For the occasion of the coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey, The Josias asked contributors and friends to share their reflections on the event. The contributions to this symposium cover a variety of topics from a variety of perspectives, all of them Catholic.
Amanda Piccirillo:
The prince knelt to his father the King, arrayed in the Imperial State Crown, carrying the rod and scepter belonging to the ages of the past. The King found himself transformed, astonished, as though for those fleeting moments he actually would be permitted to exercise the words of his oath, that he would govern and “cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all [his] judgements.”
And there was his son before him, in the robes of a medieval order of chivalry. Only hours before, both men had likely been inundated by modern mundanities and merciless logistics. But now they had been transported back in time, and in each other’s eyes they were filled with awe. William glanced a few times at a placard with the words—he knew that these would be the most important that he would utter, until that day when he too would sit in the chair of Saint Edward, the same crown on his head.
“I, William, Prince of Wales, pledge my loyalty to you, and faith and truth I will bear unto you, as your liege man of life and limb. So help me God.”
He stood and touched his father’s crown, a talisman of his future, and kissed his anointed father’s cheek. Father and son, in those seconds, breathed momentary life into the entombed virtues of loyalty, honor, fidelity, and filial piety. In coronations past, Prince William’s oath would have been the first of many that the King would receive from his vassals. But now, in our reduced age, where beauty and grandeur are things to be shunned and shamed, Prince William was alone.
Almost too on the nose are comparisons to Cinderella, who surely rode in something as gilded and splendid as the Gold State Coach. But like Cinderella, at the end of the ceremony, William and Charles were forced back into their daily roles as men of the world, entitled to magnificent privilege, for sure, but utterly diminished from the promise of their illustrious birthright.
However, neither man left that moment of sublime intimacy the same. The next day found William back in his nondescript blue suit, more banker than prince, in front of pop stars on a tawdry stage. But when he addressed his father the King, there was a glimmer of Westminster Abbey in his eyes. There was a new weight to his words, even among the dad jokes.
“I commit myself to serve you all,” he said, eyes locked with his father’s, in a clear echo of that oath. “King, Country and Commonwealth. God Save The King!”
Prince William quoted his grandmother, that “coronations are a declaration of our hopes for the future.” And for Father and son, king and heir, for the first time in perhaps a long time, they too had hope.
This is why, Catholic and American as I may be, of Jacobite sympathies and of a decidedly recusant persuasion, I cannot help but be touched by this coronation, and in particular, by the quasi baptismal qualities of the oath of the Prince of Wales. Those precious words of fealty touched something deep within me, so otherworldly were they that for a moment our ugly world stood still in respectful silence. Though the British royal family is now a mere phantom of itself, as with every remnant monarchy in our sad world, I too felt hope.
Patrick J. Smith:
It has been extraordinary seeing the reaction to Charles III’s coronation in Westminster Abbey. While one might expect enthusiasm from the English, there has been considerable enthusiasm from American observers. I do not think there is anything wrong with polite interest in Charles’s coronation, of course. There are ties of history and culture between the United States and England. However, I think the polite interest one cousin has for the doings of another cousin is as far as one can go. To find a deeper meaning in the coronation is not possible.
The coronation is what Jean Baudrillard might have called “the mythic reconstruction, the media reconstruction” of a certain idea of England. Enthusiasts will say it is the idea of Christendom, and an England that is part of Christendom. Perhaps it even is. But Christendom is gone, and England stopped being part of Christendom even before that. “We are no longer in the same mental universe,” as Baudrillard would say, and churning over the details of the coronation will not make those ideas real again.
Knowing for example the history of the coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, will not make real the idea of the divine-right kingship any more than it will make real for us the Baroque style of music. No access is granted to the realities that were once behind the anthem (or the antiphon Unxerunt Salomonem, upon which it is based) seeing it sung in Westminster on the television. Given that it was composed after the liberal protestant revolution of 1688, perhaps it never made those ideas real. We have no way of knowing.
And that is really the point. It is unclear that most people have the necessary mental framework to begin to understand Christendom, much less the idea of England remaining firmly part of Christendom. But there is no sense in playing that game. The virtues extolled by name throughout the coronation service (e.g., Canterbury’s charge to Charles after receiving the Sword of Offering) are no more intelligible today than the ideas of Christendom. Baudrillard might say that we did not understand the coronation when we had the means to do so: we will not understand it now.
