What does this mean? I don't understand.
The office of prime minister in the UK parliament is debarred to Roman Catholics, during his time in office Tony Blair courted controversy because he attended Roman Catholic mass services with his wife and received holy communion, he did not announce his conversion to Roman Catholicism until after he had left office and taken a teaching job in the US in some interfaith faculty, although it is rumoured that in one of his meetings with the Pope after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that he asked for absolution from sin.
The Monarch in the UK is "Defender of the faith" which since the reformation, Cromwell, the jacobite rebellion, williamite wars and act of union between Scotland, Wales and England (I probably dont have them all in the right order) has been the protestant Christian faith, John Knox who schooled the future Monarch James in Scotland who was the architect of Britain was a firm believer in the protestant ascendency.
One of the great, and forgotten, ironies of history has been that while people suppose that the reformation sowed the seeds of seperation between Church and State, was a harbringer of toleration and even secularism in the UK it was exactly the opposite.
The establishment churches in England, Scotland and Ireland all have or had the emblems of state and politics in their sacred spaces, often flags of state, even regiments of soldiers where adorned on alters, lots of the older churches which are now visitable as tourist attractions have got tombs, rolls of honour, inscribed monuments to Christian soldiers.
The dissenters who did practice more democratic church governance who did exist in England and Scotland and elsewhere where used as shock troops in plantations in Ireland or went to the US or elsewhere. Its not really remembered that while Guy Fawkes was aprehended trying to blow up parliament and immediately identified as an RC this occasion was also used to attack the Scottish within England and it was believed to be a Scots plot also.
I find it funn that these things arent remembered because similar schisms and betrayals and intrigue have marked not just religion but most ideologies since then.