Religion & Law

It strikes me that today -- the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More -- the Church invites us to reflect on two Catholics whose llives and witnesses could not be more relevant to this blog's project.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I've been watching Showtime's (somewhat trashy, but entirely enjoyable) series "The Tudors," and have been surprised -- almost stunned -- by the extent to which the show's producers are framing Henry's revolution as a power-grab by secular authority.  In our context, the (whiggish?) interpretation of that revolution -- i.e., it was part of a larger Protestant-led liberation of the individual conscience from Church authority and constraint -- is so often uncritically parrotted and promulgated.  The lives and martyrdoms of Fisher and More remind us, though, that the Church was (and still must be) an institutional center of non-state authority, if individual freedom is to be secure from arbitrary state power.

Here is a bit from "The Tudors", regarding More's martyrdom.  More is, I think, very well portrayed.