The 1981 Act already ended the old automatic jus soli. What follows is not a party programme. It is an account of what the statute still leaves open, of what has changed around it in the last three years, of how a restrictionist reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13 and the Fathers tries to close those openings, and of why that reading is contested inside the tradition it claims. The argument is offered in the conviction that a Christian may hold a hard view of membership without pretending that Scripture dictates it, and may hold a generous one without pretending that the magistrate has no office.‍

SSPX vs. Holy See: There is a word the English keep for a certain genre of marital combat: the domestic. It is the row the neighbours hear through the partition wall — the raised voices, the slammed door, and, at the climax, the unmistakable timpani of crockery making contact with plaster. Nobody calls the police. Everybody listens. And the next morning, over the fence, the verdict is delivered: Did you hear them last night?😁