Foundations of the Anglican Church LXXVIX

Coronation Portrait of
Elizabeth I

One of the first challenges Elizabeth had to meet was what to do with the Church.  She could not keep it in the Catholic communion—as far as the Pope was concerned she was illegitimate and therefore had no legal right to the throne.  Moreover, while far less religious than either her brother Edward (Protestant) or her sister Mary (Catholic), Elizabeth was by far the best educated theologically of the three.  She was also the most open minded and inclined to tolerance.  Elizabeth was both natively intelligent (which her sister and  brother were not) and had the open and critical mind of the serious student.  Her education had been overseen by Archbishop Cranmer and he made sure to indoctrinate her in Protestant thought, but she was no narrow evangelical like her brother. 

Elizabeth proceeded with caution.  She made guarantees that she did not want to trouble the consciences of any of her subjects.  Mary was buried in Westminster Abbey with full Catholic rites on December 14.  Just eleven days later, however, she instructed  Owen Oglethorpe. the Bishop of Carlisle who was offering Christmas Mass in the Chapel Royal at Saint James Palace that he was not to elevate the Host or Chalice at the consecration.  She had yet demanded no other changes in the Latin Mass, but the Elevation of the Host and Chalice, which emphasizes Transubstantiation, was more than the Protestant Elizabeth would suffer even in the short run.  Elizabeth stormed out of the chapel.  Nevertheless, as Oglethorpe was the only bishop who would agree to officiate at her coronation on January 15^th following the Queen gave him a second chance.  Again the Queen instructed him not to elevate the Host and Chalice; again he did; again the Queen stormed out—of her own coronation Mass.  Little by little that year of 1559 Elizabeth moved to re-introduce Protestantism.  Oglethorpe and the other Marian bishops were deprived of their sees for their unwillingness to support the Queen’s religious policies.  The monks were evicted from Westminster Abbey and other religious establishments were closed down, becoming “collegiate” churches with a college of canons and a dean.  In April Parliament passed a new Act of Uniformity which abolished the Mass and replaced the Catholic Liturgy with a new Book of Common Prayer. The 1559 Prayer Book was a slightly—but significantly—revised version of Cranmer’s 1552  book.  Clergy who would not implement the rite were removed from their benefices.  Fourteen Bishops in England and Wales were deprived of their sees.  Most were arrested for a period of time but then allowed to retire to house arrest in private life where they privately practiced the Catholic faith without interference.  An exception was Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London who refused the oath of supremacy and was confined to the Marshalsea Prison until this death ten years later.  The Extreme Protestant Party clamored for the execution of Bonner and the other bishops, but Elizabeth was not inclined to make martyrs.  Nicholas Heath, deposed Archbishop of York, also refused both the Act of Uniformity and the Act of Supremacy but assured Elizabeth of his loyalty in matters secular.  He was allowed to retire to his estates in Surrey where Elizabeth visited him several times.  Cuthbert Tunstall, deposed bishop of Durham, was put under the custody of the New Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, at Lambeth Palace.  He died there eleven weeks later.

Just about six weeks after Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, Giovanni Angelo Medici was elected Pope as Pius IV.  The papacy had been vacant from the death of Paul IV four months earlier.  Pius did not want to aggravate the plight of English Catholics and so he was silent in the face of Elizabeth’s return of the Church of England to Protestant doctrine and liturgy.  Pius also was not unlike the present Pope as he eschewed much of the pomp and splendor that had traditionally gone with the Papal Court.  He was characterized by Giorgio Vasari for his “stinginess of living, dullness of dress, and simplicity in so many things.”  In the sixteenth century Pope were not admired for toning down the Renaissance excess.  He also made some serious concessions to preserve the unity of the Church in the face of the Reformation.  He permitted the restoration of the chalice to the faithful in Austria and Bohemia where there had long been agitation for this reform.  There are those historians who admire Pius for his policies; and there are those who do not.  His English strategy worked in so far as there were no Catholic executed in England for their faith until after Pius’s successor, Saint Pius V, excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects both free from her authority and duty-bound to overthrow her reign.  But that is for another time. 