The crisis of liberalism will not be solved by Charles’s coronation. Indeed, the coronation does not even point the way to the solution of that crisis. We will not find in the media presentation of the event the necessary ideas for a restoration of Christian politics.
Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.:
At the closing ceremony of the Second Vatican Council on the 8th of December, 1964, a number of messages from the Council to various groups of persons were read out. One of the messages was to temporal rulers. The Council had been seen by many as reconciliation between the Church and political modernity, but the message to rulers gave a resounding statement of traditional Catholic teaching on political authority: “God alone is the source of your authority and the foundation of your laws.” This was the truth that the Church had continuously asserted in the face of the revolutions that convulsed the world in the name of social contract theory, liberalism, and egalitarianism. The Church was insisting that political authority is able to bind consciences, because it is from God, the creator and sustainer of man’s political nature. Rulers, therefore, are images of God, and participate in his majestic providence. This is a truth that holds of any true political authority, whether monarchical, aristocratic, democratic, or some mixture of the three. It is a truth that was, however, particularly well expressed in the hereditary monarchies of Christendom, in which kings came to throne by providential accident of birth and were anointed and crowned by bishops.
The coronation of King Charles III was a reminder of that truth. Of course, the English monarchy has been so hollowed out by the usurpations of a long line of liberal parliaments that the king has almost no power. And yet his coronation was no less a reminder to us of the true nature of human political life, after which our hearts secretly yearn: a participation in God’s providence, His eternal justice, His tender mercy, and His shining glory. It was therefore an image of the true Kingdom of Heaven. As I watched the televised image of the newly anointed king, seated on his thrown, arrayed in cloth-of-gold tunicle and cope, with rod and scepter in his hand, being crowned, I did not think of his lack of power to rule, nor of the invalidity of the ordination of the person who crowned him. Rather, my heart was filled with wonder at the image of true politics, with sorrow for what our world has lost, and with hope for the imperishable Kingdom that is to come.
Iacobus Novus:
Since the coronation order prepared by Saint Dunstan for King Edgar in 973, the Gospel used for the coronation of every English (and later British) monarch had been Matthew 22:15-22—Christ’s declaration to render under Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. (The even earlier coronation rite attributed to Egbert, Archbishop of York during 732-766, also uses this Gospel, but we cannot say with any certainty that the rite is properly dated to the eighth century or which kings may have been crowned using it.) The Epistle in use since at least the time of King Stephen in 1135 had been 1 Peter 2:13-19—a straightforward injunction to those listening to submit to the order of the king and to honor him.
I say “had,” because the order of coronation of King Charles III devised by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby discarded both. The Gospel instead is from Luke 4:16-21, when Christ entered the synagogue in Capernaum and declared himself God’s anointed one announcing the good news to the poor and setting the captive free. The Epistle was replaced with Colossians 1:9-17, declaring Christ’s loving rule over all people and things.
The character of the English monarchy has changed significantly over the 1,050 years from Edgar to now. King Canute came raiding, King William came conquering, and King Stephen came apart in the Anarchy. Within just the Plantagenet line, two Edwards, two Richards, and twice a single Henry were overthrown and replaced. Henry VIII created a new English Church that his daughter Elizabeth solidified. Parliament executed one Stuart king and overthrew a second in order to invite more suppliant monarchs to rule over them. Since 1688 the power of the monarchy has lain more in its wealth, prestige, and other indirect sources of power rather than formal authority. And yet through all this time the emphases of the Epistle and the Gospel at each coronation remained the same. Obey and honor the king, ye English, yet remember to give unto God what is God’s.
So this change in the readings should not go unnoticed. When he announced the readings, the Archbishop presented them as emphasizing the service of the king to all his subjects in all their diversity. And this is indeed true of the British monarchy, as it was and is of the King of Heaven, who came not to be served but to serve. But we could say the same about older models of kingship as well, for the ideal medieval king was enjoined to rule for the benefit of all. No doubt many neglected that obligation, but to acknowledge the many breaches of a standard is not to say no standard existed. The Christian idea that kingship is a service by the head given for the benefit of the entire body politic is almost as old as the Emperor Constantine.
