In the Octave of the Feast of Christ the King…
To the King of ages, immortal,
invisible, the one only God, be honour and glory forever…
By
James Bogle Esq
 |
| 2008 photo by 'brokenkey' via Wikipedia commons. |
The article on the web-site of the
British-based lay initiative, Voice of the Family, formed to defend
Catholic teaching on the family, headed “To God alone be the honour and glory”
by my good friend, Dr Alan Fimister, has all the good intentions that I have
learned to associate with him. However, it misrepresents the true position
of the British monarch, not least our late Queen Elizabeth II, and that on a
very serious and important issue.
I respond now to Alan’s piece in fraternal
charity with the sole aim of arriving at the truth which, of course, should be
the first concern of all Catholic journalists and writers. I am grateful to Rorate
Caeli for publishing this article and saddened that Voice of the Family was
unwilling to do so or to correct the highly misleading and damaging impression
left by Alan’s article.
Unfairly disparaging the Monarch
effectively encourages secular republicanism which is the only alternative
available today and, moreover, can undermine relations between nationalist and
monarchist, not least in sensitive communities like those in Northern Ireland
where conflict has raged on that issue for many decades. Moreover, it is in just that very Province
that key moral issues such as abortion and the role of the family have been
most hotly contested, with the government in Westminster imposing highly
immoral legislation upon the Province, by ministerial fiat and against
the will of the majority of the people living there. The blame for this lies with the ministers
and Parliament and not with the Monarch who has no power to prevent it.
Most of Alan’s article is typically
eloquent, learned and reasonable but his criticism of our late Queen is wrong
as a matter of constitutional law.
Let me start, however, with the title of
his article which is also significant. In adopting the old Scriptural motto, soli
Deo gloria, Alan mistranslates the Latin in the very same way that the
Protestant rebels of the 16th century did i.e. as “to God alone”. Indeed, that mistranslation became one of
the 5 solae summarising the fundamental beliefs of those same Protestant rebels
i.e. (1) grace alone (2) faith alone (3) Christ alone (4) Scripture alone and
(5) God alone – soli Deo gloria. All these
solae were understood in an heretical
sense and so were condemned by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.
The true
sense of soli Deo
gloria – “to the
one only God” - is seen in its Biblical context. 1 Timothy 1.17 reads, in the Vulgate Latin approved by the
Catholic Church, thus: "Regi autem saeculorum immortali invisibili soli Deo
honor et gloria in saecula saeculorum amen", meaning “Now to the king
of ages, immortal, invisible, the one only God, be honour and glory for
ever and ever. Amen.” [emphasis
added].
The difference in meaning is striking and
vital because the Protestant rebels meant by the phrase that only God should be
given honour and glory, not the Virgin Mary, not the saints, not popes,
bishops, magistrates, kings or emperors. It was central to their teaching that, as
Luther taught, the baptised are not cleansed of their sin but are, instead, not
much more than “dung heaps covered in snow”, all equally evil, and God, with
His grace (the “snow”), merely cloaks their evil (the “dung”) as if to hide it. Thus, by the lights of such Protestantism, St
Francis is as evil as Stalin and St Teresa of Avila as evil as Pol Pot but
Christ, through His crucifixion and grace, simply “hides” all their evil[1].
Far from being “dung hills covered in
snow”, man grows in glory as he accepts redemption and grace (not least through
the Sacraments) and the more he does so, the more glorious he becomes, with our
Lady, the most glorious of all redeemed creatures, and the other saints ranged
below her. The Protestant view that we are all “dung
hills covered in snow”, rather than a hierarchy of the saints in future heavenly
glory, ranged about God, His angels and His saints, was the beginning of modern
egalitarianism which eschews all idea of hierarchy and considers all men absolutely
equal (and, under Protestantism, equally bad).
