There is little dispute that More, Fisher and other English Catholics were put to death because of their loyalty to the Vatican. They have become symbols of Catholic heroism in the face of persecution to many. But with that said, can they objectively be considered true symbols of religious freedom?

Enter the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In anticipation of their annual Fortnight of Freedom (June 21 to July 4), the USCCB is set to begin a multi-city tour to display the relics of the se English Catholic martyrs (a relic is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as, "some object, notably part of the body or clothes, remaining as a memorial of a departed saint").

But the long venerated Saint Thomas More was hardly a model of religious freedom. Indeed, during More's chancellorship six English Protestants were burned at the stake for heresy.  English historian John Guy described the chancellor's behavior  in a 1980 article for History Today:

Even more controversial was More's role in events leading up to several burnings for heresy. In close co-operation with Stokesley, More arrested George Constantine for heresy in 1531. Constantine was a dealer in Protestant books, who gave away much information about his fellow reformers before escaping in early December. More had had him imprisoned in the stocks at his house in Chelsea, which he kept in his porter's lodge. But Constantine broke the frame, scaled More's garden wall and fled to Antwerp. Sir Thomas joked in his Apology that he must have fed the heretic properly for him to achieve this feat of strength. Yet More's humour was sadly inappropriate. It was on information gleaned from Constantine that Richard Bayfield, a Benedictine monk and book pedlar, was seized, interrogated by Stokesley and burned at Smithfield. Bayfield had been converted to Lutheranism by Robert Barnes, and when caught had in his possession books by Luther and Zwingli. Being a relapsed heretic, More described him in his Confutation as 'a dog returning to his vomit'. Next Sir Thomas caught a leather-seller named John Tewkesbury, who was also held at Chelsea until tried by Stokesley. On sentence, he was handed back to the secular arm and burned on December 20th, 1531. James Bainham, a Middle Temple lawyer, was then reported to More. Examined by Stokesley at More's house, he was found to own books by Tyndale, Frith and Joy. At first Bainham abjured and performed his penance, but later reaffirmed his Protestant faith. He was tried and burned at the stake in April, 1532. More's apologists cannot thus deny that Sir Thomas was personally involved in detecting three out of the six cases of heresy which resulted in burnings during his chancellorship. Neither was he inactive in two of the remaining cases. He railed in the Confutation at Sir Thomas Hitton, burned at Maidstone in 1530, as 'the devil's stinking martyr' who 'hath taken his wretched soul with him straight from the short fire to the fire everlasting'. He also launched a most irregular Star Chamber investigation into the question of Thomas Bilney's supposed recantation prior to his being burned in the Lollards' Pit in Norwich in August, 1531, using his powers as Lord Chancellor inquisitorially and in a style contrary to the Star Chamber's accepted procedure.

And it is against the backdrop of this revealing historical omission that the USCCB is trying to frame the lives of these two Catholic English noblemen.  Sterling examples of Enlightenment democracy in action, they were not.

In reality, More, Fisher as well as many of their Protestant counterparts, epitomize a long, dark period of religious intolerance, persecution,and warfare in Europe. They were important players at the outset of sectarian violence that stretched from the Reformation until the recent days of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland. This was the time of Catholic and Protestant battling for religious supremacy with the most violent of means. If anything, their example was precisely what the American Founding Fathers rejected when they drafted the First amendment.

As Frederick Clarkson recently observed, "What is religious freedom? It's all about religious and non-religious pluralism. As Thomas Jefferson put it: when one's religious identity `shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.'" This Jeffersonian concept would have been completely alien to either a Thomas More or a John Fisher of the early 16th century. Their goal was not religious freedom and civil equality but the domination of Catholic Orthodoxy.

And that is perhaps the ultimate irony about the tour of the relics. By holding up Thomas More and John Fisher as martyrs for religious freedom the USCCB may actually be revealing their longing for the freedom to oppress.