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

...

Mr Southwood (who he?) goes blah...

Some person called "Southwood" has bust a gut because I pointed out that it was the Protestant areas of Germany that voted for Hitler and not the Catholic areas and that it was the Protestant "German Christian" movement and the Protestant Reich Bishop, Ludwig Muller, who supported Hitler and not the Roman Catholic Church.

The German Catholic bishops condemned Nazism time and again.

Mr Southwood can't face this.

The truth upsets him.

Where does Mr Southwood get his information?

You guessed it folks - from books that are written by anti-Catholics and fanatics.

But just to give you a flavour of where Mr Southwood is coming from, here are some of his views:

- the SS were Roman Catholics (yep, really!);

- Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich, Hess were all fully paid-up, practising and devout Roman Catholics, apparently (hmm, excuse me, Mr Himmler, I don't think I saw you at mass last Sunday...oh, I see, you were in the garden worshipping Wotan, were you? That famous Christian god....).

- Not one Protestant nation became Nazi (err, right, Germany would be a Catholic nation, then, would it? Tell that to Martin Luther!).

- Do not include Germany because it was "in the hands of the RCs" (oh, right. So anything bad is, by definition, RC, is it? Even when it isn't? Oh, of course, logical, logical...)

- But this was because "Lutheranism in Germany was an apostate body in large part" (oh, well then of course it must have been RC, by definition - see above: everything bad = RC.)

- Austria was a Fascist nation under Dollfuss (oh, right. Err... then why did the Nazis murder him, I wonder...?)

- Cornwell says that Pius XII was "Hitler's Pope" so therefore he must have been (no possibility that Cornwell was wrong, of course. But hang on...Cornwell was brought up RC, wasn't he? So he must be bad and so cannot be believed, right? Oh, I see. RCs who agree with Mr Southwood are OK but not those that don't? Yes, of course, logical, logical...)

- Serbs were massacred in RC Croatia (but let's just forget about Croats murdered by Orthodox Serbs. That would be inconvenient to our thesis that only RCs are the bad guys).

And so on and so on, with more ill-informed bigotry.

Norweigan Nazi collaborationist Minister-President, Vidkun Quisling, was the son of a Protestant pastor

Where, one might suppose, does Vidkun Quisling fit into this picture, the son of a Protestant pastor of the Lutheran evangelical Church of Norway. Quisling, who had been awarded the CBE by the (Protestant) British government became an ardent friend of the Nazis and served as Minister-President of the Norweigan collaborationist government.

Whoops.

And what about Martin Luther himself, that great Protestant anti-semite?

Martin Luther, founder of Protestantism and author of On the Jews and their Lies (1543)

Well, make up your own mind, folks.

Here are extracts from the works of the founder of Protestantism about the Jews in a book called On the Jews and their Lies of 1543:

"[they are a] base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth."

"[they are] full of the devil's faeces ... which they wallow in like swine"

"[the synagogue is an] incorrigible whore and an evil slut".

He argued that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing "[w]e are at fault in not slaying them".

Paul Johnson writes:

"Luther was not content with verbal abuse. Even before he wrote his anti-Semitic pamphlet, he got Jews expelled from Saxony in 1537, and in the 1540s he drove them from many German towns; he tried unsuccessfully to get the elector to expel them from Brandenburg in 1543".
(A History of the Jews p. 242)

Well, Mr Southwood, bang goes your theory about the virtuous Protestants who were not Fascist or anti-semitic, eh?


...

What have you been saying, homophobic-wise, sir?

Welcome to modern Britain.

The story about a Christian Street preacher, Mr Dale Mcalpine, who was arrested for saying "Homosexuality is a sin" is a reflection of the current obsession by police and officialdom with the murky concept of "hate crime".

In fact, there is no such thing as "hate crime" in English law. It is not a phrase that is used by the law.

The actual facts of the arrest of Dale Mcalpine were recorded on video and make disturbing viewing.

Among the the first words of the police when they arrive is:

"Hello sir. What have you been saying, homophobic wise ?"

