Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is not short of titles. She is Queen of 15 countries (including Canada, the Solomon Islands, Jamaica, Belize and Australia) as well as the United Kingdom; Defender of the Faith; a Countess, a Duchess (of Edinburgh) and four times Duke (eg of Lancaster and Normandy); Lord of Mann; sovereign of 19 orders, such as those of Merit, the Thistle, St Patrick, the Bath and Burma; and Head of the Commonwealth of 35 countries, among them India, South Africa, Ghana and Brunei.
Her everyday royal style covers almost all these titles with a simple “etc”. But one, “Defender of the Faith” (Fidei Defensor), is rarely omitted. “FID. DEF.” or “F.D.” appears on even the smallest of our coins.
There is a special piquancy about this because that title was given by a pope (Leo X) to Henry VIII in 1521 as a reward for the latter’s thumping book against Martin Luther – and the faith that our Queen has been defending is not quite that which Henry (then) and Leo professed.
But leave that aside. The Queen is a believer and takes that title as seriously as she did her coronation and its oath. Indeed, the memorable pledge she made on her accession to dedicate her whole life to her royal duties was tantamount to a religious vow. It has resulted in astonishing devotion to duty and steadfastness.
She may not be theologically very sophisticated, but she surely understands how profoundly Christianity has shaped and permeated her native land. She is a frequent churchgoer. In her Christmas broadcasts she speaks openly about the religious significance of the feast. She is probably our most sincere Christian monarch since the Stuarts.
She is Supreme Governor of the Churches of England and Scotland. Strangely, that title has been quietly omitted from the long list above, but her ecclesiastical role is nonetheless crucial: she is the immediate source of the spiritual jurisdiction of the archbishops, bishops and cathedral deans of those two churches, just as she is of the temporal jurisdiction of her secular government. As the formidable John Whitgift, archbishop of Canterbury, explained to the first Queen Elizabeth, “the queen hath under her two sorts of magistrates”; viz her ministers, judges, sheriffs, JPs on the one hand and her bishops, deans, etc on the other, and to all these she delegates authority which, as the Lord’s anointed, she has received directly from God.
Thus, just as David Cameron is Prime Minister because he is the MP who commands a majority in the House of Commons and is First Lord of the Treasury by royal appointment, so Justin Welby is what he is because he was consecrated a bishop by another bishop and has been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury (and Primate of All England) by the head of the national church which Henry VIII set up when he repudiated Rome – that church having inherited the medieval Catholic distinction between power of order (potestas ordinis) and power of jurisdiction (potestas jurisdictionis).
Despite all that Anglicanism, Her Majesty has had some remarkable Catholic encounters. There was, for example, that obviously cordial visit by St John Paul II to Buckingham Palace in 1982 (and anyone who saw him riding upright, smiling and magnificent in the Popemobile into the Palace will never forget the sight). It was the first time a reigning pope had visited England and would have been unthinkable in any previous reign. She welcomed his successor warmly in 2008, too.
The Queen has heard the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster – Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor – preach. She undoubtedly had a soft spot for his predecessor (who did not?), the gracious Basil Hume, and was said to call him “my cardinal”. Her bestowal on him of the highest honour in her gift, the Order of Merit, when he was only a few days away from death, was a particularly affectionate gesture.
Yes, her Catholic subjects are more at ease with her than with any monarch since 1688. And one hopes that she is wholly comfortable with them. That this is so is due to numerous things, but surely above all to the fact that, thank heaven, “the Irish Question” – which dogged English politics for decades, generated so much ill-will (even hatred), caused serious tensions within the English Catholic community, kept alive old prejudices (Guy Fawkes and all that) and, sometimes with good reason, led many to doubt whether English Catholicism could ever be truly loyal to the Crown – is now largely a thing of the past.
We English Catholics today can honestly boast that we are loyal Catholics and Her Majesty’s loyal subjects. Generations of our forefathers longed for the day when could be said – and believed.
It must pain the Queen to see how de-Christianised her kingdoms have become during her reign – how, in particular, the Church of England has been seduced by multiculturalism (a profoundly anti-Christian doctrine), the sexual revolution and false feminism – the latter so militant that surely it is only a matter of time before we have a lesbian Archbishop of Canterbury defiantly living with her partner. The Cof E’s Evangelical wing is still vigorous, but mainstream Anglicanism seems to be in terminal decline.
She must wonder about the religious commitment of her children, especially that of her son and heir. In the past Prince Charles has seemed to espouse a sort of good-natured pantheism. But recently he has shown such sincere concern for the terrible plight of Christians in Syria and Iraq, and befriended Eastern Church leaders so warmly, that some believe he might follow his pious grandmother (Prince Philip’s mother) into the Orthodox Church. Were this to happen he could never become Supreme Head of the Church of England, so his accession would surely mean the latter’s disestablishment – which some already want but which could be its coup de grâce, because Anglicanism without the crown is almost a contradiction in terms and would leave a huge unanswerable question: whence the jurisdiction of the decapitated, but still episcopal, Ecclesia Anglicana?
Charles has also suggested that, when the time comes, he will name himself “Defender of Faiths” (in the plural) – in recognition of the religious pluralism of British society today. But that, too, would mean disestablishment and leave the same unanswerable question.
He has a point, of course. Something truly momentous has been happening during his mother’s long reign: the arrival in this country of huge numbers of West Indians and Asian Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. It is the last of these who challenge us most. Yes, many are moderates (like the admirable new mayor of London) and are or will be excellent, highly valued citizens – as many Sikhs and Hindus are. Some are being corrupted by that post-Christian decadence which they find all round them and which outrages strict fellow Muslims. Alas, some are so committed to Islam that they will never assimilate.
The lamentable decline of Christianity, on the one hand, and the challenge of non-Christian religion, especially Islam, on the other: here is a truly formidable challenge to our bishops and the faithful. Yes, it is our bishops and us. No other part of the Christian family can rise to the challenge.
We are called to re-evangelise a land which is ineradicably Christian, to bring it the Good News, fearlessly but lovingly. Yes, the Crescent and the Cross will confront each other no doubt till the end of time, but the age of the Crusades (they had their due place) is long since over and we will come to our non-Christian fellow citizens armed only with “the sword of truth and love”.
Queen Elizabeth, one hopes, has not a few years left here on earth. She surely understands what is at stake in the spiritual battle for our land. As Defender of the Faith is she not called upon to play an important new role – one of which the original donor of that title, though not the most exemplary of popes (in truth, he was a shocker) would heartily approve?
And may her son’s spiritual pilgrimage lead him, too, to understand fully what that awesome, ever-present title, the one that just will not disappear under that little “etc”, now entails.
Professor Jack Scarisbrick is a historian and national chairman of Life
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