WI: Church of England remains "Catholicism without the Pope"?

Say Cranmer/Henry/Edward/Elizabeth/any combination thereof are more doctrinally conservative, and as a result the Church of England, instead of being a Protestant body with a few Catholic elements, retains pretty much all the Catholic doctrine of the early 16th century, minus of course that of Papal Supremacy. How does this affect things going forward? In particular, I was wondering how Protestantism would spread in an England where the state religion was a form of Catholicism, and also how this would effect England's foreign policy and attitudes towards the rest of Europe?
 
An Anglicanism which is Catholicism without a Pope will be easier for the rank and file to assimilate into religiously, afterall what infouence does the pope have day to day with a English parish church. The mass each day would scarcely change. But politically there’s still going to be backlash from the priests and nobility who have the worldview enough to see that it is a break with Rome. If it can be identified as not being Catholicism (however close the doctrine remains) then there’s going to be trouble.

Similarly, foreign wise, the English will still likely be at odds with France (for political reasons) and Spain (for religious and some dynastic reasons) One wonders what would happen with Presbyterianism in Scotland, but I honestly doubt that much different would happen. Because it’d still be seen as heresy by the Catholic countries, I suspect the Protestants would be alright with counting England amongst their numbers.

If you are removing papal supremacy, are you also removing the hierarchy of priests as the Anglicans did OTL? This was the justification for removing the pope - that while kings may be appointed directly by God, no priest is automatically superior in doctrine to other priests? Or are we foing to supplant the Pope with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the King as a doctrinal source.

Keeping Anglicanism in line with Catholicism over time will be hard without a rigid hierarchy as without one the individuals priests have a lot more free range in what they can preach and argue for in synod.

Long term, if you can keep Anglicanism more Catholic - you might wipe away Puritanism but probably not the Civil War.
 
Long term, if you can keep Anglicanism more Catholic - you might wipe away Puritanism but probably not the Civil War.

I think Puritanism would still exist; there were Protestants in England during the time of Henry VIII, and of course there were the Huguenots in France, too. Whether it would be as influential as the OTL Puritan movement is hard to know though.
 
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In the long term this may make things more difficult for them. Because if Anglicanism doesn't reform to incorporate some sort of other differences from standard Catholicism then they may suffer an identity crisis, because Catholics who allow divorce doesn't exactly sound like it has a lot of legitimacy.
 
If you are removing papal supremacy, are you also removing the hierarchy of priests as the Anglicans did OTL? This was the justification for removing the pope - that while kings may be appointed directly by God, no priest is automatically superior in doctrine to other priests? Or are we foing to supplant the Pope with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the King as a doctrinal source.

I was thinking of some sort of Orthodox/Gallican/Josephinist-style Caesaropapism, where they keep priestly hierarchy and the like but the King is essentially "Pope in his own kingdom" (as I think the Gallican slogan had it).
 
In the long term this may make things more difficult for them. Because if Anglicanism doesn't reform to incorporate some sort of other differences from standard Catholicism then they may suffer an identity crisis, because Catholics who allow divorce doesn't exactly sound like it has a lot of legitimacy.

To be fair, the history of Anglicanism has pretty much been one identity crisis after another anyway. Plus, as Svetonius says, the official line even IOTL was that Henry wasn't divorced, he was just getting recognition of his marriage's original nullity.
 
Ultimately I think this means the OTL 19th C. claims about celtic Christianity being separate and the CoE having an independent descent from them get more widespread and get promulgated earlier.

Maybe this ultimately leads to a greater interest in some kind of rapproachment with the Orthodox?

What does this do to England's relationship with Ireland? Does Irish nationalism still take on a heavy religious basis, or is the difference between Catholicism with the Pope and Catholicism without enough to make religion still a convenient dividing line?

I don't know when the POD is, but unless it changes events in Scotland somehow, likely Scotland still goes Presbyterian as OTL. I wonder if you could get a weird result in TTL where England conquers Scotland, England and Ireland end up in a relatively problem-free union, but Scotland is the country where all the troubles and rebellions occur.
 
