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.
HOWEVER: According to Cum Sanctissima feasts established after 1962 can be observed in the Vetus Ordo so long as some other feast doesn’t “outweigh” it. Hence, today we can say the Mass in honor of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher. For TEXTS see below!
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 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. HERE and HERE
Huge thanks for the texts from my good friend, His Hermeneuticalness, Fr. Tim Finigan.
Tonight… this great classic?
I guess I don’t get the logic here. If their feasts are on July 9th (that is, already exist in the old calendar)… why do them today?
Also: I’m not opposed to the principle of doing TLMs with saints who were canonized after 1962. I personally think it’s fantastic! There are so many great saints we’d never be able to have a Mass for otherwise!
I’m not trying to be cynical, I just don’t understand. That’s all. :)
Clumsily enough, I cannot easily find whether 9 July will be the hundredth anniversary of their Feast Day, or the hundred-and-first. Wikipedia tells me that Eliot’s play of another martyred St. Thomas, Murder in the Cathedral, had its first performance on 15 June 1935 (a little less than 400 hundred years after St. Thomas More was beheaded on 6 July 1535 – though I haven’t tried to sort out the Julian and Gregorian calendar details – and a couple weeks after St. Thomas and St. John were canonized). And that the stage play version of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons had its first performance a little over a week before their Feast on 1 July 1960 (a little less than 425 years after St. Thomas was beheaded).
July 22, 2026. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer quits.
St Thomas More (1535)
St John Fisher (1535). Both men were imprisoned under Henry VIII, and lost their heads on Tower Hill in 1535.
Memorial for today
Saints John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, martyrs. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London because they stood firm against King Henry VIII in rejecting his unlawful marriage and in defending the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.
John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, known for his learning and the dignity of his life, was beheaded on this day by order of the king.
Thomas More, a faithful father and Lord Chancellor of England, for his steadfast loyalty to the Catholic Church, was joined in martyrdom with the venerable bishop on the sixth of July.