How do Protestants rationalize King Henry VIII, and his selfish non-spiritual motivation?

[Cheshangle]

I’m glad to hear that. I lived in the south of Ireland for four years and was an active member of the Church of Ireland. Relations with the RC Church were very good, and I was most impressed with the many RC priests I met.

 

[Cheshangle]

He may not have been a Protestant but he certainly was no longer a Catholic. You cannot start your own church, and be excommunicated by the Pope and still be a member of the church. Obviously, he protested strongly against the authority of the Pope which is what Luther did. Sounds like a Protestant to me.

He certainly considered hiself a catholic. Elizabeth I did not consider herself to be one. She was a Protestant queen who succeeded to the throne of what was still, in 1558, a Roman Catholic nation.

 

[Cheshangle]

A king’s role, who is temporal is not the seat of Peter, which was established by Christ…Peter…the rock…along with the Apostles.

Yes there have been corrupt popes…but what people are failing here over and over again, is that conditions change…look at the history of ancient Christianity to the Mediterranean to Europe and the East…invasions and destruction…the swing between temporal and ecclesial powers…all these require constant redefining of roles…

Since the Reformation, the Council of Trent resolved parameters of the Papacy that needed reform, but the Rock of Peter is in the Church. The Catholic Church has apostolic succession, the Holy Spirit comes at Mass through the ordained priest’s hands to change the bread and wine into the Blood of Christ…

The seat of Peter holds the keys to the Blood of Christ…irregardless of the humanity of those who have occupied it. When that apostolic succession is severed, there is no succession of the Apostles in the laying of hands at ordination.

What Anglicans/Episcopalians are seeking when they return to the Roman Catholic Church is essentially authority.

How do you know what Anglicans/Episcopalians are seeking when they “return” to the RC Church?

What you are saying sounds sweeping and simplistic. I know about a dozen RCs who have moved to Anglicanism, and their motives have been varied. I dare say that’s also the case in moves the other way.

 

[KathleenGee]

I read today of an Episcopal parish in Bladensburg, Maryland, an entire parish, returning to the Catholic faith. They have been praying for the bishop of Rome for a number of months now.

I have read of a number of Anglican priests coming into the fold. The reports about Anglican priests entering the Roman Catholic Church comes up every so many months or so ongoing in the United States.

I would say the bottom line of alot of contention towards the Roman Catholic Church is the issue of authority.

I have heard the story of an Anglican priest who entered the Roman Catholic Church because he wanted to preach with the definitive.

I know of Roman Catholics who switched to the Episcopal Church because of the RC’s stand on homosexual activity and women ordination.

 

[RevDrNorth]

My grandfather, God love him, was an Episcopalian. He would say he’d never be a Catholic because he would not tell his sins to a man. And I would be thinking that I would never be an Episcopalian because I wouldn’t be in a religion founded by a man who beheaded two of his wives. Never made sense to me either.

LOL…an Episcopalian might counter that the founder of his faith was Jesus Christ. In fact, I remember an Episcopalian who used to say she told her Catholic friends that the difference between their two denominations was that Catholic believed the Pope was it and the Episcopalians believed it was Jesus Christ.

King Henry had issues but so did scores of Popes (some really serious evil).

We need to not engage in the silly back and forth and focus on meatier issues to do with theology, authority and so on. All of which is complicated by perspective. The Anglican Communion believes it is the third branch (EO & RCC being the other two), the RC believes the Anglican Communion is in schism as is the Eastern Orthodox, AND the Eastern Orthodox believe they are the church founded by Jesus Christ from which the Bishop of Rome went into schism (effectually becoming the first Protestant).

 

[KathleenGee]

Pray pray pray…the Church will be greatly strengthened and divisions healed when the Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans return…

The Keys to the Blood of Christ are found upon the Rock of Peter, irregardless of individual and corrupt popes. History bears truth that issues surrounding the papacy have been reformed when considering the type of men voted into that position. I think when Protestants see that reform was made, it will hopefully remove such obsessions of the past.

