By the latter half of the 19th century, Britain's empire was at its zenith, and the United States (the 'English', as the Amish call them) was a latent world power in its own right. Britain's Australian colonies (now encompassing the entire continent once notionally divided between Portugal and Spain), collectively, by the 1890s enjoyed, per capita, the highest material standard of living in the world. Overall, Henry the 8th's legacy seemed to have stood the English-speaking peoples in good stead. There was effective separation of Church from State throughout, and democracy had become established as the natural political condition.

The same century saw Spain's empire fragment, anti-clericalism rise in France, Italy, and Portugal, and Prussia shade Austria. Pretty much all that the Vatican could look forward to being able to count upon as a power base was its Swiss Guards! Britain would have to be slowed down, somehow, or taken over, if the Holy See was to merely survive, let alone ever again wield the temporal power it had before the Reformation.

What to do?

Accepting the reality of democracy as the natural political condition of the English-speaking peoples meant that the Vatican had to either obtain the support of an existing political party popular enough to win government, or sponsor the creation and growth of a new one malleable to Vatican desires that could one day do so, if it wished to exercise the degree of political control it clearly felt was its due. In a British Dominion it would have been unlikely that the first option would have been achievable, or even the second if its sponsorship or favourable disposition with respect to Rome was to be openly known or provable.

Throughout the latter decades of the 1900s, promotion of the adoption of a new representational vehicle to be superimposed upon the pre-existing representational structure in Australia was either a heaven-sent opportunity for Rome, or a stroke of genius, depending on its true origins.

Federation!

One government to influence in place of six!

Party time!

FOXY and RUNNER.. please read Forests most informative posts.

Good Grief Forrest.... I've just read all your lengthy and informative posts and my jaw is still dangling :)

Great effort mate..and kind thanx for the educational experience.

Now.. if I can summ it up... your saying that the Vatican is behind a lot of or all/most of the political changes which we are seeing?

Now.. I've read enough 'conspiracy' theory books to be able to tell woffle from history, and your posts seem to have reasonable credibility.

There is a point of course where one begins to argue more from silence than confirmable information..and that's where my eyes tend to glaze over...haven't reached that point yet.

But the fact that you linked your position to so much history and so far back.. makes me hope you are always on 'my' side :)

You must be either a history buff and a mainlining wiki addict or a professor of something eh :)

If you see the Vatican behind a lot of this, it does not mean we cannot fight it with means at our disposal.

I am increasingly (if that be possible) concerned about where certain elements in our community wish to take us.
This applies equally to various religious based cultures.
-Islam
-Sikhism
-Hinduism

Today.. it is "If we cannot wear our Kirpan it is discrimination"
Tomorrow it is "We don't like the character being portrayed thus in that movie..CHANGE the script"
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Sikhs_force_change_in_Akshay_starrer/articleshow/3124902.cms

Today it is "But you believe in diversity don't you? so we can hold our prayers in this public place"
Tomorrow it is "We now want to broadcast our call to prayer 5 times a day from every local mosque"

Forest.. join my team :) I hereby appoint you 'History Expert'.

In Melbourne?

P.S. to Forest.. we CAN make a difference mate.. we surely can.

But one must be 'smart' about how one does it :)

Maximize Impact with minimal effort... I call it Political Aikido....

If you don't quite get what I mean.. ponder this video and you will see it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5dDwzwb3-8

Polycarp,

You say:

"Now.. if I can summ it up... your saying that the Vatican is behind a lot of or all/most of the political changes which we are seeing?"

No.

What I am saying is that the Vatican is saying the Vatican is behind ..... etc. Its all in the encyclicals.

Natural persons have heirs, to whom they bequeath a heritage, be it rich or poor, according to how they have been able to utilize what they themselves inherited, and so it continues into the future.

By contrast 'the Vatican' over time has been, and at any given time is, an entity comprised of persons in mandatory denial of their true nature, who have no heirs of their own. Their children are their dogmas; their heritage one of control and the same dogmas. In circumstances where they have insufficient obedient adherents to be able to dictate affairs of state in a democracy, they must resort to deception in order to exert the political influence they feel is their entitlement.

By the very nature of democracy, the obtaining of influence by deception must centre around the advancement of deceptive candidacy and/or the undetected manipulation of the mechanics of the electoral process.

The reason we are seeing all/most of the political changes we now do is because we, the entire Australian community, have remained unaware of the mechanism(s) by which a genuine electoral 'No' can be, and has been, changed into an apparent electoral 'Yes'. And I mean long term. Line on line. Here a little, there a little. Over more than a century.

Now as to my being any sort of 'history expert', I can only commend the answer of the author (of Shogun, Tai-pan, etc.) James Clavell to the question "How do you get all the historical background for your novels in more detail than many historians?":

"I read the same books they do."

Coming from another direction, you may find the comments on this article relevant if you have not seen them already. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7725&page=0

Polycarp,

Isn't there some Forum rule about not diverting a discussion from the General Discussion area of the Forum to the Article Discussions?

Have a look at this new article: 'Holy victuals bitter sweet for Great Southern Land' http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7854&page=0

Has part of the content of this thread been gazumped, or what?

Or has a hit been scored in the magazine?

Sorry about the delay in making my serial posts, but the next ones require the utmost precision in expression, and the words have not yet come.

But I think they soon might.

The existence of democracy implies that there must be, periodically, elections.

In Australia, from 1856, the mechanics of elections came to be influenced by a new development: the Australian, or secret, ballot. It was developed by Henry Samuel Chapman, the barrister that had won the acquittals of the Eureka 'rebels' two years earlier. It was to eventually spread, in one form or another, to most other democracies.

If there was one thing the Vatican understood, by virtue of hundreds of years accumulated experience at running an extremely centralised system of control, it was the value of secrecy. And it would have been privvy to many secrets of the world around it via the confessional, a one way street for information of potential use in furthering the interests of the Church, even if direct action was eventually taken at one or more removes therefrom, and the literality of the confidences were seemingly not breached. Promotion and preservation of the 'benefit of clergy', for those who effectively became accomplices after the fact through hearing some confessions, was a core interest of the Vatican.

As it so happened, the latter decades of the 19th century saw the formation of a new political force: labour, or social democratic, parties. These parties had obviously and genuinely believable entirely secular origins, and potentially wide appeal to voters. Again, so far as Vatican interests were concerned, a heaven-sent opportunity or a stroke of genius, depending upon the true origin of the impetus that established those political movements.

The secret ballot facilitated the holding of free elections: the right of choice amongst candidates for any elected office without the elector being exposed to coercion or retribution on the part of any candidate or pressure group. If the integrity of the secret ballot was maintained, it certainly delivered these benefits.

By the same token, if the integrity of the secret ballot could once be breached, by its very nature it more or less ensured that any abuse perpetrated would likely remain undetected, but even if discovered, that the perpetrators of those abuses would almost certainly remain unidentifiable.