Unsettling

Farewell, then, to the Act of Settlement, and to male primogeniture for the Throne, though not for estates, nor for the hereditary peerages that continue to elect 92 members of the House of Lords.

Which Realm or Territory was considering leave the family defined by our shared monarch unless these changes were given effect, though not otherwise? Even if any had been, then it would still have been wrong.

There is a certain Spot The Deliberate Mistake quality to attempts to make the monarchy more egalitarian or, heaven help us all, “meritocratic”. The Act of Settlement reminded us that we were different, and it did us the courtesy of taking our beliefs seriously by identifying them as a real challenge.

I question the viability of a Catholic community which devotes any great energy to the question of ascending the throne while the born sleep in cardboard boxes on the streets and the pre-born are ripped from their mothers’ wombs to be discarded as surgical waste. The rubbish passed as RE in this country’s Catholic schools would not be permitted, even now, in any other discipline. These should be our priorities.

Far from being a term of abuse, the word “Papist” is in fact the name under which the English Martyrs gave their lives, and expresses the cause for which they did so, making it a badge of honour, to be worn with pride. The Protestant tradition is a fact of this country’s history and culture. No good purpose will be served by denying it its constitutional recognition.

We must never countenance alliance with those who wish to remove Christianity as the basis of our State. Parties, such as the Lib Dems or the SNP, that wish to abolish Catholic schools need not imagine that repeal of the Act of Settlement somehow makes their position any better.

Forget, though, talk about how the children of a Royal marriage to a Catholic would have to be brought up as Catholics. It is always fascinating to observe people who assume their own cultural norms and political prejudices to be the Law, even the Doctrine, of the Church.

When the Stuarts married Catholics, then their children were still Protestants until Charles II converted on his deathbed after the future James VII and II had converted in adult life. They were the sons of a Catholic mother

Both of James’s surviving daughters by his first wife, who converted long before he did and very soon after their marriage, were themselves lifelong Protestants. Each eventually acceded to the Throne for precisely that reason. The rules have always been different above a certain level. When they have really been what people often thought were the rules in the first place.

Anglican and Catholic bishops are now routinely so close that they play golf together or what have you. The Anglicans ones are often less posh and less starrily academic than used to be almost uniform (the present Archbishop of Canterbury has no doctorate); the Catholic ones are far more likely to have been to university before they entered the seminary, and within a generation anything else will be unheard of, while the old working class that used to produce most of them hardly exists these days.

On each side of the Tiber, there is an unmistakeable look of bishops, and a characteristic tone of voice. On both sides of the Tiber, it is the same look, and the same tone. Don’t worry about it. Arrangements will be made.

Turning to male primogeniture, it sent an important signal: that the male line mattered meant that fathers mattered, and that they had to face up to their responsibilities, with every assistance, including censure where necessary, from the wider society, including when it acted politically as the State.

Today, we have lost a significant part of our argument for a legal presumption of equal parenting. For restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit is being paid to mothers. For restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father.

For repeal of the ludicrous provision for two women to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, although even that is excelled by the provision for two men to be so listed. And for paternity leave to be made available at any time until the child was 18 or left school.

That last, in particular, would reassert paternal authority, and thus require paternal responsibility, at key points in childhood and adolescence. That authority and responsibility require an economic basis such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as only the State can very often deliver. And that basis is high-wage, high-skilled, high-status employment.

All aspects of public policy must take account of this urgent social and cultural need. Not least, that includes energy policy: the energy sources to be preferred by the State are those providing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs that secure the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community. So, nuclear power. And coal, not dole. We can and must continue to argues for these things without the constitutional principle of male primogeniture. But its loss is a grave one to our cause.

As it is to our struggle for no more fathers’ wars, not least since those sent to war tend to come from working-class backgrounds, where starting to have children often still happens earlier than has lately become the norm. Think of those very young men whom we see going off or coming home, hugging and kissing their tiny children. Paternal authority cannot be affirmed while fathers are torn away from their children and harvested in wars.

You can believe in fatherhood, or you can support wars under certainly most and possibly all circumstances, the latter especially in practice today even if not necessarily in the past or in principle. You cannot do both. After today, do we still do either?