WI Tony Blair Coverts To Catholicism While Still PM?

IIRC a UK member once said that Lab would have more issues with this than the Tories...
Which is about as true as the statement the Pope had bareback anal sex with John Knox but never reached around, angering Knox, thus causing the reformation in Scotland.

The Labour Party has never been big on religion. As it is, a large portion of the Labour support comes from working class catholic decendants of victims of the potato famine. It would be daft for the party to have issue over this.
 
It hasn't come up before, because it is only Catholics and Jews who are barred from making ecclesiastical appointments, because of when the law was made - as a result, all other non-Anglican, non-Catholic, non-Jewish Prime Ministers have been able to make ecclesiastical appointments. The Better Regulation Executive proposed making the legislation more relevant to the multitude of faiths practiced in the UK by barring all non-Anglicans from making ecclesiastical appointments, but their idea was rejected in 2008.

Oops:eek: I know most noncomformist PMs have acted this way, didn't realise it was voluntary for them and mandatory for RCs...
 
But isn't that for just England? So it's not really a state church if it's regional.
Under the Act of Union of 1707 which is the nearest thing we have to a constitutional agreement, the Kirk was given guarantees of independence as the national church of Scotland and was recognised as the state church. That's why the Queen is a part-time Presbyterian at the moment and doesnt go to the Episcopal church when she is in Scotland, in her coronation oath she swore to defend the security of the CoS. Its the reason in the end(after agreement)the CoS backed the Union.

So Britain has two state churches, and until the Victorian times and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, had three state churches.
 
Under the Act of Union of 1707 which is the nearest thing we have to a constitutional agreement, the Kirk was given guarantees of independence as the national church of Scotland and was recognised as the state church. That's why the Queen is a part-time Presbyterian at the moment and doesnt go to the Episcopal church when she is in Scotland, in her coronation oath she swore to defend the security of the CoS. Its the reason in the end(after agreement)the CoS backed the Union.

So Britain has two state churches, and until the Victorian times and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, had three state churches.

The Kirk is not a state church, but a national church, this being formally recognised in 1921 - and as the Church of Scotland was never the state church, this cannot be considered to be its disestablishment (unlike the Church of Ireland). The Church in Wales was the state church of Wales as the Church of England until 1920, when the Church in Wales was separated from the Church of England and disestablished (though as the borders of dioceses do not follow the national borders, bits of Wales are still under the control of the established Church of England).

In short, the entire religious organisation in the UK is a bloody mess. :eek:
 
Have any PMs been members of the Kirk of Scotland? Is Gordon? (The only two Brown supporters (I know of) I might trust are members of the Kirk- J.K. Rowling and David Tennant (Who is the son of an ex-Moderator...).)
 
The Kirk is not a state church, but a national church, this being formally recognised in 1921 - and as the Church of Scotland was never the state church, this cannot be considered to be its disestablishment (unlike the Church of Ireland). The Church in Wales was the state church of Wales as the Church of England until 1920, when the Church in Wales was separated from the Church of England and disestablished (though as the borders of dioceses do not follow the national borders, bits of Wales are still under the control of the established Church of England).

In short, the entire religious organisation in the UK is a bloody mess. :eek:
I agree it is a bloody mess.

I was going by Article XXV of the Treaty of Union which formed Great Britain, in which it secures the Church of Scotland as the National Church within Scotland and the Church of England everywhere else. I never bothered checking the main website of the Kirk.

Whilst not state run, it is protected by the founding treaty of Britain by the state as the only form of Church government within Scotland. I guess the question is where the line between state and national churches is drawn. Not being state-controlled does not stop a church becomming the church of the state.

The Church of Scotland was effectively the domestic government of Scotland from the Union for a long time post 1707, providing welfare and education etc. making Scotland for a long time the most literate part of Europe.

If only the English and Irish listened over the Bishops, the world would be a better place...
 
things would be complicated, to say the least...

IIRC, the last time Britain had a Catholic queen, the parliament got King George IV to divorce her in exchange for cancelling debts.
 
Have any PMs been members of the Kirk of Scotland? Is Gordon?

