If I was a devout Catholic, the last thing I'd want is a Papist bum on the English throne.
Catholic royalists across the globe could not be faulted for celebrating with a Boyne-style Te Deum at the news the law banning Royals ascending to the throne if they are married to Catholics will be chopped.
However, the axe falls way short – much to the relief of the Prod Marching Orders – of allowing a Catholic to become monarch. Future monarchs will still have to be lumbered with being members of the Church of England.
Rather than being downhearted at this shortcoming, Catholic royalists should be relieved given the confused state the Anglican Communion now finds itself in.
Catholicism has taken a tough stand against civil partnerships, gay clergy, church blessings for homosexuals, abortion and divorce. The same cannot be said of the so-called Church of England.
In Ireland, the Anglican community is about to become engulfed in a vicious civil war over the ordination of openly gay clergy – a debate that will probably split the Church of Ireland irreparably.
However, there is a strong lobby within the Protestant Anglican Communion which wholeheartedly embraces church blessings for gay couples as well as openly gay clerics.
Pope Benedict has made it abundantly clear the Vatican staunchly opposes both, so why would a supposedly devout Catholic monarch want to oversee a Church of England which openly welcomes gays in the pulpit and homosexual blessings in its churches?
This also places the Loyal Orders in a real dilemma. They swear allegiance to the English monarch as long as he or she is a Prod. But what about these Orders' so-called Biblical principles?
Would the Orange Order use each 12 July to swear allegiance to a Protestant king who supports gay marriage, abortion, and gay clergy, or a Catholic queen who supported the Bible's stance on homosexuality and morality?
Catholic Royalists could create a religious nightmare if they pushed for the total scrapping of the Act of Settlement. This could mean a law coming in allowing future monarchs to have any religion, or none.
What happens if a future king is an Islamic fundamentalist who strongly favoured the hard-hitting Sharia Law?
Would Catholic Royalists be happy with one of the religious cults, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, or even the Church of Scientology, which is the favourite faith of many Hollywood superstars?
Even worse, what happens if a future king or queen was into the occult, and was a practising witch, wizard, a Pagan, or Druid?
The Catholic Royalist campaign to scrap the Act of Settlement is based on the dangerous assumption that the Christian faith will always be the preferred religion of the monarchy.
Both Protestants and Catholics will be in some pickle if a future monarch is a gay atheist, who pointedly refuses to have a Bible around.
It would be a brave – or simply foolish – Orange chaplain who stood on a 12 July platform and asked Protestants to swear loyalty to a monarch who despised the Holy Scriptures!
In the short term at least, the Loyal Orders have to prepare themselves for their political hell should a future king or queen have a Catholic spouse, or a civil partner. Who or what will the Orders be loyal to?
The North's peace process has seen once bitter enemies in the DUP and Sinn Féin work what has become a global shining star of post conflict government.
Could a future gay queen who shuns Biblical values provoke a combined front between devout Jesuit priests and hardline Protestant fundamentalists tub thumpers in a plot to have an evangelical Christian bum on the English throne?
The Puritan Butcher, Oliver Cromwell, who once had the liberal King Charles beheaded, would be spinning in his grave if conservative Catholics and Prod Bible thumpers joined forces to spark another mutiny against the Royal Family.
