p/c Pietro Torrigiano, John Fisher as a Young Man, Wikipedia.
This is a letter I composed from one real bishop to another—the Bishop of Durham to St. John Fisher of England—but fictionally, some time in the 16th century.
Your Lordship Bishop John Fisher,
I greet you in the name of God, the most Blessed Trinity. And I, Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham, have been asked by Our Lord and King in his great mercy to grant you one last chance for you to re-consider your way of thinking, nay, for you to fall in line with the guidance of God under every bishop in England, except yourself. As you know, we all recognize that our King Henry VIII clearly remains the rightful and only guide of the Church here in England. This must be true, as one cannot separate Church and State.
Yet you remain the only bishop of England to live (and perhaps to die) in opposition to the Holy Ghost guiding us twenty-one other bishops on this great isle of God, this England. So, my brother bishop, I must encourage you to ask yourself in deep scrutiny and full honesty: Could the Holy Ghost really mislead such a Counsel or Synod of bishops as us, while God’s sole inspiration remains with one bishop who obstinately holds to the past? Do you still protest that you alone remain the one bishop in all of God’s great country of England who has the ear (or ear for) the Almighty on the rather private and delicate bedroom matters of the King and his queen? Such arrogance on your part cannot be pleasing to Our meek Lord who chose never to stick-out in a crowd.
Was not the heresy of Gnosticism one of the earliest to plague the early Christians in the second century? As you know, Gnosticism is the belief that only an elite few Christians know the ways of God, only a select few are enlightened on the true pathway to God, while the rest of the baptized languish in the darkness of error for not having such secret knowledge.
Yet you, John Fisher, in opposing every single other bishop among us (including me) seem to have these venomous Gnostic tendencies. Could it really be that only one bishop of twenty two in our Kingdom here, namely you, know the secret path of maintaining the Sixth Commandments of God over the King and His Queen?
I have even heard whisperings that you quietly believe our sacraments may soon go invalid if we break from the old Roman ways. If this is true, then I hesitate to point out to you that you will incur upon your soul yet another early heresy, namely, Donatism. As you know, the earliest Donatist heretics held that invalid sacraments flowed from the hands of immoral clergy.
How much worse must be the temptation to you, my dear bishop, to Donatism if you erroneously believe our beloved King Henry—who has no interest in distributing the sacraments—be the one to taint the validity of the Holy Mysteries by his way of life that you publicly condemn in such insolence! Yes, he is head of the Church of England, but the King may indeed have no need for a bishop tampering with Gnosticism or Donatism like you, even if His Majesty should have mercy on your traitorous soul!
Surely, you know the words of Our Lord: The Spirit breatheth where He will; and thou hearest His voice, but thou knowest not whence He cometh, and whither He goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.—John 3:8. Do you not see that the Holy Ghost may blow new doctrines away from your stuffy Romish ways of yore? We in this our synod of bishops from one shore of England to the other follow the Holy Ghost’s new winds of mercy in granting grace and patience to His Majesty in his admittedly imperfect approach to marriage.
But should you insist on rigorist sexual ethics, I fear you be like none other than the Pharisees who condemned the woman caught in adultery! Oh, my dear John Fisher, how can you be so blind to resist the ways of mercy given us by the Holy Ghost who blows where he wills in new centuries of the Church? You frequently say there is no unity without truth. But my dear bishop John, do you not see there is no truth without unity?
In fact, there are even rumors that you not only reject Our King Henry VIII’s lifestyle, but that you consider him to be an imposter as head of the Church! Your Excellency, please write me back and tell me that you refrain from such harsh words applied to His Majesty as a “hijacker” or “charlatan.” Until I hear such traitorous words from your mouth, I choose to ignore such rumors about you.
Yet should these terrible rumors of your choice of words be true, I remind you again that we 21 of 22 bishops are not the schismatics, but you, Bishop John. You remain the schismatic, broken from our inspired Council of Bishops. How could you be so arrogant as to claim God has abandoned our entire synod for you who always quotes the outdated Church Fathers?
If only you could walk with in accompaniment and dialogue with Henry VIII, perhaps then you could lose your Pharisaical ways of Donatism and Gnosticism. But your lack of mercy blinds you from the compassionate ways of Our Lord. From the first time I met you as a young man outside the Framwellgate wall, I saw a pigheadedness in your doctrine. Now I see that you have lost your head. Or rather, that you will soon lose your head for your ossified dogmas if you are not careful!
But even if you’re not afraid of martyrdom, clinging to an ancient inflexibility surrounding the Decalogue, do you not fear going to your judgment without our synod of bishops who stand uniformly against you? Indeed, I am sure you believe that will be “heaven” for you and “hell” for us for following these “new doctrines,” but I leave you with this challenge: How could the Holy Ghost leave a synod of twenty one validly elected bishops like us for one lone bishop who styles himself more doctrinally pure than the rest? If that is the God of exclusivity that you serve, perhaps I do not want to be with your God for all eternity.
Alas, I do not know why I waste my time. You probably think you’ll be known as “Saint” John Fisher one day and we’re all going to hell for following the renewed theology of the King. Yet This is the world we live in, Your Excellency, and I think you know it. The Church of England has simply opened her windows to the world before Rome has chosen to do so.
But if Rome one day mercifully opens her windows to the world like London did, you can be sure some stodgy bishop of the future will declare himself obedient to “eternal Rome” instead of “temporary Rome.” Or, maybe a self-righteous cleric in ages to come may even find an “imposter” on the Throne of St. Peter if God continues to make souls as troubled as yours.
Praying fervently for your return,
Bishop Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham and true servant of King Henry VIII.
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