why did King Henry VIII break away from the catholic church?

Question

I'm interested to know because I've researched on the internet but there were the same answers over and over again I was wondering if there were more beside having a male heir and power.

Answer 1

He wanted a divorce. Plain and simple. Hence the birth the Church of England. He had added power with controling the Church of England because the Pope gave him the title "Defender of Faith". And he wanted his wife Catherine to give him an heir . She only gave him a daughter.

Source Wikipedia
Henry maintained a strong preference for the traditional Catholic practices and, during his reign, Protestant reformers were unable to make many changes to the practices of the Church of England. Under his son, Edward VI, the church became theologically more radical, before rejoining the Roman church during the reign of Queen Mary I, in 1555. The settlement under Elizabeth I (from 1558) of a mildly protestant, catholic, apostolic, and established church (i.e. subject to and part of the state) that accommodates a wide range of theological positions has essentially been its character since.

Answer 2

At this time, the King was the head of the State, and the Pope was the head of the Church. He wanted a divorce, and the Pope would not grant it. He argued that he only married because of a family obligation (he married his brother's widow). Now he believes that it is incest to be married to his sister-in-law. I am thinking .... shoulda thought about that before, dude. However, this was not an infrequent issue during the period.

At any rate, he argued, and the Pope still said no. So . . . he started the Church of England, of which the reigning King would be the head of the Church. The first Protestant.

Answer 3

Henry VIII had a dispute with the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) about wanting to divorce his wife and remarry. Since the Pope would not allow him to do as he wanted , Henry VIII did what any all powerful monarch would do --- he created the Church of England and made himself the head of the Church. This solved two problems. Now he could get rid of his wife and marry again in Church, AND he was now the UNDISPUTED RULER IN ENGLAND --- both of state and of the Church. --- Talk about winning the hearts and minds !!!

Answer 4

The Catholic Church would not let him have a divorce. So he started the Church of England, or the Episcopal Church. It is almost identical to the Catholic church, except for:
1. Divorce is allowed
2. Priests are allowed to marry
3.Confession is not a requirement
4. They do not believe in transubstantiation (the idea that the bread and wine on the altar physically transform into the actual body and blood of Christ)

Answer 5

Two reasons:

1) He wanted to divorce and remarry, and the Catholic Church told him he couldn't. So, he kicked the Church out of the country.

2) There's nothing better than a common religion to culturally bond a nation and a people.

Answer 6

The male heir was one part of it. His falling in love with another woman and the non-cooperation of the Pope in getting him out of his first marriage so he could marry her were the other parts. Read on.

"The second half of Henry's reign was dominated by two issues very important for the later history of England and the monarchy: the succession and the Protestant Reformation, which led to the formation of the Church of England.

Henry had married his brother's widow, Catherine of Aragon, in 1509. Catherine had produced only one surviving child - a girl, Princess Mary, born in 1516. By the end of the 1520s, Henry's wife was in her forties and he was desperate for a son.

The Tudor dynasty had been established by conquest in 1485 and Henry was only its second monarch. England had not so far had a ruling queen, and the dynasty was not secure enough to run the risk of handing the Crown on to a woman, risking disputed succession or domination of a foreign power through marriage.

Henry had anyway fallen in love with Anne Boleyn, the sister of one of his many mistresses, and tried to persuade the Pope to grant him an annulment of his marriage on the grounds that it had never been legal.

Royal divorces had happened before: Louis XII had been granted a divorce in 1499, and in 1527 James IV's widow Margaret (Henry's sister) had also been granted one. However, a previous Pope had specifically granted Henry a licence to marry his brother's widow in 1509.

In May 1529, Wolsey failed to gain the Pope's agreement to resolve Henry's case in England. All the efforts of Henry and his advisers came to nothing; Wolsey was dismissed and arrested, but died before he could be brought to trial.

Since the attempts to obtain the divorce through pressure on the papacy had failed, Wolsey's eventual successor Thomas Cromwell (Henry's chief adviser from 1532 onwards) turned to Parliament, using its powers and anti-clerical attitude (encouraged by Wolsey's excesses) to decide the issue.

The result was a series of Acts cutting back papal power and influence in England and bringing about the English Reformation.

In 1532, an Act against Annates - although suspended during 'the king's pleasure' - was a clear warning to the Pope that ecclesiastical revenues were under threat.

In 1532, Cranmer was promoted to Archbishop of Canterbury and, following the Pope's confirmation of his appointment, in May 1533 Cranmer declared Henry's marriage invalid; Anne Boleyn was crowned queen a week later.

The Pope responded with excommunication, and Parliamentary legislation enacting Henry's decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church soon followed. An Act in restraint of appeals forbade appeals to Rome, stating that England was an empire, governed by one supreme head and king who possessed 'whole and entire' authority within the realm, and that no judgements or excommunications from Rome were valid."

Answer 7

because he wanted to divorce the women that wouldn't give him male heirs.(Sexism is a human idea...) the catholic church wouldn't grant him a divorce just because his wives couldn't give him male children. (it was thought the whole matter of a baby's sex was the woman's part in makin' babies, but it's actually the man's, and he had beriberi. Beriberi is a disease caused by malnutrition that left him not able to father children, but he didn't know that....)
source: the History Channel.

Answer 8

divorce issues, catholic church against it,

henry had 6 wives.