The Thomas More Book Club

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2011-08-04T09:34:00.001-07:00

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Scalia: Have courage in face of contempt • Top Stories (www.HometownAnnapolis.com - The Capital)

2010-10-24T13:05:00.000-07:00

Scalia: Have courage in face of contempt • Top Stories (www.HometownAnnapolis.com - The Capital): "The justice urged the hundreds in attendance to have the 'courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.'

'We are fools for Christ's sake,' he said."

Thomas More Answers Slate's Question: Post-Mortem Prayer - Can praying for a dead person help get him into heaven?

2010-07-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

In Dialouge Concerning Heresies, Thomas More answered the question posed at Slate:

Do Christians think praying can help a dead person get into heaven?

The answer, written by More in 1528:

You may for the most part both pray for them and pray to them, as you may for and to those who are still alive. But someone who is canonized, you may pray to him to pray for you, but you may not pray for him...St. Augustine says anyone who prays for a martyr is insulting the martyr. With regard to everyone, you can hope rightly and be seldom sure, but of the canonized you can consider yourself sure.

Dialogue Concerning Heresies

2010-04-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Thomas More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies, which is available at The Catholic Company in new editions for about $20, is one of the most insightful readings for a Christian.

One highlight:
Reason and nature say not that a miracle is impossible, only that it is impossible for nature...miracles are possible for God; and those who report them do report them as things done by God. Therefore, they are telling you no impossible tale."

At times, I wonder how More authorized the burnings of heretics, since that seems to go against the humanity he shows in this (and his other) writings. He also finds ways to avoid discussing abuses of the clergy. It is brilliant Christian theology, though, and strengthens my faith whenever I read it.

As Aubrey De Vere wrote:
Fisher and More!
Twins of one justice
On equal thrones

Why I think it is called Wolf Hall

2010-03-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting blog post about why Wolf Hall is called Wolf Hall. That is the home of the Seymores. Maybe it has to do with Cromwell's crush (?) on Jane Seymore, as has been suggested. Although, I am not altogether convinced of that, as several times in the book he doesn't want to give the time to listen to a woman. Maybe that time will come at Wolf Hall? He doesn't seem too concerned with romance or passion in the book, so I am not sure that would be a cause for a title, unless there is a major character shift.

I think it could be called Wolf Hall because that is where Thomas Cromwell plans to take a break. Slate's podcast noted that Cromwell is not lusting for power, but he is fixated on it. There is one scene that I just noticed in listening to the audio book that I missed while reading it. Cromwell is growing increasingly stressed and looking for a place in his calendar to take a break. He notes that he will have a few days as a break when they are at Wolf Hall.
Maybe during the break his fixation for power will transform into something stronger, as Henry's own fixations transform. Maybe it is called Wolf Hall because that is the point where he will stop striving and stop being "he" (the pronoun use bothered me) and start being "I".

What will the sequel be called? The Tower? The Block? The Axe ? It would fit the pattern of titling it by future destination.

A Daughter's Love by John Guy

2010-03-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

This is the story of Margaret More Roper and her quest to preserve her father's place in history.

"Without her ... his collected works would be a completely different book and perhaps not exist at all. He would have been diffident about it, preferring to be known as an honest Londoner with the ability to make people laugh."

It seems unjust to the rest of the More children that Margaret Roper is always referred to as More's favorite child, because he loved all of them. A Daughter's Love does a good job of highlighting the special connection between Thomas More and his daughter.

Nice Bits:

Guy suggests that Margaret Roper and Thomas More decieved Thomas Cromwell about their visits. He thought she was trying to convince More to sign the oath; quite the opposite was taking place. "Because she was a woman, Cromwell didn't have the stomach to prosecute her." (267)
People were worked up about a proper English translation of the Bible, and the person who could have produced a version even More would have approved of was Margaret, but no one considered that because of her gender.

