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Hey Black:
You've got your Leos mixed up buddy. It was Leo X who unjustifiably did in Henry VIII. Incidentally, you might take note that both Henry II and Philip were known to have roving eyes as well, but the church--still reeling from the fact that Henry VIII's papa turned down its request to wage war on the Turks--had it in for the king of England; therefore the monarchs of France and Spain got off scot free (oh well, as you Romans say: "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur"!)

As far as your attempted denial that early popes did not marry and have offspring (many produced offspring without the benefit of marriage)shows, IMHO, either your ignorance or a complete misunderstanding of the history you took in Roman schools. For instance, in the case of the Apostle Peter, how else could you explain the reference in Matthew 8:14 when Christ is speaking specifically of Peter's Mother-in-Law?

On another matter, you call yourself a "Catholic" but that is what I am--catholic being defined as "universal". The difference is that some churches don't deny the very body of Christ to parishoners who have (many through no fault of their own) suffered divorce and after years of celibacy gotten remarried without having to suffer a church investigation and obtaining permission from the Bishop of Rome!

Been offline for ten days. Actually it was Henry VIII who did in Henry VIII as in most cases of excommunication via mortal sin. Whichever pope had the historic privilege and opportunity to formalize the SOB's excommunication is hardly important just so long as it was done. Ummmm, Henry VIII had a bit more than a roving eye. Other parts were also involved or he would not have died so prematurely.

I have no idea whether Peter was STILL married at the time he was called by Jesus Christ. That he had a mother-in-law proves nothing but that he had been married at one time. Like Senator Biden, he may have lost his wife to accfidental death. Like so many in his time prior to antibiotics, he may have lost her to disease. In any event, while his mother-in-law is mentioned as being cured by Christ and getting up to prepare a meal for the guests, either his wife was not around at the time or she was rather rude in not taking care of the meal preparation personally but laying the responsibility off on her just recovered mother. The word widower comes to mind. As a pious Jew and widower, he would have taken his mother-in-law into his home to care for her out of respect for his deceased wife and as a filial obligation. What does this matter as to a discipline not adopted until the 12th century thereafter and then as discipline or prudential judgment and not as dogma. Many rites of the actual Roman Catholic Church have married priests. Only the Latin rite does not allow its priests to marry. What is it about the distinction between discipline and dogma that heretics fail to understand?

There is ONE, holy, catholic and universal Church. It is not the Anglican Church invented out of Henry's illicit desires nor that of your female neo-Diocletian Lizzie I. You guys invent these abominations and then expect those who continue in the faith of Jesus Christ to spend our time responding to the impudence of those who worship themselves and their desires. By the way, was remarriage after divorce allowed in even the Anglican church before the Lambeth Conference of about 1930? Birth control? Female priests? Lesbian bishops? Acceptance of homosexuality?

Face facts, Anglicanism, with no mandate whatsoever of EITHER Scripture OR Tradition, has invented an entirely new religion in our times of which even Henry VIII would be profoundly ashamed.

Unlike Scripture lovers who place their reliance upon salvation by grace alone through faith alone via Scripture alone, the Anglican churches want to be neither fish nor fowl. Not accepting the disciplines and dogmas of Roman tradition via the Roman Catholic Church which (even old Henry would have to conceded as the "Mother Church" from which your disobedience and heresy removed itself) and yet also not willing to accept or even pretend to accept the discipline of Scripture. After all, either alternative would interfere with the trend of the week club and with the trend of the weak club as well.

If, as is the case, you lack apostolic succession, you also lack validly ordained priests and therefore lack the Real Presence in the Eucharist and so it does not particularly matter to whom and under what conditions bread and wine under the appearances of bread and wine are distrubuted by your clergy. Now, if we were talking about the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine, it would be an entirely different matter but, as we well know, in Anglicanism that is not what we are talking about.

Pope Leo XIII in the latter part of the nineteenth century ordered an historical investigation of the validity or invalidity of Anglican orders. This investigation had nothing whatever to do with the great Tudor adulterer but rather with the craven behavior of the apostate bishops of his time who sucked up to royal power by apostasizing and did not follow the noble example of St. John Fisher, a bishop executed for the Faith as was St. Thomas More. The investigation was also of the subsequent history of "The Church of England" and its practices as to Holy Orders and Consecration of Bishops. The conclusion was that the apostolic succession was lost.

You might also want to communicate with the former Anglican bishop of London, Bishop Graham Leonard, who left Anglicanism for Catholicism about ten or fifteen years ago with many of the dwindling number of English Anglican priests to become Catholic priests.