{"id":3499,"date":"2009-12-12T11:06:41","date_gmt":"2009-12-12T19:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3499"},"modified":"2009-12-12T11:28:05","modified_gmt":"2009-12-12T19:28:05","slug":"less-more-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/less-more-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Less More, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During the course of his visit to Britain next year, the Pope will be addressing the country\u2019s parliamentarians from the spot, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/religion\/6762376\/Pope-to-preach-in-Westminster-Hall.html\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a> the <em>Daily<\/em> <em>Telegraph<\/em>, where Sir Thomas More was sentenced to death in 1535.<\/p>\n<p>The choice of venue is, I reckon, largely a coincidence (Westminster Hall is the usual venue for addresses of this nature \u2013 it\u2019s where Reagan spoke, for example), but it does give me an excuse to post about Thomas More, a brilliant, fascinating individual who ought also to be seen as terrible warning of the danger that one man\u2019s spiritual (or wider philosophical)\u00a0certainty can pose to others when harnessed to the power of the state. Unfortunately, that\u2019s not how he <em>is<\/em> seen. The old boy gets a pretty good press these days. Maybe that\u2019s because he was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint in 1935. Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect that the real key to More\u2019s shiny modern reputation is to be found in Hollywood\u2019s hagiographic <em>A Man For All Seasons<\/em>, a highly watchable, deeply annoying film. As a mild corrective to Paul Schofield\u2019s fine portrait of doomed nobility, it is perhaps useful to recall that, as Lord Chancellor (England\u2019s top lawyer), More showed himself\u00a0to be\u00a0a savage ideological enforcer, quite pleased, for example, to support the burning alive (\u201cthe short fyre\u2026[prior to] ye fyre eurlasting\u201d, as he so charmingly put it) of heretics.<\/p>\n<p>Was More sincere in his beliefs? Sure, but then again so was Felix Dzerzhinsky.<\/p>\n<p>Having said that, it\u2019s important not to fall into the the current all-too-common mistake of\u00a0 judging historical figures solely by the standards of our own time. More\u2019s attitudes were hardly uncommon in his era. But having conceded that point, it\u2019s also worth remembering that the fate that ultimately befell him was not so unusual either. He defied the king. He lost. If More was no Dzerzhinsky (although there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomasmorestudies.org\/g12.html\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>), then Henry VIII was no Stalin\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the course of his visit to Britain next year, the Pope will be addressing the country\u2019s parliamentarians from the spot, reports the Daily Telegraph, where Sir Thomas More was sentenced to death in 1535. The choice of venue is, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/less-more-please\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[90,15],"tags":[29,425,101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3503,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3499\/revisions\/3503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}