A READER writes:

[1532: Henry VIII, after having divorced Catherine Aragon, his wife of 24 years, participates in a secret wedding service with Anne Boleyn, leading ultimately to the establishment of the Anglican Church and the severing of England from the rest of Christendom.]

1930s: Edward VIII gives up the throne to wed a double-divorcée. The abdication is necessitated by the Anglican Church prohibition on remarriage when a partner has a living, legitimate spouse. Edward’s action will eventually allow his niece Elizabeth to become queen.

1950s: Elizabeth refuses assent for her sister, Princess Margaret, to marry a divorced British war hero who has a legitimate spouse. Margaret submits. (She later marries and divorces another man.)

1990s: Elizabeth orders the divorce of her son Charles from Princess Diana. The legal action becomes final the year after Charles’s paramour divorces her own husband. During that decade, three of the queen’s four children divorce their spouses. Diana dies in 1997.

2000s: Charles marries his divorced paramour despite that her husband remains alive.

2010s: Charles and Diana’s son Harry marries a divorcée.

2020s: Charles, as king, becomes Anglican Defender of the Faith, the first divorced person to hold that title since Henry VIII, who founded the church in a series of actions stemming from his desire to escape a marriage.

So, as we can see: In some ways this timeline reflects an Anglican decline, but ultimately is faithful to that heretical religion’s roots.

Camilla Parker Bowles at her wedding to Andrew Parker Bowles, who was allegedly unfaithful to his wife and married again the year after their divorce.

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