EWTN Live - Sir Thomas More - Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J. with Dr. Samuel Gregg - 09-08-2010

Unlike many government figures in this century, Thomas More was a statesman and a saint. We'll look to his loyalty to God and the people he served tonight on EWTN Live. So please stay with us. And hopefully a lot of politicians will be watching too. Thank you. Thank you and welcome. I'm Father Mitch Packer and welcome to EWTN Live, our chance to bring you guests from all over the world. And our guest does come from a pretty distant place in the world, though he lives here in the United States now. He is here to help us get a better grasp of the mind of St. Thomas More. He's the research director for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. So please welcome Dr. Samuel Gregg. Dr. Gregg. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, it's great to be here. Good. As a matter of fact, just to let people know, because they'll hear that you're not from Alabama. Where are you from originally? I was born in Australia. Yeah, but now you live up in Michigan. I live in Michigan and I work at the Acton Institute. Great, who was Acton? Lord Acton was a 19th century English Catholic who wrote a great deal about the relationship between religion on the one hand and liberty on the other. He's often described as one of these historians who never wrote the great book that he always said he would write, which was on the history of liberty. But he never wrote it, but he's very famous for trying to think about this question of what it means to be free, but also bring the forces of freedom into dialogue, in the right sense of that word, with the Catholic faith. So he was a very interesting 19th century figure, and he's one of these figures that's not very easy to typecast. He's not very easy to fit into a particular type of category, but he was a very bright man. He spoke something like 15 languages. He lived in different countries. He was at the First Vatican Council. He was one of the observers there. And then he ended up as the professor of history at Cambridge University, which is where he died in 1902, I believe. And to be an English lord who is a Catholic is something of an accomplishment back then. It was, but he was, of course, born in Naples because his mother came from the Delberg family, which is one of the major aristocratic families of Germany at the time. So he spent a lot of his life living outside England. He went to Oxford for his university studies, but of course, he couldn't take his degree from there because he was a Catholic. And at that time in history, you had to basically sign up for the documents that declared you to be an Anglican if you were going to take your degree at Oxford or Cambridge. And of course, he couldn't do that, so he left. A lot of folks don't remember that Catholicism was only legalized in England in the 19th century. 1829, the Catholic Emancipation Act. So it took a little while for them to all catch on. About 400 years. But we're gonna go back to some of the roots of that. That's right. Tonight. We wanna talk about Sir Thomas More, and now Saint Thomas More. Start to give us some of your own perspective on his role in the church in England back in the 16th century. Well, Thomas More is one of these fascinating figures, I think, for Catholics and other Christians, actually. Because he comes and lives in a particular period of time which is extremely important, not just for the history of the church, but also for the history of Europe and the West as a whole. Because on the one hand, he's a scholar of the new Renaissance humanism. Now, Renaissance humanism doesn't mean what we understand today by secular humanism. Renaissance humanism is essentially a movement in the 16th century to go back to the church fathers, people like Augustine and Saint Jerome, but also back to some of the Greek thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato, as well as Latin thinkers such as Cicero. The idea was that there was an opportunity to expand knowledge. Because for much of the medieval period, particularly towards the end of the medieval period, a lot of the art of learning had become, let's call it hyper-scholastic. And there was this intense focus upon scholasticism. And at the beginning of the 16th century- So people understand scholasticism. What in particular does that mean? Scholasticism is a way of learning that's very much associated with the figure of Saint Thomas Aquinas. And it involves the dialectical method of thinking through particular questions, through question-answer, question-answer, question-answer format, which is extremely important and useful. And it's a great educational tool to use even today. The problem around about the end of the 15th century was that this type of thinking had become somewhat sterile. And there were people saying, look, Thomas Aquinas is a very important figure for the church, but there are other people that we should also be looking at. So for example, Thomas More, I think one of the major influences on his thought was Saint Augustine, particularly his book, The City of God. And it was during this period of time that people like Thomas More, Erasmus, who of course was his great friend, John Fisher, and other figures decided that a way of renewing the church, and I don't mean reforming, reformation, I mean renewing the church, was to go and look at these people and bring the richness of this past to bear upon the present. So it got to the point whereby people like John Fisher, the Bishop of Rochester, actually learned Greek and Hebrew in his mid-40s because he wanted to learn to be able to read these writers in the original languages. So that's one level of Thomas More. He's this Renaissance humanist figure who wrote that famous book called Utopia, which is a, we could do a whole program on that particular book. So there's this emphasis upon new learning, and the purpose of learning is not just knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of learning in this Renaissance humanist outlook is to become a better person, to become a more virtuous person. So that's one level. That's one thing that's going on. Then in 1517, Thomas More's focus changes, and