No - the Queen did not have power to veto the Abortion Act 1967

The Queen had no power to veto the Abortion Bill 1967.

Her vetoing power, by refusing royal assent, is only permitted by law in the rarest of circumstances such as a constitutional crisis.

It is true that the Queen meticulously keeps up with the business of Parliament so that, in theory, if there ever were a constitutional crisis, she would be ready and properly advised to act, if necessary.

The Queen usually signs Letters Patent which allow the Speakers of the two Houses to announce the royal assent. However, she signs them for a whole lot of bills in one go, and is only given a list of the names of the Bills, not the texts or even the long titles.

She thus does not know the details of the Bills she is "assenting" to and is not expected to. That is because the process of assent, save in the rarest of situations such as a constitutional crisis, is now not much more than a ceremonial ritual.

The Queen is not even given a copy of the Bills and neither is the Palace. That is not just because she knows that both Houses of Parliament will already have considered the Bill very carefully but rather because she has no power to veto any of the Bills, save in constitutional emergency.

Sir Thomas Erskine May, 1st Baron Farnborough, the original author of Parliamentary Practice

The proper constitutional authorities are the courts and Parliament and the authoritative text is Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice.

The procedure is set out here:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldcomp/ldctso56.htm

and here

http://www.francisbennion.com/word/fb/1981/1981-011-royal-assent-procedure.doc

You will see that Francis Bennion describes the most common procedure (i.e. by notification under the Royal Assent Act 1967) at page 5 of 11. The Queen signs a general assent for a whole series of Bills at one time.

But says, Bennion:

"It is a striking illustration of the extent to which Royal Assent has become a mere formality that Her Majesty does not have before her the texts, or even the long titles, of the Bills to which she signifies assent. Indeed these are not even communicated to officials of the Queen's Household (colloquially known as the Palace)".

Bennion also confirms what is now the law:

"There is no power to withhold a Bill from Assent, whether on the instructions of the Government or anyone else.{See Erskine May Parliamentary Practice (19th edn.) p. 562: "from that sanction they cannot be legally withheld"}. Nor, under the modern constitutional convention, may the Queen refuse Assent. {The last time Assent was refused was by Queen Anne in 1707, in relation to a Scottish militia Bill (Lords' Journals (1705 1709) p.506).}...One of the strengths of Britain's unwritten constitution is the reserve power it contains. In a near revolutionary situation the occasion might still arise for the withholding of Royal Assent, if only by way of delaying tactics". [emphasis added]

Thus, in a dire emergency, the Queen's reserve power to refuse assent is permitted by law to save the Constitution and country and in a few other very rare situations, but not otherwise.

Professor Vernon Bogdanor, leading constitutional expert from Oxford University

Professor Vernon Bogdanor's, The Monarchy and the Constitution, 1995, pp 131-132, gives an interesting insight into the discussions regarding the Home Rule Bill which King George V was very much opposed to:

"There is, then, no doubt that the king believed that he could veto legislation, and that he contemplated doing so in the case of Home Rule...the first parliamentary counsel, Sir Granville Ram...cited Dicey, who had declared of the refusal of assent: ‘Its repose may be the preservation of its existence, and its existence may be the means of saving the Constitution itself on an occasion worthy of bringing it forth’. The Home Rule crisis of 1914 proved that the sovereign retained the prerogative of veto, and that this prerogative might come into play on extreme occasions." [emphasis added]

The position adumbrated by Dicey is more or less the position today, as the authorities like Erskine May and Francis Bennion QC state.

We might call this "Dicey's exception".

Albert Venn Dicey (1835-1922)
was a leading constitutional lawyer
and Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford University from 1882 to 1909

Now, if the Queen were to refuse letters patent then she would be attempting to usurp to herself the power to veto a Bill - a power which the law and Constitution do not allow her.