This is barely English, let alone a question that can be answered by someone about to be arrested. Matters got worse:

"McAlpine: I spoke to your officer earlier and he was upset that I was saying homosexuality was a sin – which is what the Bible says. And I affirm that’s what I say because that’s in the Bible. And there’s no law, there’s no law…

Policeman: Well there is.

McAlpine: No there isn’t.

Policeman: There is. Unfortunately, mate, it’s a breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act"

Well, actually, constable, it is just isn't and you are an ignoramus for knowing so little about the law that you were claiming to arrest someone for!

And to cap it all the arresting officer actually arrests him for a "racially aggravated public order offence". Yep - racially aggravated!

Doh!

You just can't make this stuff up!




Nevertheless, Dale Mcalpine was arrested, taken to a police station, made to give his DNA and fingerprints and eventually charged.

What then happened?

Err...well.... all the charges were dropped.

Straight away.

Like that.

Poof - gone - out the door.

Why?

Once the facts of the case were examined by Crown Prosecutors, lawyers and police officers who were capable of using more than one brain cell at a time, it became blatantly obvious that there was no such law as the heavy-handed officers of the law had falsely claimed.

How could this be contrary to section 5 of the Public Order Act? It has never been any part of the Public Order Act to decide what is or is not "a sin" and it is not illegal to say that any form of behaviour is "a sin".

So - were the 3 police officers and 2 PCSOs involved in this situation just plain stupid or is there a problem with the wording of the law itself?

Section 5 actually reads as follows:

"Public Order Act 1986, s. 5 Harassment, alarm and distress

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he–

(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

(2) An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and the other person is also inside that or another dwelling.

(3) It is a defence for the accused to prove–
(a) that he had no reason to believe that there was any person within hearing or sight who was likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress, or
(b) that he was inside a dwelling and had no reason to believe that the words or behaviour used, or the writing, sign or other visible representation displayed, would be heard or seen by a person outside that or any other dwelling, or
(c) that his conduct was reasonable.

...

S6(4)Mental element: miscellaneous)

A person is guilty of an offence under section 5 only if he intends his words or behaviour, or the writing, sign or other visible representation, to be threatening, abusive or insulting, or is aware that it may be threatening, abusive or insulting or (as the case may be) he intends his behaviour to be or is aware that it may be disorderly"

Sothe Police had to decide that Mr Mcalpine was using "threatening, abusive or insulting words" when he said that "homosexuality was a sin".

There is no legal definition of "threatening, abusive or insulting" and the words are to be taken in their normal and natural meaning.

Clearly, the phrase "homosexuality is a sin" is not "threatening", nor "abusive".

Someone might, conceivably, consider it "insulting". But should it be an offence to use words that are merely subjectively insulting?

Where does that end?

If an MP attacks another MP over his policies is that now an offence?




The question has but to be stated for its answer to be obvious. Of course, it cannot and should not be criminal. In fact, it is simply not criminal. The police officers were simply off on a crazy frolic of their own.

The proper view must be that the words "threatening, abusive or insulting" ought to be taken together, that Mr Mcalpine could not be said to have caused "alarm, harassment or distress" and/or his conduct was perfectly reasonable (per s.5(3)(c)).

Doubtless, the CPS came to their conclusion for these or similar reasons and the charges had to be dropped.

Did anyone apologise to Mr Mcalpine? I doubt it!

There have been numerous similar incidents of police over-reaction to complaints of Homophobia, Islamaphobia, racism etc and the reason for this is the abysmally low standard of training of police officers regarding the dubious concept of "hate crime".

Common sense and the right to freedom of speech seem to have been left on the shelf at the police station.

Now view the video and see what I mean. The uniformed official grinning vacantly in the background is apparently the PCSO (Police Community Support Officer) who had actually called the police to report Mr Mcalpine for "Homophobia" (which is not an offence known to the law).

With thanks and acknowledgments to Neil Addison (barrister) at http://religionlaw.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-have-you-been-saying-homophobic.html

SS. John Fisher and Thomas More

St John Fisher was Cardinal, Bishop of Rochester, and one of our most glorious martyrs.

