When Viking raiders discovered the wealthy, unarmed monasteries of England, they sacked them. The monks were murdered, the nuns violated, and the people were either slaughtered, enslaved, or impoverished. The Church was an obvious target, and seemed to be permanently shattered.
Over time, the Norsemen became Christians, and The Church grew, again. Henry VIII was, basically, a brutish, reincarnated Viking in his attitude toward the English Church and its properties.
Unlike the Vikings, the establishment he left behind had to intellectually justify his destruction of The Church. So, hired guns like Newton made all sorts of very complicated intellectual justifications for removing the Roman Catholic Church from history, rational thought, and whatever faith threatened their employers.
Just as history records a plethora of traitors to causes, The Church has often been betrayed from within, as well. The spirit of Judas resurfaced in a long line of destructive heresies, each propounded by a long line of heretics. That same spirit is still at work. Liberal underminers have long been destroying The Church from within. In the last half a century of undermining and sabotage, they caused a despoliation of Catholicism unmatched since either the Vikings or Tudors.
Still, The Church goes on, recovering from every attack in the ongoing testimony of God’s love for Her that would not be as evident were She not under continual attack from within and without.
