The Relevance of St. Thomas More

St. Thomas More’s Feast Day is celebrated every June 22 in Catholic calendar. The Anglican Church of England, however, celebrates his martyrdom every July 6. St. Thomas More is popular known as the Patron Saint of Lawyers. In 2000, St. John Paul II declared St. Thomas More as the “heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians.”

St. Thomas More was born in 1478. He studied law at Oxford. After his studies, he practiced law and engaged in politics. He was soon elected to the Parliament and got married to Jane Colt in 1505.  Jane Colt died after giving birth to their fourth children. Soon, he married a widow, Alice Middleton.

In 1529, Henry VIII, who earlier appointed to different high positions, vested upon him the title Lord Chancellor. However, he resigned from his position in 1532 as Henry VIII claimed his supremacy over the Pope and persisted in his desire to marry his sister-in-law. In 1534, he was imprisoned, together with his good friend St. John Fisher, at the Tower of London for refusing to swear allegiance to the Kind of England as the Head of the Church of England. After the execution of St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More was tried for treason and sentenced to death. On July 6, 1535, St. Thomas More was brought to the scaffold for his execution. There, he declared in the crowd of spectators his undying faith, “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”   (See http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=324).

The life of St. Thomas More symbolizes that the moral of law is far higher than any law or decree that public officials can decree. His martyrdom is a testimony to public servant’s fidelity to righteousness in the face of the temptation to conform to the wishes of a superior whose self-proclaimed supremacy put moral coercion to subordinates for them to violate their sense of right and wrong.

In the present dispensation when morally questionable policies and methods are continually being impressed in the public minds, our age is calling for public servants who are ready to stand with their moral and political convictions. Of course, this is not yet the time when martyrs have to walk to the scaffold. Rather, the call is for conscientious citizens to lend their voices to the unheard and invisible so that truth and justice may be heard.

More than ever, we need lawyers whose belief in the rule of law and the primacy of moral law cannot be bought or bargained away with. We need statesmen and politicians who will cling to their mandate to promote the common good and defend the public from abuse and excesses of authority. St. Thomas More lived the code and died with it. It is now our time to profess, “We are the State’s good servants, but God’s first.”