Divisions cause dissipation and take away from all of our witness.

 

[xihha]

Your second paragraph is incorrect. Most English people attend church occasionally, even if only for baptisms, weddings and funerals.

I’m not sure that Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are an important part of English culture. But soccer certainly is. Indian food is now as popular as fish & chips.

You’re right most english people have attended churches for baptisms, weddings and funerals and most english kids are also taken to church at christmas as most schools join in with the carol services but that is more to do with tradition and because its the english way to do things rather than anything to do with wanting to go to church.

Sherlock Holmes and James Bond are a part of english culture, depends on your age as to how important they are but you would be hard pushed to find a single english person who didnt at least know the basic plots to both and rather sadly there are a number who could tell you more about either of those than they could about any form of religion!

We call it football not soccer, but yeah it is a big part of our culture much like rugby and cricket and moaning about the weather (seriously everyone has complained for weeks about the rain and wanting to live in a hot country then we get a nice day and everyones complaining they’re too hot… its only 22 °C)

Indian food is as popular as fish and chips (as is chinese) but it will never replace fish and chips… its just our attempt at being cultured

 

[aicirt]

I think I’m right in saying that the Pope urged RCs to kill Elizabeth I after her excommunication. I can research this further if you want.

He backed her overthrow after her excommunication. but I could not find anything where he stated that when found she should be taken out and killed. i don’t believe any Pope has ever ordered anyone killed.

 

[Bluegoat]

He backed her overthrow after her excommunication. but I could not find anything where he stated that when found she should be taken out and killed. i don’t believe any Pope has ever ordered anyone killed.

???

 

[aicirt]

???

I’m confused about what you’re confused about. :whackadoo:

The Pope did back the overthrow of the the excommunicated Elizabeth. Did he order her to be killed? No. Did Henry allow both his wives to be killed? Yes.

 

[Hesychios]

He backed her overthrow after her excommunication. but I could not find anything where he stated that when found she should be taken out and killed. i don’t believe any Pope has ever ordered anyone killed.

This is the skull of Pietro da Morrone, better know as Saint Celestine.

http://www.archelaos.com/popes/imgs/Celestine_V_11.jpg

http://www.laquilax.com/B-teschio-bucoLayer1.jpg

In those days nails were still hammered out, not made of wire, so they had flat sides. The skull is not cracked, there was flesh in the skull at the time the nail was driven in, and the head was against a solid surface.

This is where he was being held at the time of his death …
http://questidellaruota.altervista.org/Comune.jpg

 

[GKC]

I’m confused about what you’re confused about. :whackadoo:

The Pope did back the overthrow of the the excommunicated Elizabeth. Did he order her to be killed? No. Did Henry allow both his wives to be killed? Yes.

Both of Hank’s executed wives were found guilty of what constituted capital crimes, in the place and time. Certainly they were charged at Henry’s instigation. Whether they were guilty is open to question: Catherine Howard, possibly, Anne Boleyn, less so.

GKC

 

[Cheshangle]

He backed her overthrow after her excommunication. but I could not find anything where he stated that when found she should be taken out and killed. i don’t believe any Pope has ever ordered anyone killed.

Not that easy. If you read The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser (an RC and an Oxford History graduate), you’ll see that Henry’s wives were tried and condmened. Unfairly in my opinion, and by a kangraoo court possibly, but there was the semblance of a judicial prosees in sixteenth century England. Meanwhile I’m not sure if any Popes actually ordered the burning of thousands of “heretics” (people like me) but they certainly condoned it and probably encouraged it. Mary Tudor certainly did.

 

[GKC]

Not that easy. If you read The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser (an RC and an Oxford History graduate), you’ll see that Henry’s wives were tried and condmened. Unfairly in my opinion, and by a kangraoo court possibly, but there was the semblance of a judicial prosees in sixteenth century England. Meanwhile I’m not sure if any Popes actually ordered the burning of thousands of “heretics” (people like me) but they certainly condoned it and probably encouraged it. Mary Tudor certainly did.

