I’d blame cardinal woosley for that. Or Henry the 8th. I actually had a co-worker who was raised anglican and considered himself catholic. I was shocked. I just never knew that’s how them considered themselves.
I’m kinda wondering on the whole apostolic succession. I guess you can have it if you are in schism with the church like the orthodox, but not if you totally rebel like the lutherans and anglicans.
Woosley, as is correctly insinuated by the superb play and film “A Man For All Seasons”, could not act and seemed to be stuck between two warring parties. He was perhaps just the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. He really possibly cannot be held responsible because the circumstances were not of his control. Essentially he really had no power when placed in that situation, If he had of opposed the King he would have ended up dead, at the same time he was Catholic and in order to serve God best he could not give the king the decision the king wanted. He was stuck in a sticky situation.
His final line in the play/film seems to well sum that up, He laments not being Catholic enough to have turned the pressure around on the King, in his jail Cell he says something along the lines of “If I had of followed God and not King, I would not have been left to die in this horrid place.”
Actually while Henry the 8th is to be blaimed for the eventual cutting of ties(as yes the rot had set in because of his actions) he seems to take the focus off the real person who perminantly severed ties with Rome. Elizabeth the first is to me more responsible, she was the one who forced through the specific act that perminantly severed the ties with Rome. It was not entirly Henry himself and the Church in England was very much still saveable when Queen Mary took the throne.
I do not agree with the well done but not quite accurate portrayal of elizabeth as a “heroine” in the Cate Blanchett starring 1998 movie. It’s not that great history and blurrs it. At the time of her coronation England was NOT openly Anti-catholic(Until her Reign), and Queen Mary’s reign was NOT negatively accepted at the time by the majority of the English like the film seems to imply.
Mary had in fact sucessfully turned public opinion around and had reunited the Church in England to the Papacy(something the film glosses over in order to cater to the incorrect anti-catholic view of Queen Mary’s reign), but had not provided for the future(by having an heir) and had not compleatly quashed the effects of the reformation in england partly because of the way she had in fact swiftly turned around public opinion, especially toward the tail end of her reign when it was clear the next Monarch would not be Catholic.
I do not agree with her open(but at the time not entirly denounced by the public opinion until well after her Reign) persecution of Protestants(The sad flaw of her plan to return to Rome), but most certainly agreed with her intense Catholic faith and her zeal for reuniting the church with Rome.
One thing I did agree with in the Film was Geffory Rush’s portrayal and what I believe was the correct insinuation that his character(and by association Elizabeth herself) was so ruthless as to have rigged the vote of the Bishops of the then re-communicated Catholic Church in England.