He was born at Beverley, Yorkshire, England, 1459 and died 22 June, 1535.

Here, indeed, was a most doughty Yorkshireman.

John was educated at Michaelhouse, Cambridge. He took the degree of BA in 1487, and MA in 1491, in which year he was elected a fellow of his college, and was made Vicar of Northallerton, Yorkshire.

In 1494 he resigned his benefice to become proctor of his university, and three years later was appointed Master of Michaelhouse, about which date he became chaplain and confessor to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of King Henry VII. In 1501 he received the degree of DD, and was elected Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.

Under Fisher's guidance, Lady Margaret founded St John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, and also the two "Lady Margaret" professorships of divinity at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, Fisher himself being the first occupant of the Cambridge chair.

By Bull dated 14 October, 1504, Fisher was advanced to the Bishopric of Rochester, and in the same year was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University, to which post he was re-elected annually for ten years and then appointed for life.

At this date also he is said to have acted as tutor to Prince Henry, afterwards King Henry VIII. As a preacher his reputation was so great that in 1509, when King Henry VII and the Lady Margaret died, Fisher was appointed to preach the funeral oration on both occasions; these sermons are still extant.

In 1542 Fisher was nominated as one of the English representatives at the Fifth Council of Lateran, then sitting, but his journey to Rome was postponed, and finally abandoned.

Besides his share in the Lady Margaret's foundations, Fisher gave further proof of his genuine zeal for learning by inducing Erasmus to visit Cambridge. The latter indeed (Epist., 6:2) attributes it to Fisher's protection that the study of Greek was allowed to proceed at Cambridge without the active molestation that it encountered at Oxford.

Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and mother of King Henry VII

He has also been named, though without any real proof, as the true author of the royal treatise against Luther entitled Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, published in 1521, which won the title Fidei Defensor for Henry VIII.

Before this date Fisher had denounced various abuses in the Church, urging the need of disciplinary reforms, and in this year he preached at St Paul's Cross on the occasion when Luther's books were publicly burned.

When the question of Henry's divorce from Queen Catherine arose, Fisher became the Queen's chief supporter and most trusted counsellor.

In this capacity he appeared on the Queen's behalf in the legates' court, where he startled his hearers by the directness of his language and most of all by declaring that, like St John the Baptist, he was ready to die on behalf of the indissolubility of marriage.

This statement was reported to Henry VIII, who was so enraged by it that he himself composed a long Latin address to the legates in answer to the bishop's speech. Fisher's copy of this still exists, with his manuscript annotations in the margin which show how little he feared the royal anger.

Catherine of Aragon, the true Queen of England and wife of King Henry VIII, championed by St John Fisher

The removal of the cause to Rome brought Fisher's personal share therein to an end, but the king never forgave him for what he had done. In November, 1529, the "Long Parliament" of Henry's reign began its series of encroachments on the Church.

Fisher, as a member of the upper house, at once warned Parliament that such acts could only end in the utter destruction of the Church in England. On this the Commons, through their speaker, complained to the king that the bishop had disparaged Parliament. Dr Gairdner (Lollardy and the Reformation, I, 442) says of this incident "it can hardly be a matter of doubt that this strange remonstrance was prompted by the king himself, and partly for personal uses of his own".

The opportunity was not lost. Henry summoned Fisher before him, demanding an explanation. This being given, Henry declared himself satisfied, leaving it to the Commons to declare that the explanation was inadequate, so that he appeared as a magnanimous sovereign, instead of Fisher's enemy.

A year later (1530) the continued encroachments on the Church moved the Bishops of Rochester, Bath, and Ely to appeal to the Apostolic see. This gave the king his opportunity. An edict forbidding such appeals was immediately issued, and the three bishops were arrested.