In addition to Gordon Brown, Arthur Balfour (though he also belonged to the Church of England) and Henry Campbell-Bannerman were members of the Church of Scotland. Andrew Bonar Law and Ramsay MacDonald were in the Free Church of Scotland, which became the United Free Church of Scotland in 1900 following union with the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and then united with the
Church of Scotland in 1929.
 
What it doesn't mention is that a Jewish Prime Minister would also be barred from making ecclesiastical appointments. So had either Iain Duncan Smith (Roman Catholic) or Michael Howard (Jewish) become prime minister it would have required someone else (presumably the Lord Chancellor) to make the appointments - or rather 'advise the sovereign'.

I'm not really sure this is anything other than a technical point though, ultimately. The whole process is so lacking in transparency anyway.

You would simply have the PM directing the Lord Chancellor of their choice, and the LC being the one who offered the advice to the monarch formally once the appointments commission had reported.

If it did come to a head of course, Parliament could simply fire off a micro bill on the issue updating the law and have it passed before the commission reported. So not a big issue really.

As for the original question, well Blair didn't because of precisely these sorts of issues. Blair had in any case been an Anglican in name only for years and people were well aware of that.
 
I'm not really sure this is anything other than a technical point though, ultimately. The whole process is so lacking in transparency anyway.

You would simply have the PM directing the Lord Chancellor of their choice, and the LC being the one who offered the advice to the monarch formally once the appointments commission had reported.

If it did come to a head of course, Parliament could simply fire off a micro bill on the issue updating the law and have it passed before the commission reported. So not a big issue really.

Absolutely - as I said previously:

As it is, it would probably make little to no difference, as the Prime Minister would not be barred from 'advising' the Lord Chancellor on how to advise the sovereign.

EDIT: To return to the original point, there's traditional suspicion of politicians who are 'too religious' in Britain - converting to Catholicism would be seen as taking his faith a little too seriously. It might cause him a little damage in terms of public opinion, but that depends on when he converts. If he does so early on, he might be able to benefit from good-will and public sympathy, and might even manage to reform the legislation regarding religious conviction and political office - either removing obstacles to Catholics or putting the same obstacle in the way of all non-Anglicans for example. If he converts at the end of his premiership the greatest damages to his reputation have been done and his being the first Catholic prime minister becomes a footnote in history and a quiz question for the generations.
 
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Britain hasn't had to do this yet, we've all boys in line. If King William's first kid turns out to be a girl though they'll do a quick change.
Will they be able to quickly? I thought one of the major problems with this and why they'd shied away from changing it in the past was that thanks to the UK's lovely convoluted constitutional set-up that all the Commonwealth nations would have to agree to individually pass the same legislation at the same time?
 
Will they be able to quickly? I thought one of the major problems with this and why they'd shied away from changing it in the past was that thanks to the UK's lovely convoluted constitutional set-up that all the Commonwealth nations would have to agree to individually pass the same legislation at the same time?

Yes, my understanding is that the thrones of Canada, Australia, the UK, etc are all very separate, and the only reason we share a monarch is because we started with the same people, and have the same succession laws. If there was a theoretical case where, say, Prince William, as king, had two children, an elder daughter and a younger son, and the UK changed to absolute primogeniture but Canada didn't, you'd have a Queen in the UK and a King in Canada, and from then on the royal lines would be split.

Which, incidentally, as a Canadian Monarchist, I don't think would be a terrible idea. I'm constantly worried that some decades in the future we will become a republic. I think that if we had a Monarch that resided in Canada, there would be more support, reducing the likelihood that we would ever become a republic, my worst nightmare.
 
Which, incidentally, as a Canadian Monarchist, I don't think would be a terrible idea. I'm constantly worried that some decades in the future we will become a republic. I think that if we had a Monarch that resided in Canada, there would be more support, reducing the likelihood that we would ever become a republic, my worst nightmare.

Just curious, why would Canada becoming a republic be your worst nightmare. I would love to know your reasoning.
 
Just curious, why would Canada becoming a republic be your worst nightmare. I would love to know your reasoning.
Presumably because, as he said, he's a monarchist. Asking a monarchist why they don't want to see a monarchy turning into a republic is like asking a liberal why they don't want the conservative party to win the next election.
 
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