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All this emotionally rife history is still well taught in British schools. "The English think that the most important event of the Elizabethan age," explains Anglican Historian Henry Chadwick, who is also an adviser to Archbishop Runcie, "was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when the King of Spain sent a fleet to conquer the English ships and to invade and impose Roman Catholicism on the people. When people say the Pope ought not to come, they are saying that something like the Spanish Armada is on our doorstep again. They have a notion that one last ship was left behind and is now arriving."
A flurry of English penal laws forbade Catholic priests and Masses, and barred the Catholic laity from voting for Parliament or holding offices of public trust. Only in the early 19th century did the laity, against the wishes of the Catholic hierarchy, work out a formula that combined political loyalty to the Crown with spiritual loyalty to the Pope. Though the Vatican never withdrew its anathema against the Crown, this year's diplomatic recognition relegates it to history's dustbin. Catholics regained full citizenship rights in 1829, the English hierarchy was re-established in 1850, and devout Catholics were allowed to graduate from Oxford and Cambridge by 1871. In this historical context, British Catholics were as suspicious of Anglicans (not just in persecuted Ireland but throughout the British Isles) as Anglicans were of Rome.
In the 20th century, British Catholic pressure on the Vatican helped persuade the papacy at one point to outlaw even contacts with non-Catholics as undermining the concept of the One True Church. But in 1958 Angelo Giuseppe Cardinal Roncalli, the Patriarch of Venice, was elected Pope John XXIII after the death of the doctrinally stern Pius XII, and a new mood about Christian unity took hold. Two years later, John established the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity to further ecumenism among all Christian groups. And the Second Vatican Council, called into session by Pope John XXIII in 1962, began to issue decrees that moved the Catholic Church closer to an ecumenical spirit. "There was a man sent from God," said Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I, quoting the New Testament, "and his name was John."
Vatican II extended partial recognition to non-Catholic churches, called for discussions on reunion, and eliminated the idea that Catholic belief should ideally be mandated, or at least protected, by the power of the state. It was especially this removal of church political claims that made feasible John Paul II's visit to Buckingham Palace.