To rule is to serve, then, according to Christian political theory; but to serve is not necessarily to rule. While the new readings emphasize service, they also acknowledge the British Crown lacks any power and authority. Why should the British obey their king, as Peter instructed the early Christians, when the king’s command carries no weight? And why should Caesar remember to give unto God what is God’s, when he has only his royal properties but no imperium, no auctoritas of his own? These are not new observations, and they were true when George V, Edward VIII, George VI, and Elizabeth II were crowned during the 20th century. But the open acknowledgement of this fact in the coronation rite is new. And if the king is not the one to be obeyed, then who should be? If it is not the king who should be reminded to give unto God what is God’s, who deserves that reminder? The true powers that be lie in the answers to those questions. At least when the king had the power and the authority, his subjects knew where the fault of misrule lay. One can rightfully ask whether the same be said for the politicians in Parliament and those who keep them in power.
Andrew Cusack:
To the Catholic in England, the Coronation was a mystical moment that seemed to transcend the limits of time and space. At the same time, the ceremony is an odd hodgepodge: all its essential elements are fundamentally Catholic—with perhaps a faint hint of the semi-pagan—yet deployed as a buttress upholding a monarchy that is now very firmly in Protestant hands.
For the pedant and the ideologue, this is all a load of empty flim-flam. Yes, it is a Protestant cleric inexplicably dressed up as a Catholic archbishop who crowned the King. But His Majesty was also anointed with chrism from Jerusalem, blessed and consecrated by an undoubted (if schismatic) patriarch, the bishop of the oldest see in the Christian world.
So often our everyday reality fails to match the beauty that the Coronation ceremony grasps towards and attempts to convey. But the life of the baptised sinner fails to convey the grace and majesty of his Divine Saviour. We must never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What the monarchy reminds us is that our kingdom is a family, and family is the garden in which love is planted, cultivated, grown, and in which love eventually flowers.
The bonds of loyalty and love fostered by our imperfect earthly father, the King, urge us for the betterment of ourselves, our families, our circles of friends, and our country. And—for us Catholics at least—these bonds help us in some strange way towards the love of our perfect Father in Heaven.
Like many families, Britain is weird—and so is our King. (He talks to plants.) It is precisely that unquantifiable and unfussy weirdness which makes it all unique, sublime, and so easy to care for. Embrace it, revel in it, sanctify it, love it.
Yves Casertano:
Hugo’s Les Misérables, was once on the Index. Yet today it is not unusual to hear Catholics praising Hugo’s story (and its various adaptations) for its Christian message. What was offensive in a more devout age can become edifying in an era of disbelief. So too with the British coronation ceremony. The last two coronation ceremonies involving kings named Charles were the coronation of Blessed Karl as King of Hungary in 1916 and the coronation of Charles X of France in 1825. There can be no dispute that the coronation of a British monarchy conducted by Anglican ministers and featuring an oath to uphold Protestantism is gravely defective compared to the Catholic coronation ceremonies at Budapest and Reims. Indeed, a subject of Charles X or Blessed Karl would have been justified in regarding the ceremony at Westminster as an empty pantomime. But the Catholic monarchies of France and Hungary are gone (for now at least), and the British monarchy alone preserves (albeit in adulterated form) the ancient coronation ceremony that was once the common heritage of much of Christendom. And the British coronation ceremony is not valuable solely for historical and aesthetic reasons: It serves a pedagogical purpose in a world that has lost sight of the basic truth that all power comes from God and that rulers are called first and foremost to serve Christ. To take an example, these are the words spoken when Charles III was presented with his sword:
With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God and all people of goodwill, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order: that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue; and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life, that you may reign forever with him in the life which is to come. Amen.
For all the flaws of the British monarchy, on no other occasion in recent memory have millions of casual television viewers been exposed to the sound principles of Christian political philosophy reflected in the coronation ceremony.
Virgil Caine:
The aspect of the recent coronation ceremony I found most moving was the moment at which the anointing screen was lifted to reveal a frail, bewildered old man clad in nothing but a linen nightshirt, stripped of all his regalia and with it, all the warmth and certainty of the tradition it embodies—now revealed to be so much dead weight before the awful reality of the charge placed upon him. Is this really a king on the day of his investiture or a man jolted awake from a terrible nightmare, accosted by the din of some Dickensian wraith crying, ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither,” and “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required,” and “Whatsoever ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?
