A St. John Fisher for our times

First Things, 29 June 2022

St. John Fisher was a courageous bishop and gifted theologian imprisoned by a tyrant; we have ourselves a like model in our day.

The American Catholic bishops mark June 22–29 as “religious freedom week.” It is an “octave” that begins on the feast day of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More and concludes with the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, all martyred by tyrants. In between falls the feast of St. John the Baptist, who similarly faced the fury of a wicked king.

On the feast of St. John Fisher, I received a message from a former student:

Blessings on this holy feast! Praying for you and the holy prelates you have brought to Kingston. I am amazed that one St. John Fisher speaker is being persecuted for his religious faith, to the point of imprisonment by a corrupt government.

Katherine was referring to an annual dinner I started in 2006 in support of our campus ministry at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Every year, I invited a different “Fisher Visitor” to speak at the dinner. I chose St. John Fisher as the patron not only because he was a courageous bishop and gifted theologian, but also because he was a man of letters and the university. He brought Erasmus to Cambridge when he served as chancellor there.

Katherine’s message did not specify which prelate is now walking the way of St. John Fisher, who had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for opposing Henry VIII’s usurpation of the governance of the Church. What is truly remarkable is that she could have been speaking about more than one of our visitors.

In response to Fisher’s imprisonment by Henry, Pope Paul III appointed him a cardinal in May 1535, hoping thereby to obtain more humane treatment. Henry’s response was ferocious. He declared that there would be no need to send the red hat to London; he would send Fisher’s head to Rome. On June 17, 1535, Henry put Fisher through a show trial. He was condemned and sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered—the most cruel and grisly death then available. 

The king had the power, but not the sympathy of the people. The parallels between Fisher and his patronal namesake, John the Baptist—also executed for opposing a king’s false marriage—were inconvenient for Henry VIII. He did not want to be thought of as a latter-day Herod, and thus wanted to get the Fisher matter—and Fisher himself—disposed of before the Baptist’s feast (June 24). Henry commuted the sentence to beheading to get the matter done with dispatch. Fisher was martyred on June 22, a cardinal and confessor of the Church.

Who today is our St. John Fisher? Was Katherine referring to Cardinal George Pell, our Fisher Visitor in 2008? Imprisoned in solitary confinement for more than a year on the “evidence” manufactured by a corrupt police force, Pell is certainly a John Fisher for our times.

Or was Katherine referring to Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kjiv—our Fisher Visitor in 2016, represented by Archbishop Borys Gudziak—who faces an aggressive war launched by Russia? Vladimir Putin is seeking to recreate the Soviet empire, which attempted the liquidation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church of which Sviatoslav is the head.

Might she have been thinking of our 2018 Fisher Visitor, Cardinal Robert Sarah, who as the very young archbishop of Conakry faced the persecution of Sékou Touré’s Marxist regime? The Guinean dictatorship was tightening its grip on troublesome priests. Archbishop Sarah’s name was on a list of assassination targets found on Touré’s desk. Providentially, Touré had a sudden heart attack on a foreign trip and died before he could return to Guinea. Sarah’s life was spared.

It’s possible to think of our 2019 Visitor, Cardinal Jorge Urosa of Caracas, whose courageous opposition to the regime of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro earned him and his brother bishops harassment by the regime. Urosa remained a lion in retirement, dying last year after contracting COVID-19.

But I expect that Katherine had in mind our 2013 St. John Fisher Visitor, Cardinal Joseph Zen. The emeritus bishop of Hong Kong was arrested recently by the Chinese regime and charged with violating Beijing’s “national security law,” which makes criticizing the regime a crime. 

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