Tag: Catholicism

Intrigues and Machinations: Conclave by Robert Harris

saint peter s basilica

Review by Jon Elsby

Assessing Robert Harris’s1 Conclave is not only a question of style. Also singled out are the quality of the dialogue, the architecture of the narrative, the balance between different sections, the sharpness of the characterization, the economy and precision of the descriptive writing, the ability unerringly to choose the telling concrete detail, and the sheer readability of Harris’s prose – the sense that the narrative practically reads itself without requiring any indulgence from the reader.

Conclave concerns a convocation of cardinals to elect a new pope on the death of an incumbent who clearly resembles Pope Francis.2 Historical persons – Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI – are interwoven into a narrative whose fictional characters, in the words of the now customary (and legally obligatory, even if disingenuous) disclaimer, bear no intentional resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead. The central characters are the papabili: namely, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli, an urbane papal diplomat and canon lawyer; the Secretary of State, Cardinal Aldo Bellini, an aloof, austere intellectual and liberal theologian; the Nigerian Cardinal Major Penitentiary, Joshua Adeyemi, whose robust views on homosexuality appall the liberals but delight his fellow Africans; the suavely photogenic French Canadian Cardinal Joseph Tremblay, the Camerlengo or Chamberlain; the ultra-traditionalist Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco,3 a wily ecclesiastical politician and a perpetual thorn in the side of the late Holy Father; and Cardinal Vincent Benítez, the Filipino Archbishop of Baghdad, whom the late Pope had elevated to the cardinalate in pectore.

Lomeli himself has no ambition to be Pope, but one by one the other candidates fall by the wayside. Bellini shows himself to be lacking in moral courage. It transpires that Adeyemi as a young man had fathered a child out of wedlock by a girl who was probably underage at the time. Tremblay is exposed as a blackmailer whom the late Pope, in one of his last acts, had dismissed from all his offices for gross misconduct. Tedesco overplays his hand and alienates the moderates whose support he needed to secure the necessary number of votes. Lomeli’s election seems inevitable. But, in another twist, it is Benítez who is elected, to Lomeli’s mingled relief and disappointment. His election is succeeded by a final revelation which it would spoil the reader’s enjoyment of the novel to disclose.

The plot is, of course, implausible, as the somewhat contrived and convoluted plots of thrillers are apt to be. Conclave was published to mixed reviews, and several reviewers criticized the less credible aspects of the story. But they missed the point, which is not that such a concatenation of events is at all probable, but that it is (just about) possible. They also missed the skill with which Harris recreates the atmosphere of the Vatican, with its characteristic juxtaposition of splendid opulence and spartan austerity, and the distinctive tone of communications between senior clergy, which is compounded in equal parts of urbanity, indirectness, candour, self-restraint, articulacy, courtesy, precision, and intellectual clarity. It is a tone perhaps best summed up in the Greek word, parrhesia – a term derived from classical philosophy, but hardly heard outside the Church nowadays. It means to speak frankly, but to ask forgiveness for so speaking.

Harris perfectly captures the pervasive climate of secrecy and intrigue which many Vatican observers have noted. Scandal is to be avoided at all costs. In some ways, this is laudable, especially in an age of such vulgarity as ours, with its insatiable appetite for the lurid details of any salacious goings-on. But it also causes as many problems as it solves or avoids. The scandal of clerical sex abuse, which has done such serious reputational damage to the Church since it first broke in 2002, would have been far less traumatic had it not been for the misguided attempts to cover it up, shield the perpetrators, silence the victims, preserve the appearance of decorum, and protect the Church’s good name. Even today, after almost two decades of appalling revelations, there is scant evidence of the kind of rigorous self-examination and profound cultural change in the Church that are needed in order (1) to address the fallout from the scandal, and (2) to ensure that it never happens again.

