A Man for All Seasons

 I had a "birthday treat" opportunity to see the production of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons at the Harold Pinter Theatre last week. The stage set and costumes were very much true to the Tudor setting of the play, and the dialogue was very faithful to the published text of the play. 

Since seeing the play I have read again the Preface written by Robert Bolt for a 1961 publication of the play. In that Preface, Robert Bolt offers an "explanation and apology for treating Thomas More, a Christian saint, as a hero of selfhood."

... Thomas More, as I wrote about him, became for me a man with an adamantine sense of his own self. He knew where he began and left off, what area of himself he could yield to the encroachment of his enemies, and what to the encroachments of those he loved. It was a substantial area in both cases for he had a proper sense of fear and was a busy lover. Since he was a clever man and a great lawyer he was able to retire from those areas in a wonderfully good order, but at length he was asked to retreat from that final area where he located his self. And there this supple, humorous, unassuming and sophisticated person set like metal, was overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigour, and could no more be budged than a cliff.

The other aspect of Thomas More that was attractive to Robert Bolt was what he termed "his splendid social adjustment". After briefly surveying the range of Thomas More's social and political life, Bolt observes:

He parted with more than most men when he parted with his life, for he accepted and enjoyed his social context.... But why did a man so utterly absorbed in his society, at one particular point disastrously part company from it?

For a Catholic, the explanation can readily be seen in Thomas More's faithfulness to the universal Christian Church. But for Bolt, writing his play, that Christian faith can only be a metaphor representing a larger context into which a man can be excluded when he no longer enjoys the regard of society. 

More's trust in the law was his trust in his society; his desperate sheltering beneath the forms of the law was his determination to remain within the shelter of society. Cromwell's contemptuous shattering of the forms of law  by an unconcealed act of perjury showed how fragile for any individual is that shelter. Legal or illegal had no further meaning, the social references had been removed.

 I was interested to see that the revived production currently running in London (until early September) did leave the play in the original historical setting of its narrative. But it is interesting to ask how it might have been translated into a contemporary narrative. Where today would Robert Bolt be able to find a leading character who combines the selfhood amidst the ebbs and flows of a society that he discovered in Thomas More?

Jubilee of Governments

 The days 21st - 22nd June 2025 are being marked as a Jubilee of Governments, though no particular events are indicated at the Jubilee 2025 website as taking part during these days. The target audience for these days is likely to be diplomats and political leaders.

England is the home of St Thomas More, who was declared by Pope St John Paul II in the year 2000 to be the Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians. His Apostolic Letter gives a wide ranging account of St Thomas' life and, in the context of the challenges that are today faced in public life, suggests that St Thomas

... distinguished himself by his constant fidelity to legitimate authority and institutions precisely in his intention to serve not power but the supreme ideal of justice. His life teaches us that government is above all an exercise of virtue. Unwavering in this rigorous moral stance, this English statesman placed his own public activity at the service of the person, especially if that person was weak or poor; he dealt with social controversies with a superb sense of fairness; he was vigorously committed to favouring and defending the family; he supported the all-round education of the young. His profound detachment from honours and wealth, his serene and joyful humility, his balanced knowledge of human nature and of the vanity of success, his certainty of judgement rooted in faith: these all gave him that confident inner strength that sustained him in adversity and in the face of death. His sanctity shone forth in his martyrdom, but it had been prepared by an entire life of work devoted to God and neighbour. ... 

[The] harmony between the natural and the supernatural is perhaps the element which more than any other defines the personality of this great English statesman: he lived his intense public life with a simple humility marked by good humour, even at the moment of his execution.

When Pope Benedict XVI visited Britain in 2010, he gave an address to politicians and other participants in public life in the very place where St Thomas More was tried, Westminster Hall. Making reference to the example of St Thomas, Pope Benedict explored the relationship between religious faith and the duties of public office.

And yet the fundamental questions at stake in Thomas More’s trial continue to present themselves in ever-changing terms as new social conditions emerge. Each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: what are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do they extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident – herein lies the real challenge for democracy. ...

The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. ... This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

 In 1969 Pope St Paul VI published an Apostolic Letter Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum on the mission of Pontifical Representatives. Acting in many instances as the equivalent of ambassadors of the Holy See to the civil governments of the places where they are accredited, they also act as a an instrument of communion between the local churches of those places and the Apostolic See.

It is indeed true that the aims of the Church and of the State are of a different order and that both are perfect societies, endowed, therefore with their own means and independent in their respective spheres of action, but it is equally true that both act for the benefit of a common subject - man, who is called by God to eternal salvation and placed on earth to enable him with the help of grace, to attain it through a life of work which will give him well-being in peaceful co-existence with his fellow beings.

Hence it follows that some of the activities of the Church and of the State are in certain sense complementary, and that the good of the individual and of the community of peoples postulates an open dialogue between the Church on the one hand and the States on the other, in order to establish, foster and strengthen relations of reciprocal understanding, mutual co-ordination and co-operation to prevent or settle possible differences for the purpose of attaining the realisation of the great human hopes of peace among nations, of internal tranquility and the progress of individual nations.

The Apostolic Letter also mentions the representatives of the Holy See to international organisations, perhaps most notable among them being the representatives to the various organs of the United Nations.  

We can see the role undertaken by these Pontifical Representatives as a living expression of the wish for dialogue between the worlds of religious belief and secular rationality of which Pope Benedict XVI spoke during his visit to Britain.