On English Royalty

Factual Questions
81

The problem for the British monarch is that they are the supreme governor of the C of E. It comes with the job. A monarch in communion with the Church of Rome is one that acknowledges the Pope as both the Vicar of Christ and whose authority is final. So the monarch would be expressly subservient to the Pope. This is clearly an impossible to breach conflict with the position and oath upholding the C of E church.

The minor ins and outs of the specifics of the ecclesiastical rites and teachings are much less important. Although the modern C of E is moving ever further away.

Conversely the Roman Catholic attitude to the Anglican church is much more conciliatory. Alone in the Protestant and non-conformist churches, members of the Anglican church can convert to Catholicism almost without effort. To the point that ordination of Anglican ministers is recognised and they only require some basic retraining. How do you find a Catholic minister that is married with children? Find an ex-Anglican minister that converted.

Part of this is that the Pauline lineage of bishops is unbroken within the Anglican Church. So the authority of Anglican bishops to both create new bishops and ordain clergy is recognised.

Henry VIII died believing he was a devout Catholic. Just one that had a problem with papal authority. Fundamentally the entire point is to not allow that authority back.

It is an unusual situation, but any country that has a state church will run into similar problems. At least we are past God kings. Just kings that rule by the authority of God.

82

Anglican ordination is not recognised by the Catholic church. Anglican ministers who enter the Catholic church and who wish to serve in ministry do get an accelerated path to ordination, but they do have to be ordained.

(Which occasionally is not permitted — e.g. if the Minister is divorced and remarried, but has a first wife still living.)

Again, no. Anglican bishops and priests are treated with courtesy and respect and afforded various clerical honours, but the official Catholic position is that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and void”, and even an Anglican bishop who enters the Catholic church will need ordination if he wants to serve in clerical ministry.

(Graham Leonard, the retired Anglican Bishop of London, entered the Catholic church in 1994 and was ordained as a priest and later made a monsignor, but he never became a bishop in the Catholic church.)

83

The previous emperor of Japan abdicated in 2019 and it required a special law to allow that. The previous emperor is called

Daijō Tennō or Dajō Tennō (太上天皇) is a title for an Emperor of Japan who abdicates the Chrysanthemum Throne in favour of a successor.[1] It is sometimes translated as “Emperor Emeritus”.

but abreviated to 上皇 jōkō.

84

Exactly my point. Edward VIII rewrote the succession laws by excluding his heir and THAT needed Parliament’s approval. But what if he simply abdicated and did not include his descendants. In that case, I claim he can do so without Parliament under the Royal Prerogative.
I don’t think that is without precedence. When King James II fled the country, Parliament declared he had abdicated and then took on the role of choosing his successor.

85

I don’t know if it’s a mainstream view, but Anne Twomey, an Australian constitutional law professor, agrees with you (PDF, page 47):

A Sovereign may abdicate at common law and may do so constructively, rather than formally, by fleeing the nation, as in the case of James II. Abdication may also occur by legislation, which is necessary where any change in the line of succession to the throne is required (for example, by excluding from the line of succession any future children of the abdicating Sovereign).

If the Sovereign of the United Kingdom were to abdicate in favour of the heir apparent and this were done by instrument without ministerial advice, then there would be a demise of the Crown and the laws of succession as part of the law of each of the Realms would apply so that the heir apparent became Sovereign in each Realm without the need for separate action in each Realm.

86

And here is another question: Charles III abdicates and Parliament says, “No you don’t” Charles says fine but I’m not going to do any monarch things. No Royal Assents. No appointments of PMs. No passports issued. Nothing.
What happens then? And if the answer is: Parliament passes a law deposing him, remember it takes his Royal Assent to take effect which he ain’t giving.
Isn’t it just easier to agree that he can unilaterally abdicate and upon signing his Instrument, William V is now king?