it changes because of the emergence of Martin Luther and the Reformation movement, and Thomas More's concerns about what this movement represented in terms of the coherence and really the stability of what was known then as Christendom, which had a real legal, political, and cultural reality then that simply doesn't have today. Maybe something of a surprise to us, but the writings of Luther were printed. The printing press was itself barely 60-some years old, and this material was printed and spread all over Europe very quickly. Yes, indeed. And so Thomas More was able to be in contact with Luther's ideas and books at a very early stage. Yes, that's right. In fact, most of his writings in terms of sheer volumes of works were mostly writings that were designed to answer the objections of people like Luther and William Tyndale to what Catholicism stood for, and he was basically engaged for a long period of time in polemics with the Protestant reformers during this particular period of history. And it's very interesting when you read this because you start to understand when you read through these texts, and there's a lot of them, that it's not just a concern about where he thought theologically the Reformation was leading Christendom, but he was also deeply concerned about what this meant in terms of the relationship between the church and the state, the relationship between common law and canon law, and he was also deeply concerned about what it meant for people's understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. You know, one of the things that is very important in understanding this polemic is people were confused. There were persuasive arguments on both sides, and people began to be swayed one way and the other, and it wasn't just the folks in universities. It was the clergy as well as the people, and that was one of the concerns that someone like Thomas More would have. Well, he was particularly concerned when it came to Germany and the impact of Lutheran writings there, particularly Luther's understanding of the idea of Christian liberty, because as a result of these writings, it's very clear that you had what was called the Peasants' Revolt, where you had a mass uprising of peasants against the established social order, and they justified this revolt in the name of Christian liberty in the sense that Christian liberty was understood to be freedom from all forms of constraint, all forms of social order, and people like Thomas More, but also people like Erasmus looked at what was happening inside Germany and said, this is what happens when particular ideas get rooted in people's minds and they take a particular course. So it wasn't just an abstract theological discussion that was going on. There were real, live, world consequences for the force of these ideas, for better and for worse. And it wasn't only Thomas More and Erasmus, the Catholics, who objected to the Peasants' Revolt. No, Luther himself. Luther did too. Right, Luther himself wrote a whole letter to the German princes explaining to them why it was their duty to suppress the revolt. And of course, they did so in a pretty brutal way. But the wider point, of course, is that these ideas that started coming out of Germany in the early 16th century had these massive effects when it came to the social order and resulted in massive social upheaval and disorder, people being killed, property being looted, property being destroyed. We forget that. We forget that these theological discussions translated into real, live, political problems that rulers of the time, as well as politicians such as Thomas More, had to grapple with and try and deal with. And one of the things as well is Luther did not countenance anybody disagreeing with him from the Protestant side, either. If another Protestant disagreed with him, that person was also wrong. Luther set himself up as pretty much the norm for what's right and what's correct and incorrect. Well, what's interesting is that initially, in his early period, Luther talked a great deal about liberty of conscience. But once it became very clear that Lutheranism was becoming ascendant, particularly in northern Germany, then he pretty much explicitly said that it was the responsibility of the sovereigns. Because let's forget, there's lots of sovereigns in this particular period of time. There's not just one. There's lots of them in Germany. Yeah, there was no one king of Germany. There was an emperor who had only limited power. Each duchy and each small kingdom, like Bavaria, was its own independent nation and ruled a particular tribe of Germans rather than the German people. That's exactly right. And he told them, he said, now your sovereign responsibility is the responsibility of the civil power to basically ensure that everyone follows the Christian faith as it's properly understood. And he had a particular understanding of what that was. So effectively, you see this replication of this intertwining of state and religious power in this particular period of time. So it's not as if somehow the Reformation comes along and then suddenly there's complete liberty of conscience. No, that's not the case at all. In fact, some people would argue that absolutism, the system of absolutist government becomes much more plausible both in Protestant and in Roman Catholic countries after the Reformation because there's this tremendous focus no longer on Christendom, which embraces all of the Western world. It's much more about the nation state, the modern nation state and the modern absolutist monarch, and which Henry VIII, in some respects, is the prototype. Now, that's one of the interesting developments that goes on for Thomas More. Because at first, Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher were very much cooperating with Henry VIII as a young king in defending the faith. Yes, Henry VIII wrote a defense of the seven sacraments in response to Luther's disputation of what was and what was not a sacrament. Now, Henry VIII was not a stupid man. He was, in fact, a very well-educated man. It's entirely possible that he could have written this whole defense by himself. But it's pretty clear that most of it was drafted by John Fisher and edited by Thomas More. And