GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

STRIKING as is the retention in our country of the historic pomp and pageantry of a Coronation, there can be no doubt that it is the preservation of its deep and solemn religious setting which gives it a unique character in the modern world.
In dividing Christendom, the Reformation destroyed the primacy of religion in the West within the texture of temporal society. True, the form continued in individual countrics, both Catholic and Protestant, but the Reformation logically confined religion to the individual, and consequently the general acceptance of religion as an essential and fundamental element of the State was doomed, save by exception. Even Catholicism, with its insistence on the temporal, as well as spiritual, order, and its necessary claim to priority over the State into whose framework and life it should enter. was forced to the unnatural position of disestablishment from the visible secular order.
It is no doubt in many ways an anachronism that the post. Reformation Church in Britain, with its strong elements of Catholic form inherited from the past, should still today occupy a place in the State comparable with Catholic times. Even if today this is more of an appearance than a reality, it is something for which to be deeply thankful.
Paradoxically, the religious emphasis on the Coronation has notably grown in this century of general unbelief. In the 18th and 19th centuries it had reached a very low ebb, and the Coronation was scarcely more than a secular pageant and celebration within the hallowed walls of the Abbey. This phenomenon gives one hope that despite the smallness of actual church-going outside the Catholic Church. there exists a revival of spiritual seriousness which, most appropriately, is specially connected with the Crown. For Catholics there could be no greater debt to the Queen herself, to her father and grandfather.
WE Catholics at home and in the Commonwealth are prevented by our retention of the faith which once was the faith of Britain from taking our place in the sacred and liturgical aspects of the great ceremony. even though we participate in other respects as fully as our fellow-citizens. Despite our necessary self-exclusion from the.rite, we should rejoice at the fact that the proper pattern of spiritual and temporal has survived in Britain almost alone.
We may. moreover, be certain that on the occasion of a Coronation that pattern carries again a spiritual meaning that is of the first importance. The whole country feels that the Coronation is first and foremost the dedication of the Queen to Almighty God with all that splendour of ritual and ceremony that is both praise of God and the means of impressing on our imaginations the primacy of His service.
By an imaginative gesture, the Hierarchy of England and Wales has ordered a triduurn of prayer to end with the still unusual rite of Evening Mass—by happy chance, the Mass of St. Augustine, Apostle of England—and thus ensured for us something of that outward solemnity which proclaims to the country that our loyalty is no less than that of those who spiritually participate in the Abbey Coronation itself, and which stimulates us to do all we can to associate ourselves spiritually with the Sovereign. Nor can we doubt of the unique nature of the spiritual efficacy of the thousands of Masses on Monday evening—Masses which four hundred years ago explained the very purpose of the cathedrals, abbeys and churches which cover our historic land.
WE know that very many of our countrymen. and most of all the Queen herself and her family, give a grand example of the public service of God and private devotion to so much of the Christian revelation, according to the sincere faith that is in them. We know that many of these lead spiritual lives which shame too many cif us Catholics.
But we cannot but be certain that we, by God's grace and in all personal unworthiness, possess in its fullness and God-founded form the truth which, were men in general but to accept it again, would provide the stable and vitalising spiritual and moral structure that our world so sorely needs.
It would therefore be an inner contradiction for us to celebrate this great. solemn and happy day _without the most earnest prayer to Almighty God that the providential survival in our country of the Christian rite of anointing and dedication of the Sovereign should deepen the whole country's realisation that neither ourselves nor the world generally can have any stable and truly progressive future without a return to His service and the obedience of His law as the first priority in all social, political and national life.
We can thank Almighty God. too, for the evidence, of which this Coronation is a striking example, that so many remain true to Him and His will, even though they have become separated in history from the Household of the Faith; praying that we ourselves, so highly privileged by God in this matter through no merit of our own, may learn to combine an attitude of firmness about truth with the greatest possible love and understanding and co-operation with all Christians of good will in a common front against paganism and secularism. Our duty in this matter has more than once been underlined by the Holy Father.
With God all things are possible, and there is nothing extravagant, still less disloyal, in an earnest prayer for the conversion of our own country—a prayer which after all is the same is Our Lord's prayer that "they may all be one."
Such thoughts and prayers as these, it seems to us, may well be implied by us when on Tuesday we Catholics. joyfully and with a full heart, join with the whole country in the anthem and prayer GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.