Beyond the splendid hymns and the Old Testament parallels, this is the most truly Christian feature of a ceremony so saturated with Christian symbolism; it is also the most perplexing to both monarchy’s critics and many of its modern defenders. This ideal of Christian kingship is as far removed from royalist aesthetics and national heritage triumphalism as it is from debates about political modernity and the merits of various systems of government. It is, at its core, an affirmation of the absolute arbitrariness with which we are all thrown into this fallen world, and a celebration of our transcendence of the tyranny of circumstance through a fundamental equality in Christ, standing as a perpetual rebuke to the lies of ‘good breeding’ no less than to modern liberal capitalist conceptions of individual initiative and reward. For precisely this reason, the motto emblazoned on its royal insignia can never be nec pluribus impar but is always fiat justitia ruat caelum. It is a vision of kingship borne out dimly but perceptibly in the great medieval ballads of the rex incognitus, with their notion that a third son of a town cobbler or an orphaned street urchin might one day win the hand of a princess or a prized place at the round table of a king’s court. It is a model which has never and will never be fully instantiated, but to strive for anything less than it would be to turn a Christian monarchy into a burlesque mockery of itself, whose own most solemn oaths and proclamations were fit for print only in the tabloids.
Elena Attfield:
“Restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order: that doing these things you may be glorious in all virtue; and so faithfully serve our Lord Jesus Christ in this life.”
Spoken on an imperially allusive opus sectile floor to Byzantine psalmody in a bygone Benedictine monastery, the above command accompanied the presentation of the Sword—for defence of the defenceless—before the crowning of Charles III as King of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth realms on May 6. They are just a few of the nostalgia-inducing words that we as English Catholics heard during the ceremony, alongside rituals decried or celebrated as ‘symbolic’ while pointing to the transcendentals. As with much high Anglican liturgy, the occasion was a beautiful theatre of what was in medieval Europe sometimes considered an eighth sacrament. Reverence for a monarchy that today relies on exterior catholicity while requiring an oath in Protestation of it has always been a difficult position in which to be found. However, just as the Coronation rite’s pomp and ceremonial stripping could ultimately not be made sense of without reference to the regal office of Jesus Christ and imitation of His sacrifice of self, so too does our faith demand and ennoble our duty of obedience as the new King’s citizens.
In a society famous for elevating choice, liberty and individualism, the maintenance of a headship that instead emphasises heavenly calling, binding service and the common good itself heeds the above command. For Catholics, the Coronation of a likely traditionally perennialist King seems just as, if not more, tolerable as times Popes have condoned Protestant sacramentals for the security of Catholics’ peace. The crux of hereditary monarchy remains a mystical one that defies the otherwise hubristically managerial materialism of Britain, through the recognition imbued in it that it is God—Being itself—Who appoints rulers, and it is to His will that rulers must conform, sacrificially, dutifully and servant-heartedly. As with his late mother’s, the Coronation of King Charles III has affirmed a democracy not just of the present but also of the past and future with which we are in communion, and the tangible passing on of inheritance above the abstract universal concepts that elected leaders today so naively consider sufficient to bind people together for a common good. What the Coronation thereby represents to English Catholics is also that which should give us hope for our country: the lay calling to imbue the temporal order with the gospel, the counteracting of decay, the continuity of restoration and, not least, that grace and power are derived only from God before Whom we are stripped of all pretence.
