From Mr Charles FitzGerald Sir: Melanie Phillips, with respect, seems
ignorant of this country's history. The title so proudly claimed by every English monarch since Henry VIII (if, perhaps, to be relinquished by the next in line) is Fidel Defensor or Defender of the Faith. Not, let it be noted, defender of the 'Protestant Faith' as she claims, but actually of the Catholic Faith or Church Universal itself. It was, after all, a pope who bestowed it on the present Queen's predecessor. A para- dox, no doubt, but then so much of human existence is best explained in paradox.
Cardinal Ratzinger (with the Pope's blessing, incidentally) has set out to clarify Rome's position with regard to the holding of Christian religious truth and authority. Either you believe in the apostolic succes- sion and the sacramental nature and func- tion of the Church, or you do not. The `blessed vapidities' of modern Anglicanism can, I fear, no longer be a refuge for the orthodox Jew in this country precisely because, as Melanie Phillips has recog- nised, they are indeed but `vapidities'; and nobody's faith can be sustained for long on vapour.
Charles FitzGerald
Forton, Hampshire
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