Catholics in England – that was a difficult existence for centuries, which ultimately only took a turn for the better under the 70-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Not only that the “papists” hadn’t suffered on the island since the Reformation. Guy Fawkes, a Catholic fanatic from York, tried the British Parliament and the rule of 1605 König Jakob I. to blow up with two tons of black powder.
The assassination attempt of November 5, the so-called powder keg conspiracy once morest the oppression of Catholics, failed – and yet had serious consequences: England’s largest minority was henceforth suspected of treason. Only in the last few decades has she managed to reclaim her place in British society.
The church was rich and powerful in the English Middle Ages, as can still be seen today in its monumental cathedral buildings. But even more powerful was King Henry VIII. He broke with the pope in Rome in 1533 because the latter refused to annul the king’s marriage. As head of a new state church sat down Henry VIII 1534 himself. Church – from then on that was called Anglican in England.
Until 2015, a 1701 law known as the Act of Settlement barred from the line of succession anyone who “professed the papal religion or married a papist”. Only since the so-called Perth Agreement has marriage with a Catholic no longer led to exclusion. However, the ruler himself (as the secular head of the church) must continue to belong to the Anglican Church.
Catholics have led a shadowy existence since the 18th century at the latest. Most of them were Irish immigrants, who arrived in several waves as poor starving people. Catholics were foreigners, working-class underprivileged. Intellectually, British Catholicism – apart from a few examples such as the Anglican converts Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) or Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) – played hardly any role until the 1950s.
Above all, it was the great commitment to charity and schools and the moral credibility of the Catholic Church that have since made it possible to become more bourgeois. At some point there were Catholic doctors, lawyers, members of parliament. The image of Catholicism began to change into a vibrant, accepted and integrated denomination. The writer Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) commemorated the very unique English Catholicism with his novel “Brideshead Revisited” in 1945.
The clichéd warnings regarding papist infiltration are also a thing of the past. There have been many indications in recent years that Catholicism is becoming more acceptable to the court. There was the 2002 invitation to the Cardinal of Westminister to preach to Queen Elizabeth II. There was ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s conversion to the Catholic Church in 2007. The Catholic Church’s clear warnings of an unjustified war in Iraq and other public statements also provided more moral weight.
And then Prince Charles: the divorced, then widowed, now remarried heir to the throne, now the future head of the Anglican state church in England, even postponed his wedding in the spring of 2005 – out of consideration for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, of all things, in front of whose coffin in Rome also brought together the British heads of church and state.
Experts attest to the fact that England’s Catholics are very active in practical social life, but have a rather defensive, less missionary spirit – typical of a minority church that has long been discriminated once morest. Nevertheless, according to the Jesuit Oliver Rafferty, there were still around 10,000 converts per year in the 1950s. Ultimately, the number is negligible – probably also a consequence of general secularization and the abuse scandals.
Rafferty: “With everything that Catholicism has gained in the past few decades, it has lost a lot of its self-confidence. It is fully accepted by society, but has given up some of the traits that once made its special presence.”
Those: kathpress