And attempting to usurp or seize power unlawfully is a sin and we may not do evil that good may come of it, as St Paul teaches us (Rom 3:8), no matter how great the intended good may be.

It is not simply a matter of the Queen refusing to obey an unjust law. It is far more.

Any attempt by her to veto a Bill would be an attempted seizure of power by the Monarch, like the US President giving himself power to sack pro-abortion US Justices, a power he does not have under the US Constitution.

Once the US Senate confirms the nomination of a US Justice by an affirmative vote, the President must prepare and sign a commission, and have the Seal of the Department of Justice affixed to the document before the new justice can take office (see 5 USC § 2902).

The seniority of an Associate Justice is based on the date of commissioning, not the date of confirmation or swearing-in (see 28 USC § 4).

No-one would ever realistically suggest that the US President should refuse to sign the commission for any duly confirmed Justice, break the law, breach the Constitution which he is pledged to defend, and seize powers that he does not have (a coup d'etat), on the entirely spurious basis that he, the President, is morally compelled to do so in the name of over-turning Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that liberalised abortion law in the USA, and to stage a revolution in the name of the pro-life cause.

The US Supreme Court

Revolution in the name of the pro-life, or any just, cause cannot be justified, and the whole weight of Catholic tradition and teaching on the subject is against it.

The position is summarised by St Thomas in De Regimine Principum, Ch. 6, 45-52, when he writes of the opinion that the unjust ruler may be overthrown by private force:

"But this opinion is not in accord with apostolic teaching, for Peter [1 Pet 2:18-19] admonishes us to be reverently subject to our masters, not only the good and gentle but also the froward...to proceed against the cruelty of tyrants is an action to be undertaken not through the private presumption of a few..."

Revolution and revolt against legitimate authority is never permissible and always wrong

In the British Constitution the true sovereign power lies with Parliament.

Even though the Queen is called the Sovereign, in truth, most of the time, she isn't, save for Dicey's exception.

To attempt to give herself the sovereign power to veto a Bill would be the act of a private citizen, Elizabeth Windsor-Mountbatten, attempting to seize power and overthrow the sovereign power of Parliament.

That would be the sin condemned by St Peter and St Thomas and one may not sin in order to achieve good, as St Paul teaches (Rom 3:8).

We should blame the real villains for the Abortion Act 1967: the politicians, not the Queen!

St Thomas Aquinas, jurist, philosopher, theologian, scholar, saint and Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church

...

Roundheads, queens and the immorality of revolutions

Apologies to "SubjectofRome" whose post I seem to have lost. Can you send it again? Midlander need not bother unless he comes up with some arguments rather than simply barracking. Sorry, Midlander.

Others have written and some still do not quite get the point that I was making.

Last try, then, folks. Here goes.

Some make a common mistake and assume that a different set of rules must apply to a head of state who is called king or queen than to one who is called by some other name.

The name of the head of state makes no difference: he cannot seize powers that are not lawfully his (or hers) and thus do not belong to him under the Constitution.

Dictators of unstable countries all too often seize such powers for themselves. This is merely a coup d'etat. It is illegal and immoral.

Some seem to think that merely swapping a monarch for some other kind of head of state with a different name solves the moral problem of signing immoral laws. How could it?

I don’t quite know why this relatively simple idea seems so hard for some to grasp.

The evil consists in requiring a head of state to seize powers he does not have and thus overthrow a constitution.

Again I do not know why this should be so difficult an idea to grasp.

I suspect that some have but one idea or concept of monarchy in their heads and that is monarchy with wide power. But the British monarch is not such a monarch.

Some call this a "charade". It is no more of a charade than a republican constitution that requires the president to do the same thing. How is it any less of a charade to call a president “head of state” when he or she has virtually no power, either?

The fact is that most jurisdictions have a head of state, even if only for ceremonial reasons. There is a need for such a figure. It is not a charade. There is a job to be done. Most constitutions give that head of state some final and residual power to prevent the Constitution being ultimately subverted.

