Victor R. Claveau, MJ
England had been an integral part of the Church since 596 A.D., when St. Augustine and his forty monks arrived on the southeast coast, under instructions from Pope Gregory the Great. About the same time, some monks from Ireland began preaching in the northwest. Christianity gradually spread over the island. Its practice continued uninterruptedly until the days of Henry VIII.
When Martin Luther preached his new doctrines, Henry VIII (1509-1547) stoutly opposed him. Because of a book written against Luther, Henry was rewarded by the Pope with the title “Defender of the Faith”. Henry soon after quarreled with the Pope, because the latter refused to grant him a divorce from his wife Catherine. By the Act of Supremacy, Henry declared himself head of the Church in England. Cromwell, his vicar-general, made death the penalty for all who denied the kings supremacy. He disgraced Cardinal Woolsey, who many think wrote the book for which Henry took credit, and he places Cranmer in his position of Archbishop of Canterbury. He put away his lawful wife, Catherine, and married Anne Boleyn, whom within a year he has beheaded to marry another. Three more wives followed in quick succession, most of them through the easy method of divorce – murder. He took possession of the monasteries, burned their books, murdered the monks. He squandered the revenues from Church property and his father’s wealth in criminal pleasures. The latter part of his reign was characterized as a reign of terror for the English people.
His successors, Edward VI and Elizabeth, the first of a long line of anti-Catholic rulers, pulled down altars, churches and shrines, persecuted the Catholics and forced the nation with the aid of foreign mercenaries to accept the new religion. The Book of Common Prayer was introduced at this time.
For a long time, the ordinary masses remained true to the ancient Faith, and signified their disapproval of the violence of the “Reformers” by frequently taking up arms against them. But these efforts only provided justification for further persecution – cruel, bloody, systematic and persistent – and Protestantism became the official religion of England. The Thirty-nine articles outlining Anglican doctrine were drawn up in January, 1563. The articles expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, was Protestant enough, though it was expressed in as ambiguous terms as possible. Thus, justification by faith alone, exclusive reliance upon the Bible, and rejection of papal and conciliar authority were upheld. All of the sacraments except baptism and the “Supper” were omitted, though the explicit repudiation of the Mass was not promulgated until 1570, when all hope of conciliating the Catholics had vanished. But the Edwardian Prayer Book and Ordinal precluded the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass by the new generation of clergymen.
Scotland became Presbyterian in the time of Queen Mary while that unfortunate woman was a prisoner in the hands of her cousin Queen Elizabeth.
The Penal Laws
Laws made by Elizabeth and others up to the time of George III were directly aimed at driving out the Catholic religion. People who failed to comply with these regulations incurred a penalty of some sort – fine, imprisonment, exile, death – hence the name penal laws. According to these laws Catholics could be fined for absenting themselves from Protestant services on Sunday, in order to attend Catholic Mass, or for acknowledging the pope as their spiritual head.
Catholic Priests were declared outlaws, a price set upon their heads, and all who sheltered them were liable to the confiscation of their property.
Catholics were forbidden to teach. Catholic Children could not obtain an education. Catholics could not become guardians of their own children, and if a child became Protestant, his parents at once lost legal control of property owned by them.
Catholics could not purchase property, could not hold a lease longer than thirty-one years, and if a Protestant found that the property of a Catholic yielded more profit than one-third of its lease value, he could take possession of it.
Catholics could not hold office and could not vote.
These laws relaxed gradually, from about the close of the reign of George II (1760), and it is only fair to say that, during the present day, Catholicity enjoys freedom under the once intolerant British government.