A reading from the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but underneath are wolves on the prowl. You will know them by their deeds. Do you ever pick grapes from thorn bushes, or do you pick figs from prickly plants? Never.
Any sound tree bears good fruit, while a decayed tree bears bad fruit. A sound tree cannot bear bad fruit any more than a decayed tree can bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. You can tell a tree by its fruit. And this is the gospel of the lord.
In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. One of the blessings that I presently enjoy are a host of good and loyal and helpful friends. In yesterday's mail came, first of all, a reminder that today is the feast of saints John Fisher, bishop, and of Saint Thomas More, chancellor, layman. Secondly, from Australia came a book review of, I suppose, we can say the latest book on Saint Thomas More and Woolsey called Statesman and Fanatic by Jasper Ridley from Australia. That came yesterday.
So I'm being quite reminded not to forget Saint Thomas More and Saint John Fisher. Well, I don't want to forget them. We can't remember these two men enough. First of all, let me assure you that today, in the year of our Lord 1983 and the last part of 1982, there has been a concentrated assault upon Saint Thomas More to demytholize to mythologize, as they say, which means to destroy or try to destroy the image that he has enjoyed in the English speaking world and elsewhere since that play, A Man for All Seasons, which without a doubt brought him to public attention. Let's face it.
A night a twentieth century liberal cannot admire Saint Thomas More or Saint John Fisher. That is for sure. Because in many ways, they stand for everything which our contemporary liberal rejects and vice versa. If I may say just one thing that you may carry off with you this morning, these men stood for principle, not so much for action first, but for principle first from which flows action. Whereas in the Western world, and especially in The United States Of America, we have rejected principle and have concentrated on action.
And this goes back to a great extent in this country, to William James and his successors, one of whom was of course John Dewey, to this idea of pragmatism. Whereas James so simply put it, he said, Don't ask whether a thing is good or bad, ask what is its cash value. Cash value. Then we had Dewey, who took James' theories of pragmatism and applied it to education. And believe me, this is what we are reaping today.
You scarcely ever see the word Dewey or James coming up, but we are today reaping the harvest from their pragmatism. Dewey was a fervent disciple of James. He instituted and ran the Teachers College at Columbia, and out of that came teachers all over The United States. There was a time when you could pick up a Master's in a few summers, and they were indoctrinated with the idea that education is for life. What life?
Whose life? What kind of life? Oh, that everybody knows what life is. So let's educate for life. Get rid of all those dull, inane, and absolutely impractical subjects like Latin and Greek and grammar and basic math and all of this.
They hinder the mind. We must encourage creativity. Now what I'm saying is this. You see, in this nation, you just take that latest definition of the Supreme Court, that isn't based on principles at all. It's based on sociological needs, as that group of men sitting up there behind some polished benches see sociological needs.
Now, not all of them went along with it, remember, just a majority. See, in this country, if you have a majority, that makes it right and legal, and therefore it's morally right. And I'm not exaggerating this. In this country today, people equate morality with legality. If they talk about morality at all.
Because in many instances they don't, they talk about anti social conduct and you know all that malarkey. Malarkey. Let's come back to Moore and Fisher. These men stood on principle. And as I've said many times, it was a very academic principle.
It was a principle removed from daily living. Who is head of the church of Jesus Christ? Who constitutes the quorum deciding whether a marriage is valid or invalid as a sacrament? These were highly theoretical questions. And in the sixteenth century, they were much harder to answer than they are today.
There was no Council of Trent. These men couldn't face and say, Oh, here's the answer, Pope so and so and his encyclical is such and such date, here's what he said. They had nothing like that to appeal to. They had to appeal to their grasp of what they saw as the Catholic doctrine. Catholic, with a big c, not with a little one.
And they didn't hesitate. Oh, they certainly didn't like what they faced at all. They were scared to death, as I said the other morning. Scared to death that they would fail, that they wouldn't have the strength when the crunch came. They both have this is a matter of record.
We cannot we I can't emphasize too much. See, if you don't have a principle, where is your anchor? If you don't have a principle, you are a feather in the wind. You talk about leadership. How can you have leadership without principle?
In my, not so much, but some contact with elementary and secondary education, chiefly through teachers and through some students, the thing I'm coming to realize, maybe wrongly, is that the probably notice how I have conditioned all of this, very likely what seems to be the greatest pressure of norms of conduct for our students, our young people, is not principle. It's not the 10 commandments. It's not what happens in the home as they think, but their peers. What does the crowd do? What do my friends do?
Everybody's doing it. That's the norm. Now what kind of a norm is that? And yet, you see, that's the norm of the majority. We take a vote.
49 to 51, the 51 wins, that makes it proper. See, that this is the world we're living in. Don't I'm not exaggerating this. I'm not exaggerating at all. People have lost the ability to go from principle to minor premise and to draw a conclusion.
We call that a syllogism. Most people, they have no idea what a syllogism is. Well, you don't need to know precisely all the logic of it, but you've got to if you have if you're going to be a reasonable person, you have got to apply a principle to a concrete situation through a minor premise. These are the things that Moore and Fisher knew like. They they they were completely familiar with what I'm saying today, completely.
And this is what is so antagonistic and condemnatory of your twentieth century secularist, humanist, materialist, activist today. Whether they're in the church, and there are plenty in the church. I'm not talking about people outside the Catholic church, but there are plenty outside. Does it work? Does it work?
Is it practical? What is its cash value? Utilitarianism. Call it what you want. But whatever it is, it does one thing, and that is that it denies any truth to any kind of an absolute principle of any sort.
And if there's anything that Saint John Fisher stood for, if there's anything that Saint Thomas More stood for, it was for principle, the truth of Jesus Christ, stated, proclaimed by his living church. In the name of the father, and of the son, and holy spirit. Amen.