He had a statue of him in his bedroom when he was a small boy growing up in Liverpool: and now, more than five decades later, Archbishop Vincent Nichols is publishing a book about why the martyr St John Fisher is such an inspiration to him in his daily life.
Archbishop Nichols wrote much of his book, St John Fisher: Bishop and Theologian in Reformation and Controversy when he was studying theology as a postgraduate at Manchester University in the early 1970s. He decided to publish it after realising that much of what he had unearthed all those years ago about his spiritual mentor was just as relevant today as it had been then.
St John Fisher, who was born in Yorkshire in October 1469, was the chaplain to Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother, Bishop of Rochester, and vice-chancellor of Cambridge University; but having been a tutor to the king when he was a boy, he quarrelled with him over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. In 1535 he was tried for treason, accused of denying that Henry was the supreme head of the Church of England, and was beheaded on Tower Hill in London a few days before St Thomas More met the same fate.
Archbishop Nichols became interested in St John Fisher as a subject for academic research while studying theology, but says he quickly realised that the saint was his role model. At the archbishop's episcopal ordination in 1992, Cardinal Hume described Fisher as a "bishop of great scholarship, [a] man of prayer, [a] lover of the poor... humble, faithful, courageous".
In his introduction to his book, Archbishop Nichols says he realised there were many themes of Fisher's thought and writing which have resonance today. "It is again popular to criticise the clergy... of course now as then some of the criticism is justified. But its generalisation is not. Now as then there is much evidence of the untiring work of the majority of priests and those who assist them. There is ample evidence of the on-going formation for priests, of the resources and opportunities available to them. There is a need today, as then, to look at the facts of parish life rather than the popular impressions.
"It might also be a consolation to recall that in the fourteenth century too the question of clerical celibacy was contentious and its abolition proposed as the solution to many of the failings attributed to priests."
Fisher's great strength, says Archbishop Nichols, was his support of the clergy, especially in terms of widening their educational opportunities. "He wanted a clergy that was better educated, thereby better able to inform and form itself for its important ministry," he writes. "And in that ministry the task of teaching the faith was uppermost in his mind. He wanted his priests to be able and ready to study. He wanted them to bring the fruits of that study into their preaching. He wanted a laity that understood their faith and not be led astray by erroneous opinions and error."
What, asks Archbishop Nichols in his book, would Fisher have made of the Church of today? "He would be dismayed at the public failings of even one priest," he says. "He would be adamant about the need for personal renewal and discipline of life."
He would look to us bishops and priests in particular to give a clear and helpful account of the truths of faith in a manner which spoke to people of today."
Archbishop Nichols's book has been greeted with praise by senior theologians and historians including Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Cambridge, and John Scarisbrick, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick. "This is a remarkable piece of work," says Professor Duffy. "[It is] learned, perceptive, and in its broad conclusions, spot on; at the time of writing it was at least ten years ahead of the game." Professor Scarisbrick says the archbishop's book "analyses with rare skill [Fisher's] intellectual and spiritual development, and the strengths and shortcomings of his enormous output of writings against Luther and other early Protestants".
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Catholic Today is the newspaper for the Archdiocese of Birmingham