87

Passports are only nominally isssued in the King’s name; the actual work is done by HM Passport Office, under the Home Office, without any involvement from the royal household, so a passive monarch would not pose problems here. Royal assent can be granted on the King’s behalf by either the Lords Commissioners or the Clerk of the Parliaments, so there’d be workarounds to get that done if the King refuses to do anything here. I’m not sure there’d be an alternative formality for the appointment of a PM, but if necessary, one could be created by statute. Perhaps the Counsellors of State could carry it out?

88

Even against his wishes? The Royal Assent Act of 1967 would indicate not.

That needs Royal Assent (see above).

89

The scenario is a bit unrealistic. Why would the king refuse to assent to legislation effecting his abdication, if he wants his abdication effected?

But if we run with the scenario then, if the UK courts agree with the view which Lord-Feldon has pointed to, then his abdication is effective and the crown passes automatically to his heir, William, who can assent to any legislation necessary to deal with the consequences of the abdication

I’m not sure that the view Lord_Feldon points to is all that persuasasive, though. Looking at the linked article the only authority cited is a journal article from 1937, and the article also footnotes another journal article which takes the opposing view. The precedent of James II is mentioned but, of course, that happened before the Act of Settlement. Plus, in that case the crown didn’t pass to James’s heir, which is what should have happened if this is a precedent supporting Twomey’s view; in what was essentially a revolutionary act, an “English convention” met and proclaimed William and Mary to be joint monarchs. That proclamation, so far as I know, was not assented to by any monarch.

90

As I understand it, this is true now, but only relatively recently. Anglican ordinations were recognized as valid by Rome, but that stopped when the Anglican church started ordaining women (or possibly when they started ordaining female bishops).

Nor are the Anglicans unique in holding to the Apostolic Succession: Lutherans, for instance, also do. And the Catholic Church also considers the Lutherans to be fairly close to Catholicism.

91

No. Pretty much from the time of the English reformation onwards Anglican orders were regarded as of dubious validity by Rome, and an Anglican minister wishing to enter Catholic ministry had to be conditionally re-ordained. Any doubts were resolved in 1896 when, after a lengthy theological investigation, Pople Leo XIII declared that “ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been and are absolutely null and utterly void.” That’s still the official position.

(He only made that declaration because a group of theologians asked for a definitive ruling. They were hoping for the opposite ruling.)

Surprisingly, for the Catholic church the willingness to ordain women is not a fundamental sticking point. The ordination of a woman is nof course not accepted as valid, but when it comes to the ordination of a man, it’s not an objection that he was ordained in a church that also ordains women. The Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht ordain women, but their ordinations of men are still regarded as valid by the Catholic church.

Orthodox churches have different positions on the validity of Anglican orders — some take the view that Anglican orders could be valid, if there were doctrinal agreement generally between Anglican and Orthodox Christians; some take the Catholic view that Anglican orders are void; and some take the view that it’s not for them to pronounce on the question. Pretty much all of them require and Anglican minister who wishes to enter the Orthodox ministry to be re-ordained.

92

Wikipedia has an article on it:

93

Aren’t these little-endian versus big-endian arguments fascinating? It’s hard to imagine a more entertaining argument in support of atheism than two strands of the same religion, differing from each other in comparatively minor detail, declaring each other fundamentally wrong and themselves to be in possession of absolute truth.

Coming back to the thread, but staying close to the topic above, this provides a convenient and legally sound way for a hypothetical monarch who’d want to abdicate but isn’t allowed to by Parliament. All he’d need to do is convert to another denomination or religion, which would automatically strip him of the crown since the King must be in communion with the Church of England (the paradoxical situation notwithstanding that when in Scotland, the monarch worships with the Church of Scotland, of which he is also a member even though it is Presbyterian and hence rather different from the C of E). Another contradiction within the Act of Settlement is that while the reigning monarch must be in communion with the C of E, there is only one denomination which excludes a person from the line of succession before acceding to the throne, and that is, of course, Catholicism.

94

If the monarch wants to be sure of being deposed, they have to convert to Catholicism specifically; the Act of Settlement expressely identifies that as something which would mean automatic exclusion.

