difficult relatives

Difficult Relatives

(Thomas and Rada)

Once upon a time I got on a bus and failed the test of family. It was the Colorado Blvd. bus taking me home from Pasadena City College and at one stop a short old man got on and paid his fare. I recognized him as my maternal grandfather, Rudolph Davidovitz. He did not return the favor and when the paprika termagant started to berate the poor bus driver for an unscheduled stop, I was a bad, happy girl. The driver finally relented and let my grandfather off, to the great relief of everyone on the bus, especially me. We all have difficult relatives.

There is an holy day in the Protestant liturgical calendar called Reformation Sunday. Celebrated on the Sunday closest to October 31st, it is the day set aside to acknowledge our history and founders. On this day Methodists revel in John Wesley, Baptists insist that they come from the Catacombs and Presbyterians will actually speak the name of John Calvin. Everyone celebrates the founders of their church, except the Anglicans, who are embarrassed. You are ashamed of your father.

I understand, Thomas Cranmer is a hard nut and difficult to love. Liturgist, scholar and reformer, he sinned so much—how can anyone celebrate. He came into Henry VIII’s court on Anne Bolyn’s skirts. Her father, Thomas, brought Cranmer with the family, as its chaplain. Though he came in with Anne, he trumped up the charges that were brought against her, adding reginacide to his résumé. (Don’t depend on Tommy, girls, he will do you dirty if you get in the King’s way.) He stayed to feed the King supporting theology during the Great Dissolution. Cranmer’s second wife had to be hidden away while Henry dithered about the married clergy.

Henry Tudor dithered because he was a Roman Catholic. He didn’t want a new church. He simply coveted the prerogatives that the French king had enjoyed since the 12th century. Henry wanted to appoint bishops and cardinals and keep most of the Church’s money in country. This Catholic king liked to fill his court with scholars and was a great supporter of higher education. Henry appreciated the scholar Cranmer and either didn’t care or didn’t notice that this priest was a real, live Protestant. For all of his faults, Thomas Cranmer was the greatest liturgist in the history of the Protestant church, perhaps in the history of the Church Temporal. He collected everything and, even as he watched great sanctuaries and their libraries burn, he kept what he needed to forge a liturgy for a new and reformed church. And, Thomas survived Henry.

Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife, brought both of the princesses to court but only after they acknowledged their illigitimacy. (Henry was a pip of a father.) She died after giving Henry his legitmate son and poor little Edward VI came to the throne at his father’s death, age nine. (Without a mother, Edward clung to his older sisters. Truly, the one thing those two redheads had in common was love for their little brother.) Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury when Henry died and made sure the boy had a Protestant education. The little king authorized his confessor to write and disseminate the first Book of Common Prayer. Never in robust health, Edward died very young (17) but his legacy is huge. The Boy gave all of us the order of worship that we have carried into our many, new, dissenting churches, bless him.

The Boy went to his Savior and Mary came to the throne of Great Britain. I have sympathy for Mary Tudor. Her father branded her a bastard, not once, but twice, and her Spanish family did not save her. By the time Mary came to the throne, she was nuts. She truly believed that burning heretics would please the Prince of Peace. One of those heretics was Thomas Cranmer. Mary couldn’t murder her sister Elizabeth but she did burn her brother’s confessor. Cranmer was tortured to the point of recantation and signed a confession of error.

But Mary Tudor did not believe his submission to the Roman rule of the English church and Thomas Cranmer took up the martyr’s cross. On March 21, 1556, Thomas Cranmer followed his friends Latimer and Ridley through the fire to their Lord. The story of his martyrdom is as gruesome as it is uplifting. Elizabeth was still in the Tower when she got the news of Cranmer’s death, “they burnt that old man.”

“That old man” is the father of the Anglican Church, not Henry Tudor but Thomas Cranmer. Scholar, politician, liar and saint, he plumbed our bitter, self-serving depths and showed us one way to the Cross. Once upon a time I got on a bus and failed the test of family. The Episcopal Church is always on that bus. This year, just for once, do not ignore the bad old man. Look him in the eyes, and nod, and say, “Hello Papa.”