interestingly, a copy of this was sent to the Pope in Rome at the time, and the Pope rewarded the king with the title Defender of the Faith, which is why the English monarch today has the title Defender of the Faith. It's a papal title. I don't think many people know that. Exactly. As a matter of fact, for any of our viewers who are interested, they can get copies of King Henry's book, A Defense of the Seven Sacraments, from our religious catalog. And it includes the letter by Pope Leo X, writing back to him, calling him Defender of the Faith, and explaining how wonderful a book it was. Yes, that's exactly right. And remember, it was Defender of the Faith, not Defender of Faith. There has been some talk in England about this title being changed to Defender of Faith. Well, that's a pretty vacuous idea, because unless you are very clear about what it is the faith is, I'm not sure what it is you're supposed to be defending. Right, right. And Thomas More was very much involved with helping Henry respond, because someone like Henry, because of the things you've been just talking about, would see the rise of Lutheranism in England as a threat to his throne. To a certain extent, he did. The interesting thing about Lutheranism in Britain, or at least, let's call them the ideas of the new men, this is how they're referred to, the novi omnis, the new men, the ideas of the new men were pretty much confined to certain sections of the court in Britain, certainly certain parts of the city of London, as well as parts of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Lutheranism didn't take off in the same way in Britain as it had in Germany. In fact, there are many people who would argue that Britain, culturally speaking, largely remained a Catholic country up until around about the 1590s. It was so much ingrained into the culture. And you have to remember, of course, that in England, you didn't have the types of corruption that had gone on in the church in Germany. You didn't have things like the problem with indulgences that you had in Germany. In England, the clergy was relatively chaste, extremely well-educated, very well-integrated into mainstream English life, and they didn't have this background of corruption that had done so much damage to the cause of the Catholic Church in Germany, and was one of the things that gave Lutheranism such a strong impetus, because it was so obvious that so many clergy in Germany at the time were living highly corrupt lives. Right. And whereas in England, the monasteries in particular were known for their help for the poor, that there were no governmental poorhouses. The monks took care of all the poor. Right, and when, of course, the monasteries were suppressed by Henry VIII, essentially as a part of his effort to, first of all, centralize more control in the power of the state, but also to get his hands on the property of the church, there was a massive drop in basically what we would call welfare services, because all these things had been done by voluntary organizations, staffed by church people and by monasteries, as you mentioned. So when these were dissolved, you suddenly found literally thousands of vagabonds wandering the streets, because they had literally nowhere to go. Interestingly, Thomas More spent a certain number of years living in a monastery, a Cathusian monastery in London, precisely because these were the type of places that a layperson could go and seriously explore questions of faith, seriously develop their spirituality, and make decisions about what it was they wanted to do as a vocation. Now, it turned out that he did not go down the road of priesthood, and he entered the state of being a layman, but this was quite common for people to do this in this particular point in history. As a matter of fact, he married, had how many children? Four children. Four children, and his first wife died. Jane Colt died at a relatively early age, and one month later, he married Lady Alice, who's made famous, of course, from A Man for All Seasons. Right, right, right. Now, St. Thomas rose in the government. He became an important government official. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, he was always circling on the periphery of public life because he was a very prominent and successful lawyer in London. He was regularly engaged by the government at the time to conduct legal cases for it, and eventually, he was called to court because he was recognized for his great intellectual skills, his great writing abilities, but also because he was perceived, widely perceived to be a man of virtue, a man of property, a man who would do the right thing, who would tell the prince what needed to be done rather than tell the prince what he wanted to hear. So he moved very steadily up the level of what you'd call the government in Britain today. He moved very quickly up into very senior positions, and he ended up as Lord Chancellor of England, which was the most senior legal position in the country, but also the most senior political position in the country as well. He was made Lord Chancellor in October 1529 and resigned in May 1532. Now, and basically, that would be roughly equivalent to the prime minister today. Essentially, yes, although the difference is that he had a lot of responsibility for a major part of the workings of the legal system, and one of the things he did in that very short period of time was to clear up the backlog of legal cases. Now, keep in mind, while he's doing this, he's also writing long volumes of texts, theological arguments and philosophical arguments against the Lutherans. So how did he do this? Well, he got up at two o'clock in the morning most days, spent from two to seven praying and writing and reading, and then at seven o'clock he'd go off to chancellery and do his legal work. So this is a man who was fully occupied with everything he was doing, fully committed to everything he was doing, but it's also very interesting that he never succumbed to the lure of power for its own sake. He wasn't prepared to compromise his principles in order to remain in power. In fact, he wrote a book called The History of King Richard III, and this is a very interesting book because it's a book about