Harris also conveys the sheer impossibility of the papacy’s demands – the scale of the job; the weight of responsibility; the unreasonable expectations placed upon the incumbent; the relentless scrutiny, the investigative endeavours, and (often) malicious intentions of the media; the physical and mental stamina required; the intellectual qualities; the extensive knowledge of history, theology, philosophy, canon law, politics, current affairs, and diplomacy; the personal holiness, and the other pastoral and spiritual attributes…and the list could go on. The Pope is expected to be without sin, no matter how often popes reiterate that no one is sinless. Moreover, that expectation is by no means confined to Catholics, for many non-Catholics would also condemn a pope whose sins had been uncovered. Most of the popes have been old men, some very old. None has been young. For how much longer can we expect septuagenarians and octogenarians to shoulder the insupportable burdens and impossible demands of this job?4 Surely, ordinary human decency necessitates a more collegial approach to the governance of the Church of the future – this fast-expanding, global Church with around 1.3 billion members worldwide. The burdens and responsibilities of the papal office will have to be dispersed and shared, and Church governance will have to be more transparent. The Church will also have to find meaningful roles – i.e. roles which involve the bearing of administrative responsibility and the exercise of executive power – for the laity, especially for women. It is no longer acceptable for all the power to be concentrated in the hands of the clergy, let alone in the hands of one man. The popes of the future will probably be more like prime ministers – primus inter pares – than absolute monarchs.

None of this is explicitly stated in Conclave; but, first, there is little doubt that Harris’s sympathies in the theological and ecclesiological controversies currently raging between liberal-progressives and conservative-traditionalists in the Church lie with the former; and, second, the clear implication of his account of the tortuous process of electing a new pontiff (and the extremely slender – some would say, manifestly insufficient – grounds on which some candidates are eliminated from the election), is that what is now demanded of a papabile is unrealistic, and it can only be a matter of time before a pope is elected who is subsequently found to have a skeleton in his closet.

Harris hints that at the heart of the present dysfunction in the Church is the prevailing attitude among the clergy to women. He quotes as follows from Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul:

‘As for women, and everything to do with them, never a word; never; it was as if there were no women in the world. This absolute silence, even between close friends, about everything to do with women was one of the most profound and lasting lessons of my early years in the priesthood.’

This [adds Harris] was the core of the hard mental discipline that had enabled Lomeli to remain celibate for more than sixty years. Don’t even think about them! The mere idea of going next door and talking man to man with Adeyemi about a woman was a concept that lay entirely outside the dean’s closed intellectual system.

Harris does not pose the obvious questions, but they insistently obtrude themselves nonetheless. Is this healthy? Is it normal? Is this how a priest should live – by forcing himself to ignore the existence of half the human race? Is this conducive to growth to sexual and psychological maturity? Does the discipline of celibacy result (in some cases) in a malformation of ordinary human sexuality, and, if so, does this explain why so many among the senior clergy were apparently less able to empathize with the victims of clerical sex abuse than with the perpetrators? And does it also explain why they display a certain tone-deafness to the needs of women in the Church?

Conclave shows that serious issues can still be raised in works of popular fiction. This would not have seemed an unfamiliar idea to the Victorians – or, for that matter, to the Edwardians and Georgians. If it has become strange to us, that is because of the comparatively recent emergence of new forms of popular literature – e.g. airport fiction, beach reading, ladlit, and chicklit – which combine poverty of language, triviality of subject, and vacuity of thought to a degree one hopes will be unsurpassable. It is good to be reminded that not all writers and publishers have given up even trying to produce intelligent popular fiction, and that the term is not yet an oxymoron.

Notes

1It is worth mentioning that Harris is not himself a Catholic. However, he writes with considerable insight about the Catholic Church and the clergy, and his tone is unfailingly respectful. It is sad that this is so uncommon today as to deserve special mention.

2In a prefatory note, Harris says that, ‘despite certain superficial resemblances’, the late Holy Father depicted in Conclave is not meant to be a portrait of the current pope. This should be taken with a pinch of salt. The resemblances are more than superficial, and are too numerous to be coincidental. For example, Harris’s late pope is a reformer who has alienated traditionalists in the Church and has aroused much determined opposition in the Curia and in the college of cardinals. He is dealing with scandals in the Church, but is handicapped by feeling surrounded by enemies with no one he can trust (cf. Pope Francis Among the Wolves by Marco Politi). And he lives in the simple Casa Santa Marta in preference to the luxurious papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace.

3Is his name accidental (Tedesco = German) or is this meant to be a reference to Ratzinger/Benedict? However, while the fictional Tedesco shares some of Ratzinger/Benedict’s views, he does not appear to possess the Emeritus Pope’s formidable intellectual qualities, theological expertise, or gentlemanly manners.

