The headlines scream: “Catholic monarch could put Church of England in peril, bishop warns.”

Come on. With all the calamity the Church of England has been inviting upon itself for decades, is focusing on the possibility of a Catholic monarch really the thing that they’re going to worry about? It might appear so.

There’s recently been some talk that England may finally toss its three hundred year old anti-Catholic law barring a Catholic from ascending the throne, but at least some in the Church of England are vowing to fight a repeal.

The Telegraph is reporting:

The Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, who leads the 26 bishops who sit in the House of Lords, tells The Sunday Telegraph that David Cameron’s policy to end Britain’s 300-year-old succession laws risks overturning the Church’s constitutional role…

He argued that the Prime Minister’s plans to repeal the ban on the monarch being married to a Catholic posed a serious potential risk. Currently the Queen is required to take on the role of Supreme Governor of the Church of England — making it the established Church. But the bishops said that it would be impossible for a Catholic monarch to have that role…

“If the heir to the throne is brought up as a Catholic, and therefore, under the present disciplines of the Roman Catholic Church, is not able to be in communion with the Church of England, it effectively renders a Catholic heir incapable of being the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, so clearly that’s a more complicated issue than it appears at first sight,” he said.

Bishop Stevens said that a change to the Act of Settlement with the potential to disestablish the Church of England would be something that bishops “would have to resist”.

The Church of England’s will to resist anything may have atrophied by now but we’ll see. Perhaps some good ol’ anti-Catholicism can stoke the embers of the cooling C of E.

My only advice is they better do it soon or else there won’t be any Anglicans left to stoke.

Odd that they’re not simply considering that maybe a monarch shouldn’t be the head of the Church of England. But that would kinda’ negate the whole point of the Church of England in the first place, wouldn’t it? If they ditched that, methinks a little note of apology would be owed to the descendants of Sir Thomas More. Oops. Our bad.

That would seem to be a reverse Henry 8th but the Church of England has been publicly decapitating themselves for so long, I think we’re all just waiting for the head to roll.