It was also the beginning of that modern
republicanism which eschews hierarchy and extols egalitarianism, since it regarded
all true Protestants as already equally “saved” and thus already “saints”, even
in this life here below. Hence Calvin’s Genevan republic was called
a “republic of saints” and, in England, the Puritans, after treacherously
executing King Charles I, called their new republican assembly the “Parliament
of Saints”[2]. Some “saints” these, that had just murdered
their own King!
Nevertheless, the Puritan republics were
the first secularist republics endorsing the principle of separation of Church and
State (from which Puritan principle the United States gets its constitutional
idea of a “wall of separation between Church and State”, a principle that is
now used to arrest harmless people praying outside abortion clinics).
The idea of a marriage of Church and State
is a profoundly Catholic idea, being neither secularist, like most modern
republics, nor theocratic, like many Islamic states, but a dyarchy as taught by
Pope St Gelasius I the Great, in his letter to the Eastern Emperor, Anastasius
I Dicoros, entitled Famuli Vestrae
Pietatis (and sometimes shortened
to Duo Sunt, meaning “there are two” i.e. two powers,
spiritual and temporal, papal and imperial, by which the world is ruled, of
which the higher is the spiritual or conscientious).
This
dyarchical idea was abandoned by many of the Protestant rebels but not, by any
means, all. Thus, in
England, King Henry VIII, who still considered himself a Catholic even after he
had repudiated the Holy See, retained a form of dyarchical government but making
the temporal ultimately superior to the spiritual. This
dyarchical marriage of Church and State is still the basis of our British Constitution
and part of what makes us, at least nominally, a Christian constitutional
monarchy, even if the State Church is Anglican and not Catholic.
However,
the progress of the Protestant revolt in Britain later proceeded along very different
and very unstable lines leading ultimately to civil war. It ended
with the illegal execution and murder of King Charles I and the establishment
of a unitary republic over England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, of which
Oliver Cromwell would eventually become dictator as “Lord Protector”. The Monarchy
was restored in 1660 with King Charles II who was, in turn, succeeded by his younger
brother, King James II of England and Ireland and VII of Scotland, who had
converted to Catholicism.
Anti-Catholics,
Puritans and republicans, and those who had been revolutionaries against King
Charles I, got up a petition to exclude the Catholic King James from the
throne. They were called “Petitioners” or “Exclusionists” and were later called
“Whigs”. Those
who abhorred the idea of Parliament seeking to exclude the rightful King from
his rightful throne were called “Abhorrers” and were later called “Tories”. From these origins came the two main parties in the UK, the Liberal Party (“Whig”)
and the Conservative Party (“Tory”).
King
James, whilst remaining Catholic, was also Supreme Governor of the Church of
England and, as King of Scots, royal protector of the Kirk, the Presbyterian
Church of Scotland. In 1687
and 1688, he issued a Declaration of Indulgence granting religious liberty to all his
subjects of any mainstream religion, including the heavily persecuted
Catholics, and even, technically, Jews and Muslims. Seven
bishops, in a petition, refused to read the Declaration of Indulgence from the pulpit (the media of the day) and
so the King charged them with seditious libel. However, the King lost the case[3] and
the seven bishops were acquitted.
The King
was then betrayed by a conspiracy of civil and military officers, and Anglican
bishops, who feared that such a widespread grant of religious liberty would
weaken the Church of England (and the Church of Scotland) which might, in turn,
weaken their own privileged positions and wealth. Some
even feared, irrationally, that King James might demand that they return the
stolen and looted monastery lands that their Protestant ancestors had seized.
This was irrational because King James had already promised not to do so
because it was, by now, too late to do so effectively.
These
conspirators supported a foreign invasion from the Dutch Calvinist republic
under the Stadtholder, Prince William of Orange, who invaded
England on 5 November 1688 landing at Torbay, Devon. A treacherous part of King
James’ army deserted their posts on Salisbury Plain and went over to William of
Orange which turned the tide in his favour. King
James was forced to flee, having been deserted by treacherous turncoat officers
like John Churchill, made, by William of Orange, 1st Earl, and later,
by Queen Anne, 1st Duke, of Marlborough.
