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Tony Blair - a penitent Catholic
Published 02 August 2007
We have had a Jewish prime minister in Disraeli, a Methodist in Thatcher, but still not a Catholic
"This is Sholto. He's a Catholic." Thus, at the age of 13, was I introduced to Robert Runcie in the deanery of Canterbury Cathedral. "Oh," said the then archbishop, "we don't mind that kind of thing any more." It was a typically gracious comment from Runcie. But was it true? For as Tony Blair begins his role in a region long marked by religious conflict, the question of his own beliefs still hangs in the air. Leaving his expected conversion to Catholicism until after his departure from No 10 suggests that, actually, we - or at least some of us - still mind "that kind of thing" very much. Why else would a leader who proclaimed that we were best when we were boldest signally fail, during his time in office, to confront a constitutionally entrenched prejudice against a faith followed by roughly five million Britons?
Catholicism is the only religion discriminated against in law in the UK. By the Act of Settlement 1701, a future monarch can wed a Muslim or a Buddhist, but marrying a Catholic bars him or her from the succession. The Anglican Primate of Ireland, Alan Harper, has called for this ab surdly anachronistic legislation to be repealed. It is certainly something that Gordon Brown should not forget in his plans to reform our constitution, not least because his much-discussed ideas of national identity cannot be allowed to imply, in however small a way, that Catholics are somehow less British than others.
There may be no legal bar to a Catholic being prime minister, but worries about such a sce nario remain, and are not entirely unfounded. There is no doubt that Catholicism requires far more of its followers - mandatory attendance at Mass and regular confession being only the most obvious manifestations of duty - than the genteelly declining Anglicanism in which Blair was raised. Catholic priests have used their pulpits to tell parishioners to write to MPs urging them to support pro-life measures. The sneaking suspicion lingers that, on Northern Ireland, faith schools and many other issues, a Catholic PM would be unduly influenced by Rome.
This has never been put to the test, as we have had a Jewish prime minister in Disraeli, a Methodist in Thatcher (there has never been any problem with "chapel"), but still not a Catholic. The one-time Tory hopeful Chris Patten was about as close as we have ever come; and even then Patten's faith raised eyebrows. So it has been expedient for Blair to leave conversion until after he left office - but not, perhaps, right. Some may think he should have sought instruction to be received as a Catholic the moment he became convinced that it was the true Church. If we cannot put a precise date to this revelation, we do know that stories about our former prime minister's attachment to Catholicism are nothing new.
In 1996, the Sunday Telegraph reported that Blair had been taking communion at the Catholic church in Islington his family attended; the disclosure led Cardinal Basil Hume to write a letter asking him to desist. Once Blair took office, spe culation about conversion continued. More recently, the parish priest at Chequers, Father Timothy Russ, said Blair discussed the possibility of his becoming a Catholic deacon three years ago.
Now that the issue is back on the agenda, press coverage of Blair's path to Rome has been curiously benign. It's almost as though he had taken up some mildly eccentric but harmless pastime. This is strange, given that the only ideological underpinning Blair has ever appeared to possess comes from Christianity. Pace Alastair Campbell, Blair has always "done" God. Catholics could be forgiven for feeling that Blair spent his entire premiership denying this very important truth about himself.
The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, a laicised Catholic priest, offers a possible precedent for delay. "The Emperor Theodosius was refused communion by the Bishop of Milan until he had done public penance for a massacre for which he was responsible. It is rumoured that in their farewell audience Pope Benedict rebuked Blair for his part in the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps his appointment as the quartet's [UN, US, EU, Russian] ambassador [to the Middle East] is meant to be his public penance. If so, we must hope that it has a favourable outcome." People of different faiths and of none can all say "Amen" to that.
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