how someone can really corrupt a political system, not just through their own machinations, but also because other people around them go along with what's happening. It's a very interesting text because he talks about how Richard III essentially overtakes and takes over the government of England, not through mounting a coup d'etat, but rather through persuading people, telling people what they want to hear, and playing on people's weaknesses so that they will support him. So he was always very deeply conscious of the temptations of life in politics. He also believed very much in the limits of politics. He did not see the state as being the be-all and end-all. He saw the state as having a limited role, an important role, but nonetheless, that there were things that the state should not do. And that's something, perhaps, I think is a very important message for today. Well, one of the things about that message is that, first of all, he had a conscience that was well-formed. Yes, that's right. Let's talk about that a little bit. Well, that's a very important subject because his understanding of conscience, which you find in many of his writings, is quite different from the view of conscience that you find portrayed in Robert Bolt's famous play, The Man for All Seasons. Wonderful play, wonderful movie. Wonderful film, too. But not exactly representing Thomas More's own thought. No, because in the play, the Thomas More character, played by Paul Scofield, says that the reason he's resisting the king and not giving in to the king, why he won't swear to the oath of succession, why he won't sign up to the oath of supremacy, he says that it's not that I believe it, but rather that I believe it. In reality, of course, the reason why Thomas More, in good conscience, could not sign up to the things that were being asked of him was that he understood that there were two levels of conscience. One is what's called synderesis. This is a Stoic term. It comes from the Greek word. It means deep inner knowledge of moral truth that's inscribed upon our hearts. And Paul talks about this in his letter to the Romans. So it's also a Christian idea. And the idea is that on our very reason itself, the truth about good and evil is inscribed upon us. Then he talks- And that's synderesis. That's synderesis. Then there's conscientia, which most people would understand today as meaning conscience. And that is the act of conscience. It's the application of these principles to concrete, real circumstances and problems which we all find ourselves confronted with. So synderesis would be the principles placed inside of our conscience by God, while conscientia is acting out in very concrete ways. That's right. That's exactly right. So that's his understanding of conscience. Now, the modern understanding of conscience is very different. Synderesis is throwing out the door. What you have in place- Yeah, modern people don't believe that God has put basic ideas of right and wrong inside the person. Instead, what you find is that people will say things like, well, I'm acting in good conscience because I'm being true to myself, or I'm being authentic, or I'm being sincere. Now, the problem with this way of thinking is that what if you're a sincere Nazi, or what if you're a sincere communist? A person who says that, well, the Nazi sincerely believes that killing Jews is a good thing, right? So let's say there are such people. Well, if you take the modern understanding of conscience, you can't critique that person because in the end, if they're being sincere and authentic to whatever it is that they happen to believe, then you can't critique them for it. You congratulate them for their sincerity. Well, I mean, it's a real problem because it's not just that it allows evil to be done, and conscience becomes a way of liberating ourselves from truth, of liberating ourselves from reason, but it also speaks to an inability to talk about complex moral questions because if we have my truth, your truth, everyone else's truth, then there's no the truth. There's nothing we can agree about as fundamentally objectively true in faith and reason. In fact, there's no ability to even have a discussion about it. If I have my truth and you have your truth, we have no truth in between us that we can say this is a starting point for conversation. Right, the other problem, of course, which is a more long-term problem, and I think Thomas More understood this, if you have a relativistic understanding of conscience, if you basically have a very subjectivist understanding of the world, then that is a short road to tyranny because if there's no truth, if there's no truth, the thing that comes in to fill the gap is power because what you end up saying is that there's no truth we can argue about. There's nothing we can reason about anymore, so what matters is who is stronger, who is the most powerful. Because what we've done is taken away the very ability to discuss right and wrong if everybody has their own truth, and then it becomes might makes right because there's no other way to decide right. And essentially, that's what Thomas More saw happening in England in the 1530s. He saw, essentially, Parliament, the king in Parliament, setting itself up as being the ultimate arbiter of what is good and what is evil. And even, to a certain extent, deciding what was authentically Christian and was not authentically Christian. And we have the same problem today. People will say, well, the Supreme Court has decided, contrary to what the states have done, that it's all right to abort a child even though most states voted against it and the people voted against it. And they did so on the basis of conscience. They create a principle and just decree this to be the case that this is true. And they've got the power to undo all the legislation and the discussion that had gone on beforehand. So this would be another example in our own times of people just using their position to say, this is what we do anyway. Same thing happened with same-sex marriage over in California. The people could vote, discuss, vote, but the court says, nope, we're gonna undo it. So we have, in Thomas More's period, we have these types of problems starting to manifest