Foundations of the Anglican Church LXV

I found an interesting article about the conservative take on Pope Francis and want to pass it on. http://theweek.com/article/index/256251/what-do-conservative-catholics-want-from-pope-francis    I hope to get around to commenting on this down the line but I do want to go back for awhile to the History of the Church of England.  I do notice that every time I leave Pope Francis and his making history for the

Edward VI

drier bones of the past, the readership of this blog falls off markedly.  I feel bad about that as the past has much to contribute to help us understand the present.  In particular, I think it is important to look at the history of the Church of England to help us undo some of the popular myths that cloud our Catholic judgment about the Anglican Communion and prevent us from reaching a deeper relationship with the Anglicans.  So we will put Francis aside for awhile—maybe a week or so—and go  back into the sixteenth century.

Let me just recap for people that might just be picking up the thread—and it will be important for them to go back and trace this series from the beginning—that the Church of England does not have its origins in Henry VIII.  The Church of England can be traced back to the late first and second-century Roman settlements in Britannia.  While the Romans brought Christianity to Britain, Britain was not a “daughter Church” of Rome but always an independent Church.  There was no universal jurisdiction of the Roman See in the first, second, or—for that matter—first five centuries of Christendom.  Churches were “in communion” with one another which means that as long as they were in doctrinal harmony they shared access to the Eucharist and other sacraments and recognized the apostolicity of each other’s ministry, but they were all self-governing.  The Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries drove British Christians to the western regions of the island where, under the influence of the Irish missionaries and monks, they picked up certain features of the Celtic Church that were markedly different from Roman customs.  The Anglo-Saxons were Christianized by missionaries coming in the North from Ireland and in the South from Rome.  The Bishops who followed the Celtic traditions refused to recognize the authority of the Roman-sent Primate, Augustine who came to Canterbury (the capital of the Kentish Kingdom) from Pope Gregory in 597. The breach was healed at the 664 Synod of Whitby and the English Church was reunited.  The union brought strong ties to the Church of Rome but the English Church retained its autonomy with unique canon law and its several distinct rites.  Those unique rites would remain until the Reformation. The Roman Rite was not used in Britain until the late sixteenth century, long after Henry’s break. 

It is with the Norman Conquest of 1066 that Roman authority begins gradually to be introduced into the English Church and it was not without resistance.  Bishops are chosen by their Cathedral Chapters (usually with some Royal nomination) and gradually the custom evolved of sending the election to Rome for confirmation.  An important exception to this process is the 668 appointment of Theodore of Tarsus as Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Vitalian, but this was done in conjunction with King Ecgberht of Kent and King Oswy of Northumbria who had sent their candidate, Wighardt to Rome for consecration.  When Wighardt died en route, Pope Vitalian—with the advice of several counselors—chose the Greek monk and scholar, Theodore, in Wighardt’s place and sent him back to Canterbury.  His successors in that see were elected in the traditional way—by the monks of the Cathedral priory at the urging of the King for his particular candidate.)  An other variation in this process took place when Stephen Langton was elected by a delegation of Canterbury monks in Rome after Pope Innocent III refused to accept either the monks’ original choice of one of their own or the King’s choice of the Bishop of Norwich.   In the fourteenth century Parliament passed a series of laws prohibiting appeals from England to the papacy and limiting papal authority in Britain.  It was these laws that Henry used between 1531 and 1536 to snap the ties with Rome.

