Country life
Rock of ages
Leanda de Lisle
This impression hardened when I was taught about the Reformation and learnt that my own family had chosen to stick with the 'old religion'. We were the heirs of a Catholic England that had died centuries ago. It appeared to be a rather gloomy her- itage, but I was proud of it nonetheless. It was surely noble of our ancestors to put their religious beliefs before political expe- 'Oh, he doesn't talk — he's a mime.' diency. And I rather enjoyed the idea of being part of a minority that lay outside the establishment. But what about the Angli- can majority? Well, there might be some blips in their theology, but they had created the England I saw around me and they seemed to have done rather a better job than the Catholic French with all their nasty revolutions, or the Catholic Spanish, with their apparent aversion to democracy.
However, it came as rather a shock to discover that the downside of this was that some Anglicans still saw English Catholics as a potential fifth column. When the news- papers suggested that Prince Charles might marry Marie Astrid of Luxembourg, The Spectator published an unsigned article which ranted and raved about how Catholics were sneaking in through the back door and would bring James II back from the grave, or something equally frightful. Happily, this sort of attitude seems to have died out. What isn't so happy is that Anglican self-belief seems to be dying with it. I well understand why George Mikes poked fun at English arro- gance in How to be an Alien, only to regret its passing 30 years later in How to be Deca- dent. Watching the established Church tear itself apart is like watching the big guy on the block develop a debilitating mental ill- ness. There's no fun to be had in teasing him any more and you wonder what kind of monster will be moving into his house when he's taken away.
I find it difficult to understand why read- ers of the Church of England newspaper feel that Prince Charles shouldn't become their Supreme Governor when he becomes king. They say he is an adulterer. But so was the first Supreme Governor and many that followed him.
They say that a future 'Defender of the Faith' shouldn't praise Islam without con- demning the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries. But Supreme Governors once used this papal title to justify the per- secution of Catholics. The only qualifica- tion necessary for being Supreme Governor is being the monarch. And it is not Prince Charles who will suffer if he is refused the title when he becomes king. It is the Church, which would be disestab- lished. A local vicar explained to me that some members of the evangelical wing of the Church are actually anxious for this to happen. Well, I don't know if they are putting principle before expediency, or if they are anxious to cut off their noses to spite their faces, but, if the Anglican Church is disestablished, this will no longer be a Christian country. On Saturday, we went to a wedding in one of those wonderful mediaeval churches that remain the centre of village life. We all prayed together: 'Our Father, who are in heaven . . . deliver us from evil,' and as the Anglicans continued, 'For thine is the king- dom, the power and the glory . . I thought, `Theirs is the kingdom and long may it remain so.'
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