You avoid my main point: when Mary died, England was a Catholic country was a substantive but divided Protestant minority. Mary threw away some of the good will she enjoyed when she agree to what amounted to a liberal lynching of many harmless persons—along with the Protestants who had supported the effort to keep her from assuming her throne. Fact is that Mary was a Tudor. Just as many Catholics were willing to give her brother a pass on that account, so many Protestants were willing to give her a pass. Elizabeth was likewise able to get her own religious settlement because she was also a Tudor. But Mary only got to rule five years, and was genuine mourned by many , including many Catholics who knew that Elizabeth would “reform” the Church. It helped that she was not the religious fanatic that her brother—and Mary—had been. On the other hand, during her long reign, she killed as many Catholics—and suppressed as many Protestants, as Mary had done in her short one. By that time England had fully come round to the idea that the ruler determined the faith. Even Catholics, though, were grateful that Elizabeth spared England the kind of blood-bath that was happening in France,
As for the Spanish alliance, Rome was kind of bound to favor “Spain” because
(1) Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, and (2) The pope was a prisoner of the Emperor. Wolsey was crazy to think that Henry could get his annulment. It seems to me that Henry’ need for a male heir, more than his lust, was responsible for his actions. But if he was looking for a brood mare, he ought to have looked for a foreign princess, preferable one willing to cross the Emperor, so maybe a German one.
“You avoid my main point: when Mary died, England was a Catholic country was a substantive but divided Protestant minority.”
You point is irrelevant - Henry was Catholic in his religious beliefs, and wasn’t enamored of Martin Luther. His break with Rome was political, not religious - unfortunately at the time the two could not be anything but intertwined. Your point should be that monarchs were brutal, and would be brutal in the name of God, or religion or any other convenient reason.
“As for the Spanish alliance, Rome was kind of bound to favor “Spain” because
(1) Catherine was the aunt of Charles V, and (2) The pope was a prisoner of the Emperor.”
So does your statement that England and “Spain” were allied still stand? Rome’s shenanigans with Spain were the cause of the rise of Anglicanism - Henry just happened to be King at the time - I think any monarch would have and should have responded likewsie.
The Catholic bureaucracy had no business deciding geopolitics as they attempted, they fumbled it badly, and fractured Christianity. Shame on them, but it was all they knew to do. But you blame them too when casting blame at Henry.
All this “crossing the Tiber” nonsense, or “coming home” is amusing. At the time of the reformation, it can easily be argued that Rome was on the wrong side of the Tiber.
I am happy for those who find solace in today’s Catholicism - either by birth or conversion. But really, the lack of understanding of what truly caused the split in the church and the reflexive blame on “Henry wanting a divorce” for the rise of the Anglican church is just ignorance.
It was a complex thing - political intrigue, brutal monarchs made it so. To say that the Catholic Church was “right” or that Henry was “wrong” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened.
That said, the RCC now does what it does for only good and pure motives. I wish them well in their quest to return sincere Christians to their fold. I hope they never stray back into geopolitical intrigue, or they risk a similar result.
To wag fingers at Protestants for not being as pure of soul as members of the RCC is surely a great error. I don’t think its a good idea, especially given the history that you’ve helped make clear on this thread.