Henry’s break with Rome was a schism such as the schism of 1054 that has divided the Catholic and the Orthodox.  Henry was an avid persecutor of Protestantism both before and after his break with the papacy.  Catholic doctrines such as Transubstantiation, efficacy of prayers to the saints, use of images were all maintained.  Monasteries were closed and monks and nuns sent home but that was an economic measure to appropriate the monastic wealth for the impoverished royal treasury.    Henry insisted on clerical celibacy (though, never chaste himself, not on clerical chastity) refusing to allow clergy (and ex-monks and ex-nuns) to marry.  Masses for the dead were maintained, as was the doctrine of purgatory.  The liturgy remained unchanged in England’s ancient rites.  Most people thought that the schism would be temporary and that all would be well again in the future with the Roman Communion eventually restored.  They were naïve.

There had been some minor destruction of shrines in 1539 and 1540.  These had, for the most part, been either sites connected with Saint Thomas Becket or such images as the Rood of Boxley which were either fraudulent or obviously superstitious.  The Becket cult was ended because Becket was the very embodiment of Church resistance to royal authority and Henry was not about to let that continue.    Some of the shrines of saints were dismantled for the great wealth that had accumulated there as votives over the centuries.  In these cases, such as Saint Frideswide at Oxford or Saint Cuthbert at Durham, the relics were duly reburied and the gold and silver votives carted off to fund Henry’s projects.  The cult of the saints continued however without the shrines.

Beneath the surface of Henrician Catholicism was a whirlpool of Protestant innovations just waiting for their season.  Thomas Cranmer, Henry’s Archbishop of Canterbury, continued to celebrate Mass and the Sacraments in the ancient rites but he spent his evenings in his extensive library reading both the continental reformers—Zwingli, Calvin, Luther, Bucer—and the Greek Fathers.   His own theology was somewhat eclectic but tended toward the ever more radical.  Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief Minister after the fall of Sir Thomas More, advanced crypto-Protestants to whatever offices of State and Church he could.  The Bishops, on the other hand (and except for Cranmer) tended to be ultra-orthodox and resisters of the Protestant cause.  Bonner of London was a particular hunter of heretics and under Henry those who were openly Protestant were subject to the most brutal punishments and executions. 

The problem was that Henry would not live forever.  His heir was his son, Edward, who was born in 1537 and thus a child.  Henry had no brothers to serve as regents—just as well given the recent history of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower.  Henry was the marrying sort of man, but the only one of his many wives who would have known how to be a regent was his first, Katherine of Aragon, and she had died in 1536.  And Henry had been estranged from her in any case and would never have given her the regency.  Henry therefore needed to appoint a Council of Regency.  The heir’s closest relative was his uncle Edward Seymour, first earl of Hertford.  Seymour actually had custody of Edward’s person, which gave him an advantage in the power market.  Henry appointed a council of 16 men.  They included Seymour, his brother Thomas Seymour---Lord High Admiral, Archbishop Cranmer, John Dudley—the Earl of Warwick, Sir William Paget, Thomas Wriothesley—Earl of Southhampton, Sir Anthony Denny, Sir Anthony Browne, Sir Edward Montagu, Sir Edward North, Sir Thomas Bromley, Sir William Herbert, Baron John Russell, Cuthbert Tunstall—Bishop of Durham, Sir Edward Wotton, and Thomas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury.  (I have seen two lists of this Council that differ, one excluding Thomas Seymour but including Sir William Paulet.  While only one or the other could have been on the Council, both were men of considerable power in the first years of the reign of Edward VI.)  Notably excluded from the Council were Stephen Gardiner—Bishop of Winchester and leader of the religious conservatives and Thomas Howard—Duke of Norfolk.  Norfolk was in prison and awaiting execution for treason and while he had supported Henry’s break from Rome was a religious conservative.  Gardiner had been maneuvered out of the King’s favor by those who knew he would block religious reform once the Protestant party could come out into the open after Henry’s death. 

