The Great Divorce: The Evil Fruits of Henry VIII’s Adultery

[AbideWithMe]

I love John Donne. Also and I am wandering a bit here - but for a good cause - Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne (all Anglican I believe and truly great, great Christian men in my eyes (…and heart))

Gerald Manley Hopkins, James Joyce (switching countries here), some other favorites. Also Middlemarch is a great world class novel; I don’t know that anyone reads it anymore. But I am way too off track now for sure. Thomas Hardy. Daniel Defoe.

England is not the first nation I would pick on as being unChristian - historically anyway. I once had a French literature professor asked me why I liked English literature - “It is just so moral” he sighed.

But these days I agree the English are LOST. :hypno: But then so are we…:dts:

If I had to pick a single favorite poet, it would be Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was Catholic. Thirty years ago I had a high school English teacher, a Lutheran, who kept us dwelling long on Hopkins, Herbert and Donne. I do wonder if that kind of attention to them would be common in a public school these days. I don’t think a day goes by without some portion of a poem by one of those three coming to my mind unbidden, thanks to Mr. Steitz’s class 30 years ago.

 

[SalusaSecondus]

Indeed, because England was destined for “a unique good fortune in the leadership of the world it is through its effect in England that the Reformation survives today as a world force,” (Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Reformation, 161) and the worst manifestations of it, from Christendom’s first state-sanctioned regicide, to the ugliness of industrialization, to the treatment of indigenous peoples, including American Indians, are this so-called Reformation’s darker legacy. With the exception of literature, English intellectual life declined, and even within English literature, it is the Catholics—Shakespeare, Dryden, Chesterton—who shine. English philosophers are more political theorists, and their ideas sparked the errors of the Enlightenment. The suppression of the Church in England was the dress rehearsal for the French Revolution, the Italian Risorgimento, the Mexican Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War. Henry VIII’s divorce is the reason America is a Protestant country.

Industrialization was due to the Protestant Reformation? I never heard that before, that makes me like the Protestant Reformation even more.

 

[Picky_Picky]

Industrialization was due to the Protestant Reformation? I never heard that before, that makes me like the Protestant Reformation even more.

Mr Check is so simplistic that he manages to say something that is obviously in error. It is certainly true that Protestantism and industrialisation are interlinked – as are other characteristics of Europe’s emergence into the modern age, like urbanisation, individualism, the growth of political freedom, the adoption of the scientific method, the revival of classical learning, the creation of nation states, and the expansion of international trade. Cause and effect, however, they are clearly not.

 

[FollowChrist34]

If I had to pick a single favorite poet, it would be Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was Catholic. Thirty years ago I had a high school English teacher, a Lutheran, who kept us dwelling long on Hopkins, Herbert and Donne. I do wonder if that kind of attention to them would be common in a public school these days. I don’t think a day goes by without some portion of a poem by one of those three coming to my mind unbidden, thanks to Mr. Steitz’s class 30 years ago.

Yes, I am very thankful for one professor too - atheist but he was always open to those who chose God (“take your pick”). It was strange - a very good man. He’s still around. And I know Lutherans like that too. I also know Catholics not like that…

Wonder how the industrial revolution happened in France - good Catholic country. Shining example of the faith to this very day - no? Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot?

“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

That is not an Englishman speaking.

Renewed religious warfare in the 1620s caused the political and military privileges of the Huguenots to be abolished following their defeat. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who progressively increased persecution of them until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which abolished all legal recognition of Protestantism in France, and forced the Huguenots to convert. While nearly three-quarters eventually were killed or submitted, roughly 500,000 Huguenots had fled France by the early 18th century.

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In what became known as the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 24 August – 3 October 1572, Catholics killed thousands of Huguenots in Paris. Similar massacres took place in other towns in the weeks following. The main provincial towns and cities experiencing the Massacre were Aix, Bordeaux, Bourges, Lyons, Meaux, Orleans, Rouen, Toulouse, and Troyes.[26] Nearly 3,000 Protestants were slaughtered in Toulouse alone.[27] The exact number of fatalities throughout the country is not known. On 23–24 August, between about 2,000[28] and 3,000[29][30][31] Protestants were killed in Paris and between 3,000[32] and 7,000 more[33] in the French provinces. By 17 September, almost 25,000 Protestants had been massacred in Paris alone.[34][35] Beyond Paris, the killings continued until 3 October.[34] An amnesty granted in 1573 pardoned the perpetrators.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot

 

[John_Lazarus]

Chesterton was an interesting writer and thinker, but to put him in the same league as Shakespeare and Dryden is criminal.

Definitely. Chesterton never saddled English with a stupid (non-)rule that English sentences should not end in prepositions because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions.

 

[Picky_Picky]

Definitely. Chesterton never saddled English with a stupid (non-)rule that English sentences should not end in prepositions because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions.

A very stupid “rule”, and Dryden is indeed largely to blame for it. But surely such a rule saddles no longer, if saddle it ever really did, (except for on the backs of those daft enough to want to be saddled with it).

Dryden could write a bit, nonetheless.

 

[commenter]

Turned 70 this month.

Here’s to another 70 years - or maybe 17 more years - of providing information on the Internet that is factual, relevant, and always charitable, with good humor.

 

[GKC]

Here’s to another 70 years - or maybe 17 more years - of providing information on the Internet that is factual, relevant, and always charitable, with good humor.

That is a wonderfully kind, belated birthday present. I must be careful how I conduct myself, to merit it.

Thank you.