4The demands of the papacy have been enormously magnified by the relentless, unceasing scrutiny of the modern mass media – not only their focus on what the Pope says and does in the present, but also their determination to ransack his past for any indiscretions, errors, or missteps. And the worse they are, the better, as far as the media are concerned.

Jon Elsby is the author of numerous books on aspects of Roman Catholicism, and is a specialist in opera, on which subject he has written a wide-ranging survey of operatic tenors, titled Heroes and Lovers.

The Certainty of George Weigel

by Jon Elsby

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George Weigel is a controversial figure. A Catholic intellectual and a political and cultural conservative of a distinctively American kind, he is greatly admired by those who share his convictions and severely criticized by those who do not, including some of his co-religionists. But reactions to Weigel are rarely mild. For better or worse, he tends to polarize opinion into irreconcilable camps – for and against. His admirers praise the quality of his prose, the clarity of his arguments, and the scope of his knowledge. His detractors criticize the conservative assumptions, the sometimes superficial analyses of complex phenomena, and the absolute self-confidence with which he invariably delivers his judgments, as if no other conclusion were rationally possible.

I may be in a minority of one, but it seems to me that both admirers and detractors are right. Weigel is a fine prose writer, his arguments are clearly and forcefully stated, and he does have an impressive breadth of scholarly knowledge. On the other hand, he assumes very conservative positions politically and theologically, his analyses of phenomena such as the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the causes of the First World War are too hasty and somewhat simplistic, and his tone both in speech and in writing has a dogmatic certitude and an air of finality – of having said the last possible word on the subject – which recall what William Lamb, the second Viscount Melbourne is reported to have said of Macaulay: “I wish I were as certain of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.”

Another trait of Weigel’s – related to, but not identical with, that air of certitude and finality already mentioned – no doubt delights his admirers as much as it infuriates his detractors, viz: his pugnacity in controversy. He does not pull his punches. He seldom, if ever, shows any tenderness for the feelings of people who happen to think differently from himself, dismissing their views with contemptuous or witheringly sarcastic putdowns. This may be effective polemically, but it will alienate some readers unnecessarily.

Examples of Weigel’s over-confidence in his own judgment and the lack of depth in his analyses can be found more or less wherever one cares to look in his essays. The first essay in his collection, The Fragility of Order (2018) – an essay entitled “The Great War Revisited” – affords an apt illustration of both those attributes. The essay bears the subtitle, “Why It Began, Why It Continued, and What That Means for Today”. The essay consists of fourteen-and-a-half pages. Yet the English historian, A. J. P. Taylor, devoted an entire volume – and a substantial one – of his magisterial five-volume A Century of Conflict 1848-1948 to the causes of the First World War: a subject which Weigel disposes of in a mere four pages. The causes of the Great War 1914-18 (according to Weigel) were a combination of Balkan instability, rising Serbian nationalism, the political decadence of Austria-Hungary, and the web of unwise and counter-productive alliances entered into by European powers driven by a mutual distrust amounting almost to paranoia, and a desire to protect or advance their own interests, together with a notable failure to perceive where their true interests lay. For good measure, Weigel mentions what he regards as the malign role played by certain allegedly pervasive intellectual influences, including a distorted understanding of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Nietzschean Prometheanism, the Bergsonian notion of the élan vital, and the emerging political ideologies of Teutonic supremacy and Pan-Slavism.

Weigel does not offer much in the way of hard evidence or reasoned arguments to support his thesis. He merely states it assertorically, as if it were certainly and demonstrably true – too obvious to need proof, in fact. Now, it may be true, and I think certain parts of it would probably be accepted without demur by most historians (although they would prefer to see the evidence). The only points I would make are—

(1) that some elements of Weigel’s analysis are rationally contestable, and

(2) that, by any criteria, his analysis is inadequate because (among other reasons) it takes little or no account of the personalities of the decision-makers, the loci of power and the processes of decision-making in the various European states, or the psychology, predispositions, prejudices, perceptions, and personal motivations of the principal actors.