Henry tried to balance his council to draw on the talent of the Protestant faction but with the orthodox party strong enough to hold them in check but in the end he was unsuccessful.  Henry’s increasing health problems left him largely incapacitated in the final years of his reign and his plans for continuity with his policies went all awry.   The omission of Gardiner from the Council of Regency was a huge problem for those who wanted England to stand firm in its ancient faith.  Cranmer, Seymour, Dudley, and Russell were convinced Protestants and anxious to push for radical religious revision once Henry was dead.  Browne was a religious conservative who would have opposed them on the council, but he died in 1548 and so was removed from the group trying to check the Protestants.  Paulet blew with the wind religiously, changing his opinions to suit whoever was in Power, but under Edward that was the Protestant side.  Paget and North seem to be uncommitted religiously, though North tilted a bit to the Catholic side.  Denny and Nicholas Wotton were in the Gardiner party and Edward Wotton presumably shared the religious conservatism of his brother.      Herbert leaned to the Protestant cause.  Tunstall was a rabid conservative who was not only opposed to any religious change but anxious to restore the Roman communion.  Nevertheless, Edward Seymour and Thomas Cranmer had the greatest influence over the young king and in the end there was no checking the Protestant party.  Henry was barely rotting in his grave before a new religious wind blew through England.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church LV

In the past several postings I mentioned Cuthbert Tunstall and I would like to do a posting on him as he is in many ways typical of the Churchmen of the time of Henry’s break with Rome.   By looking at his role in the creation of the Church of England we can get an insight into the complexity of the issue of “how Catholic” and “how Protestant” the Church of England was and became as the English Reformation developed from Henry’s 1534 break through the reign of Elizabeth I (d. 1603).   The history of the changes in the English church is not as cut and dried as many Catholics and many Anglicans believe. 

Again, remember that the Church of England does not start with Henry VIII.  There is a Church of England going all the way back to the Roman colonization of Britain and the period when bishops from England attended Council of Arles (314), Sardica (347) and Rimini (359).  From the earliest days the Church of England was in communion with the Universal Church—that is why they were at these councils—and so with the Papacy, but it was only with the Norman Invasion (1066) that the Church of England gradually accepted the same model of papal jurisdiction as was followed by the Continental Churches.  Ever since the time of Pope Gregory the Great sending Augustine to Canterbury (595), there were attempts to extend papal jurisdiction over England, and indeed in the Anglo-Saxon period there was great reverence for the Apostle Peter, his tomb at Rome, and his successor in the papacy—but the primacy of the Pope, especially over England, was more a matter of honor that jurisdiction until the time of King John.  And right up to the eve of Henry’s break there was always some resistance to papal power in England—as there was in France, the Empire, and other European nations.  In fact, one of the reasons contributing to the break of England—and the Scandinavian countries—with Rome was resistance to the expansion of Papal power.  All that being said, let’s look at Cuthbert Tunstall.

Tunstall, born in 1574, was the illegitimate son of a Yorkshire knight.  His superior intelligence was recognized and his illegitimate birth not allowed to hold him back. He made his way through three universities—Oxford, Cambridge, and Padua—where he studied both theology and law.  Proficient in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as well as several modern languages, and earning the Doctorate in Law he was destined for great things.  He was brought in the service of William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury and received several ecclesiastical preferments, including a canonry (Lincoln) and archdeaconry (Chichester).  In 1515 he was picked up in the service of Cardinal Wolsey and sent with Thomas More on a diplomatic mission to Flanders where he met the Dutch scholar, Desidarius Erasmus. 

Educated, admitted to the circle of thinkers that linked More and Erasmus, Tunstall became, like them, one of the humanists who hoped for Church Reform.  Moreover, Diplomatic missions to Cologne in 1519 and Worms in 1521 convinced him that Luther’s path of Reform was not the way to go.  Meanwhile, he continued to advance both in Royal Service under Wolsey and in the Church—also with Wolsey’s support.  He was named Master of the Rolls in 1516 and Lord Privy Seal in 1523.  He was named Dean of Salisbury in 1521 and Bishop of London in 1522.  He was on a diplomatic mission to the Emperor in 1525 and helped to negotiate the peace of Cambrai with France in 1529. 