Ultimately I think this means the OTL 19th C. claims about celtic Christianity being separate and the CoE having an independent descent from them get more widespread and get promulgated earlier.

Maybe this ultimately leads to a greater interest in some kind of rapproachment with the Orthodox?

What does this do to England's relationship with Ireland? Does Irish nationalism still take on a heavy religious basis, or is the difference between Catholicism with the Pope and Catholicism without enough to make religion still a convenient dividing line?

I don't know when the POD is, but unless it changes events in Scotland somehow, likely Scotland still goes Presbyterian as OTL. I wonder if you could get a weird result in TTL where England conquers Scotland, England and Ireland end up in a relatively problem-free union, but Scotland is the country where all the troubles and rebellions occur.

If you look at the situation between Catholics and Orthodox, they have a lot of theology in common and a long history of mutual antagonism, so I could see religion still being an issue in Ireland.

As for the Scots, IOTL Elizabeth sent an army north to support the Presbyterians, so I guess the question partly depends on whether a CWOTP Elizabeth would do the same (under the principle "My enemy's enemy is my friend") or stays neutral (under the principle "I hate both Papists and Protestants, and I'm not lifting a finger to help either of them"). If the latter, and if without English support the Presbyterians end up getting defeated, you could conceivably see a situation where a Catholic James VI inherits the throne of England, which would be, erm, interesting. Since I don't think any attempt to rule a Catholic Scotland and Anglican England would be very successful, the most likely scenarios would be:

(1) James adopts Anglicanism to get his rule accepted in England, and forces the Scottish Church to adopt Caesaropapism too.
(2) The English change their succession laws to stop James becoming King in the first place, or overthrow him shortly after he takes the throne.
(3) James somehow manages to bring England back into the Catholic fold, probably via a Gallican-style concordat whereby the Pope's authority over the English Church is officially recognised, but the King holds all the real power in actually running it. How feasible this is probably depends on how much bad blood there is between Anglicans and Catholics by this period (if there's not too much, and if the official re-Catholicisation of England doesn't change much on the ground level, people might just go along with it) and whether or not there are any plausible alternative candidates for King (if there aren't, any attempt to depose James or remove him from the line of succession would run the risk of civil war, which might induce enough people to accept rapprochement with the Pope for the sake of political stability).
 
I think this POD requires Henry VIII having a son with Anne Boleyn, or else the future Edward VI is raised a convinced caesaropapist and not a convinced Protestant and lives longer and/or has a son. Basically, you need to avoid both the OTL Edward VI and Mary.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
Catholic and Orthodox dogma is practically the same. The basics of the faith are 99% the same.
It is the doctrine which is much, much different. Orthodoxy allows for divorce, for instance.
Henry the VIII going Orthodox changes very little in terms of religion, but gives him a pliant local Patriarch.
Ready made caesaropapism ...
 
Catholic and Orthodox dogma is practically the same. The basics of the faith are 99% the same.
It is the doctrine which is much, much different. Orthodoxy allows for divorce, for instance.
Henry the VIII going Orthodox changes very little in terms of religion, but gives him a pliant local Patriarch.
Ready made caesaropapism ...

Sure, a Church of England which would have kept the Act of Six Articles would have been nearer from Orthodoxy (aside note, would every monastery be suppressed ITTL?), but there's no diplomatic gain to do this since no major power follow the Orthodox religion.
 
...there's no diplomatic gain to do this since no major power follow the Orthodox religion.

Um... Muscovy?

I mean, Ivan IV Grozny was in regular contact with England in the decades post Henry VIII. Who knows what cross cultural religious influence a slightly earlier establishment of relations could have made.


... Orthodoxy allows for divorce, for instance. ...

That’s actually really interesting - that non-application of divorce was a post schismatic development for Catholicism.
 
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