themselves. And he's very resistant to it because he sees that, in the end, it's the short road to tyranny. And so he's also making the point, however, that there's something above the state. There's something above the nation when it comes to understanding what is true. And that is the fact that we have the reason, the capacity to reason ourselves to understand what is true, what is not, what is good, and what is evil. And that's something that was starting to be lost sense of in this particular period of time because you have this tremendous emphasis upon my own personal experience, my own personal relationship with my God. This type of language is starting to seep into the culture of European society this particular period of time. And of course, as we know, we run into this language today. We hear people say, well, me and my God. Well, my response to that is to say, well, if you're talking about your personal relationship with the divinity, okay, that's one thing. But if you're talking about the idea that you determine who God is, what his characteristics are, and what he demands of you, then you're not worshiping God anymore. You're basically worshiping yourself. And this is, again, another problem because in the end, it renders reasoned discussion about questions such as whether or not there is a God or whether or not there is truth. These things become essentially empty discussions because there's nothing left to discuss anymore. Well, there's also no time to continue on right now. I have to take a break. But we're gonna come back in a couple of minutes. And we would like to get some of your questions and your comments as well as those of our studio audience. So please stay with us. One of the things I'd like to, first of all, mention to you is it would be a delight to have you come and join us on Pilgrimage. If you can come and join us here at the studios, please contact our Pilgrimage department. Their number is 205-271-2966. That's 205-271-2966. Or you can go to our website, www.ewtn.com. And they'll give you all kinds of help about where to stay, the scheduling, places to go eat, and also getting up to Hansel as well. So that's one good thing. Another thing I wanna mention, at our website, ewtn.com, if you go to our library, we have a documents library. You can also look up Thomas More, and you'll find, just look up Thomas More, and you'll see information and books by him that you can download into your computer for free. These books are not so far away that you can't get them. These books are available for people to use and read. So we urge you to use that website to get some of them. Are you ready for some questions? I'm always ready, Father. All right, let's go to Marianne, who's calling in. Hello, Marianne. Hi, Father Pakwar, it's Marianne from New York City. How are you? Fine, thank you, ma'am, and what is your question? My question is for Dr. Gregg, and it's with regards to St. Thomas More's feelings about the validity of some of Luther's problems within the church, and also if they ever had any personal correspondence between the two. Oh, great question. Well, first of all, did they have any correspondence? Not directly, but they wrote indirectly to each other, in the sense that Thomas More wrote an entire two-volume work, which is basically called A Response to Luther, and he wrote it under a pseudonym, which was extremely common in this time for people to write under pseudonyms. And let's just put it this way. It wasn't a very pleasant correspondence, because if you read some of the writings, it's pretty scatological in the way that some of the things are said, and it's pretty aggressive. In other words, they use a lot of bad words. A lot of bad words. Now, this was quite common at this particular period of time, when people were engaging in rigorous disputation. I think one of the expressions they used was holy wrath. And it's at least partly because they really believed that people's souls were at stake, that they didn't think that these were just purely academic arguments. They really believed that what you believed about the truth had some bearing on your salvation. This is why heresy, for example, was regarded all through Europe at this particular time as such a bad thing, because not only was it seen literally, legally speaking, it was regarded as a form of sedition, because you essentially were putting yourself outside the law. That's how heresy was understood in this period of time. But the other thing is that John Fisher used the phrase that the heretics slay the souls of men. And what he meant by that was that heresy led not just the heretic to stray, but it tempted other people to go down the wrong path when it came to what they believed to be the truth and what the church taught to be the truth. So the discussion that went on between Luther and Thomas More was, let's say, pretty brutal. When Henry VIII wrote his defense of the seven sacraments, Luther was extremely brutal with him when it came to his response to King Henry. So when Thomas More responded under a pseudonym to Luther, the gloves were off, so to speak. Nonetheless, if you read through these texts, and they're very long, what you see is a very careful dissection of different claims of some of the early Protestant reformers. So for example, Luther would talk about sola scriptura, which is a very common Protestant idea at the time. Which means that you use only scripture and you don't use the church tradition. Correct, and More would say things like, well, the Bible just didn't fall out of the sky one day. Scripture that we have today, the canon that we use, we believe to be true because the church has said that this is canonical and this is not. He was very fond of quoting the line of St. Augustine that I would not believe unless I was moved by the authority of the Catholic church. So many of these arguments that were between Luther on the one hand and Thomas More and some of the Catholics on the others, a lot of them came down to on what authority do we believe these things to be true? That was one of the central arguments that went on during the Reformation. And my guess is that today, most Protestants have moved away, considerably from some of the early Protestant