If Henry VIII, who very nicely founded the Church of England, was able to get divorced, have marriages anulled and even cut a couple of heads off, why is there so much hassle about whether Prince Charles should or should not be King if he Divorced Diana (Fool, mad fool!!!) and may perhaps marry Camilla Parker Bowles?
I thought that was why The Church of England was founded?
Camilla Parker-Bowles is not Anglican, she’s Catholic. This presents some issues in terms of her potentially being the Queen Consort, and the legitimacy of the marriage itself in the Church of England’s eyes. Dumb rules, but there it is.
Given that Charles will probably be very, very old by the time Her Majesty dies, it’s unlikely he’ll ever be King anyway. Look; the Queen Mother is what, 190 years old? Okay, 100. What makes ya think Queen Elizabeth won’t live to be the same age? There’s a good chance Charles will be 80 or older by the time Queen Elizabeth finally dies.
IIRC, Henry VIII got divorced twice – once on grounds that Katherine of Aragon had been married to his older brother, hence their union was incestuous and should never have happened in the first place, and once on grounds that his marriage to Anne of Cleves was unconsummated, and therefore no marriage at all. The Pope disputed the first one because Henry’s brother was a child at the time and the marriage was probably never consummated, but if this hadn’t been the case, Henry would have had legitimate grounds for divorce within the Catholic church. So Henry definitely did not open the floodgates to modern, no-fault divorce – the only marriage affected by the schism was his own, and the main issue was whether it was he or the Pope who got to define “incest.”
Hope this makes sense (posting on a lot of champagne at the moment). Polycarp or one of the other Anglican / Episcopalian Dopers will probably be along to correct me in a minute.
As I recall, just a technicality I guess, but wasn’t his marriage to Anne annulled?
Isn’t the Church against divorce and remarriage?
Isn’t that why Princess Margaret couldn’t marry Peter Townsend?
Well, I’m sure they **could ** have married (losing some royalty points along the way, of course). However, if one prefers to allow other rules to determine the nature of one’s marriage partner,… oh, well how sad, never mind.
And what is “the Church”, please? I really do doubt the wisdom of referring to anything as “the Church”, no matter how inoffensively intended. Anything concerned with religious groups can easily become quite heated. If what was meant here was “the church of England”, then it might have been better to make that clear.
Guinastasia - I hope that I do not offend, and if I do,I am sorry. My only excuse for my clumsimess is that I am in an odd mood waiting for the results of a couple of by-elecions.
Oh no, I’m not offended.
Maybe I should’ve been more specific.
The Church of ENGLAND said that if Margaret married Captain Townsend, a divorced man, she would be excommunicated. I THINK Elizabeth was going to permit the marriage even though Townsend was a divorcee, but the Anglican Church said she would be excommunicated. There was such a scandal, that poor Margaret decided it wasn’t worth the hassle of bringing all of that stress down on her family-when you think that her sister is the Head of the Church of England technically, Elizabeth then would have to forbid the marriage. So if Margaret insisted on marrying Townsend, she’d probably be sent out of the country or something like that. From what I understand, the stress was too much.
Obviously, it was a very stressful thing to have to undergo.
(I like Princess Margaret…she’s a hell of a lot cooler than Lilibet.)
(My facts may be a bit off…it was a while ago that I read The Decline of the House of Windsor-I believe it was called.)
Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be frequent updates.
Fretful Porpentine is essentially right. The Church of England is officially opposed to re-marriage after divorce. Some parish priests disregard this and will marry divorce(e)s; it’s not officially sanctioned but the powers that be tend to turn a blind eye to it.* However, I think that most people think it would be beyond the pale for the Defender of the Faith to be a remarried divorce.
I think Her Catholicism is also a legal obstacle (?Act of Settlement), but I’m not sure exactly why. In any event, there is a grand old tradition of British Monarchs having extremely rackety personal lives and the King living in sin with a divorced Roman Catholic would hardly be the most scandalous thing ever to hit the royal family.
*The fact that the CofE is the established Church means that a lot of non-churchgoers see it as their “right” to be married in church and some priests kind of go along with this. This includes, in some circumstances, marrying people of whose marriage the church officially disapproves.
Henry VIII’s first and fourth marriages were both annulled. This may seem a pedantic point, but such theological hairsplitting did matter in the sixteenth century.
The issues raised by Prince Charles’s divorce are rather different. The traditional position of the Church of England was that divorce was not permitted and that remarriage was not allowed while both partners were still alive. This was not much different from the position of most of the mainstream Christian denominations. Divorce in England was therefore always a matter for the civil courts and remained extremely difficult to obtain well into the twentieth century. This was the position when Princess Margaret wanted to marry Group-Captain Peter Townsend. More recently the Church of England has weakened this hardline position. Remarriages cannot be performed in Anglican churches, although individual clergymen are allowed to admit divorcees to receive communion at their discretion. As so often with the modern Church of England, this is a fudge.
A Charles-Camilla marriage would raise a number of problems. Charles himself would be free to remarry in an Anglican church as his ex-wife is now dead, but Camilla would not be (Andrew Parker-Bowles is still alive). Another problem is that any claimant to the British throne must be in communion with the Church of England, although it is unlikely that Prince Charles would ever be refused communion. The final problem is the symbolic one. The Church of England is understandably uncomfortable about the idea of a divorcee as its Supreme Governor. Attitudes however are changing. The Church of England has to be realistic. All the children of the present Archbishop of Canterbury have been divorced. Probably the only thing which is stopping the Church of England further liberalising its rules is that any such move would be seen as a specific concession to Prince Charles.
Mrs Parker-Bowles has never been a Catholic, although her ex-husband is. The rules against Catholics inheriting the throne therefore do not apply.
Perhaps if Charles is planning to become ‘Defender of Faiths’ rather than just ‘Defender of the Faith’, there would be some sect, religion or whatever, which means he can do just as he pleases… after all, he would be the King… Oh no, his namesake Charles I stopped Kings being able to do all that stuff.
The ‘Defender of the Faith’ title is not what’s at stake - that’s just a title. The real problem is that the Church of England is the official state church and a king can only become king if he is a member of it. Most people now feel that this should be changed, but doing so would be very complicated. As with any changes to the divorce rules of the Church of England, this would inevitably be discussed mainly in terms of Prince Charles’s marital problems.
If anything, Charles’s suggestion that he should be ‘Defender of Faiths’ was a PC-ploy intended to acknowledge that there are other religions without directly challenging the legal position of the Church of England. The idea was that he would be both ‘Defender of Faiths’ and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Prince Charles may have picked up some exotic religious ideas, but all the evidence is that he is happy to remain an Anglican. Except when it comes to divorce, the Church of England is very accommodating.
One should add that neither the Government nor the Church of England are likely to go out of their way to assist Charles’s remarriage while it is still assumed that the Queen would disapprove of a marriage to Mrs Parker-Bowles. It is the Queen who remains the real obstacle.