It really amounts to not much less than a kind of blind prejudice and bigotry to think that this system must be abolished if it is exercised by a person called a monarch or "king" or "queen" but is fine if it is exercised by some other sort of head of state with a different title like, say, "president".

This bigotry is simply not logical. It is perhaps cultural or psychological. For instance, some Americans and many Irishmen seem to have a kind of cultural and psychological aversion to the mere word "king" or "queen", partly perhaps for understandable historical reasons. Many Irishmen, for instance, understandably associate monarchy with oppression by successive English governments but end by having an irrational aversion to the word and idea as such.

Perhaps some other people have been brought up on fairy tales about kings and queens and princes in castles who order subjects about with largely untrammelled power. Thus they think this is how all monarchs should be and can’t get their heads round the idea of a restricted constitutional monarchy.

Or perhaps some have a romantic notion about revolution which, in their mind’s eye, requires some supposed villainous monarch to rebel against.

I don’t know what else causes this kind of bigotry but it is profoundly anti-rational.

The Queen does not do evil when she signs a law because, in signing that law, she is not exercising any freedom to endorse or reject that law. She has no such freedom.

Her signing is not a free act on her part but merely an acknowledgement that Parliament has passed a law. It is rather like signing a receipt.

The only exceptions are the extreme situations to which I referred in my earlier posts (deadlock in Parliament which cannot be resolved by the courts, or a rogue government seeking to abolish the Constitution or, say, elections) and these now represent her only real power and discretion to act.

The fact that her signing is called “Royal Assent” is now a legal fiction, save in those extreme cases. Then, and only then, does the Queen retain any discretionary power.

Other than those extreme situations her signature is now no more than a “Royal Acknowledgement” or a “Royal Receipt” rather like signing a DHL receipt to say that you have received a DHL-delivered parcel.

No-one would suggest that the act of signing a DHL receipt for a parcel means that you were responsible for sending the parcel in the first place!

So, also, with the Queen. She is not morally or legally responsible for the legislation enacted by Parliament.

Now, it might be very nice and good if the Queen had more power than that and exercised it to block an abortion bill. But she doesn’t.

And no amount of calls for her to resign will give her, or her replacement, that power.

The royal power was radically attenuated by the Civil War, the so-called "Glorious" Revolution and the Bill of Rights of 1689 and further inroads continued to be made thereafter by a now powerful Parliament.

However much one may regret the Roundhead rebellion and the Whig Revolution, they won and the Royalists lost and it is now too late to reverse the constitutional situation. Indeed, even to try would now, if done by unconstitutional means, be a revolution of its own and thus sinful.

Now try as you might, you simply cannot blame Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for this situation!

Moreover, because Parliament passes an immoral law, this does not give either the Queen or a subject the right to overthrow Parliament.

I repeat, yet again, that this is what St Thomas Aquinas teaches in his De Regimine Principum ("On the Rule of Princes"), as does the Church itself.

St Thomas makes it quite clear that, whilst an unjust law is no law, morally speaking, and so it cannot bind morally and one should not obey it, that does not give us the right to overthrow the state or the prince (or the Parliament) which produced such an immoral law. It only gives us the right to refuse to obey such a “law”. We are not then disobeying the law because this “law” is, in fact, no law at all, morally speaking.

Likewise, the Queen, whilst she should certainly regard the abortion law as no law at all – morally speaking – she cannot break the legitimate laws (i.e. those which forbid her to exercise the Royal Assent as she pleases) in order to nullify the immoral “law”. That would be doing evil that good may come of it, which is strictly forbidden by the moral law.

The abortion law remains a human positive law but, in the sight of God and good men, it is really no law at all, morally speaking.

One must not, therefore, obey that law if it requires one to participate in an abortion, or connive at an abortion, but the existence of such an immoral law does not give the subject the right to overthrow the state or the Constitution.

For the same reason the Queen does not have that power, either.

