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Updated: April 30, 2025
Let us take another "straw". Before the pseudo-Reformation there were Cardinals exercising authority in the Church in England. Some of them even became famous. There was, for instance, Cardinal Stephen Langton, who was Primate of England, and who brought together the Barons, and forced the Great Charter from King John. There, amongst the signatures to that famous document we find the name of a Roman Cardinal. From the time of Stephen Langton to the time of Cardinal Fisher in the sixteenth century there was a long succession of Cardinals in England, all of whom were members of the Church in England. From the time of Cardinal Robert Pullen to that of Cardinal John Fisher there were no fewer than twenty-two Roman Cardinals belonging to that Church. How is it that during those thousand years the English Church could have and actually did have Cardinals, up to the time of the so-called Reformation, but never since? How is it that such a thing has ceased to be possible? Clearly because it is no longer the same Church. Before, England was a part of the Universal Church; and just as the Church in Italy, France, and Spain, had, and still have, their Cardinals, so England also was given its share of representation in the Sacred College. We shall realise the inference to be drawn if we consider what a Cardinal is. In the first place, he is one chosen directly by the Pope; secondly, he is one of the Pope's advisers; thirdly, when the Holy Father dies it is he, as a member of the Sacred College, who has to elect a successor; furthermore, he swears allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff, and on bended knee, with his hands on the Holy Gospels, he solemnly declares his adhesion to the Roman Catholic Faith. No Anglican of the present day, no Protestant, no one who is not an out-and-out Roman Catholic can be, or could ever have been, a Cardinal, yet there were Cardinals here in the Church in England, and, as we have stated, a long succession of them right up to the time of the pseudo-Reformation. How can there be continuity and spiritual identity between the Church in England, which before that change could and did have Cardinals, and the Church of England to-day, which can produce nothing of the kind? Cardinals or no Cardinals is not a matter of great importance in itself, but it is another "straw" which clearly shows the completely altered condition of things. Let us pass to another point. During the period between the sixth and sixteenth centuries there were many canonised saints in the Church in England. I refer to such men as St. Bede, who lived in the eighth century; to St. Odo of Canterbury; to St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the tenth century; to St. Wolstan of Worcester; to St. Osmond, Bishop of Salisbury in the eleventh century; to St. Thomas
Peter; greater, in its consequences to the human race, than the fall of the Roman Empire, the pseudo-Reformation, or the Revolution of France. It is much more than three hundred years since the last Oecumenical Council, the Council of Trent, and the world still vibrates with its decisions.
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