A chaplain to the Queen has called for Catholic concessions to balance proposed changes to the Act of Settlement, including the end of "sectarian schools".
Rev Alastair Symington, minister at Troon Old Parish Church in Ayrshire, said the reforms in aid of the Catholic Church were welcome but that they needed to make a "quid quo pro".
[...]
Rev Symington wrote: "I trust ... the Roman Catholic Church will drop its request that children of any such future royal union must be baptised into the Roman part of the Catholic Church and raised in equally sectarian separate schools."
Err...
the "Roman part of the Catholic Church"...?
Sorry what?
3 comments:
I think that's a verbal fossil of the old Branch Theory, under which there is one Catholic Church which has three "branches" -- the Roman branch, the Orthodox branch, and the (proper) Anglican branch.
If you parse the Rev. Symington's statement using that model, it makes sense.
(Yes, yes, I know, it's sheer nonsense otherwise. Work with me here. It's a Euclidean vs. non-Euclidean geometry thing -- the theorem only works under non-Euclidean ecclesiology. :) )
peace,
Zach's explanation would make sense if the quotation were from an Anglican but you hear branch-theory stuff less often from Presbyterians like Symington and other Protestants. The liberal Protestant denominations seem accepting of Rome as unlike their 1500s founders they don't hate it any more and do high-church themselves but here you see the big difference remains. They're fine with Rome and with an RC king as long as Rome stops being Catholic with its one-true-church claim and becomes a denomination like them. Which of course is impossible as it is with the Orthodox.
American Protestants (the Calvinists, then the mainline and now their PC progeny who don't go to church any more) have been trying to get rid of RC schools for years. Those schools were started of course because 100 years ago state schools were Protestant schools. The Catholic character of these places is much diminished and the Protestant side have pigged out on granola but the principle remains: the drive to shut them down is anti-religion (and still a lot of WASP disdain for immigrants and their church) disguised as fairness/neutrality.
But of course! They can choose to have their children baptized in an Eastern Rite parish if they so wish. :p-
I wonder what the full text of this letter referred to in the article says. I am having difficulties finding it online.
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