Why can Prince William marry a Catholic?
Prince William can not marry a Roman Catholic. King Henry the VIII wanted to divorce his first wife because she did not produce a male heir to the throne. King Henry asked the pope to approve the divorce and the pope refused and had him excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. King Henry then formed the Church of England and refused any royal family from marrying a Roman Catholic. The Vatican has documents that King Henry the VIII wrote the pope about the divorce and the excommunication.
When Henry VIII split from the Roman Catholic church in 1533, it was for many reasons- the most remembered being that he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn and divorce Catherine of Aragon. Other reasons include that Henry wanted worship to be conducted in English. When this schizm happened, England’s national religion became Anglican. Because of the split between Rome and England, it was put in the books that a Catholic could not rule. Exceptions to this rule only include Mary I, or Bloody Mary, Henry VIII’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon. It’s simply an old tradition that has not been weeded out.
William can’t marry a Catholic because he had some ancestors that uspet Parliament. 🙂 In 1701, the Act of Settlement was passed which laid out rules for succession to the British throne. Some of the highlights include: the monarch MUST belong to the Church of England and only protestants could be in line to the throne. Back then there were huge division between Catholic and Protestant thrones. This was in order to avoid the issues caused by James II who converted to Catholicism and caused all sorts of upset. James actually had a son from his second marriage (to a Catholic) and Parliament passed over the son to give the throne to the protestant daughters of James’ first marriage to avoid having a Catholic on the throne. So, Prince William could marry a nice Hindu, Muslim, Jewish…Ba’hai girl…but not a Catholic! I don’t believe the prohibition against marrying a divorcee is codified the same way. It comes down to the Church of England (founded to facilitate a divorce!) does not recog
Henry VIII got mad because he couldn’t get a divorce, so he forced the church to break away from the Roman Catholic church and he started the Anglican Church (The Church of England). He also forced through laws prohibiting anyone in England from being a Catholic. They were um, strongly encouraged, shall we say, to become Anglican. Because of these laws no Catholic is allowed to become king. As an interesting side note: The Irish didn’t like the English telling them to switch religions…that was a major cause of strife between the two regions, leading to much death and violence. Even today, the Republic of Ireland is Catholic, and Northern Ireland is part of the Church of England. They don’t kill each other like they used to, but there is still a rabid anti-British sentiment in Ireland.
In the 1500s and1600s, Britain had a lot of civil strife because of the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. The worst outbreak of strife was during the English Civil War, when supporters of the Catholic King, Charles I (who believed in absolute monarchy and his own power as being above that of Parliament), fought with Puritan/Protestant forces of Parliament, leading to the overthrow of the monarchy and the execution of Charles I. After a brief period wherein Britain was governed by a Lord Protector (Oliver Cromwell and his son), the monarchy was restored, but Parliament did not want another absolute monarch and saw a Catholic monarch as being more likely to be an absolutist than a Protestant. They also did not want a king who was too subject to foreign influence, e.g. the Popes or other Catholic rulers. When Protestant James II, who had two Protestant daughters by his first marriage, remarried to a Catholic and had a son who, as heir, would be the next Catholic King, Parliamen