Their imprisonment, however, can have lasted a few months only, for in February, 1531, Convocation met, and Fisher was present. This was the occasion when the clergy were forced, at a cost of 100,000 pounds, to purchase the king's pardon for having recognized Cardinal Wolsey's authority as legate of the pope; and at the same time to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church in England, to which phrase, however, the addition "so far as God's law permits" was made, through Fisher's efforts.

A few days later, several of the bishop's servants were taken ill after eating some porridge served to the household, and two actually died. Popular opinion at the time regarded this as an attempt on the bishop's life, although he himself chanced not to have taken any of the poisoned food.

King Henry VIII, wife-murdering, saint-massacring, monastery-plundering and poor-oppressing destroyer of both Church and State for his own personal gain, his poisoned legacy endures even to this day

To disarm suspicion, the king not only expressed strong indignation at the crime, but caused a special Act of Parliament to be passed, whereby poisoning was to be accounted high treason, and the person guilty of it boiled to death. This sentence was actually carried out on the culprit, but it did not prevent what seems to have been a second attempt on Fisher's life soon afterwards.

Matters now moved rapidly. In May, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned the chancellorship, and in June, Fisher preached publicly against the divorce.

In August, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and Cranmer was at once nominated to the pope as his successor. In January, 1533, Henry secretly went through the form of marriage with Anne Boleyn; Cranmer's consecration took place in March of the same year, and, a week later, Fisher was arrested.

It seems fairly clear that the purpose of this arrest was to prevent his opposing the sentence of divorce which Cranmer pronounced in May, or the coronation of Anne Boleyn which followed on 1 June; for Fisher was set at liberty again within a fortnight of the latter event, no charge being made against him.

In the autumn of this year (1533), various arrests were made in connexion with the so-called revelations of the Holy Maid of Kent, but as Fisher was taken seriously ill in December, proceedings against him were postponed for a time.

In March, 1534, however, a special bill of attainder against the Bishop of Rochester and others for complicity in the matter of the Nun of Kent was introduced and passed. By this Fisher was condemned to forfeiture of all his personal estate and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. Subsequently a pardon was granted him on payment of a fine of 300 pounds.

In the same session of Parliament was passed the Act of Succession, by which all who should be called upon to do so were compelled to take an oath of succession, acknowledging the issue of Henry and Anne as legitimate heirs to the throne, under pain of being guilty of misprision of treason.

Anne Boleyn, the King's scheming mistress, was later Queen and thereafter beheaded, when Henry tired of her

Fisher refused the oath and was sent to the Tower of London, 26 April, 1534. Several efforts were made to induce him to submit, but without effect, and in November he was a second time attained of misprision of treason, his goods being forfeited as from 1 March preceding, and the See of Rochester being declared vacant as from 2 June following. A long letter exists, written from the Tower by the bishop to Thomas Cromwell, which records the severity of his confinement and the sufferings he endured.

In May, 1535, the new pope, Paul III, created Fisher Cardinal Priest of St Vitalis, his motive being apparently to induce Henry by this mark of esteem to treat the bishop less severely. The effect was precisely the reverse. Henry forbade the cardinal's hat to be brought into England, declaring that he would send the head to Rome instead.

St Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, later martyred for the Catholic faith

In June a special commission for Fisher's trial was issued, and on 17 June he was arraigned in Westminster Hall on a charge of treason, in that he denied the king to be supreme head of the Church. Since he had been deprived of his bishopric by the Act of Attainder, he was treated as a commoner, and tried by jury. He was declared guilty, and condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, but the mode of execution was changed, and instead he was beheaded on Tower Hill.

The martyr's last moments were thoroughly in keeping with his previous life. He met death with a calm dignified courage which profoundly impressed all present.

His headless body was stripped and left on the scaffold till evening, when it was thrown naked into a grave in the churchyard of All Hallows, Barking. Thence it was removed a fortnight later and laid beside that of Sir Thomas More in the church of St Peter ad Vincula by the Tower. His head was stuck upon a pole on London Bridge, but its ruddy and lifelike appearance excited so much attention that, after a fortnight, it was thrown into the Thames, its place being taken by that of Sir Thomas More, whose martyrdom occurred on 6 July next following.

