Catholic Burnham Seeks Abolition of ‘Archaic Anomaly’ Barring Him From Ministerial Powers Over Church of England

The announcement by Prime Minister Andy Burnham of a bill to end the legal ban on Roman Catholic and Jewish prime ministers advising the Crown on Church of England appointments underscores Britain’s troubled religious past.Mr. Burnham, a Catholic, declared Wednesday that it is “unacceptable for there to be a legislative bar against people of any faith performing all the functions of my office.” The protest comes after Mr. Burnham was forced, as required by an 1829 law, to hand off prime ministerial duties for recommending bishops and archbishops to the king and instead pass the authority to the Lord Chancellor — currently Lord Alex Norris. The Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, championed by the Duke of Wellington, lifted the ban on Catholics serving in Parliament. The passage of the Relief Act was intended to quell unrest in Ireland and was precipitated by the electoral success of Dublin’s Daniel O’Connell, hailed as “The Liberator.” Wellington’s brother, Richard Wellesley, was the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The law was opposed by the House of Lords and the king. While a landmark of Catholic emancipation, the act contains a provision to assuage those loyal to the Church of England, Britain’s established religion since King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 via The Act of Supremacy.Section 18 of the act mandates that no Roman Catholic is to “advise the Crown in the appointment to offices in the established church.” This means that if a prime minister worships toward Rome, he may not advise the king — the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and since Henry, the “Defender of the Faith” — on appointments of bishops. The approval of bishops is largely a formality, but highlights how Britain, unlike America, is a state with an established church. Mr. Burnham, in his letter to the House of Commons, vows that the “government will therefore introduce a Bill at the earliest possible opportunity to correct this antiquated and archaic anomaly.”Mr. Burnham inherited his Irish Catholic faith from his mother, Eileen Murray. He served as an altar boy at St. Aelred’s Catholic High School and has called his faith “unshowy.” “Three things are important in my life apart from family: Everton Football Club, the Labour Party, and the Catholic Church — in that order,” Mr. Burnham told the Guardian in 2009. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was baptized Catholic but entered 10 Downing Street as a member of the Church of England. Prime Minister Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after his tenure as premier.The Church of England is facing a backlash this week after St. Paul’s Cathedral at London signed a multi-year agreement to host concerts with fabric, a nightclub that lost its license in 2016 after a series of drug-related deaths. The first of these concerts is scheduled for October 29. The collaboration has also prompted criticism from the descendents of Lord Horatio Nelson, the British Royal Naval Officer and hero of the Napoleonic Wars to whom Trafalgar Square is dedicated. Nelson’s remains are interred in the cathedral’s crypt. The president of the Nelson Society, Peregrine Hood, tells the Telegraph that the concerts are “an insult to Lord Nelson’s memory,” and asks “Is nothing sacred any more? What a sad reflection on where spiritual integrity and Christianity are today. St Paul’s Cathedral positioning itself in this way is deeply depressing.” Sir Christopher Wren designed the cathedral in the wake of the Great Fire of London in 1616. While the 1829 act opened the door for Catholics to serve in Parliament, it did not do the same for Jews. The law mandated each member of parliament swear an oath “on the true faith of a Christian.” Lionel de Rothschild was elected to Parliament in 1847, but it took 11 years for him to take his seat after he refused to swear that oath. Finally, in 1858 the Jews Relief Act allowed “any Person professing the Jewish Religion, to omit the Words ‘and I make this Declaration upon the true Faith of a Christian.’”Like the Catholic Relief Act, the one relating to Jews decreed that “it shall not be lawful for any Person professing the Jewish Religion, directly or indirectly, to advise Her Majesty touching or concerning any office or preferment in the Church of England or in the Church of Scotland.” Mr. Burnham’s proposed legislation would lift the ban on Jews as well as Catholics advising the king on the appointment of bishops. The Jews Relief Act was championed by parliamentarian Benjamin Disraeli, who was born Jewish but baptized as an Anglican at age 11. In 1868, he would become the first prime minister born a Jew. O’Connell and Disraeli clashed in the 1830s, with the future prime minister calling the Liberator “an incendiary and a traitor” and O’Connell declaring that Disraeli had the qualities of “the impenitent thief on the cross” and the “blasphemous robber.”Disraeli demanded a duel, but O’Connell had sworn off the practice after killing a Protestant and member of the administrative Dublin Corporation — established by a Plantagenet king, Henry II, in the 12th century — John D’Esterre in 1815. O’Connell, notwithstanding his differences with Disraeli, was a strong supporter of the Jews Relief Act and once declared that Ireland was the “only Christian country unsullied by any one act of persecution of the Jews.”

Catholic Burnham Seeks Abolition of ‘Archaic Anomaly’ Barring Him From Ministerial Powers Over Church of England

Catholic Burnham Seeks Abolition of ‘Archaic Anomaly’ Barring Him From Ministerial Powers Over Church of England

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