Henry's woe

Alex Conradie

Canterbury is a city steeped in history and

dominated by the oldest Christian sites in England.
Here, St. Augustine of Canterbury founded the first
Saxon cathedral & an abbey in the late 6th century.
Sent by Pope Gregory the Great to evangelise the
heathen Angles & Saxons, St. Augustine was
instructed to remain flexible in his teachings with
consideration for local custom. A practical man,
Pope Gregory knew that it was fruitless to expect all
errors to vanish from obstinate minds at a stroke;
"whoever wishes to climb lofty heights, climbs step
by step". However, by the 9th century, the idea of a
total Christian society had taken hold. By the 12th
century, the Church's influence had grown such that
clerics could not be brought to trial in royal courts
for secular offences such as peculation, treason and
even murder. Particularly during the reign of Henry
I, there was a growing sense of antagonism between
king and senior clerics, given the progressive
encroachment by the Church on royal legal territory.

The dispute between two friends Henry II,

king of England, and Thomas Becket,
archbishop of Canterbury, had the makings
of a Shakespearean tragedy. Strain in their
friendship showed as Henry matured and
adopted a more conciliatory attitude
towards opponents, becoming adept at
realpolitik. The older Becket remained an
obstinate and often hysterical man with an
actor's passion for noisy drama. As
archbishop, Becket was disinterested in
promoting pastoral work, neither
demonstrated any enthusiasm for creating a
godly clergy. His ascetic tendencies denied
comprehension of Christ's grace. Rather
disappointing for a would-be saint.
 In 1163, Henry was told that murder, theft &
violent robbery by clerics had been rife since
his coronation. Becket's guardianship of the
clerical courts was appalling; their verdicts
were intolerable to a king dedicated to
stamping out lawlessness. Perfectly well
disposed to the Church in general, Henry
attempted to bring clerics within the
jurisdiction of the royal courts in the
Constitutions of Clarendon (1164). In the
ensuing conflict, Becket held the position that
"Christian kings ought to submit their
administration to ecclesiastics, not impose it
upon them". Most English bishops disapproved
of Becket's attitude & tactics. Even his allies
thought his posturing and intransigence
excessive. In a lapse to his more explosive
youth, Henry rhetorically exclaimed during the
crisis "Will no one rid me of this turbulent
priest?".

Taking Henry's outburst as a royal command, four

knights set upon a course of confused blunders to
Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was isolated
politically. Martyrdom was a spectacular and
theatrical way out of an impasse of his own
making. Becket himself forced the knights to
decide between killing him or returning to court as
fools. Having stood in the north east transept with
its many exits, I'd agree with one of his eulogists,
"the archbishop might easily have turned aside &
saved himself by flight, time and place offered an
opportunity to escape without discovery". Four
anxious men could not easily have located someone
hiding in the darkness of the crypt. Even today, the
cathedral's crypt is spooky. As we walked from the
derelict side chapels into the dimly lit interior, a
voice unexpectedly boomed from the darkness.
Both Anje & I felt that forewarning visitors of an
invitation to prayer with either "This is not God" or
at very least "This is not the ghost of Thomas
Becket" would avoid triggering the flight response
unnecessarily.
 From beyond the grave, Becket's drama
unfolded with Henry's private guilt &
public prostration. Fellow senior clergy
viewed Becket's rapid canonisation with
cynicism, but his final melodramatic
master stroke ensured that the
pilgrimage to his shrine was popular
until the Dissolution of Henry VIII.
Strangely, the city of Canterbury does
not possess a single medieval manuscript
of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. A decade
or so after Becket's murder, Henry was
still haunted by the unintended
assassination and dedicated the intimate
chapel in Dover Keep (above) to Becket.

The danger presented by Becket-style gestures was a

tendency to incite clerical insistence on church rights more
than clerics personally thought prudent. In 2005, The BBC
History Magazine branded Becket as the 12th century's
worst British villain and the "founder of gesture politics".
His disservice to Christianity is palpable.

Recently, 12 states and 13 special interest groups brought a

landmark case against the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA). They claimed that the US government had a
legal duty, under the Clean Air Act of 1970, to restrict
greenhouse gas emissions. In turn, the EPA argued that the
1970 Act did not provide powers to impose limits, because CO 2 was not deemed a pollutant. In an
incredulous interpretation of law, the Supreme Court's majority opinion ruled that CO2 & other
greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act (1970). Was the spirit of the 1970 law
written with global warming in mind? Water vapour is a major contributor to the green house
effect. Both CO2 & H2O are products of biological respiration. Classification as pollutants seems
incomprehensible.
Though the US Congress has been slow to legislate in
favour of anthropogenic global warming evidence,
the legislature needs to function within the intended
confines of democratic compromise. Within a
functioning democracy, compromise ensures
moderate & balanced solutions. Courts cannot
govern; it is not their function. Also, the Supreme
Court cannot substitute itself for a failed Executive,
as much as I disapprove of Bush's presidency.
Usurping legislative power "on the grounds that there
is no other way to be rid of an acknowledged evil" is
inexcusable and a moral fallacy that the end justifies
the means.

The masses are not impervious to rational argument.

The danger presented by special interest groups is
that they unleash commotion for their cause, while
only representing a small fraction of the electorate.
"Enlightened", elite groups of Nietzsche supermen
should never be empowered to force decisions on
behalf of the electorate in the supposed public
interest. Whether global warming is largely
anthropogenic or not, meet the new sultans of spin.