Amen, amen, I say: this truly was a great bishop, martyr and man, and one most worthy to be called a priest of the Holy Catholic Church.

St John Fisher, Cardinal of Rochester, pray for us!

...

Parachuting in a soutane...

In Afghanistan, they call him padre!

Have soutane, will travel.

The Catholic clergy get everywhere - even into the French Foreign Legion.

Here their chaplain jumps out with a parachute - in his soutane! - and does forward rolls in mid-air, too!

Take a look:



With thanks to the blog of Rev Tim Finigan here:

http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/


...

The Feast of the Sacred Heart

We are in the Octave of the great Feast of the Sacred Heart.

Some - particularly Jansenists and particular types of Protestants - claim that this devotion is a novelty.

It is certainly not novel.

Indeed, the Fathers of the Church already had a devotion to the wounded heart of Jesus as can readily be seen from their writings.

However, by the time of the eleventh and twelfth centuries a special devotion to the Sacred Heart was being developed and cultivated. It was taken up particularly by St Bruno and the Carthusians.

The Cistercians also were much devoted to the heart of Jesus, particularly St Bernard himself.

St Gertrude the Great and St Mechtilde were also great promoters of the devotion as also the learned the author of the "Vitis mystica", thought to be St Bonaventure.

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, the devotion was everywhere practised by individuals and by different religious congregations, such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans.

It was established as a devotion with prayers already formulated and special exercises, found in the writings of Lanspergius (d. 1539) of the Carthusians of Cologne, Louis of Blois (Blosius, 1566), a Benedictine and Abbot of Liessies in Hainaut, John of Avila (d. 1569) and St Francis de Sales, the latter belonging to the seventeenth century.

St Gertrude the Great, Visionary-Apostle of the Sacred Heart

The image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was everywhere in evidence, largely due to the Franciscan devotion to the Five Wounds and to the habit formed by the Jesuits of placing the image on their title-page of their books and the walls of their churches.

The Jesuits subsequently became the great defenders of the devotion to the Sacred Heart and were opposed by the mean-minded, narrow, puritanical but revolutionary Jansenists who mockingly called the devotees of the Sacred Heart by the name of Cordicoles or heart-worshippers.

Jansenists, like Bishop Scipione de' Ricci of Pistoia-Prato in Tuscany, later openly embraced the principles of the French Revolution whilst those Catholics who fought against the Revolution frequently adopted the Sacred Heart as their symbol.

The heresiarch Jansenist, Bishop Scipione de' Ricci, the Bishop of Pistoia-Prato

Ricci worked in conjunction with Prince Kaunitz, the Freemasonic Chancellor of State (Prime Minister) of the Holy Roman Empire, who had consolidated himself in the government of the Empire under Empress Maria Theresa, and later under the liberal Modernist heterodox Catholic, Emperor Joseph II.

Joseph's younger brother, Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Tuscany, later himself Emperor for 2 years, was also a willing aider and abetter of Ricci's schemes.

Consider the disaster that it was for the Catholic Church, for European civilisation and for the whole world that the Christian Roman Emperor, he who had the most solemn duty to defend the Church and the Papacy and to defend and extend the bounds of Christendom, should have become, himself, a hypocrite, a liar, an heterodox deceiver and destroyer of the Church of Jesus Christ which he was pledged, upon a solemn oath, to defend and who derived all his power and privileges from that same duty.

It was the beginning of modern politics - power without responsibility, privilege without duty, desiring the the goods of this world whilst depriving others of them.

In short, the very Emperor himself had become the servant of Satan and had paved the ideological way for the devilish totalitarianism that was to come 2 centuries later.

Ricci held a famous Synod at Pistoia in which, with the support of the Grand Duke, he tried to impose, experimentally, an early form of liberal Modernist Catholicism upon people and clergy in his diocese.

But - the people rose up, locked his Synod members in the Seminary and would not let them out until they had rescinded all the Modernist decrees, even taking off roof-tiles to get them to hurry the rescissions!

