLOTH AND HAVE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT YOU.

IT IS IMMORAL TO COMPLETELY IGNORE THE GREAT SOCIETAL SIN OF ABORTION, BECAUSE YOUR PROGRESSIVE LIBERAL PASSIONS ARE ANGRY AGAINST THE RICH, WHILE YOU IGNORE THE POVERTY OF YOUR SPIRIT IN IGNORING THE SILENT CRIES OF THE UNBORN!

MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR DECREPIT SOULS!
abey
5 months ago
Through the Apostasy of Henry VII, in the iniquity that was at work, commenced the taking up the Yoke of Freemasonry by the "crown" mixing it with its religion to apolitical church leading to the Biblical prophecy relating to 'Meggido" in all those wicked & false beliefs of Ancient Egypt nothing but to slavery, against which is the war, the Spiritual war of Christ.

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