Foundations

Thomas More (1478-1535) was the brilliant Lord Chancellor of England, a lawyer, author of Utopia, devoted husband and father, and friend of the scholar Erasmus. John Fisher (1469-1535) was the saintly Bishop of Rochester, the only English bishop to refuse King Henry VIII's demand. When Henry declared himself 'Supreme Head' of the Church in England so he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, every subject was required to swear an oath agreeing. More and Fisher would not. They did not loudly attack the king; More simply kept silent, knowing that silence could not be punished as treason. But Henry wanted his approval, not his silence. Both men were imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded in 1535. At the scaffold More famously declared himself 'the King's good servant, but God's first,' and even joked kindly with his executioner. He was not stubborn or proud; he loved his king and his country, but he loved God's truth more. Pope Pius XI canonized both men in 1935. Their feast day (shared) is June 22. They show us that conscience, rightly formed by faith, is the inner voice we must never silence for the sake of comfort or power.

On October 31, 1517, an Augustinian friar and professor named Martin Luther reportedly posted Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. A 'thesis' is a point for debate, and Luther was protesting the sale of indulgences — payments that a preacher named Johann Tetzel was promoting with the jingle, 'When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.' (An indulgence is the remission of temporal punishment for sin; the Church teaches indulgences are real, but selling them was a grave abuse.) Luther had wrestled deeply with guilt and concluded that we are saved by faith alone (sola fide), through grace, not by works or money. He also taught Scripture alone (sola scriptura) as the authority for belief. The Catholic Church responds that we are saved by grace through faith working in love, and that Scripture and Sacred Tradition together, guided by the Church, hand on God's revelation. So a genuine theological disagreement was real. But the Reformation spread for many reasons beyond theology: real corruption among some clergy, a longing for reform that good Catholics also shared, the new printing press that spread Luther's writings across Germany in weeks, and German princes who saw a chance to resist the Pope and the Emperor. When Luther refused to recant at the Diet of Worms in 1521, declaring 'Here I stand,' the break became permanent. Within a generation, the unity of Western Christendom — one Church for a thousand years — was shattered.

The Sixth Commandment, 'You shall not commit adultery,' and the Ninth, 'You shall not covet your neighbor's wife,' together protect something beautiful: the love between husband and wife and the dignity of the human body. YOUCAT teaches that God created human beings male and female and that our bodies and our capacity for love are good gifts, not shameful things. Chastity is the virtue that integrates our sexuality into the whole person, so that love is honest, faithful, and self-giving rather than selfish or merely physical. Chastity is for everyone — married and single — and it is a form of freedom, not just a list of 'no's.' The Ninth Commandment reaches into the heart: Jesus said that 'everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart' (Matthew 5:28). So purity is not only about actions but about training the heart and the imagination to see others as persons made in God's image, never as objects. In Lent especially, we ask God to purify our hearts. The Beatitude promises, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' (Matthew 5:8).

Add '1517 — 95 Theses, Wittenberg' to your history timeline. Under it, write one sentence answering: 'What was the single most important cause of the Reformation, and why?' Then add Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher to your saints page with their feast day (June 22).