The Prod squad

The latest royal wedding has brought up questions from the sartorial to the photographic, but the key issue is the bride's renunciation of faith

Souped-up succession. Photograph: Sir Geoffrey Shakerley/PA

Republicans, and I am one, know that the British people will not vote to abolish the monarchy while Queen Elizabeth II sits on the throne. Unlike almost every other member of her family and the knot of aristos, assorted royal Wags and hangers-on who surround her, she has never put a foot wrong.

At the weekend, during the wedding of one of her grandsons, she once again illustrated her wisdom by refusing to allow herself to be photographed by Hello! Princess Anne's son, Peter Phillips had negotiated a £500,000 deal with the celebrity magazine for exclusive rights to his marriage to Autumn Kelly.

The Queen, as sensible as ever, was not about to fall into a trap.

So she and her husband wrecked the arrangement by making a point of posing for the nation's press on the steps of the chapel at Windsor following the ceremony. Senior members of her family, along with a number of those cronies who like to be regarded as courtiers, fell into line and did the same.

If she had not, she knew what the critics would have said. The crown is being commercialised. It would have confirmed what we already know to be the case, that the royal family is simply part of the celebrity circus. They attract attention for no other reason than the fame they enjoy through the columns and cameras of the media.

But let's remember amid this froth - and lest other republicans think I've lost the head in praising the Queen - that there was another aspect to this wedding that damns the monarchy and, it should be said, Her Majesty, too. She has not lifted a finger to change a scandalous tradition that ensures her family remains a Protestant-only enclave.

Kelly, the descendant of an Irish family that emigrated to Canada as a result of the 1845 potato famine, was raised as a Catholic. But Catholics are not welcome in Britain's royal family. So she renounced her faith and became a Protestant by joining the Church of England. Back in the days when her forebears were suffering starvation in Ireland, the British offered life-sustaining soup to those prepared to renounce their Catholic faith. Those who took the soup were regarded as collaborators.

I doubt that Kelly will be criticised for taking the soup, but Peter Phillips emerges less well from this story because, should she have remained a Catholic, he would have lost his place in the order of succession. Not that he has much hope of picking up the orb and sceptre, given that he is 11th in line.

Under the 1701 Act of Settlement, monarchs and their heirs are barred from either becoming Catholics or marrying Catholics. In the 21st century, in a largely secular country in which more people regularly attend Catholic chapels than Protestant churches, that is patently absurd. Then there are the millions who practice other non-Christian religions.

I know that the heir to the throne, Prince Charles, has previously spoken of being a defender of faith, rather than of "the faith". But he has many other flaws that are sure to undermine the monarchy when, or if, he succeeds his mother.

Meanwhile, I have this fantasy about the pages of this week's Hello! magazine being pasted up on the walls of crumbling Anglican churches like a glossy parish magazine with the slogan: "If you want to marry well, it pays to be a Protestant."