This article first appeared
in National Catholic Register
Don’t
Rain on My Parade
By Dwight Longenecker
On
February 27 the new Archbishop of Canterbury
was enthroned
in a splendid ceremony in Canterbury Cathedral.
As usual, the BBC cameras were rolling
and the English people were treated to
a grand spectacle of processions, majestic
music, ancient buildings, and dignitaries
from all walks of life. I have to admit,
whether it is the annual trooping of the
colours, a coronation, or an Archbishop’s
enthronement, the English sure can do a
parade.
I
hate to rain on anybody’s
parade, but I can’t help wondering whether
the Archbishop’s enthronement was little
more than a parade. If the Archbishop were
an emperor in procession, was he wearing
anything at all? The enthronement brought
to mind a book I had read recently. In Chosen
People Clifford Longley describes in
detail the coronation service of Queen
Elizabeth II fifty years ago in June 1953.
The magnificent service in Westminster
Abbey was loaded with allusions to the
Old Testament concept of sacred monarchy.
London paralleled Jerusalem. England paralleled
Israel and the little queen was an echo
of David--the little shepherd boy made
good. There was a mythical, mystical reality
to the service that expressed the English
awareness that they were a divinely chosen
country and a royal people. The English
royal family and the Anglican Church were
two interdependent supports for this whole
national notion. Longley points out that
in 1953 the coronation service meant what
it said. People believed the myth and bought
into it big time.
In
the last fifty years this sublime myth
of Golden England has
been undermined drastically. As the fawning
respect of the English journalists decayed
into sordid snooping, the frailties of
the Royal family were revealed. Their fairytale
image dissolved into a horror story of
a dysfunctional family with a royal barge
load of problems. The once great British
Empire disintegrated while at the same
the Anglican Church was hit with the ultimate
poison of its Protestant position. In the
sixteenth century the Anglicans chucked
out the pope’s authority, and in the second
half of the twentieth century extreme Biblical
criticism and relativism destroyed their
Biblical authority. Modernist theology
completed the work and the Church’s authority
was almost totally eroded while the superstructure
remained.
The
Queen was still on her throne. The Church
was still established.
Vicars still took services and Archbishops
were still enthroned. The words were still
being spoken, but when people pinched themselves
awake they realised that something was
missing. Those who bothered to check it
out realised that there wasn’t any content
and that nobody actually believed in the
pantomime anymore—not even the actors themselves.
As
a result, at a very deep level, the English
people don’t really
believe in the most potent symbols of their
own national identity. They have come to
realise that the churchmen and the royal
family are hollow men, or at best, stuffed
shirts. Disillusionment, cynicism and a
nihilistic lack of faith therefore runs
deep within modern Britain. The state of
Britain’s soul is illustrated by the funeral
of Princess Diana. Why was there such a
huge outpouring of grief for this tortured
Princess? Because Diana’s own sad and hollow
life reflected the life of so many English
people. They too felt betrayed by the alliance
between Buckingham Palace and Lambeth Palace.
Like Diana, the British people have lost
faith, and like her they are paddling around
in the shallows of new age spirituality.
Diana’s pathetic death made her seem like
a martyr of an establishment that clings
to the semblance of authority while denying
the power thereof. Her funeral, with its
incongruous mix of genuine grief, royal
pagaentry and the maudlin singing of an
ageing homosexual in a wig said it all.
This is what England has come to.
It
would be wonderful if the new Archbishop
could re-assert the
spiritual authority that modern Britain
so desperately needs. Rowan Williams claims
strong Catholic sympathies, but I fear
it is simply modernist Protestantism dressed
up in Catholic vestments. Is Williams a
true shepherd or a wolf in sheep’s clothes?
Williams not only endorses the feminist/homosexual
agenda, but his writings reveal that he
is fond of ‘apaphatic theology’ or the
spiritual way of darkness and ‘unknowing’.
Williams and his chums like to speak of
God as ‘a great absence.’ There is a long
and venerable tradition of apophatic theology,
but modern Anglicanism has simply hi-jacked
the tradition to dress up old-fashioned
agnosticism in a tasteful way. God is no
longer dead. He is simply not at home.
This
is why I wonder what substance really lies
within the spectacular
pagentry of the new Archbishop’s enthronement.
It is too much like one of those tacky
celebrity weddings where the lack of belief
in marriage is in direct proportion to
the immensity of the budget. While I admire
the new Archbishop’s scholarship, writing
style and Catholic sympathies, I fear Rowan
Williams simply typifies the soul of twenty
first century Britain. Williams’ language
may be lofty; he may sustain the symbols
of ecclesiastical power and claim to be
the 105th successor of St Augustine,
but is there really any substance to it?
Doesn’t the whole thing look too much like
the Narnian donkey Puzzle dressing up in
the skin of a lion to parade as Aslan?
If I’m
right and the whole thing is hot air, the
only question that
remains is the one we all think of when
playing with a balloon: when and how will
our plaything burst?
Dwight
Longenecker’s
latest book is More
Christianity published by Our Sunday
Visitor.
