Secular Thought for the Day

The parliamentary debate over a future King or Queen being a catholic is an interesting marriage of one archaic institution with another. It may modernise the monarchy but only in the sense of bringing it into the early twentieth century, and only by being more inclusive towards the members of a church whose dogma remains footed in medieval times. Of course it still leaves other religions , atheists, agnostics and humanists out in the cold – that might take another hundred years.

The move to allow women equal access to succession is another positive move and, quite frankly when our current monarch has shown that women can do the job as well as, if not better than, most men it would be bizarre of Parliament to stand in the way of this. Even staunch republicans recognise that HRH has done most to maintain public support for the institution, even though she heads up a family that is so dysfunctional that, were it born into a different class, the social workers would be calling.

But how will one partner, committed to equality and diversity, get one with another for whom women, gays, lesbians, atheists and assorted others remain second class or non-citizens? Though most churchfolk now recognise that all that stuff in the bible about slavery and the murder of children is a bit embarassing, we are going to have to wait a lot, lot longer for a female priest, bishop and pope-ess.