Weigel’s air of certitude goes with a tendency to see the world and both historical and contemporary issues in black-and-white terms. Thus (to cite one example) he thinks communism is evil, period. But he does not consider whether aspects of Marx’s diagnosis of the ills of capitalism might be correct. He does not ask whether communism in the Soviet Union and China represented improvements in any respects over the regimes that had preceded them, or whether communism could fairly claim certain achievements – e.g. universal employment, housing, education, healthcare, low crime rates, and the eradication of socially harmful levels of inequality – which have eluded some liberal democracies. He does not ask why so many people in the newly liberated states of eastern Europe now look back on the communist period with a certain wistfulness, or why, having initially welcomed the promises of liberal democracy and capitalist economics, they seem so disenchanted with the realities. Nor does he seem willing to consider seriously the possibility that free and unregulated markets might become dysfunctional and require urgent government intervention if they are to be prevented from being socially destructive. He champions Republican policies to the extent of claiming justification for the Iraq wars, while excoriating Democrat policies on healthcare, welfare programmes, foreign affairs, the economy, and just about everything else. He describes President Obama as having “a mind awash in the intellectual exhaust fumes of postmodernism”. It need hardly be said that such abusive language and naked partisanship are not calculated to win him any friends on the left – or, it might be added, anywhere on the political spectrum in Europe, where the majority view, even on the right, is (1) that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were calamitous and costly mistakes, and (2) that President Obama, whatever his flaws, had a far better record on the economy, foreign policy, the environment, and social justice than the Republican presidents who preceded and followed him.

Weigel has been severely critical of the western European powers, and especially of the European Union, which he sees, not entirely inaccurately, as an instrument of social and philosophical liberalism opposed in principle to the American neo-conservative political positions that he has consistently advocated throughout his career. His views on Europe are set out most comprehensively in The Cube and the Cathedral (2005), in which he claimed that below-replacement birthrates in most European countries meant that Europe was “committing demographic suicide” and undermining its own culture by increasing its dependence on (mainly Muslim) immigration. Weigel and other right-wing American Catholic intellectuals (of whom William Kilpatrick is an example) view a resurgent Islam and the liberal commitment to an unsustainable multiculturalism as threats both to Christianity and to the survival of the western culture which grew out of the Christian religion. He does not consider the possibility that closer contact with (and direct experience of) both Christianity and secular liberalism might, in the medium to long term, affect Muslims and Islam in ways that cannot yet be foreseen.

When we turn to the scandal of clerical sex abuse, Weigel follows Pope Benedict XVI in ascribing such cases to a lack of faith – more specifically, to the crisis of faith that occurred after 1968, as the Church struggled to absorb the full implications of the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council and the sexual revolution. No doubt, all of these played their part. But the incidence of clerical sex abuse and the attempts to cover up the scandal instead of dealing with it, cannot be satisfactorily explained by a monocausal account. Other factors were at work, including an instinct on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to avoid adverse publicity whatever the cost, and an ingrained culture of clericalism and deference by the laity towards ecclesial authority. If the Church is to deal effectively with this crisis and prevent its recurrence, her investigations must be conducted thoroughly, fearlessly, honestly, and transparently.

Weigel is an intelligent, stimulating, and thought-provoking interlocutor. But he is an unreliable guide. The Catholic Faith does not encourage such certainty as his: on the contrary, it teaches us how to live without it. We strive to do the best we can, and for the rest we place our trust in God, acknowledging our own limitations, which include the fact that we are not omniscient. We should not overestimate the deliverances of our reasoning, or our own powers of understanding and foresight. Nor should we assume that, simply because not everything in the world is as we should like it to be, it is going to hell in a handcart. The world is not under a duty to comport itself according to our desires, prescriptions, and preferences; and, if it fails to do so, it does not follow that an apocalypse is imminent. Catholics believe in a doctrine of divine providence. This includes, in the words of the Dominican theologian, Père Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “God’s loving care for man and the need for confidence in Almighty God.” It is not the least of Weigel’s flaws that he persistently seems to place greater trust in his own reasoning than in God.

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In several respects, Weigel resembles an English philosopher, the late Roger Scruton. Like Scruton, he is politically conservative and a polemical defender of conservative positions. Like Scruton, he is a clear thinker – although both sometimes display a greater degree of certitude in matters of opinion than their arguments appear to warrant – and an outstanding writer. And, again like Scruton, Weigel is a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank based in Washington DC. And, of course, Weigel and Scruton share an allegiance to Christianity.

