So Fidelis was too good and too ethical to be a successful lawyer. Oh, he tried, but the only people that appreciated him were people who were too poor to pay him. Here are some of the traits that made Fidelis a very unpopular attorney:

1. He never spoke ill of, defamed, undermined, or discouraged any fellow attorneys–even and especially those whom he opposed. His wealthier clients therefore dropped Fidelis as a lightweight.
2. He never dragged cases out in order to charge his clients bigger fees–which also meant that his opposing attorneys (of whom he never said anything negative) ended up with shorter cases (and lesser fees)–and of course they hated him.
3. He advocated for the poor. So the people who ran things despised him and regarded him as a threat.

Fidelis discovered that his love of justice was in fact a handicap in the legal profession. So he quit (a forced retirement, really, but let’s give him some benefit of the doubt here) being a lawyer, and started being a wine-making friar. He was neither the first nor the last attorney to turn to some combination of religion and alcohol.

Next up, Fidelis discovered that he could be as wildly unpopular as a religious as an attorney–even more so. His fellow friars convinced him that he should go forth and preach the true (read “Roman Catholic”) faith among the Calvinists in his area. (We can discuss Calvinism another time–for now, we’ll say that they were and are followers of the teachings of John Calvin, a Protestant with strong convictions; Calvin is to Presbyterians what John Wesley is to Methodists.) Well, the Calvinists that Fidelis came upon (and proclaimed to them that they were not following the True Faith and were in fact heretics in danger of hell-fire) took swords and knives to him and butchered him where he stood, shouting that their actions were “to punish him for his many journeys into those parts to preach to them.” It was a lasting punishment, as Fidelis died from these wounds.

Now Butler offers up a sort-of happy ending–after subsequent warring drove out a lot of the Calvinists, the main pastor in that area had a change of heart, apologized for the gang-style execution of Fidelis, renounced his Calvinist heresy, and came back to Catholicism (though to my modern ear, that sounds less like a change of heart and more like a desire to save his own skin).

As the world measures these things, Fidelis was a failure. His law practice imploded. He made only one convert to (his brand of) Christianity, and even that was posthumous. Yet Fidelis–as suggested by his named–was faithful. He worked hard to pursue justice while playing fair. He worked hard to proclaim the truth of God-as-he-understood-Him. I have no doubt but that Fidelis worked hard to make the best wine he could.

Fidelis was a success precisely because he lived an authentic life. Fits and starts, yes. Failures and startling disappointments, yes. And then a bloody, brutal end. What made him successful is that he was as Fidelis as he could be, every second of every day. He was the person God made him to be.

Nothing more shows faith, nothing else matters.