Post by Wasp on Sept 26, 2009 21:01:25 GMT
News of the pope's visit is bound to generate calls for the repeal of this act. But as a Catholic, I'm happy with it.
Stuart Reid
The news that the pope is to visit this country next autumn will be followed any minute now by renewed calls for the repeal of the Act of Settlement of 1701. If there is one thing agnostic liberals hate as much as they hate unreconstructed Catholicism, it is the Act of Settlement.
The reason they hate it is that they believe it's just not fair. They may despise Catholicism, but they feel that it is wrong "in this day and age" to discriminate against Catholics. Under the Act, the heir to the throne – or anyone else who is in line and wishes to remain in line – is forbidden from marrying a Catholic (and of course the monarch cannot be a Catholic). The heir can marry a Muslim or a Jew or a Cargo-Cultist, or even a Freemason, but he or she cannot marry an RC. The purpose of the act is to protect the Protestant succession.
The agnostic liberals who govern us want the act repealed. Tony Blair does, too, but he refused to pursue the matter when he was prime minister because he was too busy doing other stuff: going to war, promoting abortion rights, sucking up to the military-industrial complex, encouraging safe sex among teenagers.
Now that he is a Catholic and has put all those things behind him he will no doubt throw his weight behind moves to repeal the act.
Not all Catholics are bothered, however. In fact, some of us are rather in favour of the act, and are impatient with those among our co-religionists who whine about it and play the victim, as tough they were members of an oppressed minority.
The Act of Settlement is good in so far as it reminds us Catholics who we are and what we believe. It reminds us that we reject the Protestant settlement and the Glorious Revolution – and, for that matter, the American and French revolutions. It reminds us that we are Europeans, not Anglo-Americans, and, if we are old enough and pompous enough, it reminds us also that England was once known as "Mary's Dowry".
Beg yours? Precisely.
When two years ago Autumn Kelly, daughter of Brian and Kitty Kelly of Montreal, had to chose between her Catholic religion and marrying Peter Phillips, son of the Princes Royal and Captain Mark Phillips and 10th in line to the throne, there was an awful commotion. According to my friend Cristina Odone, writing in the Daily Telegraph, "he [Phillips] and Miss Kelly face the kind of sacrifice that recurs in medieval chronicles along with witch-burning and lepers' bells ... "
Well, Autumn, having converted to Anglicanism, is now happily married to Peter Phillips. If enough people die – which God forbid – she will one day be Queen of England.
Let's flip the argument. Suppose a Catholic were allowed to marry the heir to the throne – ie, the future supreme governor of the Church of England and defender of the Protestant religion. Her (or his) children, the eldest of whom would in turn become supreme governor, would presumably have to be brought up as Anglicans and at the very least therefore she (or he) would have to show a decent respect for the C of E. But that would not be easy. Rome is rather more discriminatory than the English establishment. Even if she is far too polite to say so these days, Rome regards Anglicanism as a heretical sect, and its bishops as no more than laymen in drag. Reflections of this sort might lead to the sort of insupportable tensions that can arise from cognitive dissonance.
But it is hard to imagine any serious Catholic family wanting the Windsors as in-laws. Think Lady Marchmain. There can be little doubt that, if she had lived long enough to contemplate the present royal princes (even that nice and in many ways admirable Prince of Wales), she would have asked the obvious question: "Would you want your daughter to marry one?"
The fact is, however, that the Act of Settlement will be repealed. Its repeal will be seen as a triumph for toleration; but it will of course be a triumph for indifference and secularism, and signal the end of the Protestant religion by law established. The Queen is a good Christian woman, but once the act goes, her position will be much diminished and this country will cease to be Christian, even in name.
Still, let's not be killjoys. I for one am very grateful to poor Gordon Brown for inviting Benedict XVI to come here. The prospect of the pope addressing parliament leaves me faint with excitement, especially when I contemplate the profoundly serious face that David Cameron will pull for the occasion. For all the humbug it will generate, I think that some good may come of the visit. God bless the pope. God save the Queen.
Finally, in case there are readers who have the idea that the Roman Catholic church is a nasty, brutish and long, and that Protestantism is enlightened and forward-looking, and who for that reason alone are in favour of retaining the Act of Settlement, let me give the last word to the Anglican William Cobbett, who wrote in 1824:
… the 'REFORMATION,' as it is called, was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood; and … as to its more remote consequences, they are, some of them, now before as in that misery, that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us in the face and stun our ears at every turn, and which the "Reformation" has given us in exchange for the ease and happiness and harmony and Christian charity, enjoyed so abundantly, and for so many ages, by our Catholic forefathers.