They also share, or so it seems to me, a tendency to see the world in black-and-white terms, and to attack more nuanced thinking as “woolly” and “liberal”. The title of Scruton’s final broadside against left-wing intellectuals – Fools, Frauds and Firebrands – reveals perhaps more than he intended about his attitudes. It would surely have been more polite – and more becoming in a philosopher – to have conceded at least the abstract possibility that there might be some merit in the arguments of his opponents. Instead, Scruton employs the rhetorical weapons of scorn, ridicule, and invective, as well as the logical weapons of reasoned philosophical arguments. Similarly, Weigel, in his essays, although he sometimes quotes approvingly from other conservative thinkers, including Jews and Protestants, invariably lambastes and lampoons liberals and left-wing radicals, even among his co-religionists. His depictions of communists are almost cartoonish, like pantomime villains. The ideas that nations with histories, tribal ethnicities, and cultures like Russia’s or China’s might be unsuited to liberal democracy as it has developed in the West, or that the rulers of such nations might have valid points of view of their own, or that there might exist such things as “Asian values” with which the West is imperfectly acquainted but which Asian countries wish to uphold and defend as an intrinsic part of their culture, are never entertained for a moment. He would probably dismiss all such talk as cultural relativism.

Well, is it? And, if it is, is it necessarily to be dismissed on that account? A people’s history and culture are surely relevant to deciding what system of government might work best for them. And it is surely unlikely that a form of government developed elsewhere, and in very different circumstances, could simply be imposed on a nation which lacks the political and governmental infrastructure, the cultural traditions, the popular customs, the social institutions, and the philosophical beliefs to support it. Like Scruton, Weigel has a dogmatic approach to ethical and political questions which effectively precludes any possibility of a rapprochement with people who do not share his basic philosophical assumptions and political orientation. This coming from a member of the Catholic Church, which invented the term “inculturation,” and which includes, in its incomparably rich and varied pastoral tradition, the Ignatian ideas of “discernment,” “accompaniment,” and “meeting people where they are,” is, to say the least, a little puzzling.[1]

It is possible to defend a point of view without implying that anyone who thinks differently is a knave or a fool. It is possible to grant that an opponent’s arguments have some merit without capitulating in argument or abjuring one’s own opinions. It is possible to argue eloquently and passionately, but with civility and respect for one’s adversaries. It is possible to advance truth-claims for one’s faith without claiming for oneself a monopoly on truth or wisdom or rationality. It is possible for equally intelligent, rational, and well-informed people to hold different beliefs and, even when confronted with the same evidence, to reach different conclusions. It is possible for people to agree to differ without harbouring feelings of contempt, animosity, anger, or resentment. It is possible for people of different cultures and religions to live side by side as neighbours on terms of mutual amity and respect. Acceptance of these propositions is, I would argue, necessary if we are to live amicably and peaceably with others in the pluralistic, multicultural, yet law-governed society of a modern liberal democracy. It is necessary if we are to share the same public square without causing violence or disorder. I would also argue that the truth of all these propositions has been empirically and emphatically demonstrated at many times and in many places.

Polemical writing is often entertaining, especially when the writer is not only partisan, but witty. But readers who care more for balance and fairness in argument, or who see the world in more nuanced terms, or who believe that people of different convictions may sometimes coöperate in the service of the common good, or who just prefer courtesy to confrontation in discourse, might want something a bit different from what either of these gifted, but combative, thinkers has to offer.

A final point: Weigel is primarily a Christian theologian, and his work as a social, cultural, and political commentator is an off-shoot of his theological concerns. But it is a curious and striking fact that, in his extensive output, there is very little mention of Our Lord. There is a great deal about God, the Church, the Pope, the Catholic Faith, doctrine and dogma, and modern evils, but not much about the Founder of the Church. One cannot help but wonder why. Is it, perhaps, because Our Lord was not enough of a neo-con to be recruited to Weigel’s cause?

