Page 6, 3rd November 2000

3rd November 2000

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Page 6, 3rd November 2000 — Batting for the British constitution
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Batting for the British constitution

David Twiston Davies
T IS HARDLY SURPRISING that /
there has been little enthu siasm for the latest sugges tion that a Catholic should be permitted to ascend the throne. The Prince of Wales made it five years ago during a casual conversation with Paddy Ashdown, the then Liberal Democrat leader, and it has been trumpeted by a newspaper keen to boost its serialisation of Sir Paddy's memoirs. The fact that Tony Blair made clear only months ago that he had no appetite for stirring up a constitutional hornets' nest that would require amendment or repeal of 17 Acts of Parliament, was not thought worth mentioning in the newspaper's front-page story.
The typical Catholic reaction was a grunt of approval for something which at present has no practical application. Whether members of a family which retained the Faith during the penal period, descendants of an illiterate Irish immigrant or recent converts from Anglicanism, all Catholics are united in abhoring the post-Reformation settlement. Yet few burn with a pressing sense of injustice. Although the general feeling was that this was a matter safely left to our descendants, I am uneasy that we are in danger of signalling acquiesence in the general indifference to the good things in our country's constitution. It is clear that we live in a period of instability when Catholics are finding themselves increasingly at odds with the secular establishment, particularly over the family, abortion and euthanasia. We have good reason to be grateful for the protections afforded by British law that we still enjoy, not least because the EU clearly has little interest in recognising the claims of religion under the new Charter of Human Rights.
Nobody these days talks about "the genius of the British constitution", but this phrase underlines the fact that our constitutional arrangements owe their strength and flexibility to the fact that they are unwritten and have evolved gradually over centuries. One striking example is the House of Lords, which can no longer be labelled just a powerful sectional interest. In the last few years the Lords have proved themselves far more representative of public opinion than members of the Commons. They have also continued to exercise their independence, particularly on those moral issues which Catholics consider important, after Mr Blair started to pack it with his lacklustre nominees.
Such a demonstration of independence cannot be said to characterise the lower house where Catholics in all parties seem to be cowed by their whips and a cross-party liberal agenda; it can only be hoped that Michael Martin, the first Catholic Speaker since St Thomas More, will not turn out to be more concerned with carrying through a "modernisation" of procedure designed rather to placate Labour's feminist wing than to protect the battered rights of backbenchers.
The general willingness to kowtow to left-wing values, born of the belief that the world is bent on an unstoppable socialist course. is no longer accepted without question. Yet it continues to colour the way the Catholic Church's leaders in this country think. It was noticeable when the Church was seen to be associated with the socialist dislike of Classics in its effort to discourage the use of Latin for a generation, and it could be detected in the spirit of the Common Good document, issued by the bishops at the last general election. The time has come for all of us to be more vigilant in guarding against unthinking acceptance of what are hostile attitudes. This is not to suggest that the Church should throw in its lot with the Conservative frontbench, many of whom demonstrated their own liberal agenda by boasting of their cannabissmoking past. As members of a minority, we Catholics must always be judicious; but we should be seen more as standing on our own feet.




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