Few foresaw that the foolish experiments of the Jansenists and liberal Modernists would lead to them, the Empire and the Grand Duchy being altogether swept away by the tide of revolutionary hatred and violence.

Some Jansenists, after the Terror, returned to the Faith but by then the damage was done.

Ricci did not return until 1805, after he had seen the arrest of Pope Pius VII by Napoleon Bonaparte who compelled him to come to Paris and there to preside at the coronation of the destroyer of Christendom. It finally dawned on Ricci that his experiments had not had a good result.

Heterodox Habsburg: HI&RH Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Tuscany was that rare thing, an heterodox Habsburg. He supported Ricci's ill-fated schemes and so prepared the way for his own family's later fall.

The faithless disloyalty of these Jansenists, Febronianists, Gallicanists and other liberal Catholics who had lapsed from the Faith, wrought appalling damage to Christendom and eventually led to the complete overthrow of Christendom.

Conversely, the Sacred Heart symbol became one of the great symbols of the defence of the Faith during the French revolutionary period and was used by the many Catholics who rose up against the usurping secularists and revolutionaries, not least in the Vendée region of Western France.

The enemies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus had become, wittingly or not, the prime tools of Satan. That is their legacy - fittingly so, since it is Satan who is primarily opposed to the love of God which is so much a part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

St John Eudes, Apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

St John Eudes (1602-1680) publicly and enthusiastically promoted the devotion and gave it an Office and established a feast for it. St John Eudes was also the apostle of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

On 31 August 1670, the first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in the Grand Seminary of Rennes in Brittany. Coutances followed suit on 20 October, a day with which the Eudist feast was from then on to be connected.

The feast soon spread to other dioceses, and the devotion was likewise adopted in various religious communities. It gradually came into contact with the devotion begun at Paray-le-monial resulting in a fusion of the two.

Our Lord shows His Sacred Heart to St Margaret Mary Alacoque

Eventually the devotion was hallowed by private revelation with the now famous revelations to St Margaret Mary Alacoque in the Visitation convent in Paray-le-monial.

Thereafter the devotion was taken by her confessor and spiritual director, St Claude de la Colombiere SJ, to England where, as chaplain to the English Queen, Mary of Modena, he was able to promote the devotion.

St Claude de la Colombiere SJ, confessor of both St Margaret Mary Alacoque and HRH Queen Mary of England, wife of King James II and VII. He was a great promoter of the Sacred Heart devotion.

In 1676 he had been sent to England as preacher to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, afterwards Queen and wife to King James II and VII, the true Stuart monarch of England, Scotland, Ireland and France.

It is fitting that Mary came from Modena which is not far north of that later centre of Jansenism, Pistoia.

St Claude lived the life of a Religious even in the Court of St. James and was as active a missionary in England as he had been in France. Although encountering many difficulties, he was able to guide Saint Margaret Mary by letter.

HRH Princess Mary of Modena-Este, Duchess of York as wife to the future King James II and VII and thus, later, Queen of England. Her confessor was St Claude de la Colombiere SJ whom she helped to spread the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in England

Now the Feast is a great one and has an Octave. An external solemnity is also permitted to be celebrated on the Sunday during the Octave.

St Gaius Cassius Longinus,
the Roman soldier who opened the side of our Lord with a spear but later converted to Christianity


"Unus militum lancea latus ejus aperuit, et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua".

"One of the soldiers with a spear opened His side and immediately there came out blood and water".

[John, 19:34. Communio, Feast of the Sacred Heart]

...

Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo (1678–1762), Jacobite gentleman, scholar and cavalry commander

Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Forbes of Pitsligo (1678–1762), philosopher and Jacobite army officer, only son of the third lord, Alexander Forbes of Pitsligo (c.1655–1690), and Lady Sophia Erskine (fl. 1676–1734), third daughter of John, twentieth Earl of Mar, was born on 24 May 1678.

He succeeded to the estates and title on the death of his father in 1690.

