Montreal-based writer Anna Farrow argues that any deterioration of the major relic ought to be taken very seriously indeed
I come from a family of lawyers, more specifically, on my paternal side, Catholic lawyers. Great-grandfather, grandfather, great-uncles; they all practised law in what was then the small town of San Diego in California.
My paternal uncle, Fr Tom Whelan, was born in the August of 1935, almost three months to the day after Pope Pius XI canonised St Thomas More and St John Fisher. Tom was the second born son, my father the first. The eldest, who became a lawyer, was named for his father, Vincent, but Tom, who became a priest, was named for Thomas More.
My parents went one step further. My brother, also the second born son in the family, was given both name and surname so that he became Hugh Thomas More Whelan. For a time, my brother rejected his first name so that, as a kid, I knew him as Tommy.
When I asked my uncle and brother about their names and why their parents chose St Thomas More as their name saint, they both replied: “It was because of the law.”
My uncle went further: “St Thomas More was a lawyer who had a great respect for the law (the one does not always follow from the other), he governed his life by that law, the law of God.”
Both my grandfather, appointed as an Associate Justice for the Fourth District Court of Appeal in 1965, and father were active members of the St Thomas More Society of San Diego, an organisation formed for the support of Catholic legal professionals.
When I turned up close to 40 years ago as a “girl from the colonies” at a Catholic girl’s school in Surrey, I was placed in More House. Call it filial piety or sentimentality, but it seemed fitting, and I was pleased. The Catholic Sorting Hat had got it right, or at least, like Harry Potter, I very much hoped it had.
So, it was with more than a little dismay that I read journalist Edward Pentin’s recent piece in the National Catholic Register. Pentin has written of the certain decay of the remaining skull fragments of St Thomas More if the leadership at St Dunstan’s Anglican Church in Canterbury do not relent.
American lawyer Steven Brizek has campaigned for years for the preservation of the first-class relics. He presented St Dunstan’s with a detailed plan to safeguard the remains and to allow pilgrims to view them. Those relics now lie in a disintegrating lead case under the stone slabs of the church floor. According to the report, only “the hard palette, a piece of the maxilla showing one tooth socket and a fragment of skull, and dust” remain.
The parish responded with a 21st-century version of Reformation-style tut-tuts. The St Dunstan website flies all the Anglican flags, slick logos for EcoChurch, Inclusive Church and Open Table dot the site, but the “open” and “inclusive” church cannot comprehend the continued Roman predilection for mucking about with bits of bone and fabric.
“Our focus is on God’s mission through heritage, pilgrimage and tourism for a sustainable and flourishing future,” said parish rector, Rev. Jo Richards
Elsewhere, church warden Susan Palmer noted that, “for most of the worshipping congregation at St Dunstan’s, Thomas More is an historical, rather than spiritual, consideration, if indeed they consider him at all. There is never a ‘buzz’ when he’s mentioned.”
The story is made more poignant still when one knows how the fragments came to rest in the Roper vault. Were it not for the flintier filial piety of More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, the skull would be nothing more than sludge at the bottom of the Thames.
A month after More’s execution on July 6, 1535, 28-year-old Margaret – Meg – travelled by wherry from Chelsea to Tower Wharf and bribed the executioner to give over her father’s head. She carried it back home in a cloth bag, a fact that lingers in my imagination, and it remained with her, even unto death. Margaret was laid to rest in the Roper vault with her father’s head in her arms.
What is this Catholic desire to see, touch, embrace, and yes, to venerate, the physical remains, the clothing, the beads that once were counted by holy hands? As have been often stated, we do not seek them out as talismans or amulets. I think that we love them because those bodies loved our Bridegroom. They loved Him as we desire to love Him, with an intimacy, a fierceness, and a valour that we seek.
One of the more famous quotes of St Thomas More came after he spied from his Tower cell the Carthusian monks, a community he had once considered joining, going to their execution.
“Dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed Fathers be now going to their deaths as cheerfully as bridegrooms to their marriage?”
St Thomas More sought to meet his Lord, whom he strove to faithfully serve, with just such cheer. The Church has recognised him as a saint for his service and his joy.
Count my voice in as one joining the call on the people of St Dunstan’s to allow for his relics to be preserved and honoured in a manner befitting one of the greatest saints and martyrs of the English Catholic Church.
(St Thomas More meets his daughter after his trial, by William Frederick Yeames)
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