King Charles at the Vatican: Sell Out or Salvific?

May it lead to the conversion of England! All ye Saints and Martyrs of England, pray for your people. St George, pray for the Kingdom dedicated to you!

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, STM, KCSS

O Lord, our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord, King CHARLES; and so replenish him with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that he may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way: endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant him in health and wealth long to live; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and finally after this life he may attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

—Ordinariate Prayer for King Charles III

V. O Lord, save Charles our King
All: and hear us in the day that we shall call upon thee.

Let us pray.

We beseech thee, almighty God, that thy servant Charles our King, who through thy mercy has undertaken the government of this realm, may also receive an increase of all virtues. Fittingly adorned with these, may he be able to shun all evildoing, [in time of war: to vanquish his enemies,] and, together with the Queen consort and the royal family, to come by thy grace unto thee who art the way, the truth, and the life. Through Christ our Lord.

R: Amen.

—Prayer for the King after the Principal Mass on Sundays (in Latin), pre-1962.

The Church of England is much in the news these days, and not least because Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and de facto (if not de jure) Supreme Governor of the Church of England has appointed a woman to be that body’s ecclesiastical head.  This writer can say he predicted it – not through fortune telling or arcane arts, but because doing so would be of a piece with the massive stupidity of everything this particular King’s first minister always does.

But the King is not Sir Keir, and his views are rarely those of “his” governments. As early as 1982, he and Princess Diana were prevented from going to a private Mass with John Paul II for political considerations.  In Johnathan Dimbleby’s 1994 biography of the then-Prince of Wales (reading of which must be recommended to anyone interested in the personality of the King – especially before commenting upon him or his activities), the heir to the throne describes the birth of the Church of England in a fairly unflattering fashion, in reference to the title “Defender of the Faith:”

The title was given to [Henry VIII] at a time when he had pleased the Pope quite enormously.  Whereupon he decided – because he wanted to get divorced – that things were a bit different and that Pope was a dammed nuisance because he wouldn’t grant him a divorce, which is one of the reasons why the Church of England developed.

Four years later, in a private letter, he declared that “Personally, the older I get, the more I am drawn to the great, timeless traditions of the Orthodox Church. They are the only ones that have not been corrupted by loathsome political correctness.”

That was of course a quarter century ago; but the fact is that he insisted upon an Orthodox Patriarch co-consecrating the Holy Chrism with which he was anointed at his Coronation (itself a ritual based primarily upon Catholic liturgy) – and so he became the first British Monarch anointed with valid Chrism since James II’s coronation in 1685.  At Charles III’s rite, moreover, the processional cross contained relics of the One True Cross, recently given him by Pope Francis.  Interestingly enough, the Holy Roman Imperial and French Crown Jewels include such crosses, but the equally venerable English set did not – until now.  Consciously or not, the new King was following in the symbolic trail of his Medieval predecessors in ways forgotten to-day by Catholics and Anglicans alike.

That this forgetfulness is as widespread on our side of the Tiber as the other can be seen by the reactions of many more orthodox Catholic commentators.  For them, the recent visit of the King and Queen to the Vatican was a scandal – a selling out of the first water by the Pope to the head of a heretical body which has orchestrated the deaths of thousands of Catholic martyrs over several centuries, who is any case a usurper of the throne upon which he sits.  They prayed together; they exchanged Knighthoods; the King was made an honorary brother of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, while the Pope received a similar position at the Anglican College of St. George at Windsor.  What capitulation!  What scandal!  This is a very compelling and understandable picture – and also quite wrong.  But one has to have a bit of historical knowledge to understand what one is seeing, and that is totally lacking for most of us.  So let’s try to recoup some.

In the Medieval order, all the countries of Christendom were seen as being part of one Res Publica Christiana: of this the Church was the form and the Empire – the vague but overarching body of which all Christian Kingdoms – themselves rather vague entities – was the matter.  The Emperor and the Kings were seen as analogous to the Pope and the Bishops. Both sets of authorities were mixed: in addition to their spiritual duties, the prelates (apart from the Pope as ruler of the Papal States) had temporal responsibilities as princes over the lesser nobility within their dioceses – to say nothing of the responsibility of Pope and Primates to crown the various Sovereigns.

In their turn, Emperor and Kings had spiritual responsibilities.  They were considered “mixed persons” – at once clerical and lay.  This was symbolised by the wearing of albs, stoles, and dalmatics at coronations – even as Charles III did, yet another fossilized Catholic custom retained centuries after the break – and now unrecognisable to Catholics. 

There were several byproducts to this status.  One was that various European Monarchs had specific liturgical roles at Papal Masses.  The Holy Roman Emperor not only read a lesson at Matins on Christmas Eve at St. Peter’s, he acted as Deacon to the Pope liturgically when present in Rome; the King of France acted as Subdeacon; other Kings had other roles.  This was illustrated drastically by Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, in his dystopian and apocalyptic novel, Lord of the World.  In that alternative future, all of the deposed Monarchs of Europe took refuge with the Pope at Rome and resumed their predecessor’s liturgical functions:

It was yet more kindling as the mass went on, and he saw the male sovereigns come down to do their services at the altar, and to go to and fro between it and the Throne. There they went bareheaded, the stately silent figures. The English king, once again Fidei Defensor, bore the train in place of the old king of Spain, who, with the Austrian Emperor, alone of all European sovereigns, had preserved the unbroken continuity of faith. The old man leaned over his fald-stool, mumbling and weeping, even crying out now and again in love and devotion, as, like Simeon, he saw his Salvation. The Austrian Emperor twice administered the Lavabo; the German sovereign, who had lost his throne and all but his life upon his conversion four years before, by a new privilege placed and withdrew the cushion, as his Lord kneeled before the Lord of them both. So movement by movement the gorgeous drama was enacted; the murmuring of the crowds died to a stillness that was but one wordless prayer as the tiny White Disc rose between the white hands, and the thin angelic music pealed in the dome.

