"There was great resistance in the Anglican Communion to this reforming of religious practice and doctrine to follow that of the Catholic Church. - The Episcopal Church of the USA used to be have the official name of the Protestant Episcopal Church" ~ stripes1776
The Church of England was created by King Henry VIII in 1533-1534 by secession from Rome.
It was the first protestant church to be established as a church organization before it even embraced any particular doctrines.
Doctrine wasn't Henry's concern.
Henry had been unable to persuede the RCC to give him a special dispensation to divorce his wife so that he could marry his mistress.
So as King of England, he started a new church and made himself to be the head so that he would have the authority to grant himself the divorce.
The establishment of the Church of England in 1533/1534 went along with a breakdown of Catholic church traditions - the monasteries were dissolved (rather a financial matter, as much of church property ended up in the hands of the king) and celibacy was disregarded, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer among the first to marry. [snip] More here:
Anglican Doctrines:
http://www.zum.de/whkmla/period/reformation/doctrangl.html *
Edward VI Edward VI (ruled 1547-1553) was Henry's third child, born by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Edward was only a teenager when he became king, but he thoroughly sympathized with the Protestant cause.
Edward and Thomas Cranmer set about turning the church of England into a thoroughly Protestant church.
He repealed the Six Articles, allowed clergy to marry, and imposed Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer on all church services. He also ordered any and all images and altars to be removed from churches.
Had Edward lived, England would have become a more or less Calvinist country.
Mary Edward, however, died only six years into his reign. He was succeeded by Mary (1553-1558), who was Henry's first child by Catherine of Aragon. Mary had been raised in France and was devoutly Catholic.
When she assumed the throne of England, she declared England to be a Catholic country and assertively went about converting churches back to Catholic practices. Images and altars were returned, the Book of Common Prayer was removed, clerical celibacy was reimposed, and Eucharistic practices reaffirmed.
She met opposition with steely-eyed defiance; because of the sheer number of executions of Protestant leaders, the English would eventually call her "Bloody Mary." Had she lived longer, England would probably have reverted to Catholicism for another century or so.
Elizabeth I Mary was succeeded by Elizabeth, the daughter of Ann Boleyn. Henry had executed Ann as an adulterer and Elizabeth was declared a bastard child.
Nevertheless, she assumed the throne in 1558 and reigned until 1603. Elizabeth was perhaps the greatest monarch in the history of England, and possibly the greatest and most brilliant monarch in European history.
Elizabeth understood that her country was being torn apart by the warring doctrines.
While she repealed Mary's Catholic legislation, she did not return to Edward's more austere Protestantism.
Rather, she worked out a compromise church that retained as much as possible from the Catholic church while putting into place most of the foundational ideas of Protestantism.
The pope excommunicated her and this created intense internal difficulties in England.
For it was incumbent on any Catholic to attempt to assassinate or overthrow her if possible, and a large part of the English nobility was Catholic.
Despite this, she managed to avoid assassination because of her brilliant political skills and her pervasive network of spies.
The Catholic plots on her life finally met their end when she executed her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587.
Mary was a cousin of Elizabeth's and the next in line for the English throne. She was a committed Catholic, but ruled over a country (Scotland) that had become and still is fiercely Calvinist.
Catholic extremists in England understood that Elizabeth could spell the end of any hopes of a Catholic revival in England, so they began to plot Elizabeth's assassination.
Mary, for her part, feeling justified by the Pope's excommunication of Elizabeth, foolishly took part in several of these plots.
Elizabeth eventually brought her to trial and condemned her, reluctantly, to death.
Elizabeth's greatest legacy was the spirit of compromise that infused her version of the Church of England.
She managed to please Catholics by retaining several important aspects of Catholicism and also managed to please moderate Calvinists who wanted all traces of the Roman church to be expunged.
She effected this by allowing English Calvinists (called "Puritans" because the wanted to purify the church from all Roman influences) to participate in Parliament and to set up semiautonomous congregations that practiced Calvinist doctrine but still recognized the Queen as the head of the church.
Excerpted from "Protestant England":
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/REFORM/ENGLAND.HTMIn order to understand Anglican-Catholic relations today, it is necessary to understand something of the historical situation. The establishment of an English Church separate from the Roman Catholic Church took place in 1534 with the Act of Supremacy. In the Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII declared that "the king's majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England." It was not Henry's desire to establish a separate church. Rather, he simply wanted to eliminate that papal authority which was preventing him from putting away one wife so that he could take another. By rejecting what he viewed as the pope's temporal jurisdiction, the king was able to declare himself the temporal head of a national church, and so "give himself permission" to carry out his planned divorce and remarriage. The matters of administering the sacraments and preaching were rightly seen as the work of the clergy, but the sovereign appropriated to himself all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even to the choosing and licensing of the bishops. It is evident, however, that King Henry VIII did not want a complete rupture with the Catholic faith, but rather wished to attempt to maintain a "non-papal Catholicism" in his realm.