expressions of these ideas. I mean, that's my understanding. Yeah, denial of the free will would not be much of a hold by many Protestants today. There are some, but most of them would not hold that position today. Most of them would say that you can make a decision for Christ, like Billy Graham. And that would be much more Catholic position than say a Lutheran position or Calvinist position, where you could not make a decision for Christ according to Luther or Calvin. And there are also arguments about the role of the hierarchy, the whole idea of apostolic succession ideas. So there are some of the broader ecclesiological arguments. And there are arguments that had to do with sacramentals as well. I mean, and these were not light issues. And some of the later biographers of Thomas More said things like, well, why did he write, spend so much time writing these big, long texts that apparently didn't change the minds of some people in England? Well, the answer is because he was convinced that these arguments needed to be dissected piece by piece. And the only way you could do that was by taking them seriously and engaging with them. So it wasn't enough just to come out with quick soundbites to answer the arguments being produced by the reformers. Because let's not forget that to many people in Europe at the time, the reformers' arguments were very convincing, right? They were very convincing to a lot of people. And what people like Thomas More were saying was that, well, we understand the desire for this sincerity. We understand the desire for this radical appreciation of the person of Jesus Christ. But none of these things can be known to us without the church that Christ founded and which the apostles continued and which his success has continued. So that was one of the crucial arguments between More and many of the Lutheran reformers at this period of time. Now, her other question, which was her first question, did St. Thomas More, besides this indirect dialogue with Luther, did St. Thomas More have any comments on Luther's critiques? Luther was critiquing some of the abuses that was going on in the church. What did Thomas More say about these abuses that existed? Well, people like Thomas More, before the Reformation, had been very interested in church reform. Now, by church reform, they didn't mean questioning of any fundamental dogmas and doctrines. It was not a question of arguing about faith and morals. It was a question about inculcating a more virtuous life among the laity, about restoring a sense of purity and chastity with the clergy, with ensuring that they were better educated, laity and better educated clergy, also of trying to streamline the process of the workings of the canon law courts. So he was very interested in these types of reforms. But when he looked at Luther, what he saw was anarchy. He saw, in his understanding, Luther and some of the other reformers, essentially, what they were proposing in terms of the way the church was organized, the way that the church interacted with the state. He basically thought that this would lead to a type of anarchy. And he had the example of the revolt of the German peasants as a real live example of what happens when some of these ideas got out of control. What was that revolt? A lot of people don't know about the German peasants' revolt. Well, Luther talked a great deal about this idea of Christian liberty and that you had been freed by Jesus Christ. Now, what this translated into in the minds of many of the people hearing this in Germany was that, oh, that means we're free of law. Because Luther was very critical, for example, of canon law, and so many Lutherans and Protestants at the time, particularly in Germany, took this as a way of saying, well, we need to be free of constraints, legal constraints, social constraints. Let's keep in mind that if you're a peasant living in 15th, 16th century Germany, life is not particularly pleasant for you. So you can understand why this idea of Christian liberty became very quickly transformed into this call for radical change in the social order, but not towards, it wasn't towards a type of more open, a more freer society, as we would understand that term. It was very much about the destruction of property. It was about the breaking down of legal structures. It was an end of the rule of law. And so these are some of the things that Thomas More, via Henry VIII, but also through his own writings, actually grappled with very seriously. Because as a lawyer, he was very concerned about what would happen if some of these ideas about law became particularly widespread. There was a concern of many of the European monarchs at the time as well. Sure, sure. And there was a concern for Luther. Luther didn't want it to go that far. Well, in the end, he basically encouraged the German princes to put down the revolt and then spent a lot of time writing about the importance of the sovereign when it came to the body politic. And some people have argued that one of the reasons you can see a trajectory between different forms of absolutism in Northern Germany and Scandinavian countries is precisely because of the influence of Lutheranism in these countries. We have a question from our studio audience. Ma'am, where are you from? Memphis. Memphis, great. Good to have you here. And what is your question? Well, I was just wondering during the first segment if we're talking about these problems that we're having and, I mean, we can acknowledge that we have problems, but what should the response be then? I mean, especially according to what would Thomas More say? I mean, what do you do given the fact that this is the situation we're in? Okay, well, that's a good question. And the short response is that we really are not living any new problems. The problems that we face in politics, that we face in economics, that we face in the social order, in culture and in the legal order are not really that different today than what they were, say, in the time of Thomas More. Because, for example, there are many people, there were many people concerned now and in his time about the expansion of the modern state. There were very many, including Thomas More. This was one of the reasons he was very concerned