Today, May 4, is the liturgical Feast Day of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
The forty martyrs are the forty English Catholics who refused to ascent to the King Henry VIII's severance of the church in England from Rome and his declaration that he was the head of the Church in his domains. That act in 1534 was followed by the dissolution of the monasteries and the suppression of those faithful who refused to go along with Henry's assertions that he held the rights to the mission of the Church in England and Wales.
I'm posting this here today due to their example, but perhaps not in the way that might seem to be immediately obvious. Prior to King Henry VIII England was an intensely Catholic country. Had Henry VIII not been king, there's every reason to believe that this would have continued on to the modern age. Henry's bedroom troubles sent him in another direction that his immense powers of rationalization, combined with his immense power, allowed him to do, and the long term results were monumental. Indeed, his rebellion against the Church can potentially be regarded as the act that assured the success of the Protestant Reformation in general and certainly the act that lead to its success on Great Britain. That revolution would also ultimately, and indeed even rapidly, lead to the rise of individualism and all that entails, and to relativism as its natural byproduct, which ironically has lead to a decline of religious observance in the west which is very notably marked in the decline of the Anglican Communion in the northern hemisphere.
All of that is an historical observance, of course, but the reason we note this is that the history of the English Reformation makes it extremely obvious that at the parish level, the population remained Catholic and would actually rise up against the Reformation in the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549. But that act was extraordinary. Most people simply went along, objecting in their minds, but not so much in their acts.
Cardinal John Fisher, who paid for his loyalty to the Church with his life.
Indeed, of the Catholic Bishops who were in office at the time, only Cardinal John Fisher refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Henry's acts even though its almost certain that the majority of them did not agree with Henry personally. Fisher paid for this with his life almost immediately, being executed in 1535, as did jurist Thomas Moore.
St. Thomas Moore, who likewise lost his life due to his adherence to his beliefs in 1535.
A person should note that a person being killed for being associated with a set of beliefs is not as uncommon as we might wish for it to be by any measure. Indeed, members of the Church of England would be quick to point out that Bishops Ridley and Latimer, and Archbishop Cranmer, all of whom had been Catholic clerics prior to 1534, lost their lives during the short reign of Queen Mary. Having said that, their executions had a strongly political nature and its hard to see how they would have not occurred in any event. Indeed, Cranmer recanted at least twice prior to his execution, and only recanted his prior recanting at the moment of his execution. In other words, no matter what a person may feel about them, Ridley's, Latimer's and Cranmer's fates were fixed prior to their being any point to whether they held fast to their beliefs or not.
Lots of people took the view of the English peasants, which was one in which they held "the Old Religion" close to their hearts and indeed did not really even recognize that the dispute going on in London directly impacted them, although it clearly disturbed them. At the Parish Priest level its well known that many Priests just flat out ignored the Bishops and continued to view themselves as fully Catholic in every respect. And indeed, the first years of the English Reformation caused a schism, not a real severance as it soon would. That day arrived in the 1540s and resulted in full rebellion, as noted.
But our point in all of this is this. Everyone always imagines themselves holding fast to their beliefs when pressure comes. But most people, at all times, everywhere, just go along with whatever is going on. Most of the English Bishops in 1534 probably felt that Henry was really out on a limb, to say the least (Latimer may not have as he was on record prior to 1534 with views that would have loosely supported Henry's position), but they went along anyway. Most of Henry's Catholic advisers no doubt did feel that he was all wet, but they wanted to keep their offices, so only the rare person like St. Thomas Moore went to the ax. Some likely came round to Henry's views, but the question then is whether the situation revealed what they then regarded to be the truth, or that they modified their definition of the truth to fit the situation.
Many well off English Catholics did in fact refuse to ascent and indeed Catholic noble families remained all the way until the rights of the Church were ultimate restored two centuries later. Some notable dissenters, once the order was imposed that all had to attend the services of the Established Church went, but sat in the back, kept their hats on, and refused to stand or kneel at the appropriate times, a really bold move frankly in a country in which being a Catholic could cost you your life. But most people just blinded themselves to the dispute in and in a generation or two their descendants no longer recalled or even know that their grandparents hadn't agreed with what occurred.
The other day I was at an event at which a speaker stated an opinion several times that's radically different from what the majority of Americans believed even a short time ago. Most people wouldn't have gotten all up in arms about it at the time, but they wouldn't have accorded it as being their opinion in an endorsed fashion either. Probably a very high percentage of Americans still do not, and maybe a majority, if in a place where no criticism could be personally directed at them, do not currently. But because of the shifting wind, its no longer the case that people will debate the topic outside of their own immediate circles so the speaker obtained the support of applause, with only a few souls taking the old "hat on in church" approach demonstrating their view by declining the applause.
That's the way people work in general. When big shifts come, and we look back at the historical record and imagine ourselves standing up and saying "No", "Nein", "Nyet" or whatever, we're largely fooling ourselves. Most just think those things, like the protagonist in Brecht's Maßnahmen gegen die Gewalt and only get around to "No!" when its safe, if ever.
And that's why the Feast Day of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales is worth noting and honoring for everyone. A few, albeit very few, actually will say No.