The blame for these immoral laws lies with those who frame and pass them - not the Queen.

Some say, well, what about Hitler and the Nuremberg Laws. Well, what about them? They were laws passed by the Nazi-dominated Reichstag, not by President Hindenburg.

If there were laws passed to put Jews into concentration camps then those laws should be resisted and not obeyed but the Queen would still not magically get powers she does not have to block Parliamentary Bills. If, however, these laws were forced through illegally (as, of course, they would have to be since no-one would now pass such laws) and the courts refused to act, then the Queen would be facing the very extreme situation which I adumbrated and might then have a discretionary power.

I hope this, at last, makes the position clear.

On the Queen and revolution: he who has ears, let him hear...

In response to my last post, I have a message from a correspondent called Viator Catholicus, who says:

"It is lamentable that you are so protective of the Queen of England on a site devoted to 'Roman Christendom'.

Of course, she is a figurehead with no power. But, then, what purpose does she serve? Should she not at least assert some moral authority?

Can she not refuse to sign the abortion bill to avoid any appearance of cooperation? You also made some points about the illegitimacy of Revolution.

However, the pope can certainly call for Revolution against a regime which he by his authority declares unlawful. By the way, was not the legitimate English monarch overthrown in 1688 by a the invasion of a Dutch king in alliance with certain English traitors?"

The last two questions seem to me perfectly good and fair ones and I shall try to answer them later.

Sorry to say, however, the Queen-related question is precisely an example of the very kind of parroting and re-parroting about which I complained in my previous post.

It is also self-contradictory. How can one say "the Queen has no power" and then, in the same post, say she should exercise her (non-existent!) power to refuse to sign legislation?

One cannot have it both ways.

I have VERY FULLY answered the Queen-related questions numerous times over.

How is asking and re-asking and re-re-asking and re-re-re-asking the same question that has been answered several times over, helping to resolve the issue or even explain an alternative position?

If anyone disagrees with my answers, ah, well, that's quite another thing. But then they must tell me WHY they disagree and WHAT their REASONS are.

Simply repeating the question that has already been answered several times over just looks, I'm afraid, like mindless barracking - even of the "4 legs good, 2 legs bad" variety that George Orwell lampoons so effectively in Animal Farm.

I can but say to Viator: go and read my earlier replies to people who have asked the self-same question. They can be found under "comments" at the end of each post.

In short, no, the Queen is not just a figurehead and, no, she is not devoid of all power. She has very limited but still very important power to act against a rogue government (e.g. one that banned elections) or, perhaps, to resolve a deadlock that the courts did not otherwise have the jurisdiction to resolve.

I am open to persuasion that I am wrong about that or have got the law wrong but challengers will need to point to some counter-authorities since this is the view accepted by, for example, Erskine-May on Parliamentary Procedure.

These are vitally important powers protecting us from tyranny and dictatorship. But they are very limited, "port of last resort" powers.

If this is right, then the Queen simply does not have the power to refuse other legislation. If she tried to do so she would be acting illegally and when a head of state acts illegally this is called a coup d'etat or palace revolution.

In Roman Catholic theology no-one has the right to instigate a revolution or rebellion against a superior, unless the same has been legitimately and lawfully authorised by someone more superior still.

Now the Queen is not above the law or the Constitution. The law and the Constitution are above her and she must obey them both.

As the late Lord Denning, former Master of the Rolls and former Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, put it "Be ye never so high, the law is above you".

One may not like that situation and may prefer that she be a Monarch in the old mould with much wider powers but that is not our current Constitution.

And neither we, nor the Queen, have the right to overthrow that Constitution by unilateral illegal acts or a coup d'etat.

She could not, therefore, "refuse to sign the Abortion Bill just to avoid any appearance of co-operation". If she did so she would be overthrowing the Constitution and would thereby be sinning. And one may not do evil that good may come of it, as St Paul says (Rom 3:8).