Stuart Reid
The news that the pope is to visit this country next autumn will be followed any minute now by renewed calls for the repeal of the Act of Settlement of 1701. If there is one thing agnostic liberals hate as much as they hate unreconstructed Catholicism, it is the Act of Settlement.
The reason they hate it is that they believe it's just not fair. They may despise Catholicism, but they feel that it is wrong "in this day and age" to discriminate against Catholics. Under the Act, the heir to the throne – or anyone else who is in line and wishes to remain in line – is forbidden from marrying a Catholic (and of course the monarch cannot be a Catholic). The heir can marry a Muslim or a Jew or a Cargo-Cultist, or even a Freemason, but he or she cannot marry an RC. The purpose of the act is to protect the Protestant succession.
The agnostic liberals who govern us want the act repealed. Tony Blair does, too, but he refused to pursue the matter when he was prime minister because he was too busy doing other stuff: going to war, promoting abortion rights, sucking up to the military-industrial complex, encouraging safe sex among teenagers.
Now that he is a Catholic and has put all those things behind him he will no doubt throw his weight behind moves to repeal the act.
Not all Catholics are bothered, however. In fact, some of us are rather in favour of the act, and are impatient with those among our co-religionists who whine about it and play the victim, as tough they were members of an oppressed minority.
The Act of Settlement is good in so far as it reminds us Catholics who we are and what we believe. It reminds us that we reject the Protestant settlement and the Glorious Revolution – and, for that matter, the American and French revolutions. It reminds us that we are Europeans, not Anglo-Americans, and, if we are old enough and pompous enough, it reminds us also that England was once known as "Mary's Dowry".
Beg yours? Precisely.
When two years ago Autumn Kelly, daughter of Brian and Kitty Kelly of Montreal, had to chose between her Catholic religion and marrying Peter Phillips, son of the Princes Royal and Captain Mark Phillips and 10th in line to the throne, there was an awful commotion. According to my friend Cristina Odone, writing in the Daily Telegraph, "he [Phillips] and Miss Kelly face the kind of sacrifice that recurs in medieval chronicles along with witch-burning and lepers' bells ... "
Well, Autumn, having converted to Anglicanism, is now happily married to Peter Phillips. If enough people die – which God forbid – she will one day be Queen of England.
Let's flip the argument. Suppose a Catholic were allowed to marry the heir to the throne – ie, the future supreme governor of the Church of England and defender of the Protestant religion. Her (or his) children, the eldest of whom would in turn become supreme governor, would presumably have to be brought up as Anglicans and at the very least therefore she (or he) would have to show a decent respect for the C of E. But that would not be easy. Rome is rather more discriminatory than the English establishment. Even if she is far too polite to say so these days, Rome regards Anglicanism as a heretical sect, and its bishops as no more than laymen in drag. Reflections of this sort might lead to the sort of insupportable tensions that can arise from cognitive dissonance.
But it is hard to imagine any serious Catholic family wanting the Windsors as in-laws. Think Lady Marchmain. There can be little doubt that, if she had lived long enough to contemplate the present royal princes (even that nice and in many ways admirable Prince of Wales), she would have asked the obvious question: "Would you want your daughter to marry one?"
The fact is, however, that the Act of Settlement will be repealed. Its repeal will be seen as a triumph for toleration; but it will of course be a triumph for indifference and secularism, and signal the end of the Protestant religion by law established. The Queen is a good Christian woman, but once the act goes, her position will be much diminished and this country will cease to be Christian, even in name.
Still, let's not be killjoys. I for one am very grateful to poor Gordon Brown for inviting Benedict XVI to come here. The prospect of the pope addressing parliament leaves me faint with excitement, especially when I contemplate the profoundly serious face that David Cameron will pull for the occasion. For all the humbug it will generate, I think that some good may come of the visit. God bless the pope. God save the Queen.
Finally, in case there are readers who have the idea that the Roman Catholic church is a nasty, brutish and long, and that Protestantism is enlightened and forward-looking, and who for that reason alone are in favour of retaining the Act of Settlement, let me give the last word to the Anglican William Cobbett, who wrote in 1824:
… the 'REFORMATION,' as it is called, was engendered in beastly lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent English and Irish blood; and … as to its more remote consequences, they are, some of them, now before as in that misery, that beggary, that nakedness, that hunger, that everlasting wrangling and spite, which now stare us in the face and stun our ears at every turn, and which the "Reformation" has given us in exchange for the ease and happiness and harmony and Christian charity, enjoyed so abundantly, and for so many ages, by our Catholic forefathers.