Oddly enough, the name of the British King who converts and must go to Rome literally is William, the name of the current Prince of Wales and future King.

In any case, there were also honorary and yet key ecclesiastical titles pertaining to the various Monarchs, both in their own countries and in Rome.  The Holy Roman Emperor was made a canon of Aix-la-Chapelle at his coronation as King of the Romans (or of Germany) in Charlemagne’s city; at his later crowning and anointing at Rome, he would be enrolled as a canon of St. Peter’s.  The King of France held a number of canonries throughout his Kingdom, and was also a canon of St. John Lateran; ironically, all these privileges are still maintained by the French president.  The Kings of Castile and latterly Spain are canons of the Cathedrals of Leon and Toledo, and in Rome, St. Mary Major.  In like manner, prior to the Protestant revolt, the Kings of England were honorary brothers of the Abbey of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls; in return, the Abbot of St. Paul’s was the prelate of the Order of the Garter.  According to the Abbey’s website,

In the current coat of arms of St. Paul’s Abbey (the so-called ‘Pauline coat of arms’), as in the coats of arms of the abbots, a leather strap with the motto, in French, of the Order of the Garter, instituted at Windsor Castle between 1344 and 1347, is depicted around the sword shield: Honi soit qui mal y pense (‘Cursed be he who thinks evil’). The Abbey’s connection with the English monarchs can be traced back to the period of the Saracen raids, when they often visited the Pauline monastery and venerated the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul, offering gifts, sometimes very precious, to the basilicas that housed their burial places. And it is likely that it was precisely thanks to this religious relationship that in the late Middle Ages the English sovereigns exercised the function of protectors of St. Paul’s Basilica.

Now, to be sure, the House of Stuart, unjustly deposed from its English, Scots, and Irish thrones in 1688-92, would be the rightful heirs to all of this – and having spent decades in Rome until the extinction of the male line of family in 1807, often acted in that capacity.  This writer is a proud member of both the Royal Stuart Society, and the American branch of the Society of King Charles the Martyr – a Monarch who seems to be a prime candidate for the role of “Protomarytr of the Ordinariates,” given that one of the three things that caused his judicial murder was his negotiations with Rome for reunion.  Well do I understand the belief that the Windsors are the descendants of usurpers – I share it.

But in 1766, Pope Clement XIII recognised, on the death of James III, George III as King.  King George in turn pushed through Bishop Briand’s consecration as Bishop of Quebec despite his government’s opposition, as well as the Quebec Act of 1774, and the First Emancipation Act in 1778, before losing interest in the idea, thanks to the Catholic Kings of France and Spain successfully supporting the American rebellion.  Queen Victoria’s views on the Faith went back and forth, while there is a good body of evidence that her son, Edward VII came into the Church on his deathbed – and was the first King to attend Catholic Mass publicly since James II.  Padre Pio believed that George V likewise had a deathbed conversion of some kind.  In the meantime, the Stuart claims, passable as they are through the female line, zigzagged through various Catholic dynasties, before coming to rest in the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach.  They have not pursued their claims – and the current heir’s public attempt to marry his male companion compromises his position as a practicing Catholic.  His niece and heiress, now married to the heir to the Principality of Liechtenstein, shall eventually inherit his British and Irish claims.  At that time, one might look again at the whole issue.

In the immediate, however, even King Charles’ name came as a pleasant surprise, given that for several decades commentators presumed he would take the name George VII on his accession, partly to honour his beloved grandfather, and partly to avoid a name that had become too connected with Catholicism and the Stuarts.  This may be why he did not flinch from the St. Peter’s trip, which, like his earlier attempt at a Papal Mass, caused a certain annoyance amongst his Protestant subjects.  Although it would have been too much to ask, it would have been good had Their Majesties prayed at the tombs of his Stuart predecessors in St. Peter’s Basilica.

As for our side, it seems that despite all, reviving a Medieval Catholic custom in favour of the current King, despite his religious status, is a move not unlike Bl. Pius IX’s inviting the Eastern Patriarchs to Vatican I as full participants with no preconditions – a gesture toward unity that may or may not bear fruit.  As for making the Royal Couple Grand Crosses of the Papal Order of Pius IX, this should be no more a cause of scandal than Leo XIII bestowing the higher (although now not awarded) Order of Christ to Bismarck.  In return for reassuming the Royal brotherhood at St. Paul’s, Pope Leo XIV was made a “Pontifical Confrere” of the College of St. George at Windsor – the only non-Cathedral chapter of canons to legally survive the Protestant revolt.  It is of note that in addition to the murdered Charles I, the Servant of God Henry VI is entombed there.  It shall be interesting to see if any action in that murdered King’s cause shall resume as a result of all of this.

The thing to bear in mind is that the British Monarchy is a desiccated remnant of a Catholic order; most Catholics have become too reconciled to living under various revolutionary regicides to recognise this.  But as Aidan Nichols, O.P., has pointed out in his masterful The Realm, any successful attempt reconvert the British Isles requires using these remnants – in a word, to trying to make these bones live.  If this effort should one day succeed, this meeting between Pope and King, alongside the formation of the Ordinariates, may be seen as having been a key milestone to that end.