Thursday, February 2, 2012

Was it best for England to break away from the Catholic Church?

Besides this site, I also have a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/thetudorspage, the actual page is called "The Tudor Dynasty" {click on the link and it will bring you directly to the Facebook page}

I ask daily questions on the Facebook page and the followers of the page respond with their own opinion.
One of the questions that I posed was: 
Do you believe it was best for England to have Henry VIII break itself from Rome (the Catholic church, Pope, etc.) to form the Church of England???
Roman Catholic Church
Henry VIII

My answer (opinion): 

Yes, I believe it was best for England to break away from the Catholic Church, as the Catholic Church became corrupt and as one of the respondents suggested, England was being used as a colony for Rome. 

However, did Henry VIII break away from the Catholic Church for the right reasons? 
I firmly believe his motives are questionable. Overall, Henry VIII was a selfish King throughout his realm. He did what was best for him and not for England.  In my opinion, I believe he left the Catholic church because he wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled and he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. 

Since Rome was denying his petition to have his marriage annulled to Catherine of Aragon, he had no other choice but to break away from Rome. The way the King and his counsel break away from Rome is brilliant; that I will admit. 

I am not against England breaking away from Rome. However, I believe Henry VIII did it for his own gain and not for England as a whole.  

A question to ponder, had Catherine of Aragon produced a male heir(s), as Henry VIII so desired, would he have had the desire to break away from the Catholic Church? I don't believe so. I believe he would have remained with Catherine of Aragon and remained allies with Rome.  Some responses on Facebook indicated that if Catherine of Aragon passed before he did, at that time he would have separated from Rome.  The answer, WHAT IF........

What If........That's always a question in any subject or life in general {the what if factor} 

If you want to read the responses to the above question that I received on Facebook, simply click the very above link & scroll through the facebook page.  Even better, you can like the page and become a follower.  In addition, to the right column of this blog are links to our Facebook & Twitter accounts.                                                                                                                                                                         
Feel free to respond with any comments, either disagreeing or agreeing. I love any discussion, even if we are in disagreement. If we all agreed with one another, our lives would be extremely boring.

3 comments:

The Narrator said...

My own masters research into the small North Essex town of Great Dunmow shows that, in this town at least, the Catholic church was not a corrupt and decaying hulk. Rather, I found that Catholicism in this town was thriving in the 1520s and 1530s and gave the parishioners a sense of community pride and piousness. However, as is with history, nothing is clear cut, and many parishioners, ever loyal to their king, eventually turned towards evangelicalism (ie the earlier form of Protestantism) which ultimately resulted in one of the inhabitants, Thomas Bowyer, burning in the fires of Catholic Queen Mary. My blog, http://www.essexvoicespast.com, examines some of these themes using a unique primary source, the churchwarden accounts of the parish church.

The Narrator said...

I forgot to say that I enjoyed reading through your blog.


http://www.essexvoicespast.com

Anthony Paradiso said...

Thank you, The Narrator for the info, much appreciated and thank you for the compliment. I will make sure to review your page this week. Have a good week!
Point of Reference: The Narrator was comments but an individual that wrote on my site. Anthony Paradiso is the owner of this site. I just didn't want anyone confused reading these posts confused LOL