Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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MORE’S head, separated from his body in 1535 after he got on the wrong side of King Henry VIII, was parboiled, put on a stake for a month, retrieved by his daughter and wound up hidden in a vault in an Anglican church.

Its absence from public view at St Dunstan’s in Canterbury. apparently irked U.S Cardinal Raymond Burke.

When he visited the church in 2017 he said he “sincerely” hoped that it could be displayed:

So that it could be a source of inspiration and also a grace for people to be able to see the relic, and to pray before it and venerate it.

Being of the same mind, American Catholic lawyer, Steven Brizek—according to a report this week in the National Catholic Register—came up with plan to turn More’s head into a grisly public spectacle.

This could be done, he suggested, by sticking what’s left of the 487-year-old skull of the patron saint of statesmen and politicians in an air-tight casket made of gold, bronze, marble or stone, and be viewed through a glass slab.

Church says no

A St. Dunstan’s parish council meeting last June unanimously turned down Brizek’s proposal or any possibility of preserving or exposing the relic, preferring that the remains stay “undisturbed.”

Clearly pissed off over the church’s rejection of his plan, he wrote:

Over the last several years those vested with the power to meet that challenge head on [pun unintended, I guess] have declined to use that power. Instead, inaction has been chosen as the preferred response to the crisis that faces the remains of St. Thomas More.

He added:

There is an urgent necessity to address and remedy the fact that whatever remains of St Thomas More in the niche of the Roper Vault in St Dunstan’s Church will surely vanish into nothingness and be lost forever if whatever little now remains is not gathered up, properly preserved and reverently encased in an appropriate reliquary before it is too late.

Time for people with powerful influence to exert pressure

As the head has not stood up well to the ravages of time, what the faithful will be looking at won’t be pretty, if the church eventually bows to the pressure Brizek advocates.

The solution is never going to come from within. It will come from pressure from people on the outside who matter and who can wield some powerful influence.

Brizek said that when a 1978 excavation revealed the remains “had suffered greatly and were likely vandalized, nothing was done about it”.

He added that in 1997 the head was viewed again in the same condition, but “still nothing was done about it.”

Some background from Historic UK‘s “bits and pieces” page:

Sir Thomas was beheaded in 1535. He had enraged Henry VIII by refusing to acknowledge that the king’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was legal.

More’s head was taken from the scaffold and parboiled, stuck on a pole and exhibited on London Bridge. His devoted daughter, Margaret Roper, bribed the bridge-keeper to knock it down and she smuggled it home. She preserved the head in spices but was betrayed by spies and imprisoned, but was soon released.

Margaret died in 1544 and Sir Thomas’ head was buried with her. In 1824 her vault was opened and More’s head was put on public view in St. Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury for many years.

Nowhere can I find any references to the claim that More’s head was ever publicly displayed at the church. Indeed Christian Forums says:

The relic has always been hidden from view, covered and sealed by a memorial floor plaque.

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