Notes

[1]It is not, however, surprising to find that George Weigel is no admirer of Pope Francis, or that he has volubly expressed his negative views of the current pope in several articles. Ironically, the title of an earlier book of Weigel’s, concerning Pope Benedict XVI, was God’s Choice. Was God otherwise occupied, then, when Pope Francis was elected?

Jon Elsby’s spiritual and intellectual journey has been from Protestantism to atheism, and finally to Catholicism, an evolution he has traced in his memoir Wrestling With the Angel: A Convert’s Tale, published in paperback by CentreHouse Press. His most recent book, also published by CentreHouse Press, is Seeing is Believing, which develops themes touched on in his memoir, but with greater focus on the relations between faith and culture, an issue addressed by several American apologists, though very few on the UK side of the Atlantic have taken it up. Seeing is Believing is available on Amazon Kindle.

The Blairs, Catholicism, and New Labour

by Garry O’Connor

The word ‘religion’ comes from the Latin religare, meaning ‘to bind back’, and in the present climate, in a society awash with an ‘all-pervasive claim to victimhood’, and the escalating fear and often reality of violence, a ‘binding back’ in multiple ways, not least culturally, is needed. While the No. 10 press aides and the protagonists themselves have strenuously tried to keep religion out of politics, and in spite of the notorious British reticence in such matters, it both demands and needs a central place in the new twenty-first-century world picture or disorder. As for the recent growth of proselytising atheism, who would not rather listen to Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest scientific mind in history, than diehard secularists such as Richard Dawkins? Einstein wrote in his diary, ‘What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility towards the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the universe…. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds.’ In declaring his personal creed he states, ‘The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is as stranger…is as good as dead.’ More mundanely, Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, in her timely book The Mighty and the Almighty (2006) defined the way her own country ill-advisedly tiptoedround the subject of religion.

Religious arrogance, or identifying oneself with the Messiah, could hardly be excused in Tony Blair, as it was by Dominic Lawson, as ‘unwittingly’ expressed. Cherie’s religious presumption has been of a more complicated and pervasive kind. Because she is a woman, and also an influential role model to other women, her beliefs have been both more invasive and convincing for other women, in particular those who put their gender first and their religion second.

Her revolutionary tenet, not exactly uncommon, and worthy of Lenin, which she holds with undiminished fervour, is that if you want to change an institution you join it and change it from within. In Why I Am Still a Catholic, published in June 2006, she averred:

‘Of course, like many Catholics in this country, I have doubts about some of the positions taken by the Church as an institution – for example, on contraception, or the role of women. But I am not one of those who believe that the only response is to walk away because you have a different viewpoint. I have been taught that you should stay and try and change things.

‘It’s like the Labour Party in the early 1980s. I wasn’t happy with the way it was going so I tried to help change it from within. Thankfully, we won that battle. And though the pace of change in the Catholic Church can seem slow, I believe that there are many people in this country – and not just in the laity – who are convinced of the need for it. That message, however, is not yet fully accepted by the Vatican. But, then, the Church isn’t just the Vatican. It is about all of us, the people of God as the Second Vatican Council put it.’

Father Beaufort, a priest from York, commented:

‘It would be terribly arrogant for any of us to suggest that we were somehow doing the Catholic Church a favour by gracing her with our membership. The idea that the Church is basically a human institution that has to be allowed to evolve to adapt itself to the spirit of the age owes more to Protestantism and to the modernist heresy condemned by Pope Pius X than it does to true Catholicism.

‘Ms Booth says she has some problems with certain positions taken by the Church ‘as an institution’, like the ban on contraception. But for Catholics, the Church is an institution unlike any other – a supernatural institution, founded by Christ. As the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church is the extension of His Incarnate Presence on earth, invested with divine authority to teach on matters of faith and morals. Catholics believe that the Pope, as successor of St Peter, is invested with the charism of infallibility. This means that no Pope, however sinful he is, can ever err when he teaches ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals.

‘As a moral issue, contraception is a good example of something that clearly falls under the Church’s teaching remit. To reject the Church’s clear, consistent and authoritative teaching on such an issue is to really deny the teaching authority of the Church altogether, and to cease to be Catholic.

‘Ms Booth also admits to difficulties accepting the Church’s position on the role of women. She doesn’t specify, but could she mean the Church’s restriction of the Sacrament of Holy Order to men? John Paul II made it quite clear that not even a Pope has the authority to alter the Church’s constant teaching on this matter.