We may use legitimate constitutional means to change the Constitution such as campaigning for a change but we cannot use illegitimate, unconstitutional means. That is sin.

It is Roman Catholic teaching that Catholics may not rebel against their superiors and overthrow their legitimate governance, even if that governance is oppressive or immoral.

Some Catholics have got it into their heads that Catholic teaching permits such rebellion. It does not.

The reasoning is simple enough: a subject does not have the right to sit in judgment upon his superior, for if he did have, then there would be no authority at all since any subject could, at any time, aver that the authority was being exercised oppressively and so overthrow it at his own discretion.

In short, that would be an anarchist's charter.

As I have now said, I think, 3 times this is all very clearly explained in De Regimine Principum (On the Rule of Kings) by St Thomas Aquinas, citing proper authorities.

I am open to persuasion that the Queen DOES still have more residual prerogative powers than I have stated but, to be persuasive, I think it would be necessary to point to some recognised legal or constitutional authority that says so e.g. Erskine-May on Parliamentary Procedure or Dicey or perhaps Professor Vernon Bogdanor of Oxford or, of course, some decision of the higher courts.

To answer the remainder of Viator's questions, which I believe are good and fair ones, I say this: yes, the Pope, if it can still be said that he is superior to the Queen, could authorise her overthrow or that of the Constitution.

But does he still have that superior power?

I rather fear that he does not. If any superior power now exists it might exist in international law but I suspect not in the Pope. Indeed, the Pope claims no such power any more.

I am open to persuasion on that point, however.

As for the Dutch invasion yes, that was certainly illegitimate, indeed, a very good example of an unjust rebellion against a legitimate and lawful authority - treason or treachery, in short.

That new government was illegal and could legitimately be opposed and overthrown by anyone, not least Catholics. That, indeed, is what Jacobites tried to do by the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, which were legitimate uprisings against an usurped authority and undertaken with the aim of restoring the legitimate king and constitution.

Such a restoration is expressly permitted by Catholic teaching since the subject is not judging its own legitimate government for the very simple reason that the government is not legitimate since it usurped power, itself, by a revolution. An usurped power has already judged itself, just as a robber has put himself in the wrong and may then be lawfully apprehended, preferably by the Police but, if necessary, by any citizen.

The Jacobite uprisings failed, sadly.

Eventually, the Jacobite pretenders ceased to press their claim and the Cardinal Duke of York eventually transferred the royal heirlooms to King George III.

For the other reasons why the Jacobite claims can no longer be seriously pressed, albeit their memory and principles ought still to be honoured and upheld, see my earlier and first post on the subject, To Lochaber No More...

This being so, from the time of King George III, the Hanoverians became the legitimate British royal dynasty. Moreover, the popes began to recognise them from around that time.

For this reason, among others, the American Revolution of 1776 was also an illegitimate one. It did not seek to restore the legitimate Stuart dynasty but, instead, basing themselves upon heterodox Protestant and secularist ideas, subjects of the King expressly claimed to sit in judgment on their lawful superior, the King himself, just as Cromwell had earlier illegally done.

Such rebellions are expressly forbidden by Catholic teaching.

However, once again, the legitimate dynasty ceased to press its claims to rule America and against the American revolutionary government, so that, eventually, that government, too, gained legitimacy and, after a time, it would have been disproportionate, and therefore a sin, to rebel or make war against it.

So much is no more than Roman Catholic teaching on the subject of just or unjust war and just or unjust uprising.

In the same way that a just war is no violence, so a just uprising is no rebellion. Rebellion and violence are sins. Legitimate restoration by proper, reasonable and proportionate force is neither violence nor rebellion but, as its name implies, a just and lawful restoring of the true and legitimate constitution - a bit like the Police apprehending a terrorist by minimum and proportionate force.

This is our faith.

...

To those who think the Queen should become a revolutionary and overthrow the state...

