Denver, Colo., Oct 23, 2011 / 05:49 am
On October 25, the Catholic Church honors the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales, who died resisting the royal takeover that gave rise to the modern-day “Church of England” in the 16th and 17th centuries.
When Pope Paul VI canonized the 40 saints in 1970, he looked forward to “the day when, God willing, the unity of the faith and of Christian life is restored” in the once-Catholic nations, with due respect for “the legitimate prestige and the worthy patrimony of piety and usage proper to the Anglican Church.”
Contrary to some popular understandings, King Henry VIII did not strictly intend either to form a separate Protestant church, or to obtain a divorce. Rather, on account of his desire for an annulment of a marriage judged valid by the Pope, Henry declared himself “supreme head” of the English Church.
It was only gradually, under the influence of the renegade archbishop Thomas Cranmer that Henry's “Anglicans Ecclesia” took on its distinctly Protestant character – losing, in the process, most of the seven sacraments that the disgraced king had once defended against Martin Luther's attacks.