Has the Catholic Church ever received compensation from the Church of England?

[Baho]

Funny enough I was a Calvinist protestant before I attended a Battle of Britain ceremony in Lincoln Cathedral. Clearly Anglican owned now, but the beauty of it brought me to conversion into the Catholic Church. Thanks Anglicans!

Compensation for the theft of Catholic Property would be pretty sick honestly but not nearly as sick as all of the Anglicans just becoming Catholic.

 

[Kaninchen]

I suppose the question to ask is who actually owned the Catholic churches and monasteries in England before the reformation?

You’ve been told several times, all land belonged to the Crown, it was ‘held’, freehold or leasehold by other people and entities but ownership resides/resided in the Crown.

 

[LilyM]

Krisdun:

By the Roman Catholic church? Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church? If land was held by bishops or parish priests then my understanding would be it belonged to the Catholic diocese.

Exactly, not to the Anglican Diocese who should’ve left Catholics alone and bought or built their own buildings. People with allegiance to the Pope should’ve been allowed to continue in the original buildings like before and everyone else should’ve left.

Of course they had a choice. Even two of your post-Reformation monarchs - Charles II and James II - became Catholic.

Monarchs had a choice, but everyone else did not - they had to submit to whatever the monarch decided.

You do.realise.that during the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth- and as late as the 1740s with Bonnie Prince Charlie - there were revolts against the Protestant Monarchy and indeed Protestantism.itself?

How, pray tell,.were.British people still agitating for restoration of a Catholic King to Britain over 200 years after the founding of the CoE if ‘everyone else’ had no choice but to be Protestant?

 

[ltwin]

If land was held by bishops or parish priests then my understanding would be it belonged to the Catholic diocese.

What Catholic diocese? There were no Catholic dioceses or parishes in England for hundreds of years. Was the land supposed to just wait patiently for new Catholic dioceses to be organized so it can have an owner again?

If land was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then we know who he is today–Justin Welby–and he’s an Anglican. An historical entity doesn’t cease to exist or lose all of its land just because it is no longer in communion with Rome.

And some of these comments betray a misunderstanding about how the Reformation played itself out in the church. There seems to be a belief that there is a hard cut off date for when the English Church ceased to be Catholic and became Anglican. That after this date all the Catholic clergy left their parish churches in protest and new Protestant preachers took over. But this is an illusion.

First, when Henry VIII demanded the English clergy submit to the Royal Supremacy and break from Rome, they did so themselves (either willingly or unwillingly). Yes, there were some clergy who refused, but they were punished either by deposition, imprisonment or execution in some cases. Therefore, the vast majority of Catholic clergy willingly went along with Henry VIII’s split from Rome.

And when Edward VI began his semi-Calvinist reforms, most of the clergy went along in some form or fashion, even if they were secretly still trying to keep alive as much Roman Catholicism as possible. Even with the Elizabethan Settlement, there was never a wholesale rooting out of the Catholic clergy. First, when Liz took the throne, there was already a severe clergy shortage, so deposing a bunch of clerics was out of the question. The clergy within the Church of England evolved slowly into Protestant clergy through natural processes of death and replacement, and some actual rooting out of overtly Catholic clergy.

The point being the Catholic and “Anglican” clergy for much of this process of Reformation were all mixed together in the same institution just trying to figure out how long this round of Reform or Restoration would last. There was no clear cut off between a Catholic church and a new Anglican church because the Church of England as an institution never lost continuity with the medieval English church.

 

[Paul_Edwards]

You’ve been told several times, all land belonged to the Crown, it was ‘held’, freehold or leasehold by other people and entities but ownership resides/resided in the Crown.

Yes but in justice that land when freehold can only be seized in very extreme circumstances. If today the crown or government started randomly taking people’s land of them and saying “you don’t live here anymore” there would be an uproar, and rightly, and no court of human rights would support the act.

 

[PickyPicky]

Yes but in justice that land when freehold can only be seized in very extreme circumstances. If today the crown or government started randomly taking people’s land of them and saying “you don’t live here anymore” there would be an uproar, and rightly, and no court of human rights would support the act

Yes, that’s true, although it is not particularly rare for the state to requisition private property, including land.

 

[Paul_Edwards]

What Catholic diocese? There were no Catholic dioceses or parishes in England for hundreds of years.

And who’s fault was that? The British government.

Was the land supposed to just wait patiently for new Catholic dioceses to be organized so it can have an owner again?

No, in the first place it should remained with the Catholic Diocese and new Anglican diocese should’ve formed rather than this. But because that never happened, the land should be given to Catholic Dioceses now.

If land was owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then we know who he is today–Justin Welby

“Bishop” in inverted commers, not even validly ordained or consecrated. So now this land belongs to a lay man in bishops clothes. How unjust.

Yes, there were some clergy who refused, but they were punished either by deposition, imprisonment or execution in some cases. Therefore, the vast majority of Catholic clergy willingly went along with Henry VIII’s split from Rome.