Both Anne and Catherine were tried under the Treason Act of Edward III, 1351, loosely construed. Catherine was likely the guiltier.

GKC

 

[melbanglican]

The last successful invasion was that launched by William of Orange, and his wife Mary Stuart, in 1688. Their invasion was, technically, ‘opposed’, but King James ran away and his army strolled off as well, unable to understand why they should risk being killed defending a King who didn’t have the nerve to stay around and lead them!:dts:

To be fair, others have had a crack. Charles Stuart tried in 1745-6, Napoleon landed soldiers in Ireland in 1798 and a few troops near Fishguard in Wales in 1801(?) and Hitler made a few failed attempts to land spies and saboteurs in Britain in 1940.

And regarding Henry VIII, as noted earlier, the Pope couldn’t grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she was the sister of Charles V, the Emperor who controlled most of Western Europe. Moreover, this was just the last in a long line of ‘difficulties’ that had arisen between the English Crown and the Papacy going back >200 years. Popes had a tendency to appoint well-connected children as absentee holders of large benefices in England. The revenue therefrom went to the relevant clergyman, while the inhabitants of the area received nothing from the incumbent in return. Consequently, there was a certain reservoir of resentment against Rome, if not against the Catholic religion, in some circles in England. The business with Henry is even more understandable when one considers that Popes were giving annulments to many other crowned heads in Europe who asked for them, and England had just emerged from the catastrophic Wars of the Roses. Henry didn’t just want to have his way with these women, he wanted a strong son to succeed him and so avoid a repetition of the civil wars that preceded the rise of Tudors. All the Pope was asked to do was the same thing he had done for other monarchs in similar circumstances - and it was a tragedy for all of us who would love ‘the body of Christ’ to be truly unified that His Holiness could not do it.

Sorry to rabbit on, but I think the point needed to be made. Protestantism in the form of the Church of England didn’t just spring up out of the ground as a result of the lusts of one English king.

 

[GKC]

The last successful invasion was that launched by William of Orange, and his wife Mary Stuart, in 1688. Their invasion was, technically, ‘opposed’, but King James ran away and his army strolled off as well, unable to understand why they should risk being killed defending a King who didn’t have the nerve to stay around and lead them!:dts:

To be fair, others have had a crack. Charles Stuart tried in 1745-6, Napoleon landed soldiers in Ireland in 1798 and a few troops near Fishguard in Wales in 1801(?) and Hitler made a few failed attempts to land spies and saboteurs in Britain in 1940.

And regarding Henry VIII, as noted earlier, the Pope couldn’t grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she was the sister of Charles V, the Emperor who controlled most of Western Europe. Moreover, this was just the last in a long line of ‘difficulties’ that had arisen between the English Crown and the Papacy going back >200 years. Popes had a tendency to appoint well-connected children as absentee holders of large benefices in England. The revenue therefrom went to the relevant clergyman, while the inhabitants of the area received nothing from the incumbent in return. Consequently, there was a certain reservoir of resentment against Rome, if not against the Catholic religion, in some circles in England. The business with Henry is even more understandable when one considers that Popes were giving annulments to many other crowned heads in Europe who asked for them, and England had just emerged from the catastrophic Wars of the Roses. Henry didn’t just want to have his way with these women, he wanted a strong son to succeed him and so avoid a repetition of the civil wars that preceded the rise of Tudors. All the Pope was asked to do was the same thing he had done for other monarchs in similar circumstances - and it was a tragedy for all of us who would love ‘the body of Christ’ to be truly unified that His Holiness could not do it.

Sorry to rabbit on, but I think the point needed to be made. Protestantism in the form of the Church of England didn’t just spring up out of the ground as a result of the lusts of one English king.

