One thing that would be a surprise to the me of 2005 is that I chose to have nothing to do with the Coronation of King Charles III. Back then I was an ardent monarchist; now I would be hard pressed to say that I had any positive feelings to the monarchy.
This may be a great disappointment to my monarchist friends. In many ways, it is a disappointment to me - I want to be a monarchist, but I have become disillusioned with the British Establishment.
Disillusionment ought to be a very positive thing, really. Illusions deceive because they mask what is true in order to present and sustain a false reality.
To me, the Coronation was a beautiful illusion which I could not get behind. It gave the illusion that things were in keeping with our history, our traditions and our faith. It gave the illusion that things are okay in British society. It gave the illusion of the respectability and authority of Parliament. It gave the illusion of the respectability and authority of the Church of England in matters of faith and morals.
But things aren't like that.
Parliament has been shown to be run by people who are using it to serve their own interests. The COVID enquiry is demonstrating very clearly that MPs have routinely breached the COVID regulations in order to live a comfortable lifestyle while others who kept the regulations were prevented from being by the side of dying relatives.
The Church of England has shown that it cannot truly make a clear decision because the bishops are disengaged from both the Christian Faith and the people they serve in order to toe a party line in order to meet an agenda determined by the secular society so that it can maintain its position as Established in a country in which Christianity is now a minority.
British society is in the grip of a postmodern deconstruction whereby History is reduced to malleable narratives which mask the objective reality in order to legitimise differing viewpoints based on subjective criteria. Traditions are reinterpreted in order to be acceptable to everyone's narrative except those narratives which affirm a fearful "tyranny of the objective."
Oh dear, I do sound like a miserable party-pooper, don't I?
I rather hope that I am not. One of the realisations that I have had over the past eighteen years is that I am not a Nominalist: there is an objective reality that underlies existence. Well of course, that's God, you might say. Agreed, but where I differ from the postmodern Nominalists is that I believe that things have natures - that they possess a way that they should be. Having completed doctoral research on this has really allowed me to crystallise this in my mind. Having a nature means that we can tell a things purpose and where things have gone wrong. Masek's Maxim essentially says that if one can legitimately ask "what's wrong with that?" then there is a nature from which the thing might be deviating.
A penguin that can fly in air is going against its nature. We can tell something is wrong. This means that Sir David Attenborough can make coherent programmes about penguins. Likewise he can also point to the damage done to the penguins' habitat by showing that something is wrong with the way the penguins are behaving. Penguins have a nature that means that we can tell that they are penguins and not black-and-white ducks.
Likewise, medicine relies on there being a human nature. It is not natural for humans to be continuall coughing, so someone with a persistent cough needs treatment. It is not natural for human beings to be suicidal, so someone contemplating suicide needs someone to understand, be compassionate and help them.
The nature of a good Parliament is that it forms laws for the good of the people, and is itself consistent with the laws that it forms.
The nature of a Church is that it worships God as Trinity and is consistent with the Gospel it has received once and must deliver that same Gospel to all people throughout Time and Space.
The nature of a monarch is to rule and govern fairly and wisely.
Of course, things fall short. I am not bewailing the imperfection of things. I am bewailing the denial that there is an inherent nature in things - a denial which seeks to give human beings an authority that they do not possess, namely to mould objective reality subject to their desire. This becomes dangerously close to Aleister Crowley's "'do what thou wilt,' shall be the whole of the law."
I believe that Anglican Catholics can play an important part in re-establishlishing nature by acting as a central thread around which society gets reconfigured. I have argued in my thesis that Anglican Catholics are Realists and not Nominalists. This sets us apart from the Nominalism that allowed the Reformation to go far too far.
A senior Protestant clergyman once said that Anglican Catholicism was in danger of turning into Old Catholicism. I don't see anything wrong in that. If Anglican Catholics have recovered the Catholic faith of the pre-Reformation whilst not rejecting the need for that Reformation, then we are indeed old Catholics of a sort, though not as the type of Old Catholic that has become an episcopus vagante and falling into the morass of postmodern liberalism into which the CofE has fallen. The trouble is that Protestantism has embraced that Nominalism which has allowed it to fragment because, without the binding of universals and natures, there is nothing of substance to keep things together, not even the BCP.
People will say to me that I have missed out on history in steering clear of the Coronation. This may be so but there was nothing there any longer for me. I remember as a boy watching a replay of the coronation of Her Late Majesty and being enthralled by it. That, to me, was a danger because I know that I would not be enthralled this time knowing that the crown would be placed upon the head of the King by hands that have torn the CofE and wider Communion to pieces and witnessed by those who claim offices in the Church to which they are not entitled.
I have been enthralled by Papal elections and took comfort that the traditions performed had retained their reason. Will I be enthralled again when the present incumbent leaves office? I don't know. It depends on how much of an illusion the Holy See casts.
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