Transcript
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You're listening to a podcast on Catholic saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustan Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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I'm Christopher Bloom, a professor in the Augustine Institute's Graduate School of Theology, and I'm very happy to be with you on the feast of St. Thomas Becket. It's such an astonishing thing, isn't it, that the Church offers us the feast days of martyrs during the Christmas octave. It reminds us that Christ came among us on a rescue mission for the human race. He came among us to save us from our sins, knowing that he would die to pay the price for Adam's fault and our faults. So here we are thinking about a martyr, and not just any martyr, but a martyr relatively close to us, the 12th century in England, not way back at the time of the Roman Empire, and also a martyr who's killed in a way that maybe should trouble us a little bit more than it does. You know, I think we're accustomed to thinking about martyrs who are being made in the context of. Of ideologies and revolutions and wars. Think of the martyrs of the Spanish Civil War or the martyrs of the French Revolution. But here's a man who's killed essentially by his king at a time of peace in the context of a political dispute, and a political dispute in which it's really hard for us to appreciate just what was at stake. How did Thomas Becket come to die in his play dramatizing the last days of Thomas Becket, Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. eliot, the Great poet laureate in England, Anglo American, who was writing in the first half of the 20th century, has his character, Thomas Becket, say, martyrs do not choose martyrdom. Martyrs choose the will of God. Martyrs don't choose martyrdom. Nobody wants to get killed. Right. What a martyr chooses is to follow God's will, regardless of the cost. So what was at stake in the 12th century in England? Well, again, hard for us to appreciate. We live in a time of democracy in which arguably the greatest power that the Church faces might be said to be public opinion shaped by the media. In the 12th century, there really is a powerful king, there really are powerful nobles, and the terms of the fight are highly material. It has to do with who's going to be named bishop. And does the bishop own his property, the property of his episcopal see. Does that pertain to him as being a bishop, as being appointed by the Pope ultimately, or does that pertain to him as being a feudal lord in England and thus under the king's jurisdiction? These were the kinds of fights that were happening all over Europe in the 12th century. And they came to a head in England in the 1160s with Thomas Becket and King Henry II. It was an unlikely conflict because Thomas Becket had been a close associate of Henry II before he was named Archbishop, Bishop of Canterbury, he'd been the royal Chancellor, and he'd been laboring to help Henry II consolidate his power. We still have a situation in England in which many of the ranking nobles are essentially French. In fact, Henry himself, in certain important respects, could be said to be French. And yet he's determined to rule in England as a King of England. And so there's a lot of pushing and pulling and trying to consolidate royal power. Thomas helps with that. And then all of a sudden he ends up Archbishop of Canterbury and seems to have a change of heart. He seems to realize that the freedom of the Church is more important than the consolidation of royal power. Or to put it in maybe a more contemporary idiom, it's more important for the Church to be able to testify to the primacy of the spiritual than it is for the Church to be on good terms with the King. Well, the net result of this is that Henry, a man of volcanic temper, apparently said in an unguarded moment, will no one rid me of this low born priest? A couple of his overzealous and really troubled royal servants heard this, took this to be licensed, went to Canterbury, found the man and slayed him in front of the altar of the Cathedral of Canterbury. Henry was rightly horrified by this. He, in fact, reacted quite well. There was a lot of providential penance that was imposed upon him as his earthly kingdom kind of crumbled. And he took it well. He wore sackcloth and ashes and fasted and so forth. He actually promoted the cult of Thomas Becket, which arose right away with a pilgrimage to Canterbury, which then as you all know, was made famous by Chaucer later. So this is a story with something of a happy ending. A king who converts after this heroic witness of a man who wanted to follow the will of God. Is it not obvious what the lesson is for the church today? From St Thomas Beckett. We need to be following the will of God and not allowing ourselves to worry about what the King may say, what public opinion may say. There's lots of food for thought for all of us on the feast of St. Thomas Becket. Thank you for joining me. God bless you.