Unfortunately, King Henry VIII did not understand the danger of removing part of the Church from the authority of the successor of St. Peter. Resultantly, he opened the door for a number of strong individuals who sympathized with the Protestantism sweeping through parts of Europe. As long as Henry lived, much of Catholic belief survived. For example, in the Articles of Faith, which were issued in 1536, the Eucharistic presence was called "corporal and substantial" (although the term "transubstantiation" was not used). Furthermore, it affirmed that justification was attained by "contrition and faith joined with charity," images of the saints were to be retained along with seeking their intercession, and prayers for the departed were encouraged.
With the succession in 1537 of Henry's son, Edward VI, Anglicanism took a distinct turn toward a radical Protes- tantism. King Henry's "non-papal Catholicism" was cut off from its roots and became a modified form of Calvinism. There was a specific denial of the sacrificial nature of the Mass, many Catholic practices were suppressed, and the bishops and other clergy were required to subscribe to the 42 Articles of Religion, which were entirely Protestant in their content.
At the death of King Edward VI in 1553, Mary Tudor became queen. With her accession to the throne, England was returned briefly to Catholicism. However, there remained a strong undercurrent of Protestantism. When Queen Mary died in 1558 she was succeeded by Elizabeth I, the queen who would give expression to an Anglicanism founded upon the years of upheaval which had gone beforeŠan Anglicanism which would attempt to be a ievia medialt between the Catholic faith and continental Protestantism -- an "Elizabethan settlement," seeking to embrace elements of both, yet being neither.
Queen Elizabeth herself had no strong personal religious convictions. However, she disliked Catholicism because it denied the legitimacy of her birth (since she was the offspring of Henry's invalid marriage to Anne Boleyn), and she disliked Protestantism because it abolished the episcopacy, which she felt was necessary for the safety of the monarchy.
So it was that Elizabeth set the course for Anglicanism down the "middle way," and the practice of religion in England was, at best, chaotic at the beginning of her reign. Old rituals were retained alongside new rites. Many of the clergy were still Catholics held over from the days of King Henry VIII. The doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist was not specifically denied, but worship was conducted using a decidedly Protestant Book of Common Prayer. The 42 Articles of Religion were revised as the 39 Articles of Religion, and although they were written in such way that a somewhat Catholic interpretation could be imposed upon them, they specifically denied much of what the Catholic faith would hold as being essential.
In the transitional period from King Henry VIII into the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the clergy (for the most part) were validly ordained bishops and priests, having been ordained before the Act of Supremacy was declared. The settlement during the Elizabethan reign was based upon the Prayer Book of 1552, which was vastly more "Protestant" than that of 1549. Included within the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer was the ordination rite, which was used for the ordination of bishops, priests, and deacons. Drastic changes were made in the Anglican rite, reflecting the Protestant rejection of the traditional sacrificial priesthood instituted by Our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, when the Anglican formularies for ordination are combined with the expressed view and intention of the Protestant reformers who compiled the rite, it was evident that Holy Orders no longer were able to be transmitted as historically understood by the Church. When Pope Julius III attempted to reconcile the Anglican Church to the Holy See during the reign of Queen Mary, the Pope sent Cardinal Pole as his legate to England...
...
Throughout the years, there have been many sincere Anglicans who have sought to justify the position that Anglicanism is simply one expression of the Church founded by Christ. They claim Anglican sacraments to be every bit as valid as those of the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, and their desire to believe this is understandable.
It is important to understand that Catholic teaching about the invalidity of Anglican orders is not intended to question the sincerity of Anglicans. Indeed, the Catholic Church acknowledges that God can minister His grace in all sorts of ways and through many channels, and there is no doubt that non-Catholic Christians experience the grace of God in their lives.
However, as Catholics, we have access to the very sacraments instituted by Christ and ministered through His one holy priesthood. For this reason, it is never permissible for us to receive Holy Communion or absolution from an Anglican clergyman. Because of the invalidity of the Anglican priesthood, these sacraments are not valid. As tragic as the separation is, it should serve as a reminder that we must work to build upon those things that we hold in common, and to pray for there to be "one fold, under one Shepherd," in communion with the Vicar of that Shepherd, the Pope.
By living the Catholic faith in charity, we manifest the eternal truths given us by God (cf. Eph. 4:15-16). Our lives then bear witness to the truth and draw all men to Christ. As Vatican II teaches: ie[Mother Church] exhorts her children to purification and renewal so that the sign of Christ may shine more brightly over the face of the Churchly (
Lumen Gentium, 15). Only in this manner of living can we hope for true unity within the Body of Christ.
Full article at:
http://www.cuf.org/member/angcat.pdf