Sadly, it is not available as a Kindle book...yet.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

2010-03-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

Reading the reviews of Wolf Hall, I thought Thomas More would be presented as a villain, but I don't think that was the case. Mantel presents More as her Thomas Cromwell would have seen him. She said in an interview that,

"I gradually realized that the confrontation with Thomas More wasn’t just a political crisis for Cromwell, it must have been an emotional crisis as well."

Mantel has two More motifs running through the book:

She shows the Mores as foxes, with Margaret having a "fox-like" head, More closely associated with the fox he claims to have tamed but keeps caged, just as Cromwell wants to keep More from interfering with Tyndale and Friends, but even in the Tower, More continues to have spies that Cromwell can't find and get information Cromwell can't trace.
The scene with the carpet is a lovely view of how More's story has been patched together by historians. The carpet under inspection is not quite what it appears to be; Cromwell thinks it might be two carpets, stitched together, or an inferior carpet that only discriminating eyes can see.

This is, surely, how history has patched More together. His story is too often patched from the reverential stories from his family with exaggerated evils created to quiet the shock of his execution. Cromwell would surely have felt he could see flaws in More that others could not see. Mantel says it nicely, "In real life, there is something fraying about their host, a suspicion of unraveling weave."

More is characterized nicely in some parts. He is, "a star in another firmament" and Cromwell "can hardly bear it, to think of More sitting in the dark." Even Cromwell admits:

One thing about More, he's never idled for an hour, he's passed his life reading, writing, talking toward what he believes is the good of the Christian commonwealth.

I first read Wolf Hall on my Kindle in November, 2009, and I have read it multiple times since then.

Wolf Hall Audiobook

2010-03-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

There are two audiobook versions of Wolf Hall, the abridged version by read Dan Stevens and the unabridged, which I listed to, by Simon Slater. The abriged version is 1/3 the length of the unabridged, and I love every word of Wolf Hall.

Simon Slater sounds exactly as Thomas Cromwell should sound, but he overly evils-up Thomas More. Thomas More sounds droopingly snobbish and like a comic book snake at times, and it doesn't align with the character.

Slate's Audio Book Club discussed the snake motif during the March 14 podcast about Wolf Hall, and one person brought up the story of saying marriage was like reaching into a bag of snakes and hoping to pull out an eel as as a good example of Mantel's imagery. That metaphor should actually have been attributed to John More, Thomas More's father, Mantel uses a faithful version of it.

Slater's Cromwell voice is gruff and precise, and he sounds just perfect when he reads what could be my favorite passage in the book:

He never sees More—a star in another firmament, who acknowledges him with a grim nod—without wanting to ask him, what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me? Why does everything you know, and everything you’ve learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too.

The Atlantic addressed the strange use of the "he" pronoun in Wolf Hall, saying, "Another difficulty is in Mantel’s choice to refer to Cromwell merely as “he” most of the time. Even after it’s clear that “he” is usually Cromwell, there are times when other characters need to be “he,” and several passages ended up being almost incomprehensible."

This pronoun problem messes up the audio book at times, because Slater reads certain lines as the wrong character, and the confusion is understandable due to the bizarre use of "he" all the time, except when Cromwell is speaking to himself, in which case he says, even more confusingly, "you".

The unabridged audio book is 24 hours. It seems long, but really it only fills one of the many days that will be spent waiting for the sequel.

The Queen's Lady by Barabra Kyle

2010-03-17T10:52:00.000-07:00

When I want to be critical of a book, I remember the wise words of Anton Ego, "The average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism."

This book is not an academic excursion. It is a strangly well-researched romance novel, at best. One particular aspect of More's character -- his lust for his ward, a portmanteau of Margaret Roper and Anne Cresacre -- doesn't ring true and is unnecessary for the plot.

Thomas Cromwell fans will like his dry portrayal, though he appears rarely, and Kyle gives a plausible account of how Anne Cresacre's childhood marriage and subsequent rape led to her being housed with the More family.