‘To compare the Catholic Church with the Labour Party seems to miss the point that the Church is a divine institution. Yes, we all have a part to play in building up the Mystical Body of Christ on earth. Certain disciplines can and do change. But as far as doctrine goes, and the basic hierarchical structure of (male) bishops, priests and deacons, the Church’s role is simply to hand on what was given by Christ to the Apostles. In this sense, the Church is really defined by tradition. As for reform, we are always called to reform ourselves, by conforming ourselves to the Gospel of Christ, as handed on in the teaching of the Church.

‘The Church’s teaching on contraception and the priesthood will be substantially the same in 2,000 years’ time as it is today. It would be foolhardy to make such a claim for any other institution; but we can say it confidently about the Church because of our faith that she is not just any institution, but a divine one.

[…]

‘Ms Booth says that the Church is “all about us, the people of God, as Vatican II put it”. Yes, Christ founded His Church for our salvation. But the role of the “people of God” is primarily to listen and to learn, so that we can extend the sovereignty of Christ into every level of human activity. Vatican II didn’t change the constant doctrine that the teaching Church, or Ecclesia docens, is made up of the bishops in union with St Peter’s successor, the Pope. As the “people of God”, we have to be open to conversion from our preconceptions.’

The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Benedict XVI was a blow, not only to the left-wing liberal establishment of the English and Welsh bishops. Benedict sees the Catholic Church as a continuous organic whole, enlivened and united by the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, dismissing the view of the Church before Vatican II (1965) as bad and after as good, and calling such ‘ecclesiastical schizophrenia’ the ‘hermeneutic of discontinuity’.

On sin, Tony had pronounced that the concept of believing in it was ‘simple and important’, and that ‘this is an area that will become of increasing importance in politics’. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor agreed: ‘You cannot’, he said, ‘divorce religion and life.’ But through legislation, instead of listening and learning, and by this bringing ‘the sovereignty of Christ into every level of human activity’, New Labour provided and widened the opportunity for ‘sin’, in Christian and Catholic terms (if you believe in them) in many aspects of social and personal life.

A longer opportunity for abortions, longer drinking hours, liberalising of cannabis, growth of casinos, wider and more useless sex education of the wrong kind (meaning one thing and one thing only, greater use of contraception and greater numbers of teenage pregnancies). Under the aegis of Tony’s espousal of population control the government funded international agencies which supported China’s population policies, in particular its cruel and inhuman treatment of women who are forced to abort or become sterilised if they want to breed more than one child. Gordon Brown, before he had children of his own, voted sixteen times in favour of abortion, including three times for abortion up to birth, and for disabled babies; for abortion on demand in early pregnancy; and to suppress information about abortions on disabled babies. He cut the VAT on morning-after pills from 17.5 per cent to 5 per cent. He also in 1990 voted for destructive embryo experimentation.

At the same time, New Labour created secular sins for its atheist followers to feel comfortable in denouncing and outlawing, such as fox-hunting, smoking, the right of Catholic adoption agencies to differentiate foster parents on the basis of belief, and even, some would claim, normal married life. A mass of new laws criminalising what had been seen as ordinary if not entirely appropriate behaviour filled the statute book, while a controlling and bureaucratic surveillance state came into being, in many ways similar to that of the former Communist countries of eastern Europe.

Cherie’s views on contraception and women priests did not stop her scurrying off to Rome at the first available opportunity to seek an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. The visit, as Father Seed says, ‘has to be seen as a perk of the job’. While Cherie had followed form at the funeral of John Paul II in April 2005 by wearing a black dress and mantilla, in her short audience with Benedict she flouted protocol and wore white. The correct dress code was black: only Queen Sofia of Spain, Queen Paola of Belgium and Josephine Charlotte, the wife of Grand Duke Jean of Luxemburg, as consorts of Catholic royalty, are entitled to wear white. This was deliberate. She would have known what to wear. Would she appear in court as a recorder in jeans and sweatshirt? Even Elizabeth II wore black when she and Prince Philip met John Paul. There is a kind of very English snobbishness, all too prevalent, that the Pope in Rome or anyone else shouldn’t presume to tell sophisticated lawyers like Cherie Booth what to believe and how to behave. Graham Greene, who would flout the rules even to the point of taking his mistress out to lunch with Father Philip Caraman, his father confessor (who was most upset), had something of the same attitude. It reinforces the notion that Cherie has a very grand idea of herself, but also that Tony supports and sustains her in her delusion. Ann Widdecombe commented, ‘She obviously thinks she is the First Lady. My message to her is that you are not a Catholic queen, my dear, and you never will be.’

