Replies

” She had no choice but to give her Assent to the 1967 Act, or to any other Act.”

That, of course, is false. She could have simply said no. Then what would happen? Perhaps a constitutional crisis but one which would not have effected the lives of a single British subject in any major way and it would have been for the good if it had. She, however, refused to take a stand or even to protest. She signed it willingly. She chose her crown over opposing abortion. That was her choice.

Think back: For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36).

” I think you overestimate the freedom of action, including freedom of public speech, available to the Head of State.”

I overestimate NOTHING. She should have refused. She chose abortion. She could have refused. Whatever resulted she could have easily endured with or without a crown. In the end, she showed she had no personal morals or principles. She simply did the bidding of evil without even the most feeble of protests. She is a pathetic creature.

What would people be saying if the 1967 law were about re-instituting slavery? The parliament passes a law which would immediately put every black person in the U.K. in chains and Elizabeth signs it. Would a single right thinking person in this world be saying: “She had no choice but to give her Assent to the 1967 Act, or to any other Act”? You and I both know the answer to that is “Hell no!” But we always make excuses for abortion don’t we? “Oh, she personally might oppose abortion, but convention means she has to approve a law that allows it.” If the convention is GROSSLY IMMORAL she CAN’T support it even if it means losing her crown if she’s a Christian.

“In many respects she has less freedom of action than an ordinary British citizen.”

There is nothing in British law that can compel her to sign something she morally opposes. Yes, she might be forced off the throne (although I doubt it) but that would be better than agreeing with abortion.

Keep making excuses. Keep saying she should agree with Mammon rather than lose her crown. Keep saying whatever salves your conscience and hers despite the uselessness of such excuses before the throne of God at the end of time.

For the Queen to have acted in the way you say she should have acted would have required truly heroic qualities - qualities, oddly enough, which used to be attributed routinely to absolute monarchs when they had quasi-mythical status (the supposed Divine Right of kings, etc...). That Elizabeth Windsor palpably does not have those heroic qualities doesn't mean that, in your words she "had no personal morals or principles. She simply did the bidding of evil without even the most feeble of protests. She is a pathetic creature." What it does mean is that Elizabeth Windsor is an ordinary, fallible sinful human being like most of the rest of us. I would hope that it's as such that she, like the rest of us, will be judged before the Throne of God.

Please don't assume that I'm some kind of ardent royalist for whom the Queen can do no wrong. They certainly exist, though there are not very many of them, and I'm certainly not one of them. I'm all too well aware of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the constitutional system in which I happen to live, and of the contradictions implicit in a constitutional monarchy. I just happen to believe, to misquote what Churchill said of democracy, that for the UK at least, it's the worst system for appointing a Head of State except all the others. What I do regret, and forgive me if I say that this seems to underly everything you say, is a tendency to project on to the individual the shortcomings of the role she occupies - a role which she self-evidently did not choose for herself.