Many of them do, but Canada’s situation is more bizarre than that. It specifically legislated, in 2013, to defer the succession issue to the UK Parliament on a one-time basis. There are good reasons to think that was illegal, but the Canadian constitution is supremely unhelpful at saying what should have been done, so they just went for the minimalist option.
The last changes went through seven national parliaments as well as all six Australian state parliaments. The other nine countries said legislation was unnecessary.
I guess I was thinking of Northern Ireland. While there is no longer open sectarian violence, it would seem to me that there still must be people on both sides who don’t feel good about those on the opposite side.
I thought it was more than 16 countries, but that’s still rather a lot. And no, they don’t just defer to British law.
There definitely is, but yep, it’s both sides, not just against Catholics.
I suppose the CoFE wouldn’t be required by law to be consulted - neither would the other countries, or the British people, or anyone at all in a technical sense - but it would be a really really weird situation where a major religion’s structure and leadership was changed and they had no say in the matter And all because one particular royal was somewhat popular.
Lord Feldon has agreed that the majority of them do (reporting that they have deemed local legislation “unnecessary”), and he and I both agree that Canada has already legislated such a deferral. Are you saying that we are wrong?
Maybe, but that weirdness is inherent in the CofE being an established church. It may be weird for a church to be reorganized without its consent, but official departments are frequently realigned based on top-down whim.
All of the other Commonwealth realms “defer” to UK law in the sense that they don’t have their own legislation on succession to the crown; whoever succeeds to the UK crown under UK law is monarch also in each of the other Commonwealth realms. (There are currently 15 of them, apart from the UK itself.)
But the quid pro quo for this is that the UK will not alter its law on succession to the crown without the consent of each of the Commonwealth realms. How or by whom that consent is given is a matter for the law of each Commonwealth realm, but in some cases it requires an Act of Parliament to assent to the change in UK law, and in at least one case - Australia - it requires an Act of Parliament of the national parliament, plus an Act of Parliament of each of the state parliaments.
So, there may not be “dozens” of parliaments involved, but any change to UK law on succession to the crown requires the assent of 15 other countries, and involves legislation in numerous parliaments. So it’s not done lightly and, when it is done, it takes time.
A relevant factor here is that this is something of a niusance for the Commonwealth realms. They have their own political priorities, and their own pressures on executive and parliamentary time. It’s not necessarily convenient for them to have to find parliamentary time to enact legislation fiddling with the succession to the crown and, the more often this happens, the more the inconveniences of Commonwealth realm status become manifest. It’s not a particularly robust or durable status; since the present queen acceded 16 countries that were Commonwealth realms have become republics and, the more of a niusance the status proves to be, the more likely it is that others will follow suit.
Yes, essentially. UDS explained better than I could have.
Lord Feldon - I can’t think of any situation where such a large organisation (8.5 million people) has been reorganised against the will of its members, except by dictators. Of course, it’s possible that the church would agree to a reorganisation, but that’s not what was claimed.
But, as his lordship points out, that’s what it means to be a state church. The ultimate power, and therefore the ultimate responsiblity, for the organisation, doctrine and everything else of the Church of England lies not with the Church but with Parliament.
Ordinarily, of course, Parliament exercises its power taking account of the views held by, and within, the Church. Still, it’s Parliament’s decision.
Early in the twentieth century, for example, the Church of England spent twenty years writing, discussing and debating a new form of the Prayer Book that it uses for its liturgies and ceremonies. The revised version was finally approved by the Convocations of the Church and by the Church Assembly in 1927, but could not take effect without parliamentary approval. However the House of Commons rejected it in 1928, and it was another 40 years before an Alternative Prayer Book became available within the church.
So, yeah, Parliament definitely could decide to vary the relationship between the Crown and the Church in a way that did not meet with the Church’s approval. Indeed, the democratic case for doing so would be strong; the Crown is first and foremost a civic institution, and the notion that it must be subject to succession laws which explicitly discriminate on the grounds of religion because the church wants it to is obviously problematic.
And all because one particular royal was somewhat popular.