Calling all English Speaking Catholics

 

Now the wretch [Tyndale] raileth by name upon that holy doctor Saint Thomas, a man of that learning that the great excellent wits and the most cunning men that the Church of Christ hath had since his days, hath esteemed and called him the very flower of theology, and a man of that true perfect faith and Christian living thereto, that God hath himself testified his holiness by many a great miracle, and made him honoured here in his Church in earth as he hath exalted him to great glory in heaven.

– St Thomas More

The English Speaking World is different. It is superior to the rest of the world. The English Speaking world has liberty under the rule of law. It has what was called in ancient times Isonomia: equality under the law, equality in making the law. It perfected isonomia, it saved it and preserved it. Taxation is lower, the state is limited, the law is obeyed. It is prosperous, it is independent, it is composed of victorious and free peoples.  Why is this?

The English Speaking World is different because of one man: St Gregory the Great. St Gregory summoned the English from paganism to the faith of the Church of Rome. Loyalty to Christian Rome created and defined England. By his words ‘non Angli sed Angeli’ St Gregory ensured that the tribes his mission would save would define themselves as one nation and call themselves the English. It was not unknown for an Anglo-Saxon king to end his reign by abdicating and going on pilgrimage to Rome. Alfred the Great the first King of the English would be personally anointed and invested as Consul by the Pope himself. England drank deep of Latin Christian culture and drank it pure and from the source. It took its theory of law from Isidore of Seville untouched by the absolutism of Justinian’s Code. When the rediscovered Law of Justinian flooded the west in the twelfth century, England stood firm beside the laws it had made for itself founded upon the republicanism of the Latin Christian West. Finally, on 20^th January 1265, Simon de Montfort, the son of the great commander of the Albigensian Crusade, summoned to Westminster a Parliament of Lords Temporal and Spiritual, of the Commons of Shire and Borough after the model of the Dominican Constitutions. The genius of St Dominic, who resolved the weaknesses of ancient republicanism, was poured into the public law of England.

Two hundred years later when Sir John Fortescue, the Lord Chief Justice, came to defend the Laws of England (which now embodied the traditions of Greece, Rome and Israel) against those of France corrupted by decadent Byzantine law he turned to the greatest doctor of the Dominican Order. It is upon the doctrine of St Thomas that the Dominican constitution of England was defended. The mixed monarchy, trial by Jury, the prohibition of torture, the dependence of the Monarch on Parliament for subsidy and statute, all is here. Rightly did Luther (though he said it with scorn) call the English monarch ‘Rex Thomisticus’. The liberties of the English Speaking Peoples have nothing to do with Protestantism. Non Angli sed Angeli, the English constitution breathes the pure doctrine of the Angelic Doctor.

Protestantism has rather corrupted and unbalanced our constitution concentrating all executive and legislative power in the same part of that constitution. As Charles I said (faithfully reflecting the doctrine of St Thomas),

There being three kindes of Government amongst men, Absolute Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy, and all these having their particular conveniencies and inconveniencies. The experience and wisdom of your Ancestors hath so moulded this out of a mixture of these, as to give to this Kingdom (as far as human prudence can provide) the conveniencies of all three, without the inconveniencies of any one, as long as the Balance hangs even between the three Estates, and they run jointly on in their proper Chanell (begetting Verdure and Fertilitie in the Meadows on both sides) and the overflowing of either on either side raise no deluge or Inundation.The ill of absolute Monarchy is Tyrannie, the ill of Aristocracy is Faction and Division, the ills of Democracy are Tumults, Violence and Licentiousnesse. The good of Monarchy is the uniting a Nation under one Head to resist Invasion from abroad, and Insurrection at home.The good of Aristocracie is the Conjuncion of Counsell in the ablest Persons of a State for the publike benefit.The good of Democracy is Liberty, and the Courage and Industrie which Libertie begets.

The United States of America, which has preserved this balance, has won for itself the global power that fell to Britain in the eighteenth century precisely because the USA’s interpretation of the Dominican model of government has ended up more faithful to the original than that which now prevails in England. This not because the USA is not a monarchy and Britain is, but because the USA is a monarchy and Britain is not. Those who think otherwise are as Belloc pointed out “making the common error of thinking in words instead of ideas” they foolishly “contrast America as a ‘republic’ with England as ‘monarchy,’ whereas, of course, the Government of the United States is essentially monarchic and the Government of England is essentially republican and aristocratic.”

For centuries protestants have perpetrated the fraud of ascribing the English constitutional tradition to their religion when the opposite is the case. The Leviathan of the absolute state is the protestant invention, the Dominium Politicum et Regale of freedom and the rule of law is the supreme achievement of English Catholicism. The proof is there for all to read in the writings of the great fifteenth century English Thomist Sir John Fortescue. There should be no English speaking Catholic who does not possess a copy of this book: