England has defeated religious fanatics in the past, and will do so again
by Archbishop Cranmer:
When in 1587 Pope Sixtus V began conspiring with King Philip II of Spain in ‘The Enterprise of England’, it was the world’s most powerful religious leader giving his blessing to the world’s most powerful military empire, the union of which would depose the heretic Queen Elizabeth I, wipe out the heresy of Protestantism and return England to the glorious and righteous Catholic fold. At least that was the plan. Spain’s ‘Invincible Armada’ was formidable and unsurpassed: 130 ships set sail from La Coruña carrying 2,500 guns, 8,000 seamen, and 20,000 soldiers. Little England was no match for this might, but ‘God blew and they were scattered‘, and the rest, as they say, is history. More than four centuries on, England (and the UK) is Protestant by law, and ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England’ (or, indeed, in the UK).
The journey from gunpowder plots, bombs, conspiracies and treason was not bloodless: the path toward reconciliation and social harmony is paved with some appalling acts of cruelty, vengeance and injustice meted out in the name of Jesus to the glory of God. You don’t get rid of religious fanatics easily at all. But centuries of incremental trust was repaid with cumulative liberties, and Babylon saw salvation. Roman Catholics are now free to hold great political offices of state and do all that any other man may do (except, of course, to become Supreme Governor of the Church of England, so the Throne is necessarily reserved). Religions morph and mutate; enmities subside; time heals; reason and perspective win out. Cardinal Vincent Nichols is not conspiring with Pope Francis to give contemporary effect to Pius V’s Regnans in Excelsis, by which Queen Elizabeth I was excommunicated and “deprived of her pretended title to the aforesaid crown and of all lordship, dignity and privilege whatsoever”. But nor are we seeing under Queen Elizabeth II “impieties and crimes multiplied one upon another the persecution of the faithful and afflictions of religion daily growing more severe under the guidance and by the activity of the said Elizabeth”.
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