16th century: Officially, all English citizens belonged to the Catholic Church and many attended its services. However, because the Roman Catholic service was entirely in Latin, few congregants fully understood it. Furthermore, the Church was losing authoritative ground due to inroads of Martin Luther's Protestantism and separate Church Reform movements to combat corruption of the clergy. Within a century, the Catholics would no longer hold a monopoly on European religion.
1950-1965: The Catholic Church still served about one-third of English citizens and a majority of the populations of many European countries, even though the Church was losing popularity because of its hard stand on issues such as abortion, birth control, and clerical celibacy. In the ground-breaking Convocations of 1962 and 1965 the Church took measures to "update" its image and make the religion more appealing.
Today:.....
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