by Gavin Ashenden
The King, the Coronation Oath, and the Abandonment of the Faith
What Makes a Traitor?
One is, and should be, reluctant to give advice to His Majesty the King, and it’s quite possible that the man who is reported by his former servants to have toothpaste laid out on his toothbrush for him, and is in the habit of asking his staff to bend down and collect a piece of paper that has accidentally fallen into the wastepaper basket by his desk, may not find it easy to be offered advice.
We have given some thought already to the deep disturbance that has emerged from King Charles demoting Christ. But there is also not just what he had done, but the way he has gone about doing it.
There are some serious difficulties involved in His Majesty’s latest attempt to make the world conform to the idiosyncratic religious map he cherishes inside his head and the means he has chosen to achieving it.
He has not publicly announced that he has reneged on his coronation oath. Instead he has smuggled his change of allegiance into a financial report.
The duties of the monarchy has been covertly changed by means of a few amended lines in the Sovereign Grant Annual Report 2025 to 2026, published at the end of last week.
On the plus side, the incompetent draftsman of last year referred to the King as Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith. And the first half of this has been amended to the accurate historical title, the technicality of which matters greatly, and so ‘Head of the Church of England’ (?!) has been replaced by ‘Supreme Governor of the Church of England,’ (the title his ancestor Henry 8th took to himself.
Either way, Catholics will be reminded that the real intention of Henry VIII was to become the ‘anti-pope’ in these islands, just one of many anti-popes that Europe threw up to during the course of history.
But whatever satisfaction might be gained by those with a well-informed grasp of history, something rather dreadful has taken place at the end of that sentence, smuggled into his accounts. ‘Defender of the Faith’ has been replaced by ‘Protector of the Space for Faith within the Multi-faith Nation.’