It was a long way from those stalwart Catholic women of her Waterloo childhood, gathering in their living room rosary circles to pray together. But Cherie has been determined to keep her Catholic options open, like George Bush, who wooed the seventy-seven million Catholics in the United States by visiting the Pope three times during his first term. But she has kept in too with pro-abortion groups such as Planned Parenthood, and posed before their stand at a Labour conference brandishing a condom. In spring 2006 she delivered a paper at the Vatican Political Academy of Social Sciences, speaking about how children ‘are forced to grow up so quickly…having to take on the responsibilities of adults’ because they were neglected by older people. True in some cases for sure, although the trend in her own country was in rather the opposite direction, with children lamentably slowed down in their educational and maturing process, so that, as a head of department at a major public school observes, pupils of fourteen are five years behind the educational standard of those at a similar age ten years ago. In 2006 Cherie joined the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences as an adviser on social and legal issues.

Tony expressed one of his religious beliefs in the foreword to a pamphlet written by John Smith:

‘Christianity is a very tough religion. It may not always be practised as such. But it is…. It is not utilitarian – though socialism can be explained in those terms. It is judgemental. There is right and wrong. There is good and bad. We all know this, of course, but it has become fashionable to be uncomfortable about such language. But when we look at our world today and how much needs to be done, we should not hesitate to make such judgements. And then follow them with determined action. That would be Christian socialism.’

Latterly, though, it had become hard to know what he thought. He would seem to waver, disappointing those who hoped he would respect the Church authority, especially over contraception. Falling in line with Cherie, in 2006 he attacked the Church over what he called a ‘blanket ban’ on condoms and committed money to spread their use in Africa. The Catholic view is that condoms encourage promiscuity and have therefore only a limited value. To promote condom use is, according to Catholic doctrine, only one degree away from promoting the use of prostitutes, or in other words, using sex as a commodity. Condom use is, however, the soul of the sex industry, which expanded enormously in the UK during Tony’s premiership, and now he endorsed this wholeheartedly. Red-light districts had proliferated in every town centre, with brothels their inner citadels of degradation for prostitutes. A recent example is the town of Ipswich, where in 2006 five such poor women were murdered. Some say the condom culture, or commodity sex, is leading to wholesale population decline: one extreme and even absurd prediction is that by 2900 there will not be a single European left in Europe, but there is truth in the trend. After ten years of the Blairs the UK was judged in a United Nations study to be bottom in the moral league of the twenty-one economically most advanced nations.

Cherie invited Pope Benedict XVI to visit Great Britain in May 2007, twenty-five years after John Paul II visited in 1982. He didn’t of course come, but if he had it could have proved a final example of Tony and Cherie’s ecclesiastical topsy-turvyism. Would they have taken His Holiness to visit Ipswich? In the event, and as a final theatrical flourish in his world tour before departure on 27 June 2007, Tony took Cherie with him to Rome for an audience with Pope Benedict. But this time there would be no Berlusconi to write in the sky with £20,000 worth of fireworks: ‘Viva Tony!’

Garry O’Connor has worked as daily theatre critic for the Financial Times, and as a director for the RSC, before he became a fulltime writer. As novelist, biographer and playwright Garry has published many books on actors, literary figures, religious and political leaders, including Pope John Paul II and the Blairs. He has had plays performed at Edinburgh, Oxford, Ipswich, London and on Radio 4, and contributed dramatised documentaries to Radio 3, scripts and interviews for BBC 1, as well as having his work adapted for a three-part mini-series. The Darlings of Downing Street, from which the above excerpt is taken, is an incisive probe into the Blairs’ tenure of 10 Downing Street and the New Labour project. The Darlings of Downing Street, published by CentreHouse Press, is available on Amazon Kindle and most other ebook platforms.

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