Lessons for today in 'Seasons'

In the end, it wasn't so much the seven months of endless news coverage and commentary that made up my mind about President Clinton's troubles. It was a two-hour work of fiction based on real events that happened centuries ago.

If you're still struggling with the issues surrounding the President, I recommend that you go out and rent "A Man for All Seasons," the 1966 movie that won six Oscars, including best picture.

When I happened to see it again on a cable station recently, I was astonished at how much of the film's content relates to issues Americans have been discussing all year: honor, perjury, the sexual appetites of a nation's leader and what loyalty is owed to someone who has dishonored his office.

King's appetites

As the story opens, the monarch has a problem: no male heir. His solution is to dissolve his marriage to Catherine and marry the more comely -- and presumably more fertile -- Anne Boleyn. But he runs up against a major obstacle -- the Catholic Church, which will not permit his divorce and remarriage, especially since it had already bent the rules in his favor by permitting him to marry his brother's widow.

As the play unfolds, we encounter many of the same types of characters we have seen on television news shows during 1998: sycophants to whom the King can do no wrong; power-seekers who hope to curry favor by swallowing their beliefs; weak men who have no beliefs to begin with.

Standing against them is Thomas More, who holds fast to his faith and principles. For doing so, he pays the ultimate price: He is beheaded after a trial in which perjured testimony is permitted. He was later canonized and is now St. Thomas More.

Connections

When you think about moral standards and what values Americans want to preserve, consider More's castigation of those who have acceded to Henry's wishes: "You have given in because the religion of this country means nothing to you one way or the other. [You] would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount. But you'll labor like Thomas Aquinas over a dog's pedigree."

Honest man

The trouble with More, the King tells him, is that "you are honest. What's more to the purpose, you're known to be honest. There are those who follow me because I wear the crown, and there are those who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I am their lion, and there is a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves -- and there is you."

Caught between his conscience and going along with the crowd that followed their leader, More chose his conscience and eventually ended his silence.

Americans today don't spend a lot of time arguing about canine pedigrees, but they do spend a lot of time talking about home run hitters, the new TV season and who's got the best burger in town.

We would be a better country if we all spent more time thinking and talking about honor, conscience, faith and virtue. To get a start, watch "A Man for All Seasons." You might find that it has more to say about the end of the 20th century than it does about the early 16th.

(09-24-98)

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