Forbes married first, in 1713, Rebecca (d. 1731), daughter of John Norton, a London merchant, with whom he had one son, John, Master of Pitsligo (c.1713–1781); and secondly, in 1731, his wife's companion, Elizabeth Allen (d. 1759), in a match which produced no children.

("Master of..." was the title given to the eldest son of a Scottish Lord of Parliament if he had no other courtesy title).

In his youth he travelled to France, where he received some education and made the acquaintance of Fénelon, and was introduced by him to Mme Guyon and other quietists. These were very influential in forming his religious ideas, which, although he remained a lifelong episcopalian, were resolutely ecumenical.

He returned to Scotland in 1700. After the deposition of George Garden from his living for Jacobitism in 1701, Forbes gave him a house at Rosehearty, where an ecumenical religious community was set up "where persons of different religious persuasions lived together in the love of God and the practice of self-abnegation" (Henderson, 18): Chevalier Andrew Ramsay was one of those who sought to join it.

In the Scottish parliament Forbes sought what was "consistent with the honour and independence of Scotland" (Forbes, Thoughts, 1829, iv), opposed steps leading to the union with England, and withdrew from the consideration of the articles to Pitsligo Castle.

In 1715 Forbes joined the Jacobite rising under his first cousin the Earl of Mar, commanding a troop of horse at Sheriffmuir. Following the collapse of the rising, he was forced to flee to France.

Subsequently he made his way via Rotterdam, Leiden, Vienna (where he may have acted as King James's agent), Venice, and Munich to the Jacobite court in Italy, where he kept a diary of events, published in 1938 as The Jacobite Court at Rome in 1719.

Pitsligo Castle was a great castle...

 

.....before it was burned and ruined by Whigs.

In 1720 he went to Paris, where he discussed Jacobite schemes with the financier John Law. Having not been attainted, he borrowed money from a Roman banker and returned to Scotland in the same year; living in retreat at Pitsligo Castle, he corresponded with other quietists and wrote philosophy, publishing Essays Moral and Philosophical in 1734.

Thoughts Concerning Man's Condition and Duties in this Life, and his Hope in the World to Come, also composed at this time, was not published until 1763: this work proved to be even more of a success, going through several editions and remaining in print well into the nineteenth century.

Elsewhere, he explored the question of the legitimacy of the state in his unpublished On Government and A letter on governments, composed about 1720 (which interestingly contradict some of the arguments of his published work). In them he appears to move some way towards a contractualist Whig position.

His thought combines a benign Christian ecumenism— "Every Body knows 'tis accident, for the most part, that makes us of one Religion, rather than another" (Forbes, Essays, 170)—with a kind of providential version of legitimacy and ideas of the centrality of popular consent, which can be held to hint towards the arguments of utilitarianism. He also (in his Essays) showed some sympathy with the position of women, whom he thought "more active, more foreseeing and better managers than we" (McLynn, The Jacobites, 157).

In 1745 Forbes "weighed and weighed again" the prospect of joining the rising, as he discusses at length in his complex Apologia (Memsie apologia, Aberdeen University Library, Pitsligo MS 1/16), but when he did so he entered on it with enthusiasm: "Did you ever know me absent at the second day of a wedding?" he asked his friends (Forbes, Thoughts, 1854, xvii); to his soldiers he simply said "Oh Lord, Thou knowest our cause is just. Gentlemen, march" (Tayler and Tayler, Jacobite Letters, 2).

W. Lockhart Bogle RA. Lord Forbes of Pitsligo mounts his horse. 1893.

By the end of September 1745 Forbes was in Aberdeen, whence he marched south with around 130 horse and two companies of Banffshire infantry, later incorporated in the Duke of Perth's regiment.

On arrival at Edinburgh on 8 October, he was appointed general of horse by Prince Charles (Charles Edward Stuart), with the rank of full colonel.

In England, where his cavalry were often used as scouts or forward patrols, he was in the thick of the action. Pitsligo's horse was the first body of Jacobite troops to enter Manchester, where Forbes threatened a reluctant constable with his sword; on 1 December he commanded the building of the bridge at Gatley ford and engineered the crossing of the Mersey by pontoon.

