As new Feature on our Online Daily we will highlight an article or column that was featured in The Wanderer in years past. Most of these articles provide insight or relevancy to the same issues of today. Please feel free to comment on these articles. The discussion box is open.
The Wanderer Newspaper January 23, 1969
The Church from its very beginning has had to fight for its very life against external attacks, yes, — but more against the traitorous attacks within the Church. When one looks back over the history of the Church, one must become convinced, that if the Catholic Church were not of Divine institution — founded by Christ on the Rock, it could never have survived these assaults. You know of these external persecutions in which millions of souls have suffered cruelly, from injustice, from dishonor, from loss of property and of life. But always the Church ‘ has suffered a greater loss of ‘ souls from those preaching false doctrine within the Church by its own rebellious Sons, I wish to consider here. Already in the days of the Apostles, the Council of Jerusalem had to rescue the infant Church from the domination of the Jewish converts, who attempted to make the Church of Christ but a continuation of the Jewish synagogue. Then the attackers questioned the Divinity of Christ. — questioned whether He was true man, and even argued that man did not need Christ at all to work out his salvation. Later, these dissenters questioned the need or validity of the Sacraments; insisted that Christ was not really present in the Holy Eucharist. You remember Martin Luther contended that the Holy Mass was an invention of The Devil.
THE ATTACK ON THE MAGISTERIUM
In the 15th century churchmen began to attack the authority to rule the magisterium of the Church, — they denied the Church’s right to obedience, — denied its infallible power to teach true doctrine pertaining to faith and morals. It was largely due to their error that there sprung up in the later centuries hundreds of religious sects, each claiming to teach the truth, when in fact, all were in error except the one Church Christ founded. — the one Catholic, infallible Church. The Church Christ established must possess the prerogative of infallibilty; otherwise we could not know with absolute certainty God’s truths. Thus, as we have seen, Luther, when the Church pronounced his theory of justification erroneous, denied the right or authority of the Church to judge what is true or false, moral or immoral, in matters of faith or morals.
CAUSE OF THE ENGLISH REVOLT
The same was true in England, when many of the Catholics rebelled against the Church and the Pope, although the events that led up to the revolt, were different. And since this episode was so intimately connected with St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, we will relate it in connection with his life. Bishop Fisher was a man of deep piety and solid virtue. No one in all England could match him for his knowledge of theology and for his eloquence. He was a very close friend of King Henry VIII, and it is generally thought, that he was the ghost-writer of the treatise which the King published, “On the Defense of the Seven Sacraments,” against the heretical teaching of Martin Luther, and for which treatise the Pope conferred on the King the title of “Defender of the Faith.” No cleric was held in higher admiration by the King. What, then, was the reason for the complete reversal of the King in his fidelity to the Church, and for his vicious hostility of his esteemed friend, Bishop Fisher?
The immediate cause for this was the King’s infatuation for Ann Boleyn, a clever, beautiful lady of his court, but the foundation for this conduct had been laid long before. The Church had just emerged, scarred and torn, from the deplorable scandal of the Great Schism. These years had largely been a period of revolt, — of denial of the Church’s right to obedience. When Luther appeared on the scene, he proclaimed two doctrines that later deeply affected Henry: (1) The Church, being wholly spiritual, is entirely subject to the State; (2) Rome has no jurisdiction over the Church of any nation, but the temporal ruler is the head of the Church in that nation and has the right over all Church properties.
Meantime the English King sought to have his marriage to Queen Catherine annulled. Bishop Fisher became the Queen’s most trusted friend and counselor. When in this capacity he appeared in the Logates Court, he startled his hearers by his bold defense of the Queen’s marriage, declaring the marriage-bond indissoluble. When this was reported to the King, he was furious and took every means to discredit Bishop Fisher. The case was sent to Rome for a declaration of nullity on the grounds that there never had been a marriage because of the lack of a proper dispensation. Rome rejected the claim. Then Cranmer, now Archbishop cf Canterbury, called a session of Parliament to pass on the nullity.
