Bloody Henry.

Apologetics 315 has this link to Explaining the Heresy of Catholicism by John MacArthur.  MacArthur is supposed to be something of a heavy hitter in Protestant circles, but the two lectures I've listened to make me doubt that reputation.  In the first lecture on the Mass, MacArthur spent 20 minutes accusing Catholicism of the Donatist heresy, requiring for the effectiveness of a sacrament that the priest be morally "pure."  Anyone with a passing interest in history knows that Catholics like St. Augustine were on the other - and winning side - of that issue and that the Catholic doctrine is "Ex opere operato":

A technical phrase used by theologians since the 13th century to signify that the sacraments produce grace of themselves, apart and distinct from the grace dependent upon the intention of the person conferring the sacrament; the latter effect is designated by the phrase ex opere operantis. The phrase is first found in the writings of Peter of Poitiers (c.1130-1215),

"The act of Baptism is not identical with Baptism because it is an opus operans while Baptism is an opus operatum."

The phrase was not in general use in the time of Saint Thomas but it was officially adopted by the Council of Trent and used to signify the objective character of the sacraments as producers of grace in opposition to the subjectivism of the Reformers. According to Trent, therefore, the term opus operatum signifies that the correct use of the sign instituted by Christ produces the grace irrespectively of the merits of either minister or recipient (ex opere operantis), though the intention of conferring the sacrament is required in the minister and the intention of receiving in the recipient, if he be an adult, for a valid and worthy reception of the sacrament. For the council clearly states that the sacraments "confer Grace on those who do not place an obstacle thereunto."

This is ironic since MacArthur's constant point is how ignorant Catholics are about their "satanic system." It seems that the ignorant one is John MacArthur, who apparently thinks that the Donatists won the schism.

In the second lecture on the Mass, MacArthur vented for a full 20 minutes on the 180 martyrs who were put to death under Queen Mary Tudor, aka "Bloody Mary."  Certainly, no would defend that religious oppression in this day and age, but for the sake of balance it might be worth pointing out that Mary's dad, Henry VIII, killed numbers that would not be eclipsed until the totalitarian Twentieth Century:

Mary I burned 284 Protestant heretics, according to John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which is unlikely to be an underestimate. Estimates of the number of executions carried out by Henry VIII range from 57,000 to the 72,000 claimed in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (the mass murder following the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace should be taken into account). The troops of his son Edward VI massacred more than 5,500 Cornish Catholics in the wake of the Prayer Book Rebellion. Elizabeth I was more sparing of formal executions, though St Margaret Clitheroe was pressed to death at York and Mary Queen of Scots beheaded; but the butchery in Ireland was appalling. There, Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queene, supported a policy of extermination by artificial famine on a scale that was not exceeded until Stalin in the 1930s.


So, why is it “Bloody Mary”, but “Bluff King Hal”, when the executions he ordered exceeded his daughter’s by more than 56,000 at the least? Why not “Bloody Harry”? Obviously, because he was the founder of the Church of England. That did not prevent him from burning the more advanced Protestant Anne Askew, who had the privilege of being racked in the Tower of London by the Lord Chancellor in person, which suggests that the divisions between conflicting wings of the Church of England were at least as vicious then as now.


The most recent study of Mary’s reign, Eamon Duffy’s Fires of Faith: Catholic England Under Mary Tudor, authoritatively demonstrates that England at her accession remained a Catholic country at heart and was relieved to return to the practices of the old faith, which had not been abandoned out of mass apostasy but only in obedience to the personal policy of Henry VIII, enforced by terror.

In that regard, one interesting thing about MacArthur's reading from Foxe's book is the apparent mass support for the incineration of Protestant's under Mary.  Foxe's description has the martyrdom's attended by thousands.  Giving due credit for the idea that executions were popular, might there also be some element of "pay back" by a population that had been repressed during the reigns of two kings who were trying to exterminate the old religion?

The bottom line is that MacArthur's sermons explain why a lot of anti-catholicism seems stuck in the 16th Century: it is stuck in the 16th Century, in the living memory of people like John MacArthur.