“Of course there have been abuses on behalf of some ecclesiastical courts in granting declarations of nullity, but that was always IN VIOLATION of clear and constant and never abrogated Church doctrine and canon law. “
There have been abuses in the historical past, recent past, and will no doubt be in the future. In short, little has changed in Rome on that issue. However, it is not my quarrel or concern. The statement that Henry wanted a divorce so started a different church is wrong. It doesn’t reflect any better on Henry or other monarchs or Popes that divorces/annulments were routinely granted when palms were greased with alms, but it was the reality of the time.
Other than that - if you think the fact that Rome favored Spain over England is “devoid of all factual content” then by all means provide the “truth”.
It’d actually be more accurate that Pope Clement favored the monarch of Spain (including Latin America), AND Germany, namely the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s wife, was Charles aunt.
Henry also had a arguably legitimate case under Roman canon law. He had been granted a legal waiver in the first place to marry Catherine, as she was his brother’s widow. Church law at the time normally prohibited marrying a close relative’s widow; it was seen as a form of incest. The waiver was granted based on Spanish Catherine’s word on something unprovable.... that her previous marriage was not consummated.
The fact that Catherine’s male children—so important for a stable succession—repeatedly miscarried or died in infancy convinced the superstitious Henry he was under God’s curse, hence he felt the “marriage” wasn’t real. Annulments on the basis of such evidence really were routinely granted by the papacy...in normal situations.
Pope Clement however, was in anything but a normal situation. He was under house-arrest by Charles V, who had also (unthinkably!) just sacked Rome itself—something not done for over 1000 years, since ancient Rome’s fall. It’s clear that the political pressure by the European world’s one superpower—Charles V—was enormous, and Henry’s case never had a chance...and Spain (which then included most of South America, and the whole HRE, that is Germany) was clearly favored over (then backwater/weak) England.
The evidence of power-politics playing a role in corrupt/weak Medici Pope Clement’s decision-making on Henry’s annulment is crystal clear to anyone but a zealot.