Contrary to despondent nostalgia for the sacramental kingdom to which the Coronation at times alluded, reconciliation has become the Catholic hierarchy’s buzzword. Historically, for the first time since the 1534 Act of Supremacy, this Coronation witnessed not only six Catholic bishops in attendance but also a blessing upon the King reserved for the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols. Comically or bewilderingly, this did face a sceptre which reflects Catholic teaching on the temporal and spiritual powers, despite their severance to now reflect the King’s supreme governorship over the Church of England. Nevertheless, speaking after the Coronation, the Cardinal explained the significance of the moment, of growing “reconciliation” and of the use of Catholic convert William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices being a nod to the continual recusant celebration of Catholic Mass during Elizabethan suppression. If retaining a shell of a good order destroyed in other lands is a trait of the non-revolutionary British, so too could be the continuity allowed by reconciliation. With Catholic Mass attendance having surpassed that of Anglican services, maintenance of things restored may not be far-fetched. So, while we can choose to look to the nostalgia-inducing symbols, rituals and façades of the ceremony in pain, it has showed us we also have cause, as believers in grace, calling and work, to view them with hope. Processing outward to the magnificent sound of Edward Elgar—a man once put to shame by British society for his Catholic faith and now beloved by it as the greatest British composer of all time—the Coronation ceremony indeed started, flowed and concluded in Pomp and Circumstance, and all that they herald in.
O Lord, save Charles our king: and hear us in the day that we shall call upon Thee. Let us pray. We beseech Thee, almighty God, that Thy servant Charles our king, who through Thy mercy has undertaken the government of this realm, may also receive an increase of all virtues. Fittingly adorned with these, may he be able to shun all evildoing, and, together with the queen consort and the royal family, to come by thy grace unto Thee Who art the way, the truth, and the life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Rafael de Arízaga:
The coronation ceremony of Charles of Great Britain invites us to do some political theology.
First, consider the order of nature. If one attends to the actual workings of political life rather than their exterior appearances, one must conclude that England ceased to be a monarchy sometime between 1688—the year of the liberal protestant revolution that deposed James II—and 1714—the year of the death of the last legitimate monarch in the Stuart line. “Monarchy” is rule by one. Instead of this, Great Britain has been ruled since that time by a virtually unopposed class of merchant nobles. What is notable is that while the monarch’s right to rule has in theory never been denied, his or her ability to exercise that right has ceased. By a diabolically effective arrangement, the monarch’s prerogatives and power have remained with him in speech and in law, but their exercise has passed, in act and in custom, to the oligarchy. The system is somewhat analogous to the right a tutor might have to manage the affairs of an imbecile under Roman law. It is not a coincidence that the figure of the “prime minister”—a creature of the oligarchy intended to be the new head of the executive power in place of (or “in the name of”) the monarch—began to take shape around the first half of the eighteenth century.
The oligarchic system retains, in their entirety, the trappings and formalities of a Christian monarchy while preserving none of its rights. One is reminded of Melville’s Benito Cereno. This theatrical aspect has surely been one of the causes of its stability over the centuries—nothing in politics imparts stability to power like the sacrality of monarchy. And so, kings and queens of Great Britain have been crowned, and continue to be crowned, to this day. Their ceremonies continue to speak of the right and duty of the monarch to rule and to judge the people, et cetera. Faithfulness to the venerable formalities of ancient tradition is a feature, not a bug, of the settlement. The more exquisitely the rite (however hollow) be reenacted, the more perfectly the true nature of the oligarchic regime remains obscured. (Of course, that performance is now combined with the pantomime of democracy, but we cannot treat of all things in this space.) Writing of the protestant succession, that liar and sophist David Hume truthfully explained the device: It is a matter “reserve or disguise, which are always employed by those, who enter upon any new project, or endeavour to innovate in any government.” It is therefore not surprising that many admirers of ancient Christendom are also attracted to the form of the British coronation ceremony. As far as it goes, the sentiment is completely understandable (for such ancient things were very good). It is also the intended purpose of the ceremony’s preservation to this day.
Second, consider the order of grace. If one attends to the reality of the divine law rather than the mere sound of words, England ceased formally to be a part of Christendom—of the temporal republic of the body of Christ—sometime upon the accession of Elizabeth Tudor. To be a part of Christendom, a Christian people, is, surely at the very least, to refrain from attacking the Christian Church. Instead, the people of England have been historically abused by their monarchs and rulers into abandoning the faith of their fathers and becoming enemies of the Church. I trust that the point needs no belaboring in these parts of the internet.
