The affair of Luther would have also ended with his being burned, had not some German princes protected him. There was no resolution between Rome and Luther because the theological dispute was fundamental. Then, and even now, the RCC promoted beliefs which have no scriptural basis and are in fact contrary to scripture.
The historical facts do not allow contradiction, despite the complications you introduce to blur the issue. Free societies with limited government and freedom of religion did not arise in any Catholic country. They arose in England and a few other Reformed countries as logical consequences of Reformation thinking about the individual, his conscience, and his reliance on written scripture alone. Rome regarded the Bible as liberals regard the Constitution: as a living, breathing document they could add to or modify as the hierarchy chose.
Convenient. Henry’s purely cynical but Catherine de Medici is not. You cherry pick.
You don’t know what you are talking about. The trend toward consolidation of royal power had been building for centuries. The Church had been fighting power grabs by temporal rulers for at least since 1050. Initially the Church staved off the kings but in the end, the kings triumphed under Henry and Philip II and Joseph II from the 1500s to the 1700s.
There were no state churches until they were invented by Protestant rulers who made the church in their realms departments of state. This is as true of kingdoms like England as it is of city-states like Zurich. It’s a huge power grab by temporal rulers. They confiscate the property of monasteries under the specious claim that they will take better care of the poor. Ever heard that before? It’s just like what Obama’s doing now.
This happens in Protestant as well as Catholic areas, indeed, NONE of the jurisdictions that became “Protestant” would have become “Protestant” were it not for heavy-handed coercion from the top down.
As to cynicism. Rulers of that era believed sincerely that such heavy-handed control of religion was necessary for reasons of state, to ensure social stability etc. Both Protestant and Catholic rulers believed this. There is not a dime’s worth of difference between Protestant and Catholic rulers on these issue at the time.
Henry was a mixture of cynicism (like all powerful rulers) and true Believer—he truly believed that he was reforming Catholicism, that he was doing what was best for religion but he was sincerely wrong. At the same time he was grossly unjust, tyrannical (he exercised complete censorship over printing—so much for the wonderful liberating effect of Protestantism—he did so because he had to do this to gain total royal absolutist control). He could not distinguish between what he wanted for his own personal gain and what he wanted for state purposes. That’s the problem with Absolutism. But he was no different in this than the other absolutist rulers, whether Catholic or Protestant, of his day.
However there is one difference legally: in England state control of religion was written into law. In Catholic countries like France and Spain it was mostly de facto but not entirely de jure.
But I’m never going to convince you. You need to cherry pick you history in order to undergird your textbook Anglo-American Protestant prejudices. Why don’t you make some cherry preserves out of the fruit of your picking?