The History of the Catholic Church by Hitchcock James

Author:Hitchcock, James [Hitchcock, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586176648
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2012-11-26T07:00:00+00:00

10 Reason and Revolution

Religion and Politics

Religion never exerted greater influence in Europe than in the period 1500 to 1660, and perhaps at no time in history was it so closely bound up with politics. But—at first largely unrecognized—it was also being undermined and discredited.

Spain

Spain, which had been in political and economic decline since the death of Philip II, had sunk to the level of a second-rate power, but the Church was perhaps stronger there than anywhere else, due in part to the fact that most bishops were not from the nobility and thus were not secular princes. There were more priests per capita than in any other country, and piety was intense at all social levels. The Inquisition continued, under royal control, but it had relatively little business, since Protestantism was virtually unknown and the influence of skeptical ideas was minimal.

England

In England, Catholics at first hoped for better treatment from the new Stuart dynasty, but when that did not happen a small group hatched the Gunpowder Plot, with the aim of blowing up the houses of Parliament while James I (1603-1625) and the leading men of the kingdom were assembled. Several plotters were executed, including a solider named Guy Fawkes, whose name was thereafter associated with an annual anti-Catholic celebration. A few Jesuits who were not even aware of the plot were also executed.

James and his son Charles I (1625-1649) both had Catholic wives and did not enforce the anti-Catholic laws rigorously. Charles also supported efforts to make the Church of England more “Catholic”—marble altars, altar rails, pictures in church, a heightened emphasis on episcopal authority—which contributed to his overthrow and execution at the hands of the militant Protestants called Puritans. During the Puritan interregnum that followed his death, Catholics were severely persecuted.

Charles II (1660-1685) proposed a blanket policy of limited religious toleration, but Parliament rejected the idea, and he acquiesced passively in the execution of several Catholics in the Popish Plot of 1678—a fraudulent claim that Catholics were conspiring to overthrow Charles in favor of his Catholic brother James.

But Charles, who himself became a Catholic on his deathbed, made a secret agreement with Louis XIV (1643-1715) to restore England to the Catholic Church, and he successfully fended off attempts to deny James the throne.

James II (1685-1688) sincerely desired religious toleration but encountered trouble because he attempted to achieve it by royal edict, without parliamentary agreement, and arrested seven bishops who refused to recognize his decree. When his wife gave birth to a son, thereby ensuring a Catholic succession, many of the leading men of the kingdom invited his Protestant daughter Mary II (1688-1694) and her Netherlander husband, William III (1688-1702) to take the throne, and James fled to France.

After this so-called Glorious Revolution, Catholics continued to be subject to harassment, especially because of Stuart attempts to regain the throne, which reinforced the idea that Catholics were traitors. In 1780, a proposal to grant freedom to Catholics was abandoned when it provoked massive riots in London, in which numerous people were killed.

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