Meanwhile, of course, tension was heating up over the “King’s Great Matter”—Henry’s desire for an annulment of his Marriage to Katherine of Aragon.  Tunstall served alongside Bishop John Fisher in defending Katherine’s interest in the proceedings, but unlike Fisher Tunstall ultimately acceded to the King’s wishes.  In the midst of the proceedings, Tunstall was elected (with Henry’s support) Bishop of Durham.  This was a particularly prestigious post as the Bishop of Durham, unlike the other Bishops of England—and even the two Archbishops—was a “Count Palatine.”  This is a particularly rare title which involves military and judicial powers general reserved to the King and rarely granted to non-royals.  The designation of the Bishopric of Durham as a palatinate is because the diocese forms the northernmost part of the realm on the Scottish border—through many years the site of many conflicts between the English and the Scots.  This title was held by the Bishops of Durham from the time of William the Conqueror until abolished in 1837. 

When Katherine was replaced as Queen, Tunstall passively went along with Henry’s policies.  Naturally conservative and somewhat an idealist, he struggled with the idea of a break with the papacy but gave his assent.  He was unable to see the long-term consequences of this break but learned his lesson for while little changed in Henry’s time, the break permitted a far more radical reformation to occur in the not-too-distant future.  Tunstall was rewarded for  his compliance by being made president of the Council of the North—a standing committee of northern nobility that administered affairs in that part of the realm far from London and London’s ability to oversee the day-to-day affairs so distant. 

Under Henry there was little effort to Protestantize the Church of England.  Mass remained in Latin; priests were required to be celibate; communion was in one kind.  Some shrines—particularly those dedicated to Thomas Becket who was a symbol of resistance to royal authority—were done away with and around the time of Henry’s marriage to the Protestant Anne of Cleves there was some attempt to get rid of statues, but very little else changed.  Henry abolished the religious orders—and we will cover this in a future posting—but former monks and nuns were pensioned off, were not free to marry and had to keep their vows, and required to continue wearing their religious garb. 

Henry kept the Church “Catholic,” albeit without the Pope, but once dead the Reformers moved in and the new king, under the influence of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and the King’s uncle, the Duke of Somerset, began a thorough protestantization of the Church.  Liturgical Reforms were introduced with the 1549 Prayer Book—and a far more Calvinist liturgy with a 1552 Prayer Book that alarmed Tunstall and others who espoused an Henrician Catholicism, ie a Church Catholic in doctrine and practice, but under the King.  Tunstall’s objections caused him first to be arrested—first house-arrest and later in the Tower of London—and then deprived of his bishopric.

Fortunately for Tunstall, Edward died shortly thereafter and was succeeded on the throne by his half-sister, Mary, who was a Catholic.  Mary set about restoring the union between the Church of England and the papacy.  Tunstall was released from prison and restored to his see.  With the rest of the realm, he was restored to union with the Holy See in November 1554. Tunstall, while himself totally Catholic, openly tolerated Protestant practices in his diocese, refusing any sort of inquisition or persecution.

Four years later, Queen Mary died and was succeeded by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.     Elizabeth was reluctant to make any more changes in the hierarchy than she had to, but the majority of the bishops—including Tunstall—saw that her agenda was restoring the Protestantism of her brother, King Edward VI, and knew this time what the consequences of going along with royal policy would be.  Tunstall refused to participate in the consecration of the new Archbishop of Canterbury—Matthew Parker—as did most other sitting bishops.  He was arrested and confined in Lambeth Palace, the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, where he died several weeks later at the age of 85.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church LIV

