Yet again, the fort's "been betrayed even by those who should have defended it."

When Henry VIII ascended the throne in the 16th century, Christopher Check tells us that "the faith was vigorous in merry old England. Whereas heresies had brought war to France and Bohemia, and clerical scandals had plagued the whole continent, Henry inherited a country with a thriving Catholicism. The English nobility supported hundreds of monasteries that looked after the corporal needs of the poor and the spiritual needs of all English souls....All this, Henry would destroy."

Though a well practiced adulterer, Henry had remained in communion with the Church.  Yet in the midst of his affair with Anne Boleyn, Henry conveniently decided that his marriage to Catherine (Katharine) of Aragon could not be valid.  In spite of Henry's theological rationalizations, the Pope had the audacity to NOT grant Henry an annulment!  King that he was, Henry eventually decided to have himself declared "Supreme Head" of the Church in England.

Christopher Check rhetorically asks, "How could Henry, a man of such learning, fail to see such obvious contradictions in his own schemes? The answer is in St. Thomas Aquinas, who reminds us that lust darkens the powers of reason: 'Unchastity's firstborn daughter is blindness of the spirit' [Translation: "Sin makes you stupid."]"....Check continues....

• "to get the pope's attention, Henry, with a complicit Parliament, attacked the whole English clergy....Charged with praemunire, a kind of treason, the clergy were forced to pay Henry a sum of 100,000 pounds to purchase a pardon for the imagined offense and were forced to acknowledge Henry as the 'protector and Supreme head of the Church in England'....[Later] came the Submission of the Clergy....The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham, prepared a stirring rejection of this suppression of Church authority, but he failed to deliver it in Parliament, prompting Bishop Fisher [i.e., Saint John Fisher] to tell More [i.e., Saint Thomas More] that the 'fort had been betrayed even by those who should have defended it' [emphasis added]...[In the end,] More than one thousand monasteries and convents were destroyed and monks and nuns turned out into the street....In destroying them, Henry introduced the modern welfare state. Once, the poor were cared for in dignity and charity by men and women religious....The suppression of the Church in England was the dress rehearsal for the French Revolution, the Italian Risorgimento, the Mexican Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War. Henry VIII's divorce is the reason America is a Protestant country."

Fast forward almost five hundred years and "across the pond"....

"The most anti-Catholic American president ever scooped up the Catholic vote again, winning half of all Catholics....an impressive feat after four years of persecuting the Church....Almost four out of ten church-going Catholics voted for Obama and 55 percent of Catholics who go to Mass a 'few times a month' voted for him...."Once again, the bishops proved feckless and divided. Some bishops raised their voices against Obama; most didn't. Nor did the bishops counter Joe Biden's misrepresentations of 'Catholic social doctrine' and 'de fide' abortion teaching late in the campaign.  Plenty of mixed signals were sent: depending on which bishop was speaking, Biden and Paul Ryan were either equally good Catholics or equally bad ones. One bishop wrote to his flock to tell them that Ryan was as 'inconsistent' in his adherence to Church teaching as Biden. Such bishops served as useful idiots for Biden, who used a campaign commercial featuring images of a crucifix to sell voters on the idea that the Obama administration embodied Catholic social justice" (George Neumayr).