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Hi Zina,
That's a somewhat broad question,
but I'll try to answer it somewhat
briefly.
The chief indicator that England
ceased to be Catholic was when Henry
VIII renounced his ties with the
Pope and made himself head of the
Church of England.
This happened
in April of 1534 with Parliament
passing an act which invalidated
Henry's marriage to Catherine (and
making Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter,
legitimate and heir to the throne).
Refusal to take an oath in support
of this constituted high treason,
and this was why St. Thomas More was executed. But even one year prior,
in April of 1533, parliament passed
an act which implicitly repudiated
papal primacy by saying that the
king was the supreme head of the
empire in both the temporal and spiritual
spheres. By 1535, the schism was
well-established.
Protestantism started to creep in
earnest under Edward VI (1547-53).
The chief indicator that England
became Protestant (which is a
different question) were the
radical changes made under the leadership
of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. Prior
to Cranmer, the Church of England
more or less maintained most of its
Catholic heritage; indeed, Henry
VIII was named a Defender of the
Faith by the Pope. All he wanted
was a divorce, not a doctrinal revolution;
so in a sense he initiated a schism
rather than introducing a heresy.
Introducing heresy was Cromwell's
job.
In particular, he introduced a Protestant
notion of the Priesthood, one that
excluded the sense of the priest
offering sacrifice to God, a crucial
distinction which later would cause
the Catholic Church to declare that
the priestly orders of the Church
of England were "absolutely
null and utterly void". This
is because he had fundamentally changed
the concept of the priesthood.
This happened with the publication
of a new order by Henry for ordaining
and consecrating bishops and priests
in 1550; it was revised in 1552.
The intent behind this new order
was to eliminate the concept of the
priesthood having a sacrificial character.
That prompted more and more protestantizing
to be introduced into the Church
of England.
As for effects of the Reformation
on the Catholic Church, obviously,
the Catholic Church will be forever
changed by the effects of the Reformation.
Probably the most visible effect
is that for all its wrong headedness,
the Reformation *did* motivate the
Catholic Church to reform itself
in what we call the Counter-Reformation.
There were real abuses that were
going on in the Catholic Church,
too many, and she had been too lazy
to purge herself of the evil. The
Reformation provided that motivation,
and the purification took form in
the Council Of Trent (1545-1564).
The Church did more than condemn
various errors of Protestantism;
she also spent a lot of effort condemning
abuses, cleaning up the mess, and
issuing decrees that would prevent
them from occurring again.
The bigger effect of the Reformation
is that it severed the unity of the
Church in a major way; a way that she has obviously yet
to recover from.
I hope this helps — let me
know if you have any further questions.
Eric Ewanco
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