All the churches in England, Scotland, and Wales were stolen by the monarchy for the Church of England, yes. After Catholics were allowed to practice openly again, we build new ones to replace those taken away.
Good point. The oldest Catholic church in the English colonies was right off my college campus, built ca. 1635, well after the Reformation. The first cathedral in the United States was built in Baltimore, Md in the early 1800s. Here in the USA, the story is different.
I feel your pain.
Yes, a shame. In London, the Westminster Abbey completely unsacred and the Catholic Westminster Cathedral of a dubious taste but full of English Catholics…
It is no theory, Chuck. Henry VIII burned or destroyed most of the Catholic cathedrals and monasteries throughout England. You can go and visit their ruins all over the countryside. The ones he left standing are mostly Anglican now.
Spot on, Juliane, except this. The Church of England was the state church of the American colonies until the War of Independence. Then the Anglicans remaining in the U.S. were in the awkward position of owing religious allegiance to King George III, so they created the present sect as way to be both American and English Protestant.
Ah, yes, thanks for the correction. I tend to think of the Puritans as a different sect from the Anglicans but I suppose that is what they were in spite of their desired reforms.
Completely unsacred is, I think, a bit of an exaggeration. Yes, it is now no longer Catholic, but there are at least 4 daily services held there each day (including 2 communion services) and their choir sings daily every day except Wednesday. Pope Benedict was so impressed after he attended Evensong there that he asked them to sing in Rome last week for the solemnity of St Peter & St Paul.
Not quite. He dissolved almost all of the monasteries but not the Cathedrals - in fact he converted five edifices that had been Abbey churches to the existing 16 cathedrals at that time. Other churches later became Cathedrals. The iconaclasm that is often refferred to, took place much later during the Commonwealth when England was governed by Puritans. After the restoration much enrichment was done to many Cathedrals.
There are 22 Catholic Cathedrals in England and Wales and 42 Anglican Cathedrals in England (6 in Wales)
Then I tell you my London Experience. When my kids were small we lived in Camden Town for 1 month in a house exchange. Then, on Sunday we went to Mass and we found a beautiful Gothic Church and moved towards it, after a limping old lady. She entered and we found a couple there in an empty church. I was surprised as it was 5 minutes to mass. He said that it was not a Catholic Church and the lady said that though she was Catholic she would not bulge one inch as she was exhausted and God is the same everywhere. I was shy of asking but I had to for the man was looking to me. With 1000 excuses I asked whether that was a Catholic church and every politely He showed me the way down the road and told me, who was still muttering excuses, that that was no problem. It was a High Anglican Church (??? if I remember well).
I am not sure about the relevance of your Camden Town experience, but I suspect the church you visited was the Anglican Church of St Michael - once on the point of closure but today a thriving parish (including many Catholics who dislike the rather ugly Catholic churchthere but that is no excuse, they should find another Catholic church). I am surprised about your comment on the singing. Catholics in London are poor singers, unlike Anglicans.
The C of E was not the established church in every colony, only some. Massachussetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut were all officially Congregational; Delaware, Georgia, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania all had no established church; the rest were Anglican. Additionally, there were significant numbers of Quakers in Pennsylvania, Anabaptists in Rhode Island, and Catholics in Maryland.
NO, most of what we call Puritans had already left Anglicanism for Anabaptist and other sects by the 18th century. They considered Anglicanism too much like “popery.”