UPDATE 25 June:
I received this note.
We met many years ago at Fr. Finigan’s Parish in Blackfen. I was one of the regular visiting choir. You kindly link to the Society of St. Bede’s Propers sheet that I made for the Feast. I see in the comments that the music is not easily available. We have the music of the Propers here, https://lms.org.uk/proper-chan
ts-england-wales#Fisher%20&% 20More Also I am working on Missale Romanum supplements for England and Wales here, https://societyofstbede.wordpr
ess.com/propers-for-england- and-wales/
ORIGINALLY POSTED 22 June 2023
In the Church’s traditional calendar St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More have their feasts on 9 July. More was martyred on 6 July and Fisher on 22 June. In the Novus Ordo calendar they are celebrated today, together.
Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared St. Thomas more the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.
More makes you think about our catholic politicians today. Fisher about our bishops.
Plus ça change…
There is a relatively new book about them: John Fisher and Thomas More: Keeping Their Souls While Losing Their Heads by Robert J. Conrad, Jr and published by TAN, which is serious stepping up its game.
Two saints for our times if ever there was need, one for comportment in the secular sphere and the other in the Church.
Let us invoke the intercession of St. Thomas and of St. John for our public figures, secular and spiritual.
Animi caussa…
From the 2005 Martyrologium Romanum.
Sanctorum Ioannis Fisher, episcopi, et Thomae More, martyrum, qui, cum Henrico regi Octavo in controversia de eius matrimonio repudiando et de Romani Pontificis primatu restitissent, in Turrem Londinii in Anglia trusi sunt. Ioannes Fisher, episcopus Roffensis, vir eruditione et dignitate vitae clarissimus, hac die iussu ipsius regis ante carcerem decollatus est; Thomas More vero paterfamilias vita integerrimus et praeses coetus moderatorum nationis, propter fidelitatem erga Ecclesiam catholicam servatam sexta die iulii cum venerabili antistite martyrio coniunctus est.
Anyone care to take a shot?
NOTA BENE FATHERS!
Mass texts in the Extraordinary Form for these two saints on 9 July are not easy to find.
I’ll give them to you in advance of July so you can get ready: HERE
Huge thanks for the texts from my good friend, His Hermeneuticalness, Fr. Tim Finigan.
Tonight… this great classic?
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I remember a few years ago having to sing the proper of the Mass for Ss. Thomas More & John Fisher. I struggled to find the texts but did in the end. Then I couldn’t find the music, so I made my own from another Mass. Fitted perfectly!
Andrew: Do you still have it?
I have asked for the intercession of these two great Saints in all my legal battles. They are very powerful.
“Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared St. Thomas more the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.”
I would say he is a patron of the laity generally, and much to be admired and imitated for his domestic virtures, rather than just the public ones. He was a brilliant scholar, an incredible friend, but most of all, an almost impeccable father. An extract from an epigram he wrote to his children while on an embassy on the continent:
“Ah ferus est dicique pater non ille mererur,
qui lacrimas nati non fleat ispe sui!
Nescio quid faciunt alii, sed vos bene scitis
ingenium quam sit molle piumque mihi,
semper enim quos progenui vehementer amavi
Et facilis (debet quod pater esse) fui.
At nunc tanta meo moles accrevit amori
ut mihi iam videar vos nec amasse prius.”
I’m led to think of the typical caricature of the distant and uncaring father that seems to plague post reformation British history. The execution of More was a suicide of the spirit of England.