"The English Reformation was a Crime Against Humanity"

A facebook group to which I have been invited...

The so-called English Reformation, and Acts of Supremacy and Settlement, were the original disasters that have resulted in the current calamitous state of decay and degradation suffered by the British nation. It was one of the great calamities of western civilisation and the errors of the English Reformation have infected the whole of the formerly Christian world.

Beware of anyone who seeks to blame anything on something which happened nearly 500 years ago. It's bad history.

England was known as one of the most devoutly Catholic nations on earth, Mary's Dowry, the home of one of the four great pilgrimage shrines of Christendom, Walsingham and her Catholicism was the reason she was called "merrie".

I have never, ever, seen any evidence that this is why England was called "merrie". In any case, it is predominantly a post-reformation description, often used by the Anglican establishment, so it seems rather unlikely. Further, I would be intrigued to see any evidence that England "was known as one of the most devoutly Catholic nations on earth" (by which I assume that the author means "Roman Catholic"). So vague as to be meaningless.

Henry and his usurper, tyrant, bastard daughter destroyed the native English religion and the entire social order.

Elizabeth was neither bastard, nor tyrant, nor usurper. Indeed, her reign compares favourably to both Mary's and Henry's in term of the role of Parliament in the affairs of state. Quite what is meant by the "native English religion" is unclear. I suppose that it means something like unreformed Roman Catholicism, in which case destruction is an odd word. Henry certainly didn't - he was consistently middle-of-the-road on the whole issue of religion. Elizabeth also was never one to favour the newly-emergent Puritan movement - as the persistence of the Cathedral tradition (among other things) makes clear. Perhaps the author should read some Hooker.

Moving on to the "social order". Definitely a revolution, of sorts, and it certainly destroyed some things. However, its prime victim was feudalism (a system which was maintained in much of continental Europe for at least another 100 years). I rather think that the increasing industrialisation, wealth, individual emancipation, etc. were rather good things. Stop me if I'm wrong...

They replaced it, out of greed and demonic lust for power, with a state-sponsored tyranny and state theft on an unprecedented scale. They installed a totalitarian police state in which the common people were bullied, priests and devout laymen murdered, the welfare of the people abandoned by the destruction of the monastic system and the robber barons fattened on the lacerated backs of Christ's poor.

Certainly there was greed involved on Henry's part. Slightly less than the scale of selling enough indulgences to build St Peter's, but yes, guilty as charged. Demonic lust for power? Not really. The greatest long- or medium-term effect of the Reformation was the establishment of a wealthy and powerful middle-class (to use a slightly anachronistic phrase). This new source of power solidified the political structure in England as one that would not tolerate arbitrary government along the lines of French absolutism, and which stopped taxation without representation.

Totalitarian police states, now and then, don't get more repressive than those of Catholic Europe. Try to pick better examples.

The greatest privatisation in English history did, of course, leave some without the support that they had previously enjoyed. But one of the remarkable things about the English Reformation is just how little iniquity lasted more than 20-30 years. True rural (or urban) poverty leads to revolution and uprisings - as it did in Edward's reign when crops failed and inflation got out of control (take note Gordon Brown). But by Elizabeth's reign, England was more prosperous than she had ever been before, a trend which continued. The influx of countryside dwellers made unemployed by enclosure led to one of the most successful urbanised economies in Western Europe.

And again, the biggest winners in the process weren't the "robber barons", but the newly emerging bourgeouisie, who, as sketched above, were crucial to England's stability and prosperity while Spain, France, and swathes of Italy stagnated for the next 3-400 years.

What has replaced it has been five hundred years of denial and a tea-party quasi religion that has finally collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions and self-deceptions.

I get the impression that there's not much point debating theology here. Suffice it to say that every Church has its tensions, and ours are being rather badly handled just at the moment.

Thanks to Henry and Elizabeth, England has been a state of denial for centuries in which none dare to love God or ask questions about Truth.

You see, that's just sily. Go away...

Restoration of the Catholic Faith is the only choice now between total social collapse and a new tyranny of relativistic secularist dictatorship.

Hmmm...

Free the English people: Bring Back the True English Faith.

Pray to Our Lady of Walsingham, Queen of our islands.

The True English Faith which Rome muzzled at the Synod of Whitby?!

Of course, the worst part of this whole travesty is that it completely misses out the most important leader of the English Refomation, "England's Josiah", King Edward VI. Which makes me very cross because I am writing a thesis about the wee bugger...