Posted on 10/15/2004 8:59:24 PM PDT by Land of the Irish
There is a hint that pledge may have been broken by Prime Minister
TONY BLAIR’S family priest strongly hinted yesterday that the Prime Minister was breaking his pledge not to take Roman Catholic Holy Communion in Britain. Father Timothy Russ also said that Mr Blair, an Anglican, “may well” convert to Catholicism. The revelation will increase speculation that Mr Blair is preparing to convert to Roman Catholicism despite a clear denial from Downing Street.
Father Russ is invited regularly by Mr Blair to say Mass in a drawing room at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s weekend retreat. A table is used as an altar.
The services are attended by the Prime Minister, his family and house guests. Mr Blair used to attend Father Russ’s parish church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the nearby village, but for security reasons rarely does so now.
Mr Blair’s interest in the Church is growing and he has told Father Russ: “Theology is much more interesting than politics.” He has also asked him whether the Prime Minister of Britain could be a Catholic.
If Mr Blair converted while in office, he would be the country’s first Catholic Prime Minister, although there is no constitutional bar to a Catholic in Downing Street.
Cardinal Basil Hume, the late Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to Mr Blair in 1996 demanding that he cease taking Communion at his wife’s church in Islington, saying that it was “all right to do so when in Tuscany for the holidays . . . as there was no Anglican church near by.”
Mr Blair promised to stop receiving Communion at the Church of St Joan of Arc if his presence there caused a problem for the Catholic authorities. But he made clear that he did not agree with the decision in a pointed letter to Cardinal Hume which said: “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it”.
The Pope issued an encyclical last year which said that Communion could be given to an Anglican only if it was required to “ meet a grave spiritual need for . . . eternal salvation”. Earlier this year, Mr Blair, whose wife Cherie is a Catholic, took his first Catholic Communion in public for seven years when staying in Cusona, Italy, offending local clergy and leading to demands for an investigation by the Vatican.
However, Father Russ, parish priest in Great Missenden, yesterday insisted that Mr Blair could receive Catholic Communion.
He declined to confirm that the Prime Minister was taking Communion but defended the use of the principle of epikeia, which allows exceptions to rules under certain circumstances, in such situations.
He said that it would be “unwise” to speculate that the Prime Minister was close to converting. “It might well end up that way but a lot of things would have to change in his modus operandi and in his way of thinking and working before he could be a Catholic.”
The epikeia principle, outlined in Canon 1752, allows priests to override the strict letter of the law in cases where rigid application of the law would frustrate the intentions of the author, or God. The Canon states that the salvation of souls in the Church must always be the supreme law.
Sources close to the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, indicated that under the epikeia principle, there would be no objection if Mr Blair had been receiving Communion. Father Russ said that he was concerned about the Prime Minister’s views of the moral order and the sanctity of family life.
He said: “Tony Blair is a lazy thinker when it comes to certain ethical questions.” But he said that the Catholic Church fulfilled many of the Prime Minister’s socialist ideals.
Downing Street said last night that Mr Blair had no plans to convert.
I am inclined to agree with you.
I love Tony, and I won't hear a word said against him. So there!
"It is perfectly clear from the comment above that you do not live in the U.K."
Well no I don't, and believe me, my Irish Grandmother rolls in her grave every time I mention Tony. You folks need some help over there, that is clear, but you'll have to prevail on the Tories to improve before you get any, I'm afraid. I think Blair has done some really stupid things that I totally disagree with, but he did move Labor right, and I'm sure many thought that would never be done. And he is completely staunch in the WOT which is far more that you can say about our own "dims".
You guys need to get your guns back, I'd make that priority #1, and that's from a second amendment supporter who will never, ever, own a gun.
This is just not true. New Labour may have abandoned old-fashioned socialist economics, but culturally and constitutionally they and Blair are way to the left of any previous Labour government. No previous Labour prime minister would have dreamed of doing any of the revolutionary things Blair has done such as expelling the hereditary peers from the House of Lords, banning foxhunting, or advocating replacing the pound with a common European currency.
Worst of all, while Blair personally claims to support the monarchy, anti-royalism is far more prevalent in New Labour than it was in the old days, when patriotic socialists (yes, they did exist) had no problem with the existence of the Crown. I'll take a socialist loyal to his Queen over a capitalist with no regard for his country's heritage and traditions any day.
I suppose you are free to take my opinion with a grain of salt since I am a monarchist (who probably should have been born in pre-20th-century Europe) and an anti-Iraq-war paleoconservative on US politics (I don't like Bush either and will be staying home on November 2). But face it: Blair is no conservative of any kind; in fact he is the most un-conservative leader Britain has had since Oliver Cromwell.
"Blair has done such as expelling the hereditary peers from the House of Lords, banning foxhunting, or advocating replacing the pound with a common European currency."
I agree that these are all stupid things. I must say that our American left used to be patriotic too, so it doesn't surprise me that Labor used to be more patriotic, I doubt that any change in those attitudes is the result of Blair alone.
I admit, I don't understand why the Tories can't get any traction with the anti-Europe angle.
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