The Accession Oath

New Zealand Tablet, 8 July 1909, Page 7

The Accession Oath

Some day British legislators will put that ' relic yf barbarism,' the accession oath, like Judas, 'in locum suum' — in its place. An outstanding feature of the recent effort to have it amended was the wholesome and whole-hearted way in which it was flailed not alone by the secular newspapers, but by the non-Catholic religious press as well. These leaders of public opinion are very weary of seeing the Catholic faith singled out from among the thousand-and-one variegated creeds within the farflung Empire, and designated by the new Sovereign as superstitious and idolatrous. ' The formula,' says the Guardian (a leading Anglican religious newspaper), 'as it stands is utterly indefensible, and would be so even were the King not the Sovereign of millions of Roman Catholics. Only the most rabid partisans can possibly desire to see it retained as it stands.'