Any Episcopalians in the house?

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GKC is probably right. He usually is. To jump from that to an assertion that the charges against both were trumped up is not logical. Of course the charges may have been trumped up. It was the 16th Century. Kings tended to get their own way.
Either way, if the annulments were fixed and the outcome determined, why bother with the executions/arrests?
 
I’m always baffled when some Roman Catholics want to go down the road of judging the character of King Henry VIII or any other leader, theologian, or whatever else. If we are to judge Anglicanism by the morality of Henry, then perhaps we should talk about the behavior, actions, and morality of some of the popes??? Some of the renaissance popes make Henry look like a choir boy. 😉
 
Either way, if the annulments were fixed and the outcome determined, why bother with the executions/arrests?
Read GKC above. Two were annulled, two executed for treason, two survived the king.

I think the general approach of the Independent article, considering that it was just a newspaper article, is fair.
 
Read GKC above. Two were annulled, two executed for treason, two survived the king.

I think the general approach of the Independent article, considering that it was just a newspaper article, is fair.
That’s wrong. Two annulled, one died, two executed for treason, one survived as Henry’s widow.
 
Either way, if the annulments were fixed and the outcome determined, why bother with the executions/arrests?
The charge of treason, in committing adultery. Anne Boleyn’s and Henry’s marriage was declared null by Cranmer two days before her execution, on the grounds of an impediment of affinity arising from Henry’s prior dalliance with Anne’s sister Mary.

Catherine Howard was merely executed. The evidence of adultery was far stronger and no attempt was made to procure a decree of nullity, which would have been easily procured.

.

GKC
 
My, your grasp of the relevant history is shaky.

Henry got a decree of nullity from his Archbishop of Canterbury, shortly before he formally broke with Rome, with respect to Katherine of Aragon.

While he had the occasional mistress (Elizabeth Blount in particular), none were murdered. Wife 2 and wife 5 were accused of treason, convicted and executed. #5 was more likely guilty than #2.

To round out the wives, #3 died following childbirth, #4 (a quicky) ended with another decree of nullity and Henry saw her no more. #6 (and #4) outlived him.
"Archbishop Cranmer declared Henry’s first marriage null. He had no power to do so, but on the day that he was made Archbishop of Canterbury he made a private oath not to submit to the authority of the pope. Anne was crowned queen. Pope Clement finally condemned the divorce. "*

catholic.com/magazine/articles/the-great-divorce

Great article linked above.
 
I’m always baffled when some Roman Catholics want to go down the road of judging the character of King Henry VIII or any other leader, theologian, or whatever else. If we are to judge Anglicanism by the morality of Henry, then perhaps we should talk about the behavior, actions, and morality of some of the popes??? Some of the renaissance popes make Henry look like a choir boy. 😉
I don’t believe it is so much of a discussion of a moral issue, though yes morally the things he did were wrong, but how the moral issues of Henry VIII caused the separation of England from Catholicism.

God bless. 🙂
 
Catherine was a randy individual. Her case was far stronger than the one agaisnt Anne. But Henry wanted Anne dead. Dead she was.

The article is mostly accurate, if superficial, by my reading. Save for the idea that nothing spectacular would have occurred if Henry had been successful in his Great Matter, re: Anne.

What Henry did was sever the relationship between the Church in England and the RCC. This was something that, in some form, was going to have happened eventually, whether Henry had ever met la Boleyn, or no, or whether he had sired a rugby team of legitimate, virile, and healthy heirs. The relationship between the Church, and the Throne, in England had been a contentious one for several hundred years, minimum, with the Throne/Parliament maneuvering to increase the government’s power over the Church in England, and reduce the power of any external agency over it, from outside the kingdom (i.e., Rome). You can trace the struggle in a number of Acts and Royal decrees, running back to the First Statute of Westminster, and culminating in the Henrician Acts in 1534. Henry (and Catherine and Anne and Clement and Pius and Cromwell and Wolsey and Charles, etc, etc) was the occasion of the split from Rome; the cause was much deeper, and lay in nascent, emerging nationalism, as much as Hanks’ dynastic and hormonal issues.

Of course, history is a cloudy subject. But so I read it.

GKC
 
I’m always baffled when some Roman Catholics want to go down the road of judging the character of King Henry VIII or any other leader, theologian, or whatever else. If we are to judge Anglicanism by the morality of Henry, then perhaps we should talk about the behavior, actions, and morality of some of the popes??? Some of the renaissance popes make Henry look like a choir boy. 😉
Folks who lived in the 16th century often acted like folks living in the 16th century, in their respective offices and roles. People are people, and were then. too.

“(Henry) was no spectacular profligate, no Don Juan, no sophisticated student of the Ars Amoris; and compared with Francis I or Charles V, or many English kings before and after him, he was almost modesty itself” (Scarisbrick, HENRY VIII, p. 430.Scarisbrick’s book is, as I have very, very often mentioned here, the best single work on what was going on in Henry’s day. Scarisbrisck is RC).

GKC
 
the cause was much deeper, and lay in nascent, emerging nationalism, as much as Hanks’ dynastic and hormonal issues.
German nationalism was also undoubtedly an important factor in why many German princes along with their subjects followed Luther out of the Catholic Church.
 