about the development of absolutist monarchy with Henry VIII because he saw it as leading to tyranny. But what he said was that, okay, you need a legal system. You need a legal system that embodies certain principles that is normatively based, that a legal system that is not based upon just whatever people happen to want, but it embodies principles of natural law. But he said, ultimately, law will only take you so far when it comes to resolving a whole range of social problems. He said, in the end, what you need is a virtuous citizenry and you need a virtuous political class. That's why he wrote so much about this issue of how people should behave in political life because he kept saying, unless the people who are politicians, the people who are members of parliament, unless the people who are serving the king are living virtuous lives, then that is, if they're not doing that, then it's likely to translate into all sorts of bad behavior on the part of politicians. And of course, if the citizenry at this time looks to the nobility, looks to the monarch as models of how to behave, so if they're not behaving in a virtuous way, you couldn't really expect the citizenry to do so either. So I think what Thomas More would say to today's culture would be, your problems are the problems that I had to deal with. And the answers, to a certain extent, are in the legal system, but more fundamentally, they're in the moral culture and that we all need to be striving towards living virtuous lives. Does that mean we'll all live perfect lives? No, because we know that we're human, we know we're fallible, we know we've fallen, but we should be constantly striving to be fully human beings, to be full men, to be full women who don't view virtue as a distraction or somehow constricting, but as really the path to human flourishing. A society and a culture that embraces that will resolve many of these problems that we're talking about. As a matter of fact, I don't know how much you've read of the founders of the United States, but in their own documents, they say similar things, that the law can only give a certain kind of limit, but it requires people who are moral on the basis of religion in order for the law to really be effective. Otherwise, you'll have to make laws for every single behavior, whereas if people have a moral quality that, again, that comes from their faith, then they'll bring to the social situation virtues and you don't need to legislate as much. If there's an absence of virtue, you have to legislate all the more. Right, and one of the particular problems that I think we have today is that we think that if something is not legislated against, then it's okay to do it. So, for example, there's no legislation, as far as I know in this country, against adultery. There's no legislation. There used to be. Right, there used to be, but my point is generally this, that people think that if something is not illegal, then it's okay to do it. Now, the virtuous person understands that we have laws against lying when it comes to, for example, perjury, right, but we don't have laws that forbid lying in every single social circumstance. Why? Because that would require the state to have such a pervasive influence and role in society that you'd essentially end up in a totalitarian society. So, we rely upon people living honest lives, telling the truth without the threat of coercion behind them, and that, I think, is one way in which you can very successfully limit the growth of the state, but it also puts the onus back on the individual to understand that if I want to live in a free society, then I just can't live any particular moral life. I have to live a life of virtue, the theological virtues and the cardinal virtues. And now we're right back to conscience again. Yes. You know, the formation of conscience based on those principles inside. That's right. It's interesting you mention that formation of conscience because when it came to this issue of Thomas More and his decision about whether or not he would recognize what Henry VIII was doing, particularly with regard to becoming head of the Church of England, as well as having his first marriage declared invalid, Thomas More spent a lot of time reading, talking, discussing among his friends the morality of the different arguments that were going on in this particular time, particularly about the divorce question. So it wasn't as if he suddenly said, well, I'm just opposed to this. He spent time thinking through these questions because he realized that if I'm going to come to an informed position, if I'm going to inform my conscience about what is the right thing to do here, then I need to pay attention to what Scripture says, I have to read the Church Fathers, I have to look at the consistent teaching of the Church, and I have to look at the facts of the matter as well. It was a very sort of methodological approach to thinking through how do I inform my conscience about this particular issue? And he came to the conclusion that Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was indeed valid, and that the people who were taking a different position were either acting in bad conscience, or simply just didn't see the truth of the matter. And it's pretty clear, I think, if you read his writings, that he thought that most of the people who were defending Henry's position were being duplicitous. We have a caller, we have Dan on the line. Hello, Dan. Hi, Father, how are you? Fine, where are you from? Good, I'm coming from Connecticut. Great. Yes, my question regards Henry VIII and the Church. We're all familiar with Henry's break with the Roman Catholic Church. And my question is, in view of what's happened over these centuries, and a reexamination of all the historical factors, the circumstances, and what we now know, what everybody now knows, I've often been surprised that the Anglican Church itself hasn't reexamined its own position regarding this. How do they feel about it? Has this helped as far as maybe reconsidering their own position in relation to the Catholic Church? Are things at a status quo with them? Are they happy with the way things are? Do they feel that perhaps the time has come maybe to further a reconciliation? Thank