Let me give a little background...
St Thomas Becket was the king's man. He became friends with the King and was known to go carousing with him, participating and all forms of debauchery. However, at the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury the king had an idea. He would appoint his friend Thomas Becket as Archbishop and then have complete control over the church.
Beckett was hastily ordained a priest, having already been ordained a deacon many years before, and then the following day he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Throughout this process something changed in Archbishop Beckett's life and he became God’s man.
The issue that has caused some Anglicans to call him the patron saint of paedophilia was his response to the murder of a priest at the hands of one of the Norman nobles. The priest in question was accused of deflowering a maiden, or in other words rape, and was being held by the nobleman for his crimes. The issue was that before he could be tried in the Civil Court he had to have been tried in an ecclesiastical Court. However, the nobleman executed him before he was able to be tried in the ecclesiastical Court.
In response to this miscarriage of ecclesiastical Justice, the Archbishop of Canterbury excommunicated the nobleman. King Henry and Archbishop Thomas Becket then began what has become a significant fight between the church and the state.
The argument made by some Anglicans is that this is essentially the same thing that the Roman Catholic Church did with the sex abuse cases that have been made public over the past several years. That is quite simply a massive stretch and an erroneous view of the historical facts.
The Roman Catholic Church covered up sex abuse. St Thomas Becket was not going to do that. He simply wanted the priest to be tried in an ecclesiastical Court first! To make the claim that this is the same thing is in my mind completely irresponsible and outright offensive!
This is the same kind of historical revisionism that “woke” historians use to discredit the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other key historical figures. Just recently the same kind of argument has been employed by Progressive Evangelical Biblical Scholars to suggest that King David raped Bathsheba.
The truth of the matter is that St. Thomas Becket is a hero of the faith. He defended the rights of the Church over the rights of the Civil Authority. The issue facing the Roman Catholic Church today is a completely different one. They failed to do anything about the sex abuse right under their nose. Not only did they not report it to the Civil Authority, but they didn't even deal with it ecclesiastically. St. Thomas Becket was going to do the right thing, but was unable to do so because the civil magistrate took Justice into his own hands.
The bottom line is that anyone who misrepresents a good man in this way should be held accountable for it. We need to call “woke historical revisionism” what it is, and not allow for it to destroy the Good deeds of Godly men!
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