Here's an excerpt:
Years ago, when I read a biography about St. Edmund Campion, a priest martyred in the aftermath of the English Reformation (yes, killing priests and other Catholics was equated with purification) it opened my eyes to my own lack of knowledge of what Catholics had to endure as a result of the English Reformation.
Stephanie Mann detailed this period in history in her book, Supremacy and Survival, How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. As a student of history, she explained that the book was thirty years in the making. Her reason for writing it, however, goes beyond her love of history to her love of the Catholic faith. Too often, this historic period is chronicled through a Protestant filter, playing down the heroism and truth of the Catholic players.
Mann writes that Protestants often interpret the English Reformation as a necessary step in the progress of liberal civilizations. But she points out that this reformation departs from those in Europe, beginning with Luther. Rather than theological differences, it was about power and personal desire. “The English Reformation was led by a king, not because of Church scandals or abuses, but because the pope would not grant him an annulment on his first marriage,” Mann states. “The Roman Catholic Church in England on the eve of Henry’s break from Rome was a strong community, with excellent lay involvement, efforts by bishops and theologians to improve the Church and remedy abuses, a vibrant monastic tradition, and a determined apologetic response–which included the king himself–against the continental Reformers.”
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