William
of Orange then became King William III of England, Scotland and Ireland. Savage
penal laws against Catholics and “dissenters” were again restored by law and
the Declaration
of Indulgence
was abolished. This
event is known to history as the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, and
with it the Constitutions of England, Scotland and Ireland changed dramatically.
It effectively made Parliament, instead of the King, sovereign. This was
encapsulated in the so-called “Bill of Rights” of 1688 (which, despite being
called a “Bill” is, in fact, an Act of Parliament). Thereafter,
the circumstances in which the King could act alone, using the Royal
Prerogative[4],
became severely limited.
Ironically, five of the seven acquitted
bishops were subsequently removed, by Parliament, from office for refusing to
swear allegiance to the new King William III. They considered him an usurper
and not the true king and so refused to swear. Instead, they formed a schismatic
“non-juring” Anglican Church which later became the inspiration of the “High
Church” and Oxford Movements, the latter famously producing Cardinal St John
Henry Newman. The non-jurors enjoyed good relations with the Episcopal Church
of Scotland (which had been ousted by the Presbyterians in 1637) and are also
the spiritual ancestors of the worldwide Anglican-Catholic Ordinariate[5].
After
the Bill of Rights 1688, what was left of the Royal Prerogative, now very
severely curtailed, began to be whittled down more and more over the succeeding
decades and centuries. From
once having the power to prorogue Parliament whenever he did not need its
advice (Parliament then being considered a body that advised the King, not one
that dictated to him) the Monarch could now barely even refuse a Bill presented
to him for Royal Assent.
Today,
the most important Prerogative powers are exercised exclusively by ministers and include the
power to make war and deploy the armed forces, to conduct foreign policy and
make treaties, to make public and judicial appointments, to issue passports,
and to grant pardons and honours, among others.
The
Monarch still exercises some Prerogative powers himself, known as “the Reserve Powers”
or “the personal Prerogatives”, but only on the advice of ministers. The most
important of these are the power to appoint and dismiss ministers, including
the Prime Minister, to summon and prorogue parliament, and to give the Royal Assent
to Bills passed by Parliament. However,
all of these powers can only
be exercised solely on the advice of ministers and not at the discretion of the
Monarch acting alone.
If there
is concern that ministers have improperly “advised” the use of Prerogative
powers, then the “advice” upon which these powers were exercised can be reviewed
by the courts[6]
and thus, in effect, so can the exercise of those powers. Otherwise, these
powers are unimpeachable by the courts.
Parliament
itself can also over-rule certain Prerogative powers by enacting a statute. For
example, the power to appoint and regulate civil servants was placed on a
statutory footing by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 which
also codified the constitutional convention that new treaties have to be laid
before Parliament before the government can ratify them.
The very
last time that a Monarch, acting alone on her own discretion, refused Royal
Assent to a Bill was in 1708 when Queen Anne, the last of the Royal Stuarts
(allowed by Parliament to accede to the throne because she was a Protestant),
refused assent to the Scottish Militia Bill. Since
then, the British Constitution has so far developed that, today, the Monarch
may not now refuse assent to any Bill at all unless advised so to do by his
ministers.
Indeed,
the procedure today for giving Royal Assent usually involves Lords
Commissioners, nominally appointed by the Monarch “on advice” of ministers (and
thus actually appointed by the Prime Minister). They call upon the clerk of the
House of Lords to signify the Royal Assent with the words “Le Roi le veult”, meaning, in Law French, “the
King wishes it” and the clerk duly speaks those words openly in the House. However,
the Monarch has, in reality, almost nothing to do with it.
