Posted on 11/28/2017 5:49:26 PM PST by Coleus
Elizabeth I had her own problems.
Come on get real. People weren’t PC back then. Catholics and Protestants alike. Plenty of bloody horrors to go around.
I’ve heard that even Phillip II, a Catholic absolutist if there ever was one, told Mary that burning hundreds of average and lower class people for heresy would backfire on her. She didn’t listen
And again, a disconnect from the facts appears.
It was for Henry purely political.
Not a matter of reformation at all for the matter was not one of questioning the propriety of Roman popes vs the local authority of Bishops which was the governance of the early Church.
It was, again, what Henry wanted as King and he got what he wanted because he was the King (enter a Mel Brook’s comedy one-liner: it’s good to be the king!).
As for explaining the subsequent looting, well, the looting itself explains the looting. Henry did a lot of things, including building a very expensive navy plus living in high style ... those things weren’t gonna pay for themselves, were they?
That too is political and has nothing to do with theology ... aside from Henry acting very much like an unconverted man that is. Henry’s England and Henry’s power are about as theological as I sometimes think he ever got.
As for what Edward did later, well, THAT is distinct from his father. Maybe he did take some tentative steps in theological directions ... but what has that to do with Henry who was not alive to cause them?
Again, the CoE began for reasons entirely besides “reformation” of any sort. There was reformation in England (etc), but it often had the CoE as it’s opponent little different than how similar efforts had opposition from Rome elsewhere.
Going further than just the start of the CoE, or the actual Reformation for that matter, and touch on something that has also come up in this thread ... for the practical consequences of these earlier doings, I’ve occasionally pointed out how important where you were in Europe turned out to be for the influence these things ended up having over your life.
In the largely Catholic south the struggle was for the monarchs and civil authority to have Independence from Rome. This essentially led to the virulent secularism of our age as the separation from the Church itself became more and more militant.
We might call this branch of things the State seeking to be free from the church.
I believe it is absolutely accurate to say of political secularism that whatever freedom of conscience the people may enjoy at the moment it is ONLY to the extent that some things are still held to not be political. Ultimately political secularism holds EVERYTHING to be political and so there is ultimately no room for faith.
(Aside: This is a mirror image of Sharia Law where ultimately EVERYTHING is Sharia and there is no room for politics or law apart from Sharia ... so in Europe we see ardent secularist who reject the Gospel importing Islam ... if that’s not evidence of a strong delusion I don’t know what is....)
In the actual Reformation bits of the north the kings were, in theory, just another parishioner one day a week (granted in a VERY nice private box) but was the King the rest of the week (and it’s good to be the king) ... the upshot was that being a good subject and being a good pew warmer were often confused, resulting in what might be termed religious nationalism where “good people” were the proper sorts who had the proper associations and proper patriotisms.
These were frequently seen as intertwined being the idea I’m trying to convey.
(Also, later after the French Revolution, the secularist of the Protestant north did some serious catching up with their southern brethren ... but even then they were often not AS virulent until they caught neo-pagan racist mysticism for a number of decades. Said NPRM being an entirely unchristian and opposed to Christ and His Gospel.)
Then there was England, where the struggle was often for the faith to have freedom from the Crown. It was from this that ideas of the freedom of the Church (which is to say: the body of believers) from the state developed.
I would point out that simply as a matter of reason, of logic, that two estates which coexist, which vie for the ultimate loyalty of the people CANNOT be mutually separate as if they did not coexist or compete for the ultimate loyalties of the people.
“Separation of Church AND State” is an absurdity.
When a modern secularist speaks of this they ONLY EVER mean the separation of the State from the church. The State is owed the principal loyalty of the people. The State also has claim for suitable police powers to protect itself from being unduly influenced by private matters like faith ... LBJ’s tax exemption restriction shenanigans are EXACTLY the government asserting police powers of this sort. Naturally, other States have been even more severe: with few equaling the French in dechristianization.
But for the Founding Fathers of THIS nation it was the separation of the Church from the state, of holding the state powerless to how or why the People might attempt to regulate and control it. That is to say: the consciences of the People is to be free to decide where their loyalties lay and the state has no basis for demanding police powers to use to protect itself against the People.
