Fr. McManus Responds to Scottish Daily Express Article: “Pro-Joe Biden Catholic group claims King’s Coronation Ceremony was SECTARIAN.” Saturday, May 6, 2023.
Posted By: May 11, 2023
Fr. Mc Manus Responds to Scottish Daily Express Article:
“Pro-Joe Biden Catholic group claims King’s Coronation ceremony was SECTARIAN.” Saturday, May 6, 2023
The Scottish Daily Express pretends surprise and shock that I should refer to the historic coronation oath Prince Charles III swore as “anti-Catholic and sectarian” As if this issue was not known since the Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement, 1701.
Well, let me help out the Scottish Daily Express by referring it to the Royal Family website, where it declares without equivocation: “The Act laid down that only Protestants… are eligible to succeed [to the Throne]. Subsequent Acts have confirmed this.
Parliament, under the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, also laid down various conditions which the Sovereign must meet. A Roman Catholic is specifically excluded from succession to the throne.”— https://www.royal.uk/succession
Furthermore, the Bill of Rights 1689, states that should the monarch convert to Roman Catholicism, they immediately and automatically cease to be monarch (“be forever incapable to inherit, possess, or enjoy the Crown”) and that the subjects are absolved from their allegiance.
Some like to seek an excuse for all the above State-sponsored anti-Catholicism by claiming it’s that way because the Monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Well, that is no excuse. It simply shows the wisdom of the framers of the American Constitution who rejected the idea of an established Church, knowing from England’s record that an established church by definition is sectarian and discriminatory. And for the record, if there were law that the President of Ireland had to be Catholic, I would oppose that just as much—it would be sectarian, anti-Protestant, anti-Semitic, anti-Islam, etc., etc.
The British constitution and the foundation stone of the Royal Family are, by definition, anti-Catholic, discriminatory, and sectarian. That may not mean too much to the average English person in the street (but that does not excuse them either), but it means a whole lot to a significant number of Orange, Unionists/Protestant supremacists in Northern Ireland.
Indeed, the unwritten, uncodified British constitution is the root cause of bitter and deadly anti-Catholicism in the racist (anti-Irish) and sectarian (anti-Catholic) artificial and undemocratic mini-State of Northern Ireland because it enshrines, condones, and legitimizes anti-Catholicism.
That significant number of supremacist Protestants in Northern Ireland can simply say, ‘We are just upholding the British constitution as faithful subjects of King Chares III.’
But it was not the Protestants in the North of Ireland who created that racist and sectarian Six-County State. It was the London Parliament by its “Partition Act” unilaterally passed on December 23, 1920, with the assent of the King of England—George V, great-grandfather of Charles III. … So, the buck stops with the King and Parliament (or, as they like to say, ‘the King in Parliament.’)
Finally, let me further help out the Scottish Daily Express with this long-established fact since I founded the Irish National Caucus on February 6, 1974:The Irish National Caucus is neither Republican nor Democrat. It is bipartisan. For years we have had many ‘Congressional Friends of the Irish National Caucus,’ both Republicans and Democrats. We ask all Members of Congress and all Americans to apply established American foreign policy principles to Ireland: national self-determination, national independence, respect for international human rights, etc., etc. …All summed up in our founding motto, modeled on the American Pledge of Allegiance —now an Internet Petition, signed by over 31,000 people—’ Ireland, too, has the right to be One Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’
What good American—and for that matter, what good Scottish person —could oppose this splendid Petition?
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https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/uk-news/pro-joe-biden-catholic-group-29946309
Pro-Joe Biden Catholic group claims King’s Coronation ceremony was SECTARIAN
The anti-British Irish National Caucus group, which campaigns in the USA for a United Ireland, branded the oath taken by King Charles ‘state-sponsored anti-Catholicism’
By Douglas Dickie Content editor. Scottish Daily Express. Wednesday, May 10, 2023.
London.England. – Saturday, May 6: King Charles III holds the Sovereign’s Ring, also called the Coronation Ring, during his coronation ceremony in Westminster Abbey on May 6, 2023, in London, England. The Coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as King and Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the other Commonwealth realms takes place at Westminster Abbey today. Charles acceded to the throne on 8 September 2022, upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II.
A pro-Catholic pressure group strongly supportive of Joe Biden has branded the Coronation ceremony sectarian in a bizarre blast. Millions across the world watched in delight as King Charles III was crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 6.
But less impressed was the influential anti-British Irish National Caucus (INC) lobbying body, which campaigns in the US for a United Ireland. It pointed to the part in the ceremony where the King promises to “secure the Protestant succession to the Throne”. The group’s founder Father Sean McManus, who was once based as a Redemptorist father in Perth, claimed the statement was a form of “state-sponsored anti-Catholicism”.
During the ceremony, Charles made the oath: “solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful Protestant and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to law.”
As monarch, he is head of the Church of England, and also swore to uphold “the laws of God and the true profession of the gospel, maintain the Protestant Reformed religion established by law and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline and government thereof, as by law established”. Charles had previously said he wanted to be a defender of all faiths, and in a change to tradition, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who performed the ceremony, said the Church of England “will seek to foster an environment where people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely”.
But the INC, which has links to America’s Democratic Party, blasted the oath. In an extraordinary attack, McManus said: “The coronation of King Charles and the words of the oath he swore — solemnly, formally, and as King — raises anew the issue of state-sponsored anti-Catholicism in the UK and Northern Ireland.”
He added: “If the sectarian words of the King’s oath don’t mean much to the average person, their anti-Catholic resonance mean everything to a significant number of extreme Orange/Protestant/Unionist supremacists in Northern Ireland.” In a blog piece he said the oath was “like having a clause in American Constitution prohibiting a Black being President”.
McManus set up the INC in 1974 as a way to spread anti-British sentiment in the States at a time of extreme tension in Northern Ireland. Democratic president Jimmy Carter even approached the group in 1976 ahead of the election to try and win support from voters with an Irish-Catholic background.
Both the UK and Irish governments in the 1980s suspected the group of being linked to NORAID, which raised funds in America for the Provisional IRA. The group back candidates in elections who do not believe Northern Ireland should exist.
Its website contains several articles praising current POTUS Mr. Biden, who infamously snubbed the Coronation ceremony, instead sending his wife and daughter. Reacting to Mr. Biden’s election win over Donald Trump in 2020, McManus said it was the end of a “nightmare”.
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