Willem was not concerned with the Church? Then he should not bother to become king, writes PETER HITCHENS
My distinguished colleague Robert Hardman tells us that Prince William has no great interest in the Christian religion. He goes to church on major festivals and for major ceremonies, but does not attend regularly. I see no reason to doubt this.
British people in his age group tend to feel this way. His own tragic family background cannot do anything about that. It has been decades since the royal family has been an example of Christian living. The culture he grew up in is indifferent to Christianity. The idea that religious faith matters, or is central to thought and life, has disappeared.
Well, yes. As a member of the disappearing minority who still attends church regularly, I can understand this very well. Many churches, with their modern baby talk services, ladybug Bibles, corny sermons, and happy-go-lucky kindergarten music, seem designed to scare away any thinking person.
The worldly, utopian political positions of leading church figures suggest that they themselves have little idea of what they preach. I can think of a few whose personal actions, and unrepentant inability to acknowledge bad mistakes, make them unfit for their positions (you know who you are, Bishop). But the more modern and secular they become, the more they adorn themselves with embroidered robes and crazy hats. They also tend to preach a wishy-washy, “non-judgmental” religion in which hell was abolished sometime in the 1960s. Somehow I suspect this is the sort of thing that former Post Office Chief Paula Vennells embraces, although I would appreciate her contacting me to tell me otherwise.
My distinguished colleague Robert Hardman tells us that Prince William has no great interest in the Christian religion. He goes to church on major festivals and for major ceremonies, but does not attend regularly. I see no reason to doubt this
British people in his age group tend to feel this way. His own tragic family background cannot do anything about that. It has been decades since the royal family has been an example of Christian living. The culture he grew up in is indifferent to Christianity. The idea that religious faith matters, or is central to thought and life, has disappeared
But behind it all lies a dark, hard truth that remains unchanged over the years. We all die and can be judged. We live in a universe that humans still find difficult to explain. We don't even know why it's there in the first place. If it is – as the indifferent and the atheists like to claim – the outcome of a massive cosmic car crash, it is strange that it is so complicated and that it operates with such fine tolerances.
There is also another problem. What is the real source of justice and power? As the post office and blood scandals show all too well, neither the law nor politics are very good at helping the disadvantaged and oppressed. Everyone is wondering why it took a TV drama to win justice for the subpostmasters and postmistresses, and why it still takes a TV drama to solve the blood scandal. I will tell you. Drama awakens the conscience, another mysterious feature of the cosmos, which cannot really be explained by Richard Dawkins etc. That is why the idea of kingship and religion are so closely linked, and why this is the last country on earth is where a Christian community lives. coronation of its head of state.
In the 16th century prayers that the modern Church of England has inherited but is reluctant to use, God is called “the only ruler of princes.” In prayers for the monarch, the king is urged to act in that light “knowing whose minister he is.” The clear implication is the unwelcome and increasingly despised idea that the King is chosen by God and rules in God's name.
The man who wrote these prayers, Thomas Cranmer, was not stupid, naive or unworldly, but a deft politician who lived and died in the heart of power. He annulled Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, earning the lifelong hatred of Catherine's daughter, the future Queen Mary. She had him burned alive. If this sort of thing isn't true, or is marginal, or if we don't really believe it, then there's no point in having a King or a Prince of Wales. We might as well have a president in a nice suit.
In the 16th century prayers that the modern Church of England has inherited but is reluctant to use, God is called “the only ruler of princes.” In prayers for the monarch, the king is urged to act in that light “knowing whose minister he is.” The man who wrote these prayers, Thomas Cranmer, was not stupid, naive or unworldly, but a deft politician who lived and died in the heart of power.
If William can't care about the Church, then he can't really care about the monarchy. And if he doesn't believe in it, why would anyone else?
His grandmother undoubtedly lived her entire life very close to power in all its often ugly and terrifying forms. She became more committed to her faith as she learned the limits of worldly affairs. The same goes for King Charles, of course. William may have some time to change his mind, but we never know how much time we have for such things.
I suggest that every now and then he slips anonymously into one of our majestic cathedrals and sits behind a convenient pillar to hear the great and ancient service of Evensong. Maybe he'll start to see things in a different light.
England expects… to be an American baggage carrier
I don't quite understand what the National Maritime Museum is planning to do with its talking sculptures, but the general impression seems to be that Admiral Horatio Nelson needs to remove a few pins.
This is nothing new. As a little chocolate-covered child I was taken on a tour of HMS Victory in Portsmouth, which in those distant days still showed some pretty serious damage from German bombing a few years earlier. The entire visit was marked by the courage and endurance of Nelson and his men. I was allowed to stand on the spot where Nelson fell, shot by a French sniper. I walked among the big black iron cannons and imagined myself wandering around like a gunpowder monkey, delivering gunpowder to the crew amid the smoke. I was shown the red-painted orlop deck, where the wounded were taken to be sawn up without anesthesia by rough surgeons amid lakes of blood. How I longed to have been there in Trafalgar, at the battle that secured the freedom and independence of this country for more than two centuries. But forty years later, when my own children were old enough to make the same tour, it was all sociological – about flogging, the press gang, and health and safety. I don't think anyone even referred to the big signal 'England expects…'. All that stuff was too big for the small country we had since become.
Since then, I have not been surprised to see our armed forces transform into politically correct, softer bodies whose main job seems to be to act as baggage porters for the US and its increasingly strange foreign adventures.
I don't quite understand what the National Maritime Museum is planning to do with its talking sculptures, but the general impression seems to be that Admiral Horatio Nelson needs to remove a few pins.
Never forget REAL horrors against Jews
A very special film, The Zone Of Interest, is about to be released. It is about the mass murder of European Jews, a subject that must remain in the public eye. But the viewer hardly sees the real horrors, as much of it takes place in the neat detached house of the commander of the Auschwitz death camp. At one point he holds a garden party, with the famous gate tower of Auschwitz in the background.
All very clever, but I would like to see a dramatization of Victor Klemperer's astonishing diaries about life as a Jew in Hitler's Germany – the implacable hatred of Jews for being Jews, expressed daily in detailed persecution, with the terrible end made clear as the shadows draw closer. This is what we must remember, because the mental illness of anti-Semitism is still with us, and this is its natural end.