The postbag contains some hot complaints about our dear Queen, some a bit offensive, to the effect that she is not legitimate because she didn't refuse to sign certain immoral laws, classically the abortion laws.

These are ill thought out complaints.

But why, exactly?

I shall repeat here the points I made in one answer as I can see that they may be of interest to a wider audience.

I speak as a lawyer as well as a theologian and so hope that I can speak without complete ignorance on the subject.

The Queen has some few not well defined residual powers which probably include the final power to resolve a complete constitutional deadlock or impasse, or to restrain a rogue government that breaks the law in a way that the Courts and Judges cannot otherwise rectify, but, in truth, her powers do not really extend much beyond that. Indeed, that is probably about the sum total of her real political powers today.

That her powers arise from an unwritten Constitution and are necessarily therefore not so well defined does not obliterate them but it does make determining their extent rather less clear. It means that the scope of our Constitution is defined by what lawyers call "conventions" rather than by a written instrument like, say, the US, Canadian or Australian Constitutions. It also means that the Queen will be much more hesitant about exercising any residual prerogative or reserved powers, as they are called, than is the case with her representatives in countries with a written constitution.

That is why the Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr, in 1975 felt able, after taking advice from the Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Garfield Barwick, to dismiss the Prime Minister and compel a "caretaker" government to call a General Election.

Sir David Smith, the Australian Governor-General's official secretary, reading the Governor-General's proclamation dissolving both Houses of Parliament (under s.57 of the Constitution) on the steps of Parliament House, Canberra, 11 November 1975, with the sacked ex-Prime Minister, Mr Edward Gough Whitlam, and 2 be-wigged clerks of the House, standing behind him. In front of Sir David, a large crowd of Whitlam supporters was baying and chanting in an attempt to drown out the words of the proclamation. Mr Whitlam grins at their efforts but, in fact, a month later, he was defeated at the polls by the biggest landslide defeat in Australian political history. He and his Party (the Australian Labour Party) have never forgiven or forgotten what they see as a "betrayal" by Sir John Kerr who was himself a Labour Party appointee as Governor-General. Others consider that Mr Whitlam got what was coming to him because he had, they say, begun to govern unconstitutionally. Either way, these events have had a dramatic and lasting effect upon Australian politics.

His power to do so, as the Queen's representative, was clearly defined in section 57 of the Australian Constitution, as can be seen here:

http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/general/constitution/par5cha1.htm

Even then there was a massive and intense reaction to his using that power and a political upheaval that is still being felt with all sorts of continuing ramifications including a huge campaign, supported by large funding, to replace the Monarchy with a republican President.

Thus those who think that the exercise of similar powers by the Queen would not be de-stablising or create immense upheaval are simply not looking at the facts.

In fact, however, compared with the powers of the Australian Governor-General, her representative in Australia, and even, in theory, her own powers in Australia under section 59 of the Australian Constitution, her powers in the United Kingdom are very narrow powers.

Nonetheless they remain very important ones. We must honestly hope and pray that they will never have to be exercised but it is, nevertheless, necessary that she retains them – for all our sakes and for the safety and security of the nation.

As a matter of law and constitutional convention and practice, the Queen does NOT have the power to refuse legislation beyond this extremely narrow compass of powers and she certainly has no power to pick and choose what legislation she wishes to approve.

In the UK Constitution, conventions form the very constitution. That is what the UK Constitution consists in. They determine the scope of the UK Constitution. That is how an unwritten constitution works.

Under these constitutional conventions, the Queen retains a purely nominal or ceremonial "power" to refuse legislation but it is not a real power save in the very rare and highly extreme situation of a deadlock or rogue government, as stated above. That is the current reality as regards her real political powers.

Thus, if she tried to take any more powers than this narrow compass then she would, in effect, have instigated an illegal coup d’etat against the democratically elected government of the day and would not then be acting as a responsible head of state but rather a criminal revolutionary.