you, thank you, Dan. I think there are many different Anglican answers to that particular question, it's a good one. Historically speaking, I think there's two things, one very important thing to understand. When Henry VIII broke with Rome, he fully understood himself as being a Catholic. I think Henry VIII always thought of himself as being a Catholic to the day that he died. He just had no time for this idea of the Bishop of Rome telling him what went on, particularly with the inner workings of the church in his own country, as well as the divorce question. But I think what you see with Anglicanism is when Elizabeth becomes Queen in the 1550s, you see a much more decisive turn then, in a much more permanent way, towards a smorgasbord of positions within the Anglican Church. Even under Edward. Well, Edward VI took them in much more in a very directly Protestant direction. And there was quite a backlash against that position during the reign of Queen Mary. So with Elizabeth, what you see is this movement towards a series of doctrinal positions which people ranging from, let's call them, Anglo-Catholics to deeply Evangelical Protestants could somehow find themselves accommodating themselves to, which is what most people did in this particular period of time. So that's a theological reality. When it comes to- And also, to connect with something you said earlier, given the changes, she became fairly totalitarian. Well, yes, I like to remind some of my Protestant friends that more people were killed under Elizabeth's reign, far more people were killed under Elizabeth's reign than under the reign of, quote-unquote, Bloody Mary Tudor. Far more people were killed, and far more barbarians. Thousands more. Thousands more were killed. But to get back to the position of the Anglican Church today, I think anyone who would look at the Church and say, the monarch, which she still is, the Queen Elizabeth is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, to our ears today, that sounds absurd. And I think, strictly speaking, it's an absurd position. There's no theological warrant for it. There's no scriptural warrant for it. There's no tradition warrant for it. But what I see, at least within the Anglican communion, is I think you see different groups going their own ways, I think. You have the evangelicals going their own way. You have a lot of what we call Anglo-Catholics moving much more towards Rome. And a lot of it has to do with this idea of the sacraments, particularly when it comes to the sacraments of the priesthood and holy orders. And then, of course, you have this, let's call it this liberal muddle, which is pretty much dominant in terms of its control of the Episcopal Church in the United States and Canada, which I suspect in maybe 20 years will be almost non-existent. Because in the end, I think, what I think they're grappling with is that there is no real authority that can decide that this is authentic doctrine and this is not. Because even though they have their Lampeth Conference, which meets every few years to discuss doctrinal questions, that doesn't stop sections of the Anglican communion just going off and doing their own thing. And this, I think, is a very practical example of the importance of papal primacy. And I think there are a good number of contemporary Anglicans who recognize, they may not agree with it, but they understand the institutional significance of it and how it helps to keep real unity within the church. Yeah, the number of Anglicans has considerably gone down. It's less than half the number of Jews living in New York City, in this country. And it's because of the splitting up and people who are Anglican in conscience don't know where to find their home all the time. So this is a great deal of confusion that's going on in the Anglican church. Episcopalian church. We have time for a real short question and answer. Sir, where are you from? Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Great, and what's your question? Dr. Gray, I was wondering if you could give us your thoughts on a current issue, I believe it's in the state of Florida, with a church that is talking about burning the Quran. You have about a minute. Sorry. Well, let me just start by saying I think it's the wrong thing to do. We have, in the United States, religious liberty. It's one of the great gifts of the American Revolution, that they decided that the state would not make laws when it came to religion, that they would permit free expression of religious belief. Now, there's always this understanding that people would live by certain moral norms and would not behave in certain ways. So my own view is that burning a Quran is, A, I think, disrespectful of a people's belief. You might disagree with them. I'm not a Muslim because I think Islam is wrong on some pretty crucial points, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to somehow go around and try and deliberately insult them. So in other words, what we find is that if you're going to have authentic religious liberty, you really need people who are tolerant in the right sense of the word, because remember, we're tolerant not because we agree with someone, but precisely because we disagree with them. Exactly, exactly. This is a great discussion. Hopefully, you will be back and we'll be able to take a look at Utopia or one of the other writings. Thank you very much. My pleasure, Father. And I want to thank all of you. May God bless you and keep you and cause His face to shine upon you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You know, and we can bring you guests like Dr. Gregg and all the other guests who come here because this network is brought to you by you. You know, we don't do advertising. We depend entirely on your support. So we're gonna ask you to make sure that you keep us in between your gas bill and your electric bill. We're still hurting a little bit and we need some more support financially so that we can keep on bringing these programs to you. So again, keep us between your gas bill, your electric bill, and your cable bill, and we'll be able to pay all of our bills, which are pretty considerable these days. So God bless you and thank you all very much. Thank you.