MP moves against anti-catholic legislation
-08/03/05
The centuries’ old ban on the monarch marrying a Roman Catholic will come under renewed attack in the House of Commons today.
Edward Leigh, a Conservative MP who is Catholic, has a ’10-minute Rule Bill’ which proposes the repeal of the 300-year-old legislation passed at the time of the Glorious Revolution, which prevents heirs to the throne marrying “Papists”.
He said yesterday: “Surely in this day and age it is intolerable for the constitution to pick out any minority on grounds of religion. The language of our constitution is itself derogatory. A member of the head of state’s family can marry anybody apart from a Papist.”
The MP’s move follows calls by many religious and secular bodies including the Christian thinktank Ekklesia and the Fabian Society that the archaic rule should be changed.
The 10-minute Rule Bill will not become law, as it is essentially a mechanism for raising an issue with the government and putting it on the public agenda. However, it may prompt the government to act if it appears to have significant support.
The bill is being seen as a measure of cross-party concern that antique laws such as the Bill of Rights, Act of Settlement and Acts of Union between England and Scotland should include provisions for concerns which have long passed into history except for a small fringe of Protestant fundamentalists.
There have been a number of attempts to remove the discriminatory clauses in recent years, but usually as part of a larger package of constitutional reforms.
Mr Leigh believes a ‘royal marriages: freedom of religion bill’ would be simpler to pass into law than bigger pieces of legislation because it simply remove the relevant clauses.
Yesterday, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the Catholic archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, said: “A situation could ultimately arise where a future spouse of the head of state has their religious liberties infringed through a prohibition on passing on their faith to their children.
“Accordingly it will be measures which abolish all religious restrictions on members of the royal family which will alone remedy this unsatisfactory situation.”
The Catholic church no longer requires that the children of mixed marriages be brought up as Catholics but it still expects them to be.
Some observers believe that should Prince William meet a Catholic woman he wishes to marry, the legislation could be amended very quickly.