A Man for All Seasons
Acceptable with guidance. Age: 14+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Bolt gives a great stage portrait of Saint Thomas More choosing death over a false oath, and teens feel the cost. The reservation matters. Bolt was an agnostic and wrote More as a hero of the private self. The real More died for the truth about the Church and the papacy. Worldly churchmen and Cromwell's scorn for conscience are on stage, and the play shows them as wrong. Tell your teen what Bolt left out.
For parents
For readers 14 and up, and best read aloud in parts as a family with teens. Ask what More means by conscience, then read CCC 1776 to 1794 together. Ask whether More died for himself or for the Church. Ask who the Common Man is and whether we are like him.