However,
the common view of constitutional lawyers is that there is one exception to the
general rule that the Monarchy cannot, on his own discretion, veto a Bill
passed by Parliament and it is this: the Monarch may refuse Royal Assent and so
veto a Bill, against the advice of ministers, if it is a Bill that attempts permanently
to destroy democracy e.g. by extending the life of Parliament indefinitely or by
gerrymandering the electorate so that the government can never be removed.
This is
the one time the Monarch may refuse Royal Assent, and so veto a Bill, acting on
his own discretion and against the
advice of ministers. The Monarch is permitted so to do because obviously ministers
are not going to advise vetoing their own Bill attempting to abolish democracy. This is
the one and only rare exception where the Monarch may veto a Bill on his own
discretion[7].
For
similar reasons, the Monarch also has power, acting alone on his own discretion,
to dismiss a Prime Minister who refuses to resign after losing the confidence
of the House of Commons. In all
other respects, however, the Monarch has no more power to veto a Bill passed by
Parliament than do you or I.
If the
Monarch were to attempt to seize such a veto power, he would be subverting and
destroying the very Constitution that he had sworn to uphold and protect. It
would, in effect, be a coup d’etat by the King against the State and thus a form of immoral and illegal sedition
which St Thomas Aquinas condemns as seriously sinful[8]. If the
present King were to try to do so then he, Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, would, in
his private and personal capacity, be raising a rebellion against both
Parliament and the Crown, i.e. against King Charles III in his official
capacity. It would be hard to imagine a more seriously illegal and immoral sedition
than that.
St
Thomas also teaches us that “accordingly the sin of sedition is first and
chiefly in its authors, who sin most grievously”[9]. The
Church teaches the same[10]. It is
also the teaching of the Catholic Church that the ends do not justify the means
and that we may not do evil that good may come of it. Alan,
himself, says so in his Voice of the Family article: “so must we never do evil that good may come of it.” This is also expressly taught by St Paul in
Romans 3.8[11]. Therefore, the Monarch may not raise a sedition
or a coup d’etat in order to veto a Bill that he has no power to veto,
no matter how bad that Bill may be. That would be “to do evil that good may
come of it”, the very thing that Alan agrees we, as Christians, may never do.
Yet Alan condemns our late Queen for not
doing so – for not doing evil that good may come of it. He complains of “her complicity in the
various immoral Acts of Parliament which disfigured her reign” failing to
understand that she had no such “complicity” whatsoever because she had no such
power. As a matter of constitutional law, Alan is
simply wrong. He has failed to understand that, under the
British Constitution, it is Parliament that is sovereign, not the Monarch.
To accuse our late Queen of sinning by
refusing to veto the Abortion Bill (or any other immoral Bills) one must first
prove that she had such a power. However, as a matter of law, no such power
belonged to her. One simply cannot blame a person for
failing to exercise a power that the person does not possess. The blame for these immoral Bills must lie
where it belongs: with those who did have power to pass them,
namely the ministers and Parliament.
To blame the Queen for them is a sin
against charity, justice and filial piety. It is like the bad policeman who, unable to
catch the real criminal, arrests innocent people, instead, and locks them up
out of anger at not finding the true criminal. It is like the bad soldier who, unable to defeat
the enemy and take a certain defended locality, takes out his anger on innocent
local civilians by attacking them instead.
The British Monarch is “sovereign” in name
only. The true sovereign is Parliament. That is the meaning of the principle of
parliamentary sovereignty. Accordingly, the rest of Alan’s criticism
of our late Queen falls away. Our late Queen cannot be blamed or
condemned for failing to use a power that she did not have. Still less may she
be blamed for failing to destroy the Constitution and, in defiance of St Paul
and Christian morality, failing to do evil that good may come of it.
