We honor St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More as models of lonely courage during “Religious Freedom Week,” which comes to a close today. As Kipling would put it in another context, they kept their heads “when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.”
Fisher and More kept their heads spiritually and morally. They lost them literally in 1535 on Henry VIII’s orders; Fisher first on 22nd June, their joint feast day, and More on 6th July.
Yet even as we honor them, their example is difficult for us to fully appreciate.
What made Fisher and More’s fidelity stand out was precisely that it was lonely; the vast majority of their peers went along with Henry’s usurpation of Rome. Fisher was the only English bishop who resisted. More was singular amongst his friends and colleagues; even his family doubted his stand.
Had we lived in the early sixteenth century, we would have seen that bending to Henry’s will was the norm. It was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey of York, Lord Chancellor, who was England’s senior cleric, not Fisher, the bishop of Rochester. Wolsey was vigorous in advancing “the king’s great matter” before Henry lost confidence in him.
Fisher only got the red hat of a Cardinal when already imprisoned; Henry greeted the news by observing if the pope sent the red hat to London there would be no head to wear it.
Our experience of tyranny in the last century is not principally that of the lonely witness, but tends toward the white-robed army of martyrs. We are more likely to know about confessors of the faith, not collaborators with the regime.
Consider the honor roll of the twentieth century, only counting Cardinals:
- Sigitas Tamkevičius of Lithuania,
- Blessed Stefan Wyszynski, primate of Poland,
- Adam Sapieha of Kraków,
- Kazimierz Swiatek of Minsk,
- Blessed Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb,
- Josyf Slipyj of Lviv,
- Josef Beran of Prague,
- Alexandru Todea of Romania,
- Jozef Mindszenty, the primate of Hungary,
- Ernst Simoni of Albania,
- Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan of Saigon,
- and Ignatius Kung of Shanghai, to whom we shall return.
Those are only the most prominent red-robed prelates. Entire national episcopates stood firm. Groups of martyrs from Mexico, Spain, Italy and Poland have already been raised to the altars.
The prominent collaborator, as played by Wolsey and later Thomas Cranmer, has not been our recent experience. While detracting not at all from the lions of the last century, they had, in large measure, the encouragement that comes from solidarity with others.
Courageous Chinese witnesses today are undermined by their peers who go along with the regime.
There is the heroic Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong publisher and faithful Catholic. Jailed since 2020 under China’s new “national security” law, Lai’s trial is currently underway. There is little doubt about how it will end.
Lai made his billions in retail before turning to journalism, and could easily have gone abroad when Beijing started turning the screws on Hong Kong. He is not one to flee the storms; he remained, a man for all seasons.
Lai, like More, knows the added pain of being persecuted a regime that has the cooperation of his fellow Catholics, John Lee and Carrie Lam. Lee is chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; Lam is his predecessor in a role which now consists of enforcing Beijing’s erosion of civil liberties in Hong Kong.
No doubt Lai’s jailers taunt him with the fact that his fellow Catholics have seen their way clear to support the very regime that is incarcerating him.
Jimmy Lai was baptized in 1997 just as the British handed Hong Kong back to China. He was baptized by Joseph Zen, the new coadjutor bishop of Hong Kong (wisely appointed by St. John Paul the Great before Chinese control took effect).
Zen would become bishop of Hong Kong in 2002 and was created a cardinal in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI. Zen plays the role of Fisher today.
He has not been imprisoned, but his strong voice against collaboration with the Chinese Communist regime has earned him persecution in Hong Kong and the cold shoulder in the Vatican.
In May 2022, Zen and five others were arrested for foreign collusion: they had set up a fund to help pro-democracy protesters with legal and medical costs. The international uproar forced Beijing to back off national security charges. Zen was eventually convicted in November 2022 for not registering the fund properly. There was modest fine and no jail time.
Cardinal Zen understands Fisher’s witness. In 2013, I invited him to address our St. John Fisher Dinner in Kingston, Ontario. Somewhat to my surprise, he came.
For a retired octogenarian, the trip from Hong Kong was long and tiring. He explained at the dinner that it was “foolish” for him to travel so far at his age. But he said he “had to come” when he saw the invitation.
“Anything to honor St. John Fisher,” he explained.
China had its own John Fisher in Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-mei, the bishop of Shanghai – China’s most important diocese – who spent more than thirty years in Communist prisons for refusing to join the state “patriotic” Church and betray his fidelity to Rome.
He was imprisoned from 1955 to 1985, then released to house arrest. In 1988 he was permitted to live in exile in the United States. In 1991 when he was given the red hat in Rome – he had been created a Cardinal in pectore at St. John Paul’s first consistory in 1979 – the congregation rose for a prolonged and emotional ovation.
The current bishop of Shanghai is cut from different cloth. Bishop Joseph Shen Bin was appointed the bishop of Shanghai in April 2023 by the Chinese Communist Party. The Vatican did not even know, let alone give its approval.
Nevertheless, Pope Francis gave his post facto approval in July. It’s possible that Shen Bin engineered his own transfer to China’s preeminent see. Regardless, he was given a prominent role at a Vatican conference last month. Cardinal Zen did not address the gathering.
Shen Bin is head of the state-created episcopal conference of China, which is not recognized as legitimate by Rome. According to its own documents, that faux-conference of bishops “supports the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the socialist system, and adheres to the principles of independence and self-governance in political, economic, and church affairs.”
In 1957, Fulton Sheen wrote, “The West has its Mindszenty, but the East has its Kung.”
In 2024, in Joseph Zen and Jimmy Lai, China has its John Fisher and Thomas More.
