King Charles may already be longing for the good old days of merely dealing with the alleged crimes of his creepy sweatless brother, as he has now attracted the ire of an even more unscrupulous pack of ne’er-do-wells – grumpy Orangemen. The monarch’s crime is to try and put an end to 500 years of sectarian strife in Europe by becoming the first leader of the Church of England to pray with the Pope.
You’d think it might be a positive thing to step away from a period that has brought us such highlights as The Thirty Years’ War (1618 – 1648, 8 million dead, including half of Germany); the French Wars of Religion (1562 – 1598, 4 million dead); and several hundred years of conflict in Ireland (including Britain’s genocidal starvation policies that left over 1 million dead), but the Independent Loyal Orange Institution (ILOI) has a different take. The offshoot of the Orange Order apparently want to keep this excellent run going for a few more centuries, and have used the trendy medium of obscure theological rhetoric to do so.
Gonna party like it’s 1517
Ever with the times, the sash-sporting sectarians have come up with a series of anti-papist gibberish likely to confuse even their own members, King Charles, the Pope, the person that wrote it, and probably God himself. Leo is a fairly conventionally bigoted leader of the Catholic church, but the wild diatribe – which sounds like an unused excerpt from the street preachers scene in Life of Brian – makes him sound closer to the antichrist:
The Pope falsely claims to be the Vicar of Christ on earth and the Church over which he presides clearly preaches a false Gospel which is not in keeping with the Inerrant Word of God.
When examined in the light of Scripture, the erroneous and dangerous doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome are found to be unscriptural and completely without biblical warrant.
Romish doctrine of Purgatory is repugnant to the Word of God along with the worshipping of images and relics’. Furthermore, the same Articles of Faith over which the King governs reaffirm that ‘the Church of Rome hath erred on matters of Faith and that the false doctrine of Transubstantiation cannot be proved in scripture for the Mass is a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit which have given occasion to superstition.
The Canary tried running the above through Google Translate to see what this shit means but the Deranged Orange Sectarian Lunacy feature is still in beta so we’ll put it down as “something not very nice about the Pope” for now.
Full-fat Orangeism, carbonara and Holy War
The ILOI pledge on their website (a form of witchcraft btw) to “look forward to the future [and]…learn from the past”, which is an interesting take given they likely believe the world is 6,000 years old, fixate on stuff 2,000 years old, pledge their allegiance to a creed 500 years old, and revel constantly in the ‘glory’ of a battle that’s 300 years old.
The solemnity of their letter clearly indicates they’re still stuck in a past where Britain’s benefit-scrounger-in-chief (i.e. King), enjoyed real power rather than just slightly too much power for an unelected figurehead. Naughty Charlie is told off for failing to uphold his Coronation Oath in which someone who actually listens to this stuff noticed that he pledged to be a “faithful Protestant”. Apparently that means “there can be No Peace with Rome, until Rome makes Peace with God” so with any luck hopefully while in Italy Charles can say something disparaging about a carbonara and kick off a world-shattering Holy War before he gets the 19:15 flight home to London Stansted.
In these fast-changing times, where some unionists seem to be moving towards your more fashionable forms of bigotry, such as hatred of immigrants and trans people, it’s almost nostalgic to see the old hands keeping the proud tradition of anti-Catholic animosity going.
The Grand Orange Lodge of England took a pop at the unelected wealth hoarder too, but it’s just a bit weak, the diet version to the full fat Orangeism that is Six Counties, Lambeg drum-beating, shouting at schoolkids, fighting your mates for no reason, setting the street on fire, pointless, self-defeating, antediluvian sectarian shite. If you want the real stuff, call in the boys from Ballymoney.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.