With the news in recent years about many Anglican clergy requesting entrance into the Catholic Church, **how likely would it be for the Royal Family of England to ever revert back to its religious roots! ** It seems rather surprisingly odd that with the historical understanding of why King Henry VIII began “his” church, that individuals of the Anglican faith would come to realize that perhaps that was a purely personal desire and not exactly a God inspired enlightenment to make the separation.
We are called to pray that we may all be of one faith before the Parousia! Our Lord prayed to God in the Garden of Gethsemane that we all “may” be one, seeming to leave the possibility that we may not be of one accord when He does return. Another proof of how dependent we all are on all our free will choices.
**It is always great to read about personal reverts to the Catholic Church **and how great it would be to see a whole country turn again to a faith we believe captures the fullness of truth because of our Lord’s promises of the Holy Spirit’s guidance!
I agree with you about the personal reverts to the Catholic Church, I cheer every time I hear of a soul returning to Holy Mother Church.
But as for how likely it would be for the royal family to become Catholic? I would estimate that to be extremely unlikely.
It would require the overturning of the Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Act of Settlement of 1701 which were specifically passed to ensure that the monarch could never be Catholic. Both the Act and the Bill were written specifically to discriminate against Catholics.
The new monarch takes an oath during the coronation to uphold the Protestant religion and which includes the words from the Bill of Rights as follows:
“It hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant Kingdom to be governed by a Papist Prince.”
The roots of the current royal family are predominately German, the family name being Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. That was changed in WWl because it sounded too German and the King feared a rebellion out of hostility to all things German. The current royal family are of the Hanoverian line.
Queen Anne was the last monarch who could have truly been called English. She died in 1714 without children and George l of Hanover was offered the throne even though he was 52nd in line to the throne. The first choice Sophia of Hanover having died before Queen Anne, George was her son. He was the choice because the other 51 possible heirs in front of him were all Catholics or had “papist leanings”. It wasn’t until his grandson George lll that a Hanoverian monach was born in England and was fluent in English. They were German Protestants through and through.
The Act of Settlement specifies that succession is limited to the heirs of Sophia of Hanover provided (and here is the kicker) that they do not *“profess the Popish religion”, “marry a Papist”, *. or
“be reconciled to or hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome”
The issues I am trying to illustrate are two-fold: firstly the current English royal family are not English. They are certainly British, but they are not English.
Secondly, it would take an enormous shift of public opinion to allow the Act of Settlement and Bill of Rights to be amended to allow a Catholic to sit on the throne.
Even now there are potential heirs to the throne (albeit many times removed) but they could never succeed to the throne because they are Catholic.
