Religious Indifferentism and the British Monarchy / Indiferentismo religioso y la monarquía británica
PUBLICADO POR: C. CARLISTA FELIPE II DE MANILA SEPTIEMBRE 16, 2022
https://periodicolaesperanza.com/archivos/14192
A little disagreement with Lawrence Cawas, he said:
Let us recall the words of St. Francis de Sales on this point, he tells us that «it is our duty to denounce as strongly as we can heretical and schismatic sects and their leaders. It is an act of charity to cry out against the wolf when he is among the sheep, wherever he is».( Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 29). The first duty of charity is to unmask the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I answer, she played a very passive role in the heretical evils of the Church of England, people like Rowan Williams and Justin Welby are more to blame.
Precisely as Winston Churchill was more to blame than George VI for the Bombing of Dresden (a real evil).
She had as little power as "popess of the Church of England" as she had as "monarch of the United Kingdom" or as her father had as such.
Indifferentism is in and of itself wrong, but for some time allows a tolerance, not of itself wrong, and from which Catholics have profited.
I think all of these people were raised from childhood in the idea that exclusivism is the key to intolerance, and that, not only they did not want Mary Tudor's intolerance back, but also not that of the Penal Laws. The former is understandable, and getting Mary Tudor back would do little good, it seems Cardinal Pole was discouraging her from making what the English would (wrongly) see as martyrs. The latter is in itself very laudable. Only the indifferentism is wrong. Making the sharing of such indifferentism a pre-condition for enjoying the tolerance would be very wrong. But at least officially, she does not seem to have done that.
That she usurped (and Charles III usurps) the position of Pope in the land of England for those who are of its so called Church is as true as that Calvin usurped the position of the Bishop of Geneva. But the activity of the usurpation is not comparable. Calvin actively drove away Pierre de La Baume, a few bishops of Geneva before St. Francis of Sales. Elisabeth did not even drive away any Catholic clergy, let alone a Pope (false or true). Calvin determined the false doctrine of his followers in Geneva. Elisabeth II did as far as I know make no doctrinal decision for the Church of England. The one she did for her own person by adhering to it - may God have mercy.
I think some Spanish Catholics have some trouble in figuring out what is going on in non-Catholics in the English speaking world (outside Ireland, that is). This is not only true about this comment on the late Queen, but I have met people having a hard time understanding how any Catholic could admire C. S. Lewis, or how J. R. R. Tolkien could be a real Catholic while being a friend of his.
For Calvin, or for Elisabeth I, not being a Catholic was an active choice. For C. S. Lewis, and for Elisabeth II, not becoming Catholics was refraining from an active choice. In the case of CSL, his posthumous book included complaints about liturgic reforms in Anglicanism - and he commented that "Catholics are complaining about that too" - meaning, the looming threat of such may have taken away from him one reason he might otherwise have had to convert. For any monarch or royalty of a Protestant country, becoming Catholic has for centuries come with a cost - abdication or exclusion from the line of succession. Hence, a fairly drastic change of lifestyle.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Eusebius of Bologna
26.IX.2022
Brilliant.
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