Although it is largely true to history, the producers do play with characters and events from time to time. Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr, was indeed sympathetic to the Protestant cause, but the show has her hiring house-arrested reforming bishop Hugh Latimer as her private chaplain. Never happened.
I find the show surprisingly even-handed about the religious issues of the time. The writers had Hugh Latimer complaining to Queen Catherine that just because the Christian faith should be based wholly on the Bible and that everyone should be free to read the Bible for himself, that does not mean that everyone can set himself up as arbiter of what religious truth is. (Here he unknowingly mimics King Henry's own position on religious authority.)
But of course, once you dismantle a clear institutional authority, what's to prevent a multiplication of competing interpretations of a book which is, in fact, a library? That is exactly what happened and continues to happen in Protestantism.
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2 comments:
? World Togetherness Fund!
"what's to prevent?!" like "Who's to decide?!" is a typical "liberal's" pseudo-principle. Institutional authority occurs in many ways, most of which aren't free from contradictorinesses. ... I think there is no official way according to the Koran on who gets to interpret the Koran for all Muslims. By your examples in this post, therefore membership in Islam is always declining drastically: Islam claims to be based wholly on the Koran, as Protestant Christianity claims to be based wholly on the Bible. If the logical or other problems in Protestant Christianity's authority systems caused the decline in the USA since the 1990s, these problems should have caused Protestant Christianity to decline in membership steadily since 1520. ... Or again, Catholicism's authority principles are clear (as I've always admitted) even if not entirely free from contradictions, therefore membership in Catholic Quebec didn't decline drasticallyafter 1960 -- and this quite without an activist liberal or "Second Vatican" or "crypto-Protestant" or whatnot clergy revolt: Québecois just stop'd attending mass, just stop'd practising Catholicism. A cessation which is kind of spooky: what caused this process, which was comparatively so sudden? The 'arguments' against Christianity and Catholicism had been around for decades, even centuries. ...
But imho what draws is substance or at least the appearance of substance. Jungianism as a religion has no clear system of authority -- therefore it has always declined in membership. No, the substance and charisma provided by Jung and e.g. Hillman draw adherents, and this constitutes "influence." ... Even Catholicism's authority principles cannot override this reality. For instance, C.S Lewis (substance, charisma) has had more influence on mass-going Catholics in recent decades than has John Paul 2's encylicals, even though Lewis is an Anglican. And also within 'the' Church: many a saint has more powerfully influenced the meaning of "Catholic Christianity" than the official authorities, who often try'd to shut down, ostracize the saint, or even persecuted the saint --maybe even to the point of auto-da-fe (Saint Joan of Arc was try'd and kill'd not by the "English" civil authorities [the line of Norman French kings who establish'd themselves in England by conquest and didn't give up their claim to rule France as well]) but by the French church, yes?)
Even when clear coherent lines of authority aren't corrupt etc (which clearness in definitions can't prevent), formal authority isn't enough when substance is missing.
Considering this stuff empirically, in our time anyway a dividedness in Christianity correlates with more vitality or at least less general decay. Catholicism in monolithic Québec is far less vital than Catholicism in English Canada, where even though it is the largest Christian denomination, it can't repose on its being the only thing on offer. This is true of Catholicism in America and Great Britain too, isn't it? And in Germany? But where Catholicism is the only thing on offer in France, as also Lutheranism in Scandinavia, it's virtually dead. Denominational unity in a national culture isn't incompatible with vitality, but obviously it isn't a cause of vitality. (The big emphasizers of the need for denominational unity -- "ecumenism" -- so that the Christian church can really do evangelism, regain secular modernity etc, have been the denominations with the least to offer.)
In conclusion, why does an American who is drawn to system-free moral conservatism for its real-life qualities wish to argue that Protestantism's incoherent authority system causes or helps to cause its decline? ... The American regime isn't coherent -- therefore it's always been in drastic decline?
P.S. "Competing interpretations" vitalizes, re-vitalizes. Obviously one doesn't want competing interpretations (of the Bible, the Koran, Nietzsche, Plato) to fight it out with military equipment: cf Nietzsche's project to bring war of spirit up from the subterranean and onto the floor of the cave or earth. A formal agreement by the powers that supervise war of spirit to not intervene with military equipment for or against any interpreter could also prevent interpreters from grabbing military equipment to defeat another's interpretation. Cf competing religious orders within the Church: SJ vs OP, when neither party or order could use military equipment against the competition -- at most only institutional machinations, which is less exemplary than truthing. ...
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A somewhat coherent authority system can incline one to the mistake that what's needed is a totally coherent authority system. e.g. a Catholic would have to choose (for himself -- because "who's to decide?!") whether to go with Thomas Aquinas (a pope may offer a new symbol of the faith but does not teach) or with self-standing 'official' Catholicism which says that the teaching office is constituted by the holy roman pontiff and the bishops in communion with him. Evidently Tridentine Catholicism sort-of upheld both: the teaching office plus the Doctors of the Church. Incoherent, but didn't cause decline.
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