Saint John Fisher held the primacy of the pope to be so much a diveinely established principle of Christian unity as to lay down his life in its defense.
He tried to protect that unity at all cost because it manifested in his eyes the unity of life which is established between God and man through the reception of the sacraments, all pivoted on the Eucharistic sacrifice as celebrated by the priests.
Fisher's sustained argument on behalf of the sacramental priesthood, which Luther was resolved to void of its meaning, goes therefore hand in hand with Fisher's defense of the unity of the Church, which is embodied in its priestly or hierarchical organization, resting on Peter and his successors.
In these ecumenical times Fisher's book should be a sober reminder about some basic spiritual realities that form the backbone of the Church as established by Jesus Christ.
In the Introduction by Father Stanley L. Jaki, Saint John Fisher's book is put in the context of one of the greates ecclesiological contestations the Church had to face. Father Jaki, a world-renowned historian of science, is also widely know for his monograph, Les tendance nouvelles de l'ecclésiogie (reprinted during Vatican II), and his books on the papacy: And on this Rock: The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants and The Keys of the Kingdom: A Tool's Witness to the Truth. He is an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the recipient of the Templeton Prize for 1987.
(xxviii + 182 pp. 1996.) $15.00 + S + H