Alan has erred and erred grievously. He
must make amends. He has sought to tarnish and defame the
reputation of our late Queen most unjustly. In so doing he has helped to undermine our
Constitutional monarchy not only here in Britain but across the whole
Commonwealth. He has also aided and abetted the only alternative to Christian
constitutional monarchy, namely secular republicanism, and thereby aided that
very same secularism which Voice of the Family claims to be defending us
from. In so doing, he has inadvertently given
aid, comfort and support to the secular republicanism that is destroying
Christianity world-wide and which, taking Ireland as an example, so frequently
succeeds in secularising even once strongly Catholic countries.
Is that what a Catholic scholar and
journalist should be doing? No, of course not.
Our late Queen was truly a model of unblemished
character, virtue, selflessness and of Christian leadership, witness and
dignity, albeit as a Protestant. We were extremely fortunate to have her as our
Head of State and for so many years. Very few heads of state can be compared to
her. Thos who wish to challenge or criticise our
late Queen should first of all find out the true facts and not proceed from a
position of unlearned error.
Let us Catholics, then, not cheapen
ourselves by carelessly and wrongly lashing out at her, and her 70 years of unimpeachable
good conduct and good witness, by seeking to blame her for evils that she had
no part in.
**Ends**
NOTES
[1] As Luther put it pecca forte, crede fortiter – “sin
strongly, but believe more strongly still” for it is the original Lutheran
Protestant belief that the Elect go to heaven merely by believing in Christ, no
matter how much they may sin in their daily lives.
[2] This “Parliament of Saints” was preceded by the “Rump” Parliament
which consisted of those Members left after the Long Parliament was “purged”,
on 6 December 1648, by Colonel Thomas Pride, in “Pride’s purge”, throwing out
all Members, many of them Presbyterians, who wanted the return of King Charles
I or who were opposed to the execution of the King. This was done on the orders
of Commissary General Thomas Ireton whose title and position have resonances
with those of a Soviet commissar. Between 6 and 12 December 1648, Colonel
Pride, supported by 2 regiments, prevented 231 Members from entering the House
of Commons and imprisoned 45 of them, so that the Army controlled the House
entirely. The remaining Members, almost all extreme radicals, formed the “Rump”
Parliament and voted to set up a bogus High Court to try the King which the
House of Lords then rejected. Nevertheless, it was illegally set up. The King,
upon being brought before it, accordingly challenged its jurisdiction. However, that
illegal “court” then signed the King’s death warrant and the King’s execution
proceeded soon after on 30 January 1649. Thereafter, the “Rump” Parliament
voted to abolish both the House of Lords and the Monarchy and established a
Council of State to rule the new republic of Britain. Soon enough, Cromwell
came to regard the “Rump” Parliament as corrupt and, on 20 April 1653, famously
harangued them and said, in a speech no King would ever have dared to make, “depart,
I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”. He then
declared "you are no Parliament" and called in a troop of soldiers,
under the command of Major-General Thomas Harrison, ordering them to clear the
chamber. Turning to the Speaker’s Mace, the symbol of parliamentary power, he declared
it a “fool’s bauble” and ordered it taken away. Within a month he had set up a
“Nominated Assembly” called “the Parliament of Saints”. The absurdly named
Puritan, Praise-God Barebone, leather seller, preacher and member of the heretical
millennialist sect, the Fifth Monarchy Men, gave his name to this “Parliament
of Saints”, it being also called Barebone’s Parliament. From the start its
Members became a subject of ridicule, many commentators calling them
"pettifoggers, innkeepers, millwrights, stocking-mongers and such a rabble
as never had hopes to be of a Grand Jury". In particular, its members were
singled out for their low social status, their Puritanism and their relative
lack of political experience, all exemplified by Mr Barebone himself. This
“Parliament of Saints” came into being on 4 July 1653 and was the last attempt
at political stability by the republic before the dictatorship called “the Protectorate”.
Cromwell and the Army Council nominated all its members (129 from England, 5
from Scotland and 6 from Ireland, the latter all English army officers) so that
it has appeared to posterity as a kind of proto-Fascist republican parliament.