Moreover, if she did so in order to prevent certain immoral laws from becoming law (e.g. the abortion laws) then her actions would not only be illegal and revolutionary but they would also not succeed in over-turning the abortion laws (or any other immoral laws) and so would, in any case, be pointless and disproportionate.

She would succeed in nothing much more than ending the Monarchy and de-stabilising the Constitution and therefore the whole country.

She simply does not have that right – morally, legally or politically.

The last Monarch actually to refuse assent to legislation was Queen Anne back in the 18th century. Queen Victoria possibly still had the power, at least in theory, but she never used it.

The present Queen no longer has those powers - rightly or wrongly.

Nevertheless some people, in ignorance perhaps innocent, still think the Queen has the powers of Queen Anne or Queen Victoria. As a matter of legal and constitutional practice and convention, she simply does not have those powers any more.

If, on the other hand, she really DID have the power to refuse any legislation i.e. as Queen Anne truly did or as Queen Victoria still theoretically did, then she might legitimately be held morally culpable for not exercising them to reject immoral laws.

But she does not have that power.

For her to take that power would be as illegal as you or I trying to take such powers. She would, in short, have become a revolutionary bent upon over-throwing the state.

Unless critics of the Queen wish to argue that we all, as Christians, have the obligation to start a revolution and overthrow the state because of an objection to immoral laws, then they cannot expect the Queen to do so any more than the rest of us.

Ignorance of the legal and constitutional postion of the Monarch is excusable in those who know but little of such things or who are simple folk of little learning but for the intelligent and educated to argue so is lamentable.

The idea that the Queen should become a revolutionary and stage a coup d'etat against her own government may perhaps have its origins in the kind of spurious liberation theology that more resembles Marxism than Catholic theology. It is the sort of entirely fallacious theology that encourages Catholics to support revolutionary movements around the world and to support revolutionaries closer to home such as the bloody, murderous and diabolical IRA.

This spirit of revolution is not a clean spirit. It is a spirit that refuses to serve and says, with Satan, "I will not serve".

It should be obvious that no Catholic can ever even begin to endorse such a creed.

It is not now the place to explore the idea of just war but suffice to say that no subject has the right to rebel against his legitimate sovereign or government and still less the right to declare such a sovereign or government illegitimate. Only a legitimate superior may declare a lesser sovereign power illegitimate and the subject, by definition, is not a superior.

The idea that a group of subjects may club together and declare their own sovereign government illegitimate and so claim the right to overthrow it is a concept entirely condemned by the Catholic Church.

It has, however, been welcomed by some Protestant sects and by many secularists.

The anti-Catholic founders of the American revolution claimed the right to judge their government and rebel and were roundly condemned by the Catholic Church for so claiming.

The only time a Catholic may fight against his own government or sovereign is if that sovereign is illegitimate by its own admission or by the proper judgment of a superior. The Pope, for instance, might be such a superior in some cases, or perhaps international law, depending upon the particulars of each case.

A clear usurpation or seizure of power from the legitimate sovereign government, or an illegal invasion, may be rightly resisted by a Catholic by force of arms but even then the invasion must have been declared illegal by some superior power (e.g. by recognised international law) and, moreover, a Catholic may only do so if resistance is proportionate and there is the real prospect of winning. Otherwise, he acts immorally and sins.

On the other hand, if a foreign power seeks to overthrow an illegal or usurped government, a Catholic may be justified in assisting that foreign power to restore the legal government but, again, only proportionately and with a reasonable prospect of success.

The idea that there is a general right for any group of citizens to band together to overthrow a government that they, and they alone, have judged to be oppressive or wicked is utterly spurious and has no basis whatsoever in Catholic doctrine or, in all honesty, in right reason. It is simply a recipe for chaos and anarchy.

Revolution is an anti-Catholic creed - by definition.

Those who doubt this should read De Regimine Principum ("On the Rule of Princes") by St Thomas Aquinas.

...