Time for disestablishment?

THE CURRENT DIVORCE proceedings concerning the Prince and Princess of Wales are significant not only for their possible constitutional implications such as whether it matters if the people will accept Prince Charles as future King but for what they tell us about the spiritual leadership the House of Windsor is expected to provide. They are not just the breeding stock for the monarchy but for that rather odd hereditary position, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. What does it mean that the current Governor, the Queen, has virtually ordered the divorce when her Church, if anything, is in theory even more devoted to marriage-forlife than we are (it does not have annulment and is in at least two minds about remarriage in church)? Now senior members of the Synod are voicing serious doubts as to the spiritual and moral fitness of Prince Charles to inherit the governorship. There could be a way out that would set Anglicans free to worry about more important things: disestablishment of the Church of England. It is time that debate was re-opened.