Saint Thomas à Becket

The 12th century relationship between England's King Henry II and Saint Thomas à Becket has profound significance for events of the last several decades:

one of the major points-of-contention between King Henry II and Archbishop Becket was the attempt by the king to bring 'criminous clerics' under the immediate jurisdiction of the royal courts rather than the ecclesiastical courts. Becket himself had no desire to be lenient with these priests—quite the contrary—but he suspected (rightly, as it turns out) that the king would use the coercive power of the royal courts to threaten church officials with punishment in order to bring them more and more under his control....bishops should not simply 'wash their hands of the problem'...by passing the judgment off to a psychological therapist (as was done before) or by passing the judgment off to a secular tribunal (as is being done now)….

The right approach now should be: 'Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past and get back on the right track by establishing an ecclesiastical court system that can be trusted' (Professor Randall Smith, 6/5/14)

In many cases, the Church has been made vulnerable by the failure of bishops to properly supervise clerics