Given your explanation of the Spanish situation, I’d have thought that you’d have been able to see the situation for Catholics in England after “Regnans in Excelsis” as a similar sort of phenomenon.
Or is your point that everybody should have submitted to the greatly misunderstood Spanish?
The situation surrounding Regnans in Excelsis was a mess, partly because Pope Leo X declared King Henry VIII the “Defender of the Faith” before King Henry VIII separated England from Rome. Catherine of Aragon (Henry’s first wife) was also a “Defender of the Faith” in her own right, which was passed down to their daughter Mary I, when she became queen.
But mainly, it became a mess due to the selfish policies of King Henry VIII & his mistreatment of his daughters. Because he wanted a son so bad, he divorced wives and executed others. He also started to imprison and/or execute Catholic noblemen who were trying to persuade him to reunite with Rome.
King Henry’s treatment of Catherine of Aragon & Catholics greatly disturbed their daughter, Mary, who remained a devout Catholic and was often sick. She was not allowed to visit her mother and Henry declared Mary illegitimate for many years.
When Queen Mary I became queen, she vowed to allow religious tolerance and allow both Catholic and Protestants to worship as they pleased. She restored communion between the Church of England with Rome after many consolations with the protestants.
However, after she had a false pregnancy, she fell into depression and believed that God was punishing her for being nice to heretics. So she revived the Heresy Acts which were put into place by King Richard II, King Henry IV, and King Henry V (which were repealed by King Henry VIII & King Edward VI). Under that law, she then proceeded to force protestants to convert to be executed. Now known as Bloody Mary by the protestants, opposition to her and Rome grew. Even people who were indifferent began to hate the Church due to Mary’s actions.
After Mary died, Parliament’s first action was to end communion with Rome and establish Elizabeth as head of the Church of England. But Elizabeth didn’t enact that law until 1570, partly because of influence from her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, Philip, Mary I’s widower, and because she had no problem with private Catholic worship.
However, when she finally enacted the law in 1570, that triggered official action from Rome. From Rome’s point of view, Mary, Queen of Scots was the proper heir to Mary I, not Elizabeth, who was an illegitimate child. So when Elizabeth ended communion with Rome (after Mary I restored it) AND when the Vatican believed that northern rebels had been successful, the Vatican issued Regnans in Excelsis because the “Defender of the Faith” was NOT defending the faith.
The Pope’s ill-advised actions further infuriated Parliament, and they pushed for further actions against Catholics (which Elizabeth tried to mitigate) then started forcing Catholics to convert, die or leave England because she wanted one religion in England (and to settle the religious fighting among the nobles). All this lead to a greater push to for a coup to place Mary Queen of Scots on the thrown from English Catholics and from the Northern English and Scots. This then made it treason to attempt to convert someone to the Catholic faith.
But the truth is that ALL of this was started by and for the most part moved forward by secular interests and NOT purely religious interests.
God Bless.