German nationalism was also undoubtedly an important factor in why many German princes along with their subjects followed Luther out of the Catholic Church.
Indeed. But I rarely discuss Contenental matters.

GKC
 
I’m always baffled when some Roman Catholics want to go down the road of judging the character of King Henry VIII or any other leader, theologian, or whatever else. If we are to judge Anglicanism by the morality of Henry, then perhaps we should talk about the behavior, actions, and morality of some of the popes??? Some of the renaissance popes make Henry look like a choir boy. 😉
We are discussing the once “defender of the faith”, so not just the same as Pope Rodrigo Borgia.
 
We are discussing the once “defender of the faith”, so not just the same as Pope Rodrigo Borgia.
Just how Henry got the* Defensor Fidei * is a fascinating tidbit (lots of history is). I’ve posted it here often.

But surely Alexander VI (inter alia) is a defender of the Faith, of sorts.

GKC
 
But they do. The RC church issues tens of thousands of such decrees a year. A majority of them, I understand, in the United States.
The Catholic Church recognizes the difference between a marriage that never validly happened, and a valid marriage that people seek to dissolve, to enact a new one. In some places, government authorities also recognize the distinction - it’s not just a religious thing. Protestant groups once accepted anullment, but not divorce. Over the years, Protestant groups accepted a position similar to the secular society on divorce. The RCC has held to the same, core Christian standard. Ironically, the RCC holds Protestant marriages in higher regard than the Protestant churches that performed them. They are indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
 
The Catholic Church recognizes the difference between a marriage that never validly happened, and a valid marriage that people seek to dissolve, to enact a new one. In some places, government authorities also recognize the distinction - it’s not just a religious thing. Protestant groups once accepted anullment, but not divorce. Over the years, Protestant groups accepted a position similar to the secular society on divorce. The RCC has held to the same, core Christian standard. Ironically, the RCC holds Protestant marriages in higher regard than the Protestant churches that performed them. They are indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
And even more ironically, had C.S. Lewis been a RC, when he was faced with marrying Joy Davidman, the process of seeking a decree of nullity with respect to Joy’s marriage to William Gresham, he would have had a road to take, based on Gresham’s preexisting marriage to another, when he wed her. The CoE, 60 years ago, had no such path for him to take.

Things change.

GKC
 
The Catholic Church recognizes the difference between a marriage that never validly happened, and a valid marriage that people seek to dissolve, to enact a new one. In some places, government authorities also recognize the distinction - it’s not just a religious thing. Protestant groups once accepted anullment, but not divorce. Over the years, Protestant groups accepted a position similar to the secular society on divorce. The RCC has held to the same, core Christian standard. Ironically, the RCC holds Protestant marriages in higher regard than the Protestant churches that performed them. They are indissoluble in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
Good point.
 
Which, of course, was H8’s claim: that the dispensation with regard to his marriage to C of A (which offended the regulations regarding affinity, since she was his sister-in-law) had been improperly granted under constraint.
Missed this.

His argument that Julius’ dispensation was contrary to the Levetical prohibition was that that was jus divinum, not Church law, and thus it was ultra vires, even for a papal dispensation.

It was not a particularly strong causa, but it was average for the sort of thing, in the day. There was a stronger argument in an undispensed impediment of the public honesty, but he refused Wolsey’s advice on that. It wouldn’t have made any difference.

GKC
 
When the lack of clean air and clean water are TEC’s version of mortal sins, it isn’t my version of social justice that needs to be challenged. I dare you to find ANY mention of repentance in TEC’s presiding bishop’s “Lenten message”. There is none.
So polluting the air and water God gave us, thus poisoning the lives of our brothers and sisters around the world and those to come after us, is not a grave sin?

Yes, I think your version does need to be challenged.

And I’m not going to get suckered into defending anything said by the Presiding Bishop in general terms. Sometimes her overzealous critics read too much or too little into her statements and I take up the cudgels for her. But I haven’t read her Lenten message.

I think you may overestimate the importance of the PB. Though to be fair, some Episcopalians worry that she may share your error 😛

Edwin
 
  1. The Episcopal Church’s position on abortion is scandalous, and while the opinions mentioned in the first link are atypically extreme, I have heard Episcopal laypeople say some pretty horrifying things along those lines. I have not heard such sentiments from priests myself, though most Episcopal clergy are politically prochoice. Two of the priests whose ministry I’ve experienced (the only two whose parishes I have formally joined, and that is not a coincidence) were strongly opposed to abortion, though the first of them (who eventually left the Episcopal Church) clearly didn’t feel free to express his full views from the pulpit for fear of being divisive without the Episcopal Church’s authority behind him, and the second was, at least when I first met him, opposed to a political ban on abortion.
  2. Again, the opinions expressed by the bishop of Washington are not typical of what I’ve heard from Episcopal priests (actually I did hear them from a C of E priest in Romania when I was first considering becoming Anglican, and they made me seriously reconsider the whole idea), but they certainly are to be found.
  3. This is the poorest example, since the pagan clergy couple were defrocked and are no longer Episcopalians.
Edwin
 
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