What happened?
Britain voted to leave the European Union in an unexpected result whose effects were felt across the world. David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister after leading the remain campaign, which was defeated by a margin of 52 to 48 per cent. The leave campaign leader Boris Johnson said the result affirmed “the very principles of our democracy, the rights of all of us to elect and remove the people who make the key decisions in their lives”. Britain faces months of political uncertainty.
What the media said
The powerful and influential supported remain, said Fraser Nelson in the Wall Street Journal. So this was “probably the biggest slap in the face ever delivered to the British establishment in the history of universal suffrage”. The EU was failing, Britons decided: they voted for “liberty and free trade”.
“This is about so much more than the European Union,” said John Harris in the Guardian. Our economic model since the 1980s “has just about served the most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline”. The referendum showed those differences: London and the South East voted remain, poorer areas voted leave. “Here is a country so imbalanced it has effectively fallen over,” Harris wrote.
What the blogosphere said
At the Spectator’s Coffee House, Theo Hobson quoted a journalist who said the election was a defeat for “love” and humanist values. It made Hobson wonder whether the EU is “a sort of secular humanist church. The average secular humanist … is anxious that her ideology needs such structures, as if it might melt into air without them. The referendum has highlighted the poverty, and intense anxiety, of secular humanist thought.”
At his Patheos blog, Chase Padusniak said he was tired of the leave campaign’s buzzwords – “sovereignty, independence and democracy” – but also thought the new settlement had opportunities. “The EU provides limited hope for meaningful changes in policy, a non-EU Britain might provide more,” he said. But in the end, “No one has the answer. Kyrie Eleison.”
The most overlooked story of the week
✣ Pope says Martin Luther had right intentions
What happened?
Pope Francis has said that Martin Luther’s “intentions” were “not mistaken”, even if some of his methods were bad. Speaking on the plane back from Armenia, the Pope argued that “today Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification”. He said: “On this point, which is very important, he did not err.”
Why was it under-reported?
The Pope’s remarks on Brexit and gay people overshadowed these comments. They also raise knotty theological questions. It is true that, as the Pope mentioned, in 1999 the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity issued a joint statement on justification with the Lutheran World Federation. But the Vatican added a separate statement noting that there still seemed to be tensions between the Catholic and Lutheran theology of justification – especially on how much we can cooperate with grace – which the statement doesn’t address.
What will happen next?
In October, the Pope travels to Sweden for an ecumenical service to mark the 500th anniversary of the outbreak of the Reformation. The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity sees it as an opportunity to concentrate “on the centrality of the question of God and on a Christocentric approach”. But the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, has said that Catholics “have no reason to celebrate” the beginning of the Reformation. Expect a lively and protracted debate.
✣ The week ahead
Cardinal Robert Sarah will give the inaugural address at the Sacra Liturgia UK conference at Imperial College London on Tuesday. The conference will discuss liturgical formation in the context of the new evangelisation, following Sacra Liturgia conferences in France and the US. Cardinal Sarah will also celebrate Mass at the London Oratory at 7pm on Wednesday.
The Vatileaks trial is scheduled to end on Wednesday. Two journalists are on trial for publishing books based on leaked documents; three former Vatican officials, including Francesca Chaouqui, are accused of leaking them.
The relics of St Thomas More and St John Fisher are finishing their tour of the United States. The relics have visited Miami, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Denver and Phoenix. They arrive in Los Angeles today before moving on to Washington DC. The tour is part of the US bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom”, a celebration of religious freedom.