The Catholic War on the British Throne
Individual British and American Catholics have made great contributions to their nations. Many sincerely believe that their church seeks only the spiritual welfare of Britain’s inhabitants. However, a look at history tells a different story—a story of a deliberate attempt to subjugate the British crown.
In 1605, Catholic terrorists tried to blow up King James i and the entire British leadership. Once that failed, it tried to seduce Britain’s royal family. As parliaments demanded a share in government, the Catholic Church taught that kings ruled by divine right and could not be challenged or held accountable by any law made by their subjects. The church also encouraged England’s kings to marry Catholic brides, granting special exemptions from the usual rules around such marriages. Both Charles i and Charles ii married Catholics and signed secret treaties promising to promote the Catholic Church. Charles ii converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. His brother, James ii, had converted to Catholicism before his coronation. When the nation rose up against him, the church realized it could not, at that time, regain England by converting the king.
So the Catholic Church took another approach: sponsoring Britain’s most dangerous enemies. It signed a concordat with Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801. This brought Catholics back into public life after the French Revolution had rooted them out. Soon after, Napoleon began forming the Armée d’Angleterre to invade and conquer Great Britain. But ferrying that army across the English Channel proved an insurmountable obstacle. The army moved on to other tasks, and the alliance with Rome fell apart.
Over a century later, the same church helped bring Hitler and Mussolini to power. Both men forged concordats with the Catholic Church. Pope Pius xi hailed Mussolini as “a man sent by Providence.” Pius and his secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli, worked with the Catholic Center Party to enable Hitler to take over as a dictator. The church asked for God’s blessing on Hitler’s new Reich and ordered German bishops to swear allegiance to the Nazi regime. Pacelli became Pope Pius xii in 1939. He did nothing to stop the Holocaust, encouraged Croatian fascists in their brutal war on the Serbs, and became the greatest Nazi smuggler by far at the end of the war. Yet rather than repent of this shameful history, the Catholic Church is in the process of making Pius a saint.
After the war, the Catholic Irish Republican Army waged war against the throne and against the British public. They assassinated Lord Moutbatten, cousin of Queen Elizabeth ii in 1979. Five years later they blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton in an attempt to kill Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. They regularly bombed transport hubs, shops and town centers. Catholic leaders refused to condemn this and did not excommunicate even the most violent of terrorists, despite repeated calls to do so. Instead they attacked the ira’s enemies, accusing them of waging an “unspeakably evil” and “murderous campaign” against “the nationalist and Catholic community in general”—as Cardinal Daly, primate of Ireland, said.
Throughout this conflict, the Catholic Church has stood against many of the Bible-based values Britain held dear. Magna Carta is hailed in Britain and America as a founding document of freedom and rule of law. The Catholic Church has a different view. Pope Innocent iii declared “on behalf of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit” that the charter was “null, and void of all validity for ever,” and he threatened anyone who would try to uphold it with excommunication. Magna Carta limits the power of a monarch or state and grants rights and freedoms to individuals. In 1864, Pope Pius ix made the Catholic Church’s opposition to this approach clear. He denounced as heretical the separation of church and state, as well as religious tolerance. Later, Pope Leo xiii continued to condemn what he called “Americanism.”
The Catholic war on Britain’s throne is real. King Charles’s outreach doesn’t undo the effects of these attacks—it cements them.
