Rat wrote:
> You have some kind of beef with Henry VIII, evidently -- or you just
> have a beef with me and want to be contrary.

No, I'm striving for historical and doctrinal accuracy. Too bad you
don't share my standards.

> I'm not saying Henry
> was a nice guy; in many ways, he wasn't.

Which ways was he a nice guy?

> Nor am I saying his personal
> life was above reproach -- it wasn't.

Got that right.

> What I AM saying -- which was
> absolutely true -- was that he did NOT support any of the doctrines
> being put forward by the Protestant factions on the continent at the
> time.

What you call "Protestant factions" are more often called "Reformers,"
at least insofar as they sought to reform the church's doctrines.
However, you are wrong to insist that Henry was not Protestant -- this
is a term accepted by Anglicans and by Roman Catholics. Protestant is a
rather general term for one who protests, and that is certainly what
Henry did. He didn't accept the counsel originally offered him in the
matter and "shopped" for a bishop until he found one who'd engage in the
sophistry he did to break with Rome.

> He was, doctrinally, a staunch Catholic (Romanist ). He opposed
> every Protestant change suggested by anyone around him, except the
> authority of the Pope over the Church in England. In that, he went
> back to a Byzantine/Roman concept -- the authority of the Emperor
> within his empire -- not forward to the radical Protestant concept of
> the time.

The Reformation was hardly radical: the teachings of Calvin and Luther
had historical precedents. If Calvin, Hus, and Luther were heretics,
then so were Augustine, Eusebius, and literally every church father
before the ninth century. I can provide a list of fathers and what they
taught on every point of doctrine stemming from the "solas" of the
Reformation.

> Several of those close to Henry had Protestant leanings,
> including Anne Bolyn and Catherine Parr, and certainly Cromwell and
> Cranmer (both of whom had spent time on the continent -- Cranmer in
> Germany ). But Henry firmly squelched any effort to change the
> doctrinal aspects of the Church as long as he lived.

Correct, he sought only divorce -- a trivial and selfish matter compared
to the doctrinal abuses of Rome.

> Cranmer and
> Catherine Parr both came close to being executed as Protestants,
> although Cromwell eventually got axed for entirely different reasons
> (hooking Henry up with Anne of Cleaves).

Sounds no different from what papal critics faced. Hmmm.

> Several others got axed
> (like Thomas Moore) for refusing to accept Henry's break with the Pope.

More's (one o) downfall began when he refused to endorse Henry's
divorce. He was consistent on the travesty of that divorce and paid for
his consistency with his head by refusing to take the oath of supremacy
and the Act of Succession. The former was an oath declaring Henry head
of the church in England. The latter ostensibly *******ized Mary.

<snip: I disagree vehemently with many of your points>
>> You also failed to explain why the British monarch swears to defend
>> the "Protestant and reformed" faith in his or her coronation oath.
>> That oath, if you looked at the link, goes back to 1689. It is hardly
>> a novelty.
>
> Yes, I know. Geez, I was just bringing in a bit of Episcopalian
> stuff, the conflict between the Low, Broad, and High church, which
> is pretty much a dead issue now, but was quite lively when I was
> growing up. Yeah, yeah, there are Protestant aspect to the
> Episcopal church,

Not aspects at all and you're arguing semantically. Protestant is quite
general, but Reformed is more specifically what your church is in terms
of doctrine. Your church has more doctrinal agreement with Presbyterians
and even Methodists (despite their being a spin-off of Anglicanism) than
with Rome, which is why your church has had fellowship with the more
doctrinally loose factions of those traditions. You're closer to full
fellowship with PCUSA and ELCA than with Rome, even before all your
radical moves to the left (with which even those liberal bodies disagree
with you).

> but Anglo-Catholics like to play those down, and
> have always stressed that we are Catholic and catholic, not Protestant.

You are the first Episcopalian I have *ever* encountered who has taken
such exception. As I've noted, my church also calls itself catholic
(small c), as do other Reformed churches. That in no way is a high/low
church distinction, it's an adjective rightly defining the church's
doctrines stemming from the historical creeds (Apostles', Nicene,
Athanasian) and confessions.

I could make a very strong case that your church ceased being catholic
many years ago as you started the steep decline into radicalism.

> We're not a Protestant denomination in the same way the Presbyterians
> or Baptists, or low-church Lutherans are, however. Here we follow
> another Via Media. We have the Apostolic Succession for our clergy
> (although it came through Scotland, not England). We are more like
> the Orthodox in being Catholic but non-Roman than were are like the
> more radical Protestant denominations.

Your church *is* a radical Protestant denomination, perhaps the most
radical now. You have a lot more in common in terms of doctrine and
practice with the United Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and
even the Unitarians (well, more practice than doctrine with Unitarians,
but some of your Bishops, like Spong, are closer to Unitarian than
Christian).

> We most certainly are not
> Protestant in the same way the other non-apostolic churches are.

Yes, you are. You're like Presbyterians in doctrine and Rome in
structure. Your only significant difference among all the Protestant
bodies is your hierarchy, which is shared among liberal Methodists and
liberal Lutherans; I suspect the conservative Methodist and Lutheran
factions are bottom-up rather than top-down organizations, so there's
less chance of heretics and apostates rising in church hierarchy. Why
does your church reward those who deny clear, central Christian
teachings with the title of bishop anyway?

<snip rest of sophistry>