1884 photograph of Lollards' Tower at Lambeth

Palace--London Residence of the Archbishops

of Canterbury

In our last entry we saw the story of William Tyndale, an English priest who translated the scriptures into English, fled to the Continent to avoid the anti-Lutheran heresy hunts that went on under Henry VIII, and was put to death in 1536 for his Protestant ideas in Antwerp, then under the dominion of the very Catholic Emperor, Charles V.  In order to understand how Henry VIII was able to separate England from Rome we need to understand the religious mood in England in the sixteenth century.  Beneath the surface of an officially Catholic England, was a lot of discontent with the Church especially among the urban merchant classes.  The rural peasantry and the nobility were comfortable in their Catholic faith, but trouble for the hierarchical Church had been brewing for some time in England—at least since the days of John Wycliffe and those who followed his ideas and were known as “Lollards.”  If you want a refresher on Wycliffe and the Lollards look at the entries for April 27^th and 28^th  2011, and June 7^th and 8^th 2013.  I also want to tell again the story of Richard Hunne, a London merchant, whose 1514 murder while under imprisonment by  the Bishop of London gave a focus to the anger of many in the merchant class against the bishops and “The Church,” i.e. the institutional hierarchical Church. 
Richard Hunne was a merchant-tailor in the City of London in the early sixteenth century. His infant son, Stephen, died in 1511 and his funeral was at the Church of Saint Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, London. The priest, Thomas Dryffeld, demanded the infant’s christening gown in which the tiny corpse was dressed, for a fee. Now this sounds gruesome to the modern reader, but it was standard in the Middle Ages that the various trappings of a funeral—the pall that covered the body, any cloths or bunting with which the church was draped for the funeral, and even the shroud in which the corpse was dressed belonged to the priest by ways of fee. Also any candles or other decorations that were used went to the priest. They would be resold to the undertaker (or in the case of candles, to the chandler) who could then sell them to the next grieving family for re-use. The baby most likely, at least by custom, would not have been buried in the Christening gown in any case but have been simply wrapped in linen or wool before being interred. Nevertheless Richard Hunne begrudged the priest the gown. He was a tailor, a very wealthy tailor, and the gown was of some more than usual value. Hunne could have afforded it. He was a man of means. But on principle he would not give in. It is difficult to know psychological motives of a person long dead unless they have left us some strong indication, and Hunne probably did not even understand himself why he was so tenacious on this point. Perhaps he was angry over the death of his son; that is a normal reaction at the death of someone we love. And the anger over the death of a child often is directed towards God—or religious figures who “represent” God to us—because we simply don’t know where else to direct it. We just don’t know why, on Hunne’s part, this escalated as it did, but it did.
Dryffeld for his part would not give in either and had Hunne summoned before the Archbishop’s court at Lambeth for settlement. The auditor of the case, Cuthbert Tunstall, would later be Bishop of London under both Henry VIII and Queen Mary. Tunstall had no axe to grind and simply applied the law. Hunne was ordered to give over the Christening gown or its value—6s 8d (probably about $225.00 in today’s money). There was no further punishment and Tunsall ignored Dryffeld’s demands that Hunne be excommunicated. One would think that the end of the matter. It wasn’t.
Hunne went to St. Mary Matfellon for evensong on December 27^th, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist. The priest conducting the service, this time Henry Marshall, Dryffeld’s vicar, recognized him and stopped the service, shouting that that Hunne was an excommunicate (he wasn’t, as I just wrote) and under the curse of the Church. The service, Marshall shrieked, could not continue until Hunne left. The scene was costly to Hunne’s business as devout Catholics would have nothing to do with an excommunicate. On the other hand, it seems Hunne was baiting the priest for this church, Saint Mary Matfellon, was not Hunne’s parish and was over two miles from Hunne’s home. Moreover, Hunne had brought a party of friends with him to the service and they all stomped out together. In the event, Hunne sued Marshall for slander in the Court of King’s Bench.