It dissolved itself, after much in-fighting, on 12 December 1653, and Cromwell,
as “Lord Protector”, then became dictator of the republic, a fate so often
reserved for egalitarian, secularist republics throughout history.
[3] Dominus Rex versus Archiepiscopum Cantuariensem et al. De Termino
Sanctae Trinitatis Anno Regni Jacobi Secundi Regis, Quarto, In Banco Regis.
Die Veneris Decimo Quinto Die Junii, 1688 (The King v the Archbishop of
Canterbury and others, in Trinity Term in the fourth year of the reign of
King James II, in the Court of Kings Bench, on Friday 15 June 1688).
[4] The Royal Prerogative is so called because it refers to the right
of the King to speak (i.e. legislate or command) before (and after) all others,
including Parliament. It comes from the Latin words rogare, to speak,
and pre, meaning “before” i.e. prerogare “to speak before” all
others.
[5] All of these non-jurors remained, unsurprisingly, the strongest
supporters of the Catholic Stuart dynasty and of the Catholic Prince Charles
Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, particularly during the Jacobite
uprisings to restore the legitimate Stuart dynasty to the thrones of England,
Scotland and Ireland.
[6] A recent example of this was
the 2019 prorogation ruling in which the Supreme Court decided that Mr Boris
Johnson’s advice to the Queen to prorogue parliament for five weeks was
unlawful – see R (Miller) v the
Prime Minister and Cherry v Advocate General for Scotland [2019] UKSC 41.
[7] Erskine May, Thomas, A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges,
Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 1st Ed, 1844, chs 1 &
2, 25th Ed, 2019, ch. 1; Bagehot, Walter, The English
Constitution, 1867, London: Chapman and Hall, ch. II; Dicey, A V , Introduction
to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 1885, London: MacMillan, Parts
I & III; Bogdanor, V, The Monarchy and the Constitution, 1997,
Oxford: Oxford University Press; Hood Phillips, O and Jackson, Constitutional
and Administrative Law, 8th edn, 2001, London: Sweet and Maxwell, at
para.7–010 & p.136; Tomkins, A, Public Law , 2003, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, at pp.63–64; Bogdanor, V, The New British Constitution,
2009, Oxford: Hart Publishing; Barnett, H, Constitutional and Administrative
Law, 10th edn, 2013, London: Routledge, at p.325; Halsbury’s Laws of
England, Vol.20 (Constitutional and Administrative Law), 2014, London:
LexisNexis, at para.18; Parpworth, N, Constitutional and Administrative Law,
8th edn, 2014, Oxford: Oxford University Press, at para.4.9; Bradley, Ewing and
Knight, Constitutional and Administrative Law, 16th edn, 2015, Harlow:
Pearson Education, at pp.19 and 207; Zander, M, The Law-Making Process,
7th edn, 2015, Oxford: Hart Publishing, at p.49; Wheeler, G J, Royal Assent
in the British Constitution, LQR 2016, 132(Jul), 495-505. The exercise of
the Royal Assent is not purely formulaic in the sense that the Crown, acting on
the advice of ministers, might, in very rare circumstances (e.g. a minority
government, or a colonial or devolved government), theoretically be advised to
withhold assent but such a situation is highly unlikely. What we are
considering here is not such a scenario but rather the Crown refusing assent against
the advice of ministers or acting alone. That, it is agreed
by the relevant constitutional authorities, would only be lawful in the
situation where the whole Constitution were about to be vitiated e.g. by
extending the life of Parliament indefinitely or gerrymandering the electorate
so that the government could never be ousted – that is
to say, permanently destroying democracy. Otherwise, the Monarch, acting alone,
no more has such veto power than do any of his subjects.
[8] St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, Q.42.
[9] Ibid., Q.42, A.2.
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church, paras. 2238-2240.
[11] “And not rather (as we are slandered, and as some affirm that we
say) ‘let us do evil, that there may come good?’ whose damnation is just” Rom
3.8.
