The opening debates were of a high caliber but none the less very painful to listen to and I wanted to walk out. I managed to remain in my chair and gradually I began to hear some new amazing voices. Allow me to repeat some of the most healing among them, and add a thought or two of my own stimulated by them.
After the long, open, honest discussion there was a vote and a clear victory for the orthodox side of the diocese. In response to this vote, the losing side then staged a carefully planned demonstration with placards, lapel pins and a fully scripted mildly threatening speech. A highly respected leader of the orthodox side then asked for the floor. His few measured words were not fully written out. In his speech he quoted from C. S. Lewis’ letters to Dom Calabria.
From 1947 to 1954 C. S. Lewis engaged in correspondence with a Roman Catholic Italian monk named Dom Giovanni Calabria. As the only language they had in common was classical Latin the entire correspondence was carried out in that venerable tongue. At one point Lewis apologizes for the rusty nature of his Latin composition. (The translators of the letters tell us that the Latin is flawless! “There were giants in the earth in those days!”)
Lewis’ letters have survived. Calabria’s have not. Yet from Lewis’ extant epistles it is possible to discern the views of both. They often reflected on the divided body of Christ and both longed for it to be reunited. Calabria insisted that “the whole cause of schism lies in sin . . .” Lewis disagreed. Yes, granted Lewis, both Tetzel and Henry VIII were “lost men.”
Lewis then continued:
But what would I think of your Thomas More or of our William Tyndale? All the writings of the one and all of the writings of the other I have recently read right through. Both of them seem to me most saintly men and to have loved God with their whole heart: I am not worthy to undo the shoes of either of them. Nevertheless they disagree and (what racks and astounds me) their disagreement seems to me to spring not from their vices nor from their ignorance but rather from their virtues and the depths of their faith, so that the more they were at their best the more they were at variance. I believe the judgment of God on their dissension is more profoundly hidden than it appears to you to be: for His judgments are indeed a great deep (abyssus).
After quoting the above passage the speaker concluded by challenging the assembly to join him in
looking on those with whom they disagree, until or unless it be demonstrated otherwise, as holding their positions from the best that is in them and to commend them to God, whose judgments on our dissensions will always be more profoundly hidden than we within our limited perspectives can now know.
In his final eucharistic sermon the bishop quoted the last words spoken by Thomas More and the final statement of his judges. The judges said:
Sir Thomas More, you are to be drawn on a hurdle through the City of London to Tyburn, there to be hanged till you be half dead, after that cut down yet alive, your bowels to be taken out of your body and burned before you, your privy parts cut off, your head cut off, your body to be divided into four parts, and your head and body to be set at such places as the king shall assign.
St. Thomas More’s final words to those judges were:
More have I not to say, my Lords, but that like as the blessed Apostle St. Paul, as we read in the acts of the Apostles, was present, and consented to the death of St. Stephen, and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet they now both sing holy sancti in heaven and shall continue there friends for ever, So I verily trust, and shall therefore hartly pray, that though your Lordships have now here in the earth been my Judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting joy and thus I desire Almighty God to preserve and defend the king’s Majesty, and to send him good counsel.
On the deepest level, meaning is not created by what happens to us, but by how we respond to it.
I am a Civil War buff. Actually the “late great national unpleasantness” has four names. If you are from Massachusetts you might know it as “the great rebellion.” In Pennsylvania we call it “the civil war.” In Virginia it is usually “the war between the states” and in Mississippi some know it as “the war of Northern aggression.” That is, the war not only caused divisions, but there were differing nuances on what those divisions were really all about, and on how one should perceive the people on the other side. Nevertheless, each side was fully confident of its righteousness. Brian Pohanka of Virginia, in a recent book on the that war, writes:
Most Northerners fought to preserve the Union, and most Southerners fought to preserve the political integrity of their respective states. Both sides fought to maintain what they saw as the most fundamental ideals of the nation’s founding Fathers. The volunteers who marched to war in the spring of 1861 were utterly convinced of the righteousness of their cause . . . .
When they were at their best, Lincoln and Lee (like Thomas More and William Tyndale) were all the more “at variance.” Both men seemed to realize this. Was this why Lee never fought an “enemy” but only “those people?” Does this partially explain his continued impeccable conduct after the war? On Lincoln’s side, is this why the Southern army from Lee to the last private was set free—with their horses “for the spring plowing”? Was this why the notorious, deeply racist, southern cavalry raider (later Presbyterian) Nathan Forest declined to launch a guerrilla war when Lee surrendered and instead told his mounted, fully armed and undefeated troops:
Civil war, such as you have just passed through, naturally engenders feelings of animosity, hatred, and revenge. It is our duty to divest ourselves of all such feelings, and, so far as it is in our power to do so, to cultivate friendly feelings towards those with whom we have so long contended and heretofore so widely but honestly differed. . . . Obey the (U.S.) laws, preserve your honor, . . .
By the time he wrote this final communication, Forrest had killed 30 Northern officers and men in personal combat and 29 horses had been shot out from under him. Lincoln looked out on the world and said “With malice toward none and charity for all, . . .”
Sir Thomas More, C.S. Lewis, Lee, Lincoln and (even) Nathan Forrest—on various levels—do they have things to say to our deeply troubled church?
Kenneth E. Bailey of New Wilmington, Pa., is an author and lecturer in Middle Eastern New Testament Studies.
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