Yep, as to Henry. I’ve posted on Horny Hank and his Hormones for years here; you touch on the main issues. The conflict between the Throne and Rome can be seen in Parliamentary Acts running back around 250 years before Henry, at least to the first Statute of Westminster. The system of impediments/dispensations and decrees of nullity, as evolved in Henry’s day, was a mixture of theology and politics, designed to simultaneously allow the Church to protect the sacrament of matrimony and to permit the making a breaking of dynastic marriages, as the need was felt. Henry’s causa was not as strong as it could have been (he should have cited the undispensed impediment against the justice of public honesty in Julius’ original dispensation), but the Leventine prohibition he tried to use made as strong a case as was customary, in the day; certainly stronger than the causa that got his sister Margaret a decree of nullity, at about the same time. But given the politics, no chance of any causa being strong enough in Henry’s case.

GKC

 

[Bluegoat]

Really, people here ask questions like this about Henry all the time. But I look at it and think - how can this fail to show that the Holy See was claiming a role that it shouldn’t have? How can modern Catholics justify the kind of methods Rome used for deciding these things? How can they justify that the political maneuvering they were involved with? Or that rulers were unable to make legitimate ruling decisions if they didn’t have the political clout over the Vatican?

To ask the one question demands the other IMO. And it answers it too.

 

[GKC]

Really, people here ask questions like this about Henry all the time. But I look at it and think - how can this fail to show that the Holy See was claiming a role that it shouldn’t have? How can modern Catholics justify the kind of methods Rome used for deciding these things? How can they justify that the political maneuvering they were involved with? Or that rulers were unable to make legitimate ruling decisions if they didn’t have the political clout over the Vatican?

To ask the one question demands the other IMO. And it answers it too.

What the role of the Church in society should have been has to be looked at in the historical context of the time in which the system grew: the decline of the Roman empire, and the slow growth of nationalism. To look at it from our perspective is not to see the perspective of a thousand+ years prior. What it was, and how it grew and changed, had consequences that can be described, without assuming that it could have been more as contemporary society would expect or prefer. Things were as they were. And got to be as they are, step by step.

GKC

 

[Bluegoat]

What the role of the Church in society should have been has to be looked at in the historical context of the time in which the system grew: the decline of the Roman empire, and the slow growth of nationalism. To look at it from our perspective is not to see the perspective of a thousand+ years prior. What it was, and how it grew and changed, had consequences that can be described, without assuming that it could have been more as contemporary society would expect or prefer. Things were as they were. And got to be as they are, step by step.

GKC

Sure. I wouldn’t expect them to have figured out the modern nation state and separation of church and state. It isn’t an issue of laying blame. That’s not what I’m saying.

The situation was, to my mind, clearly not working, and it hadn’t been for some time. The English Reformation and the other parts of the Reformation owe a lot to that. Something had to happen to alleviate that, and it did. Maybe if the CC had been motivated, something else could have happened.

But to ask the question as if Henry et al were somehow these grievous plotters and reprobates is silly, just as it would be silly to say the Catholic Church should have understood its role in a modern secular kind of context.

If people want to know why Anglicans are not worried about Henry, the answer is the same as why they aren’t worried about Leo.

 

[GKC]

Sure. I wouldn’t expect them to have figured out the modern nation state and separation of church and state. It isn’t an issue of laying blame. That’s not what I’m saying.

The situation was, to my mind, clearly not working, and it hadn’t been for some time. The English Reformation and the other parts of the Reformation owe a lot to that. Something had to happen to alleviate that, and it did. Maybe if the CC had been motivated, something else could have happened.

But to ask the question as if Henry et al were somehow these grievous plotters and reprobates is silly, just as it would be silly to say the Catholic Church should have understood its role in a modern secular kind of context.

If people want to know why Anglicans are not worried about Henry, the answer is the same as why they aren’t worried about Leo.

I agree. And somewhere in the thread on the reformation I said that, with respect to England (the Continental situation being of only peripheral interest to me). Henry was the Perfect Storm, given his personality. But the situation would have come to some sort of a head, eventually, had Hank been a celibate with 10 legitimate male offspring. So to speak.

GKC