However, there are s few parts of this book I do like, because they added to my understanding of Thomas More:

Kyle envisions a new setting for More's famous phrase, "The field is won." Kyle has a beautiful passage in the book. She shows More as a strategist, saying:

'I must go and stand before the commissioners again. And his time, they will ask only once...silence will be my sanctuary.' He closed his eyes and realized that the shudder, and the trembling of his hands, had finally stopped...he had beaten [his body's] craven urge to capitulate. 'Thank the Lord,' he whispered, 'The field is won.'

In another nice scene, which is unfortunately framed with the ol' strangeness of Honor Larke, Kyle paints with a flash of literary Hobienism:

Finally, she was looking at the real man...the man who stood naked in his faith. A man in whose huge imagination the heaven-scapes were so peopled with centuries of noble saints and martyrs that any human touch would shatter the magnificent dream.

D.H. Lawrence worked hard to separate human touch from social confines, and that huge step forward was still controversial 30 years after Lady Chatterley's publication. It is not human touch alone that would have shattered More's magnificent dream, but giving in to sin at all.

More was called to be walk his road. Whatever path he would have chosen, of the paths Erasmus suggests he wanted, would have led to his execution, because the monks he debated joining were executed just as he was.

Back to Anton Ego. The actual storyline of Honor Larke and her romantic adventures in The Queen's Lady suggest the book is the average piece of junk, making it better than my criticism. It is not available on the Kindle, so I bought it for a few dollars and read with Apple's Nook app. It is on Google Books for anyone who wants to preview it before deciding whether or not to add a Harlequin-type book to the More shelf.

The Statesman and the Saint (also published as The Statesman and the Fanatic) by Jasper Ridley

2010-03-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

Jasper Ridley is no fan of Thomas More. The Statesman and the Saint is a dual-biography, and it is interesting to watch the parallel lives of Wosley and More unfold. Jasper Ridley seems to believe the worst of More and the best of Wosley, but he does offer some interesting views of the life of More, particularly how he separated his work life and his private life.

The unhappy aspect about this book is that Ridley seems to bent on presenting More as a dangerous man who was not capable of love; even the relationship with Margaret seems to be more of a reflected interest rather than a mutal connection. At the end of the book, Ridley goes overboard with a dramatic conjecture of how Wosley would be in the world today. He suggests Wosley would be a CEO of a company or some other behind-the-scenes power, and More would be a fanatical leader raising armies against those he wanted to eliminate from society.

Much like God's Bestseller by Brian Moynahan, Statesman loses some of its sense of authority by accepting the rumors of More excessively torturing people as fact. Both books are written by established, credible historians, but even stronger authorities, such as John Guy, have discounted much of those suggested abuses.

It is interesting that in America, the book was published as The Statesman and the Saint, and in England it was published as The Statesman and the Fanatic.

God's Bestseller by Brian Moynahan

2010-03-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

Brian Moynahan wants to hold Thomas More responsible for William Tyndale's death, but it doesn't make sense to me. More died in July 1535, and Tyndale died in October 1536. That alone tells me that if More was involved, it was in an otherworldly way.

This is what people reading God's Bestseller should know:

Thomas More was didn't reject the idea of people having access to Bibles. He rejected the idea of the Bible replacing the church's authority. Jesus founded a church, he didn't write a book.
Thomas More didn't reject the idea of an English translation of the Bible. He rejected Tyndale's translation. John Guy suggests Margaret Roper could have made an acceptable, authrotative translation, and I agree.
The church was the protector and provider of More's world. Monks protected books, cardinals founded colleges. This is explained very well in How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill and How the Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods.
More thought that if people believed they could be saved by faith alone, they would not actively be charitiable, which directly contradicts St. Paul's instructions that of faith, hope, and charity, the greatest is charity. More discusses this is in A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.

Now, I am a fan of Tyndale's translation. I use the God's Word Bible, which i believe is rooted in Tyndale, which is rooted in Erasmus' translation of the Latin Vulgate. More envisioned such openness in Utopia, but he didn't see Utopia as a potential reality, and it still isn't.

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