What is of interest here is that after three centuries of revolution in the world, it is in Great Britain—the perfidious one—where we find one of the few remnants of the political rites of Christendom. A coronation of a Christian monarch by a bishop of Christ’s Church, in a sanctuary consecrated to God, invoking His Holy Name. But Charles is not a monarch. Welby is not a bishop. Westminster Abbey is a seat of heretical rites. In such circumstances, what can one say of their invocation of God? In asking this question, one cannot judge the personal intentions of the participants in the ceremony—may God have mercy on their souls, as well as ours. Rather, let us concern ourselves, as political theologians, only with what the action itself says—or to put it more clearly, what the British political order says by it. I submit that what it says is, without question, an offense to God. It is no less offensive than, say, David Bawden’s proclamation as antipope in a Kansas thrift store in 1990. But it bears none of the innocuousness.
None of the above is to reproach the British people for celebrating on the occasion of the coronation. After all, why begrudge a people their joyous traditions, such as they are? Let them go out on the streets and eat their chicken and beg God to save their king. The vacuous theater of the British monarchy, imparting the authority of sacral rule to a government of merchants, has been—no question—one of the greatest acts of political genius ever recorded. Who can be blamed for falling into the spell of its mystique, the precise mechanism of which is to hold onto the sacred and beautiful forms of antiquity in order to better serve the purposes of another?
But four and a half centuries of such perverse deception is surely enough.
Taylor Patrick O’Neill:
The coronation of King Charles III was defiantly real and defiantly Christian. Detractors will argue that the British monarchy stands for nothing, that it is a show to safeguard what little cultural cache the United Kingdom retains in the twenty-first century. This is false. While it is true that the monarchy has much less legal authority than it once had, this is a particularly modern way of thinking about politics. The real political power that Charles wields is no less political for being cultural rather than an arm of the modern bureaucratic machine. While Americans rend their garments every four years over their executive, the UK shares in the calm and virtuous demeanor of their pater. In a world detached from place and beholden to its time, King Charles isa houndstooth thread running through the ages, rooting the British to place and transcending the myopia of time.
It is telling that modernity simply does not know what to make of such a coronation. The givenness of social relations, the subordination of self to the posterity of others, and, most importantly, the leitmotif of the coronation, the unrelenting and the brazen intonation of the Name of the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. Over and over again we heard proclaimed to the world that Jesus Christ rules all things. Justin Welby noted the source, end, and exemplar of Charles’s kingship to be Our Lord Himself.
The liberal mind cannot see how Christ has baptized monarchy, seeing it as only tyrannical and pompous. But Charles’s explicit promise to subordinate his entire kingship to Jesus Christ means that he is called to lead by humility and suffering, to image the one who has baptized the crown in the shedding of blood in love. “His throne,” Welby preached, “was a cross. His crown was made of thorns. His regalia were the wounds that pierced His body… We can say to the King of Kings, God Himself, as does the King here today, ‘Give grace, that in Thy service I may find perfect freedom.’” To the extent that the crown and Charles himself really stand for that authentic Christian freedom, being chained to Selfless Love, they are of immeasurable witness to the world. The British monarchy is far from perfect, but the particular goods that it retains are as medicinal and fresh to the current age as the first warm breeze after a long winter.
Cronan Yu:
It should have been cause for national celebration. Instead, for some, King Charles III’s recent coronation proved to be a catalyst for national division. At the heart of this division is a dispute over what constitutes the best form of government for Australians. Supporters of the king believe there is little reason for change, arguing the monarchy has brought Australia decades-long stability. Republicans, however, seeking to repudiate Australia’s colonial past, contend that the monarchy is outdated and assert that Australia’s future as an independent country necessitates the establishment of an Australian Head of State. They envision a country built on the foundational values of equality, merit, justice, fairness and inclusion.
As things stands, it remains unclear where the majority of Australians stand on this perennial constitutional dispute. The last time Australia went to a referendum on this issue in 1999, the republican cause lost 55% to 45%. Some suggest the tide has well and truly turned in the intervening years. Regardless of prevailing public sentiment, both alternatives—Australia as a constitutional monarchy or Australia as a republic—have their shortcomings. Appealing as the prospect of an Australia president might be to some, its most prominent proponents have, thus far, failed to substantiate a clear vision of how Australia would indeed be better off with a head of state who is crowned by democratic vote. Further, and perhaps more crucially, Australia’s political system is in crisis with only one in four Australians saying they trust our political leaders and institutions. Democracy, too, is seemingly in crisis with recent data suggesting Australians’ trust in democracyis rapidly declining. On the other hand, having a head of state who is far-removed from the day-to-day affairs of Australians, who wields little political power and effectively has little say in the governance of the country is far from ideal.
