Campion is just the type of man Elizabeth desires. At Oxford University, a young professor named Edmund Campion stands apart for his outstanding intellect and virtuous character. Because of this, the ever down-to-earth Elizabeth needs first-rate intellectuals to work in her government and new church if both are to thrive. Due to her father’s persecutions and her own suppression of the Catholic hierarchy, many talented clerics have been killed or jailed, and their replacements often owe their offices to their submission to state authority rather than innate talent.
The saga begins with Elizabeth I travelling to Oxford University to meet the faculty and to seek talented men capable of helping her found a new church. The name of this penetrating book is "Saint Edmund Campion: Priest and Martyr." Evelyn Waugh has written a powerful account of this evil time in English history. The punishment for both clergy and laity is the same, with both groups being hung, drawn and quartered. Like her father, she also declares herself the head of the church, and then later decrees that any Englishmen becoming priests are traitors, and any lay persons helping priests are also guilty of treason.
His practical daughter, Elizabeth I, simply carries the project to the next stage. If Henry isn’t the head of the church, how can such morally reprehensible actions be theologically justified? Quite simply, they cannot be justified, so Henry sets up his own church with himself as the head. With the wholesale theft of English monastic lands by Henry and the rapacious Parliament, a state religion becomes an absolute prerequisite.
The heresies that begin under King Henry VIII and continue under his pragmatic, morally lukewarm daughter, Elizabeth I, are ample testimony to this fact. With few exceptions, state religions often force believers to trust in the power of the King before submitting to the yoke of Our Lord. The reason for this can be summed up in Our Lord’s command, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s." (Mark 12: 14-17) State religions have often been the bane of pure faith.
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