Now they are ridiculous:
the cult of monarchy is over,. |
Now they are ridiculous: the cult of monarchy is over, as the royal
wedding fiasco shows. But Catholic cardinals should know that the
same fate awaits them.
Traditional institutions with nowhere to go but down often have
two phases of decline. When they first realise that the modern world
is running away from them, they become dogmatic in their assertion
of traditional values, as if by embracing orthodoxy they can re-create
the time when orthodoxy was accepted by all. If they aren't totalitarian
governments with secret police forces to impose their will, they can
appear rather magnificent in their obstinacy. Even their critics admire
their principled refusal to compromise with reality. But the pretence
can't hold for ever. The gulf between what they say and what everyone
does becomes so preposterous that they are pushed into the second
stage where they must either reform or die.
The papacy of John Paul II was in the first stage of splendid stubbornness.
Britain's monarchy is now ridiculous.
Who can doubt the scale of its crisis after the postponement
of Charles Windsor's wedding? It has been commonplace for years
to say that the conventional supports of Britain's monarchy have
disappeared. The empire has gone and the Commonwealth means next
to nothing to the majority of the British. The old concept of the
British nation state is buckling under pressure from devolution,
the European Union and globalisation. And, to top it all, when Tony
Blair removed the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in
the House of Lords he left us with the lonely anomaly of a hereditary
head of state. ...You
can read more.
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