There’s no problem, as already pointed out, about the monarch taking communion in Presbyterian or Lutheran churches; these are Protestant churches, and the CofE doesn’t regard participating in commuion in Presbyterian or Lutheran churches as excluding you from communion in the CofE. (In fact nowadays that’s probably also true for the Catholic church, but in the case of Catholicism the views of the CofE don’t matter, since Catholicism is an automatic exclusion under the Act of Settlement.

What if the monarch embraces a non-Christian religion such as Buddhism or Hinduism, or simply repudiates religious belief altogether? You can construct an argument that, as long as he rejects the claims of the Church of Rome, he’s still a Protestant, or at any rate he’s enough of a Protestant to satisfy the Act of Settlement. Or you can construct an argument that joining another religion after you’ve become the monarch doesn’t exclude you, unless that religion is Catholicism; if the Act of Settlement had meant that joining any other religion would result in exclusion it would have said so, and it doesn’t; it singles out Catholicism. But as the situation has never arisen we don’t have an authoritative ruling on the point.

95

I don’t doubt that, as with all these hypotheticals, parliament would, if confronted with a decision, adjust the law to suit whatever seems expedient and generally acceptable at the time. Or in other words “cross that bridge when we come to it”.

96

Well said.

We’ve had threads and threads over the decades on various political questions in various countries that amount to “What will happen when [this novel situation] arises that’s not really addressed in current law?”

And folks fall over themselves to somehow contort current law to deliver a definitive answer when instead the most likely answer is “The law will be modified (or reinterpreted) at the time to meet the novel circumstances. And done in whatever way is politically doable / expedient at the time. Without knowing that future political context we can’t say much more.”

97

The point I was try to make (badly, and with bad information) is still that the C of E has a very specific view of its relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. At least from its point of view. From the Anglican point of view, the historical position seems to have been that it could only take a single change from the top to swivel the entire church back under Rome.

The monarch is a single person. As an Anglican, they would not be the first to decide, from a position of personal faith, that the Church of Rome was the right path.

Without legal insurance, it would not be impossible to imagine a situation where the monarch, as supreme governor of the church, and Catholic, negotiated with the Pope for a return of the Anglican Church. In exchange for recognition/conversion/re-ordination of existing ministers and bishops, and a pledge to revert doctrine, the C of E becomes Catholic, is extinguished as a separate entity, and returns to the fold. In the current world, this is essentially impossible with non-negotiable abdication long before such negotiations were possible. That, in addition to the impossibility of actually foisting such a move onto the church membership. But for a long time the UK swayed from one side to the other on exactly this question with no little bloodshed involved.

The situation in Northern Ireland provides a view onto the simmering divide. It isn’t, and never really has been, only about doctrine, as important as that is. Class, freedom, privilege, power, money: they underpin much of the reality, and not in happy ways.

A monarch joining another faith probably would not be tenable either. Certainly not if at any point it resulted in a conflict with the oath to defend the C of E. Anglicans have become a very broad group, and accept a remarkable range of views. But there will always be limits, and for the supreme governor, a lot of unwritten assumptions and expectations. The British character and establishment has been built upon such expectations, and this is especially so at the rarefied heights of the monarchy. Current events provide a view into this.

98

Assuming I understand you correctly …

The monarch need need not be perfectly down the centerline of current CoE teaching, but there is an “Overton window” of what’s enough inside or too outré versus current thought and practice.

The monarch needs to stay in the semi-tall part of the bell curve and it would get very weird and very bad were they to head too far out towards the fringes, much less exceed the edge of the fringe.

99

Maybe. The main thing is, no-one in government wants this sort of question to take up valuable parliamentary time and bandwidth unless they absolutely have to, or it’s something generally regarded as non-contentious that needn’t take up time. The status of the CofE would be much more contentious than the 2013 tidying-up

100

They extremely lucked out by getting the only competent individual of the whole bunch to last for 70 years.