The ones who refused rightly owned the buildings and were mistreated and the ones who submitted were joining another church and so should’ve walked out of those buildings.

The clergy within the Church of England evolved slowly into Protestant clergy

Reminds me of the phrase “how to boil a frog? Turn the heat up gradually, and it will not realize”. This was an injustice through a very deceptive process.

There seems to be a belief that there is a hard cut off date for when the English Church ceased to be Catholic and became Anglican. That after this date all the Catholic clergy left their parish churches in protest and new Protestant preachers took over.

The Church of England was founded on 3rd November 1534 with the Act of Supremacy. What Catholic Clergy did was refuse to agree that the King is above the Pope in the Church, and as you say some were killed as a result, maybe some temporally went unnoticed hopefully. Those who agreed otherwise were Anglican, whatever they called themself.

 

[Kaninchen]

If today

If today, for you, is during the dissolution of the monasteries, you need to stop living in the past.

 

[Kaninchen]

not particularly rare for the state to requisition private property

There was quite a lot of it about, if I remember from school history. Attainder - when nobles lost their lands when accused of various offences against the Crown.

 

[PickyPicky]

Or 1940 when land was requisitioned for airfields, tank training, etc.

 

[Kaninchen]

Or 1940 when land was requisitioned for airfields, tank training, etc.

Indeed but I was trying to focus on the Late Medieval/Early Modern eras.

 

[PickyPicky]

Indeed but I was trying to focus on the Late Medieval/Early Modern eras

Yes, and your example was particularly apt.

 

[Krisdun]

There were no Catholic dioceses or parishes in England for hundreds of years. Was the land supposed to just wait patiently for new Catholic dioceses to be organized so it can have an owner again?

At the time immediately before the reformation there were Catholic dioceses in England - for example the Diocese of Canterbury headed by then Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

 

[John_Martin]

No we atheists were here first. First there were people, then there was religion.

Not really - Adam walked and talked with God. Abel sacrificed suitably. Then Cain introduced defect into right religion as did Ham after Noah. Religion became futility over time. Then atheism honestly faced the false gods of Cain and Ham and the protestants.

And if the Church requires compensation from protesters, then the Church would set itself up for identical “forgiveness” from the Father. Christ will not sue Pilate.

 

[Jbrady]

At the time immediately before the reformation there were Catholic dioceses in England - for example the Diocese of Canterbury headed by then Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

If you really want to know about how the reformation went down in England, an internet forum is the wrong place to find out. The subject is far too complex, and requires reading actual history textbooks, not only about what was happening in England, but also about what was happening in Rome (it was the rock-bottom of Catholic Church history) and what was happening elsewhere on the continent, especially the Protestant reformations.

Your questions are far too naive to be answerable in any meaningful way, and there are no simple answers to them.
You are going to get nowhere if you continue to view this as black and white, good or evil, Catholics were the good guys and Protestants were the bad guys. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and doesn’t fit into the neat story you would like to hear.

A good book to get you started by one of the top experts in the field:

https://www.amazon.com/English-Refo...YV4FP9DZ99N&psc=1&refRID=G41TWGT1RYV4FP9DZ99N

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, just to get you started.

 

[Krisdun]

Regardless of who the bad guys or good guys were (both sides were not friendly to each other) the situation in England/UK is as it stands. It could just as easily have turned out the other way where a Catholic monarch pressed for the re-emergence of the Catholic faith in England leading to suppression of Protestantism but that has not been the end outcome. It could still happen in future we don’t know and then all sorts of issues could arise…

In addition we are seeing potential cracks in the CoE today which could lead it to split as well as some members converting to Catholicism.

 

[GKMotley]

Off the shelves here:

DIckens/THE ENGLISH REFORMATION, Haigh (ed.)/THE ENGLISH REFORMATION REVISED, Scarisbrick/HENRY VIII (best Hank bio extant) and Scarisbrick/THE REFORMATION AND THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, Duffy/THE STRIPPING OF THE ALTARS and a short ton of other stuff available elsewhere.

 

[PickyPicky]

At the time immediately before the reformation there were Catholic dioceses in England - for example the Diocese of Canterbury headed by then Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

Before, but not after. When the English Church, and all its possessions, had become independent of the Pope, there were no Catholic dioceses in England – not until 1850.

 

[Jbrady]

Off the shelves here:

Read Henry VIII and Stripping of the Altars, and many more. Weirdly, my interest in the period started rather obliquely, when a student of mine moved to Deptford and we started obsessively researching the history of the place, in which Henry and his successors had a major role. Bermondsey Abbey got me interested in the English Reformation. I already had a good grasp of Church history, so I had a good foundation to build on.

 

[PickyPicky]

Ah, much of my youth was misspent in Deptford, and it positively reeks with (a) history and (b) Deptford Creek.