The case is very complex and we don’t need to go into all the details as we will only end up losing our point, but it involves the fact that in England at the time there were two judicial systems—the King’s and the Church’s. Certain offenses were to be tried in Church court—Hunne’s refusal to pay the mortuary fee to the priest, for example, was a matter for an ecclesiastical court, not the King’s Bench. Also, certain persons could only be tried in Church court, the clergy—from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowliest parish clark—in point of fact. This privilege of exemption from the King’s Justice was a sore point for many going back to the time of Thomas Becket whose fights with Henry II were on this exact point of clerical exemption from civil law. At this very moment, Parliament was debating a bill to strip the lower clergy (those below the rank of subdeacon, such as acolytes, lectors, porters, etc.) of privilege in Church courts, demanding that they be tried for their crimes as everyone else in King’s Bench. Hunne by bringing the slander case against a priest into the King’s Bench was denying the right of the Church to try a case involving a member of the clergy. This implied that the Church was subject to the Crown. This was a dangerous compromise of clerical privilege. The Bishop of London thus went on to have Hunne arrested for “heresy.” The “heresy” substantially is denying the supremacy of the Church over the State.
Hunne was confined in Lollards’ tower—the prison reserved for heretics—in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence, Lambeth Palace. Two days later, December 4^th, 1514 he was found hanging in his cell. The jailers said it was suicide. The coroner’s jury said it was murder. Witnesses came forward and testified that they had heard members of the Bishop of London’s household plan the murder. One witness said that a servant of the Bishop had told him, the witness, that Hunne would be dead by Christmas. It seems that agents of the Bishop of London had attempted to murder Hunne in his cell by inserting a red-hot wire through his nostril into his brain—leaving no trace of violence and making the death appear natural. However there was a struggle, and in the struggle Hunne’s neck was broken. The corpse was hung to make it appear that the broken neck was the result of him having committed suicide by hanging.
Hunne was posthumously judged guilty of heresy and his body burned. As a convicted heretic, the Church confiscated his estate—leaving his wife and children penniless. This caused a huge outcry among the merchants of the city. Hunne was one of them, a member of the Guild of the Merchant Tailors, one of the guilds that controlled the political establishment of the city. When the Reformation came to England, it was slow to spread among the nobility and among the working classes—but it spread like wildfire among the business classes. They were educated and they were self-made men (and women) and they were ready to move on from the world of clerical privilege and control.
This story is one of many stories—more dramatic than most, but still only one—that hows the loss of confidence in the hierarchy and the clergy on the part of the Middle Class.  Part of this was the remnants of the Lollard movement which had encouraged a strong evangelical fervor among  the laity that differentiated the Lollards from the religious establishment.  But it was more complex than that.  You had, in the Middle Class, an educated group of people who were interested in religion but also had sufficient education to think for themselves and think critically.  They were not inclined to accept ideas simply on “authority,” but wanted their questions answered and their opinions heard.   We need today to be careful in the Church for we too have an educated laity who think for themselves and no longer accept something  just because “Father says so.”  Moreover, many of the laity today are better educated than the average priest—something not true sixty years ago—and even more educated and urbane than our bishops.  Authority today is answerable to its constituents.  Certain people in the Church may not like that, but they have to wake up and smell the coffee: thing have changed whether they like it or not.  Very frankly, the abuses of authority in the American Church by prelates like Cardinals Burke or George or Law or the late Cardinal Hickey,  or Archbishops Cordileone, or Lori, or Bishops Morlino, or Finn, have put the Church on some perilously think ice.  Part of Pope Francis’ appeal to people is that he seems to be more dialogical, or at least more aware of their perspectives and questions than his predecessors.   This is not a time for authority to be exercised peremptorily.  Indeed we see here those who understand authority as power (abuse) and those who understand authority as service and we need leadership whose trigger-finger is not quite so itchy as others would have it.  The tooth-paste does not go back into the tube and an educated and critically-thinking laity need far more sophisticated response from Church leadership than they have been getting in some circles.  It is a new day and a new day requires new ways of doing things.