His Hermeneuticalness on St John Fisher

With delight I report that my good friend, His Hermeueticalness, Fr. Tim Finigan has taken up his electronic pen more regularly than before his heart problems knocked him down… slacker.

Here’s a bit of his great offering about St. John Fisher, whose feast with St. Thomas More, we observed a couple days ago.

[…] I do agree with Thomas Craughwell at the National Catholic Register that “Fisher needs is his own version of A Man for All Seasons—a big, gorgeously filmed, beautifully written, destined-to-be-a-classic film, with an all-English cast.”  [With an of film credit role song by Adele?   NOT.]

I would suggest Mel Gibson, but somebody would have to stop him from reducing it to a piece of anti-English propaganda with gallons of blood spurting from the holy bishop’s neck at the crucial point. [Maybe people need to see what happened to the English Martyrs.] Perhaps Sir Ridley Scott (Gladiator etc.) could do something, or Peter Weir (Master and Commander.) Now that Russell Crowe is a little old for the action hero role, could he do a gutsy elderly bishop? Or maybe Sean Bean could graduate from his new priestly persona?

To help film directors understand the dramatic potential of such a film, here are some of my previous posts on St John Fisher: [Useful!]

Feast of St John Fisher
Hymn to St John Fisher
St John Fisher’s cell
Cardinals’ badge of honour
Titular Church of Cardinal Fisher
If St John Fisher and St Thomas More were bloggers
“Alone of thy peers”
St John Fisher’s prayer for holy bishops

I note with pleasure that Rorate Caeli have today recalled the detail of St John Fisher’s final hours: when he was told that the writ of execution had arrived, he asked the gaoler to let him have another couple of hours’ sleep. That’s what a clear conscience looks like.

One important lesson from the lives of St John Fisher and St Thomas More is their response to scandal given in high places in the Church. Here’s a link to something I wrote on it some time ago: How to respond to scandal in the Church.