Bishop Fisher, a member of Parliament, vehemently objected on the ground that Parliament had no jurisdiction in the case; and with three other Bishops, appealed the case to Rome. Immediately the King issued an edict forbidding such an appeal and he had the four Bishops imprisoned.
Before this affair with Ann Boleyn came up, the King had forbidden that the treatises of Luther be published in England. And now the friends of Ann, and probably Cranmer, contrived to have the treatises of Luther fall into the King’s hands. This was just what the King wanted to solve his problem, and he ordered Cranmer at once to call a convocation of the Bishops of England; he demanded: (1) That they declare his marriage to Queen Catherine null and void; (2) that the Bishops take an oath to recognize the King as the head of the Catholic Church in England. Refusal to do this would be considered treason. and punishable by deposition from office, confiscation of all property, and imprisonment and death.
THE ENGLISH BISHOPS DEFECT
The Bishops squirmed, but showed themselves ready to submit — all except Bishop Fisher. He pleaded again with the other Bishops to be firm and refuse to take the oath, but he accomplished nothing. Cranmer, now Archbishop of the primal Diocese of Canterbury, forthwith declared the marriage of King Henry to Queen Catherine null, and Ann Boleyn was crowned Queen.
Bishop Fisher was immediately imprisoned. For eight months he lay in prison—cold, hungry, sickly — awaiting trial. Here he was declared guilty of treason, and Cromwell now the King’s Chancellor, sentenced him to be beheaded. His last prayer was that God forgive those who had condemned him.
It is hard to understand how all the Bishops of England. save Bishop Fisher alone, could have become so craven as to submit to the King in a matter so vital; that it led the whole Church in England into heresy, and jeopardized the salvation of their own souls and the souls of their people. The treason of the adulterous King one can understand, knowing the power of unrestrained human passions, but not this conduct of the Bishops. Why! even the fortitude of the laity who chose martyrdom to betrayal, put them to shame. Evidently, those preceding two hundred years of spiritual neglect and worldly ambitions, had so weakened the faith and moral fiber of the clergy, that they no longer knew how to be, or desired to be, the good shepherds of their flock.
TODAY, THE CHURCH IS ALSO MENACED FROM WITHIN
In our day similar betrayals are menacing the Church. Some few Bishops, more priests and Religious and lay organizations, are denying that the Pope, as head of the Church, has any right to demand obedience; they assert that the Pope can be and, at times, is wrong in proclaiming the truths of Christ; that the doctrines concerning faith and morals taught by the magisterium of the Church are relative, and subject to change. Others, by promoting the systems of Teilhardism and Situation Ethics, are teaching false doctrine not unlike the errors of Martin Luther; they are, in fact, teaching heresy, only lacking the Church’s formal pronouncement. Those advocating a change in the structure of the Church; those who are demanding a democratic form of government without the Pope or the Hierarchy, if they had their way, would inflict more damage on the Church than King Henry VIII did. The difference is, that, these modern dissenters have not yet a spiritual or civic power to execute their demands. The fact that these have not been excommunicated by the Church does not lessen their moral guilt of heresy and of disobeying Christ, as He speaks through His Church.
Can it be that these modern dissenters are afflicted with the same malady which corrupted the souls of the Protestant revolutionists in the sixteenth century — a malady caused by being too busy about worldly things, to the loss of Divine Faith and starvation of the soul for lack of spiritual food? Let each one examine his own conscience.
Those faithful Catholics who have had to suffer much in order to be true to Christ may find comfort in the words of St. John Fisher. While he was in prison awaiting his trial, he one day told his friends that Our Lord had appeared to him and said: “Know you not that Christ must suffer and so enter into His Kingdom?” And then the Bishop added: “Who, then, can for very shame desire to enter the Kingdom of Christ with ease, when Christ Himself entered not His own without pain?”
Editors Note: This column appeared in The Wanderer on January 23, 1969. Bishop Adrian wrote a weekly column for The Wanderer at the time. Born: April 16, 1883: Died February 13, 1972. He was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Bishop of Nashville in Nashville, Tennessee from 1936 to 1969.
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