Our Founding Fathers knew of and largely rejected the secularism later enacted by the French but which had been bubbling up for years.
Naturally, faith and conscience mattering more than the power of the state is anathema to modern secularist (aside from how they may use it, transitionally, to gain power or destabilize things in society that resist them) and they’ll argue any perversion for us to be, basically, more like the French Revolution. They are even at this time tentatively moving towards a round of dechristianization ... if they think they can get away with it (they need to get our guns first, as well as get us to accept political correctness, among other things, so we cannot and will not resist).
(Aside: when, after the French Revolution, American clowns went around loudly parroting French slogans and attitudes as if they were laudable we’d have been better off to this day if they had been whipped by their fellow Citizens rather than be tolerated!)
Elizabeth and Mary weren’t nice people. To be understating the facts. Elizabeth seems to have been downright unpleasant on the being affable end of things to boot.
Frankly, few of the royals have been worth a damn when it came to THEIR power and THEIR prestige. Ask the Chinese about Victoria on that front. And that’s even discounting that for every Alfred the Great (a rare bright spot) there are a dozen or more of Leonard the Lames.
But what else is new? Of all the kings of Israel, then Judah and Israel, the number that did good before The Lord was appallingly low.
Mary got her head chopped off.
“It was for Henry purely political.”
No. People make an anachronistic mistake in lumping together dynastic and family issues, politics, matters about church governance, seizure of property, Henry’s lack of heirs, etc. as being “purely political”.
That’s how communists make everything about “power’ or “economics”.
It just isn’t.
“As for explaining the subsequent looting, well, the looting itself explains the looting. Henry did a lot of things, including building a very expensive navy plus living in high style ... those things weren’t gonna pay for themselves, were they?”
The “looting” was not really about paying for his navy or even living in high style. It was about creating a new landed aristocracy with the people he gave the land to.
“As for what Edward did later, well, THAT is distinct from his father.”
Yes, he was - but he was not a “Presbyterian”. No such thing existed yet. Only at the very time Edward was becoming king did John Knox embrace the Reformation.
“There was reformation in England (etc), but it often had the CoE as it’s opponent little different than how similar efforts had opposition from Rome elsewhere.”
Often is not always. And until the Presbyterians/Puritans became players there were Reformed members of the newly created CoE sect who battled more traditional minded members and Lutheran inspired members. You’re proving what I said to be correct.
The rest of your post had nothing to do with what we were discussing.
You are mistaking which sense of politics I’m employing. There is more than just the communist sense. More than just the sense employed within the French Revolution.
Heirs and property were once what constituted politics. Not of elections and debates but of kingdom against kingdom,
“You are mistaking which sense of politics I’m employing.”
No, actually I’m not.
I personally enjoy having Catholics go nuts in such obvious ways.
Free Republic is loaded with tons of Catholic Caucus threads, so when they post such articles, the non-Catholics can respond.
I suspect of the posters would like to do some reforming of their own against other commenters : )
Lisa has created Lutherans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy_4RKqH728
“its founding doctrine was convenience and expediency.”
You gloss over quite a bit. Henry was no more or less corrupt that the Pope. The Pope openly favored Spain and wished (supported) England’s overthrow and did his best to make it happen. The Pope lost. Henry set up the COE out of the same mold as the Catholic Church of the time....with the political and religious center under his control.
Go ahead and hate on Henry, but his action broke the back of the Pope as “king of the world” and ushered in the era of the nation state, and that brought eventual prosperity.
Catholic historic apologists point to the tyranny, corruption and moral failings of Henry “defender of the faith” only after he put England before Rome.
Had he not done that, Henry was OK to Catholics Bureaucracy.
Your lack of truth about the stunning moral and political corruption of the Catholic Church of the time is amusing.
You need to do more than point at Henrys many moral and tyrannical failures to find the hard truth that 16th century Catholicism was equal to Henrys moral corruption and tyranny.
"...all Christians, no matter their tradition nor even the strength of their faith, should be locked arm in arm against the forces who wish to destroy their shared heritage...
This is not hard to understand. It is important.
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