In the first stage of the fight at Clifton on 18 December, Pitsligo's horse was put to flight by government cavalry and dragoons, and retired to Penrith. At Falkirk in January 1746 the horse was stationed in the third line with the Royal Scots and the rest of the cavalry.

On the retreat north, Forbes entered Aberdeen on 7 February: on the disorder of the further retreat, all or nearly all his horses were lost. At the battle of Culloden, the men of Pitsligo's horse thus stood in the rear and took little part in the action. Their leader, however, was still at this stage (and beyond) a zealous recruiter: Adam Hay later claimed to have been held by Forbes as a pressed man in the days immediately before Culloden, while in the aftermath of the battle he was still trying to raise men, despite acknowledging over 2000 dead on the field.

 

Eventually accepting the inevitable, Forbes went into hiding on his own estates for the rest of his life, where his exploits became a local legend.

During the day he lay in the mosses at Craigmaud, 9 miles up-country from Fraserburgh, or hid "in a hollow place in the earth, under the arch of a small bridge" (Forbes, Thoughts, 1829, xxi).

On other occasions he called at his own castle in the guise of a beggar, ordered searching soldiers breakfast in the house in which he was hiding, or guided a search party to his own hiding place in the Cave of Cowshaven (still known as Lord Pitsligo's Cave) on the Buchan coast, 2 miles from Rosehearty.

His attainder named him as Lord Pitsligo (rather than Lord Forbes of Pitsligo), and on this technicality and the basis of similar mistakes made in attainders after the 'Fifteen, it was reversed by the court of session in 1749. This decision was, however, overturned by the House of Lords in the following year.

W. Lockhart Bogle RA. Pitsligo in hiding under the arch of a bridge. 1893.

Government troops continued to search sporadically for the ageing philosopher (who went under the name of Mr Brown in his correspondence with the Countess of Erroll, carried by the Laird of Udny's fool as go-between) until the later 1750s, by which time he was almost eighty years old.

His dignity and resignation under this treatment were remarkable: in 1752 he could still write that "We have nothing to depend upon but the Goodness of God every moment, we are sure he can do us no Injustice" (Aberdeen University Library, Pitsligo MS 1/6).

He died at Auchiries on 21 December 1762.

By all accounts Lord Forbes was a man of extraordinary moral qualities: the personification of "Virtue and Justice" to William Hamilton (Forbes, Thoughts, 1829, lvii); "the best father … best friend and the best subject in Britain" to John Murray of Broughton (Forbes, Jacobite Court, 33). His character forms the basis for that of the Baron of Bradwardine in Sir Walter Scott's novel Waverley. In the judgement of William King, Forbes was the "one person" known to him who spoke no evil "of any man living" and found good to say of all (King, 143–5).

[From Murray G. H. Pittock in the Dictonary of National Biography]

Charles Pettie. Bonnie Prince Charlie. 1898.
With Bonnie Prince Charlie, Forbes of Pitsligo is on the right (or it could possibly be MacDonald of Clanranald) and Cameron of Locheil is on the left.

HIELAND LADDY (Jacobite)

Where ha' ye been a' the day'
Bonnie laddie, Hielan' laddie
Saw ye him that' far awa'
Bonnie laddie, Hielan' laddie
On his head a bonnet blue
Bonnie laddie, Hielan' laddie
Tartan plaid and Hielan' trews
Bonnie laddie, Hielan' laddie

When he drew his gude braid-sword
Then he gave his royal word.
Frae the field he ne'er wad flee
Wi' his friends wad live or dee.

Geordie sits in Charlie's chair
But I think he'll no bide there.
Charlie yet shall mount the throne
Weel ye ken it is his own.

[From Minstrelsy of Scotland, Moffatt. Published in Jacobite Relics, 1810. A version of the tune appeared in Playford, 11th edition, 1701.]

The current Chief of the Name is Sir William Stuart Stuart-Forbes of Pitsligo, 13th Baronet, who lives in Churchill Street, Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand.


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