If St John Fisher and St Thomas More were bloggers


What kind of bloggers would St John Fisher and St Thomas More have been? Both would surely have written blogs had the opportunity been around. St Thomas More could have engaged in sharp controversy in his combox, and a blog would have been the perfect vehicle for St John Fisher’s monumental line-by-line refutation of Oecalompadius on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Both would have used their blogs to denounce scandals in the Church, especially among the clergy. The titles for their blogs? My quick guess would be "Meeting Merrily" and "The Fort is Betrayed" though those might be posthumous titles in truth.

St Thomas More would have been one for a mixed blog of serious pieces (with expert legal knowledge), jokes, and friendly advice, along with quick fire refutations of heresy. St John Fisher would have had one of those blogs without pictures, but with sensible and grave expositions of the scriptures and the Catholic faith that people feel guilty about when they don’t read it carefully enough. Mind you, he would also engage with heresy – the sheer weight of his scholarship would be devastating in any online debate. Above you can see his profile picture (I don't think he would have bothered with Facebook, but perhaps St Thomas More would.)

St John Fisher is my favourite of the two, mainly because of his priestly example, though I do love St Thomas More as well. In the internet popularity stakes, St John Fisher is the underdog. A search on Google (blogs) just now threw up 14,200 results for St Thomas More and 3,800 for St John Fisher. To be honest, I think this is an improvement on the balance when I was younger. It seemed that everyone had heard of St Thomas More but nobody had heard about St John Fisher. Perhaps the Catholic blogosphere is slowly closing the gap :-)

Happy feast day! St John Fisher and St Thomas More pray for us.

For some of the standard stories and quotations, here are some other posts that I have written on St John Fisher:

Feast of St John Fisher
Hymn to St John Fisher
St John Fisher's cell
Cardinals' badge of honour
Titular Church of Cardinal Fisher

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