Scottish Catholic Observer

Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed changes to the anti-Catholic Act of Settlement, which could scrap the ban on spouses of Catholics ascending to the throne.

The Prime Minister said yesterday, ahead of the Commonwealth leaders’ summit in Australia later this month, that the ban on any monarch married to a Catholic was an ‘historical anomaly’ and could not ‘continue to be justified.’

Mr Cameron has shared his plans with the 15 other countries that have the queen as their monarch but he has not proposed changing the ban on monarchs themselves being Catholic. The British monarch is also the head of the Church of England.

The Catholic Church in Scotland has said previously that the Act of Settlement laws, which date back to the 17th and 18th centuries, are a ‘serious barrier to tackling problems like sectarianism and anti-Catholic bigotry in Scotland.’

“It is difficult for a government at any level, Westminster or Holyrood, to assert that sectarianism is wrong when the act perpetuates it,” Peter Kearney, director of the Catholic Media Office, said shortly after the coalition government came to power.

The Prime Minister will also seek to remove the discrimination against women in the line of succession, by proposing to scrap the rule by which male children take precedence over their sisters.

Such a move would mean that the children of Prince William and his new wife, the Earl and Countess of Strathearn, who were married earlier this year, could benefit from the planned changes even if he or she is born before the law is altered.

Any changes require the agreement of all 16 Commonwealth ‘realms’—the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Belize, St Christopher and Nevis, St Lucia, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Papua New Guinea.