By Brad Miner Monday, June 29, 2026
Anglo-American poet T.S. Eliot (born in St. Louis) wrote “The Hollow Men” in 1925. The poem concludes with this evocative quatrain:
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The poem appeared two years before Eliot joined the Church of England (he had been raised Unitarian). Eliot had a kind of conversion experience in Rome, falling to his knees before Michelangelo’s Pietà, but despite his love for the Italian language and for Dante, Catholicism seemed… alien to him. Having settled in England and into English identity, that country’s established religion made sense to him, albeit in its “high church” version, often called Anglo-Catholicism or Anglicanism.
What would Eliot think of the Church of England today? By the time he died in 1965, he had become deeply concerned about the leftward drift of British culture. Eliot’s major prose works—The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)—are extended laments that England was ceasing to be Christian.
And it is precisely this accelerated descent and slide away from orthodoxy that seems to be driving so many young English people, especially men, toward Catholicism in 2026. Something similar is happening in the United States.
Some call it a “silent revival,” though that may be because liberal Anglicans do not want to hear about it. Here are some figures that speak clearly to what is happening: according to the Catholic Herald, among churchgoers aged 18 to 34, Catholics now make up 41 percent compared with only 20 percent Anglicans, a stunning reversal from 2018, when Anglicans accounted for 30 percent of that group and Catholics only 22 percent.
Mass attendance continues its upward trajectory, and the numbers would likely be higher were it not for the COVID lockdowns that, both in Britain and in the United States, disrupted patterns of religious practice for Catholics, Anglicans, and everyone else.
From my perspective, the Anglican Communion was dead before it was born 492 years ago. But let me say at once that there have been, are, and probably will be many great and holy faithful in the Church of England. C.S. Lewis is a notable example. The problem is the genesis of the Church of England.
It all begins with a divorce, of course; that of Henry VIII, hardly a holy man, from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, an exemplary woman. The daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catherine had come to England in 1501 to marry Henry VII’s eldest son, Arthur. She was 16 and he was 14. Five months later, Arthur died.
Catherine remained in England, effectively becoming the Spanish ambassador, one of the first women ambassadors in European history. Then, in 1509, she married her brother-in-law, the 18-year-old Henry VIII. They were amicably united, though Henry had a roving eye, as monarchs often do.
In 1510 Catherine suffered a miscarriage (a daughter). In 1511 her son, Henry, was born, but he died 52 days later. This was followed by two more stillbirths, both boys, in 1513 and 1514. Her only other child, the future Mary I, was born in 1516. Protestants would call her “Bloody Mary,” though she never surpassed the anti-Catholic atrocities of her father. Finally, Catherine gave birth once more, but this baby, too, was stillborn.
Henry wanted a son, not a daughter, as his heir. Hence: the “King’s Great Matter.” Henry sought an annulment from Pope Clement VII in 1527. The Pope refused, and the religious crisis was set in motion.
Henry had received the title “Defender of the Faith” from Pope Leo X in 1521 for his written defense of the Seven Sacraments, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a direct attack on Martin Luther and a solid defense of papal authority.
At the beginning of the annulment controversy, the king argued that Leviticus forbade his marriage to Catherine: “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife” (18:16) and called such a union “an unclean thing” (20:21). Catherine, however, always swore that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, which invalidated Henry’s argument. Moreover, Pope Julius II had issued a bull permitting the marriage, a dispensation that applied whether or not the marriage to Arthur had been consummated and that had been arranged by the parents: Henry VII and Ferdinand II.
Some have suggested that Clement VII might have been willing to grant Henry’s wishes. Perhaps, setting aside moral considerations (and in a spirit of realpolitik), it would have been better if he had. But the most powerful monarch in Christendom, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had the ear of Pope Clement, and Charles was Catherine’s nephew.
Henry then cast aside the faith of his birth and the nearly thousand-year tradition of his nation to start a new church. St. John Henry Newman would argue that the question was not whether doctrine could develop, but whether a development would be governed by authority or by opinion. Catholicism in England was torn apart by the opinions of Henry VIII. Anglicanism claims to be semper reformanda, always reforming. But that is madness, is it not? Yet, with Henry VIII’s canonical marriage to Catherine ended, his union with the next lady in line, Anne Boleyn, was legitimized.
Boleyn gave him a daughter who would become queen and dominate the next age: the Elizabethan. Anne Boleyn would be beheaded, as would Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard. There were six wives in all. Jane Seymour, the third wife, did give Henry a son.
That son, Edward VI, died at 15 and was succeeded by Catherine of Aragon’s fervently Catholic daughter, Mary, who would reign for four and a half years.
Henry and Elizabeth would upend English life and faith, establishing what historian Michael Wood has called a “police state,” with thousands of Catholics displaced, tortured, and killed. And, yes, Mary killed hundreds while failing to restore Catholicism.
But Henry is now “Good King Harry,” Elizabeth is “Good Queen Bess,” and Mary, of course, is… “Bloody.”
Henry VIII is a strange “founder” for a Christian denomination. Catholicism in England was fragmented by the opinions of Henry VIII and by successive archbishops of Canterbury. And the king no longer defends the Catholic faith, but in recent days has rebranded himself Defender of Faith (unspecified).
About the Author
Brad Miner, husband and father, is senior editor of The Catholic Thing and a senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute. He was literary editor of National Review and had a long career in the book-publishing industry. His most recent book is Sons of St. Patrick , written with George J. Marlin. His best-selling The Compleat Gentleman is now available in a third revised edition and also as an audiobook from Audible (narrated by Bob Souer). Mr. Miner has served on the board of Aid to the Church in Need USA and also on the recruitment board of the Selective Service System in Westchester County, New York.