How should Australian Catholics respond to this debate? Perhaps more pertinently, how should the Catholic Church in Australia respond to this? Australia’s current crisis is indicative of a political void, and thus represents an opportunity to articulate a truly Catholic political program, one which seeks to order man to his supernatural end. In order to do so, Catholics must reject a most diabolical lie, a lie that many in the Church have sadly, though unsurprisingly, bought into: the lie that our secular world has no appetite for religious belief.
Public distrust in government suggests that our nation, our world, needs the Church, the sole beacon of hope, the ark of tradition, the only institution which can withstand the forces of the prevailing religion of our time which worships limitless freedom and boundless progress. Indeed, the Church alone has the power to defeat this secularised religion because she alone understands that our present cultural battle—the battle against “wokeism” or whatever you prefer to call it—is not merely ideological, but rather, spiritual warfare. All human conflict is ultimately theological, and so now, more than ever, the Church must work towards reordering our society not just towards the common good, but ultimately the Highest Good.
Nathaniel Gotcher:
When Queen Elizabeth II died, and Charles, Prince of Wales, was proclaimed king, one of my first thoughts was, “What will they call the Prince’s Foundation?” This organization has been an inspiration for me, an American architect, since I first learned about it—a patronage of the Prince of Wales dedicated to traditional arts and crafts. Through it, Prince Charles hoped to build up a dying nation through beautiful and thoughtful work and a return to the cultural and agricultural touchstones of a truly Great Britain. It is without a doubt a more “political” movement than any other royal initiative and neatly avoids the unfortunate prohibition on political action by royals by focusing on “culture.”
But make no mistake, Prince Charles had a political vision when he founded Poundbury and established the Prince’s School. Education, workforce, urbanism, agriculture—all priorities for the Prince’s Foundation—are policy themes for your average politician. The question only remains if this work will continue now that Charles is the king.
I believe, with great hope, that Charles is not done, and that he is the right king for our time, even as Elizabeth was the right queen for the dramatic shifts that occurred over the last seventy-five years. We need the Gardener-King, visitor of villages, and master of the arts and crafts. We need a King who can push back on an institution that has embraced being apolitical. I do not have great hope that the next generation has the will to assert any sort of royal prerogative, but if there is any chance, it is because of the example that Prince Charles, now King, can give to his son.
Matthew Roth:
Hearing “Zadok the Priest” in context is remarkable, for, although with the caveat that is the Church of England, this text is one of the simple translations from Latin to English otherwise carried over from the medieval coronation. It is a magnificent composition with a striking text that gets to the heart of what kingship is for Christians.
Alas, the moment was spoiled by television commentators speaking over the singing and, later, by internet users who associate the music (not the text) with soccer. How far we have fallen!
I am also struck by the pageantry: military, religious, and, as limited as it was this time, royal, chivalric, and noble. Even though the newly-crowned monarch, his heirs, and indeed his family seem unable to articulate why they govern and why they should do so with such spectacle, there is still the suggestion that not only does authority come from God, but that society is ordered to Him and and that the order, in the sense of drill and ceremony, of public events reflects this by being beautiful. The marching is precise, the uniforms crisp, the music splendid. The historian in me is inclined to note that this has waxed and waned in British history: The coronation of George II in 1727 for which Handel wrote the coronation anthems would have been splendid, whereas both the coronation and funeral of William IV (and Victoria’s coronation for that matter) are national embarrassments to this day. Nevertheless, we ought to preserve these things, and this no matter the form of the regime. The French national holiday showcases beautiful military pageantry which right-thinking Catholics appreciate even as they prefer or advocate for a monarchical (imperial) regime.
Obviously, the regime cannot be based on pure aesthetics—we must yield to the speculative after all—but this is not to be neglected.
One final thought: Perhaps there will be a new Carolean aesthetic, with floral ornamentation to accompany what is so far a modestly successful revival of traditional architecture in Britain.
Marlow Gazzoli:
I did not watch the coronation, but I’m glad for him; or sorry that it happened.
Puddleglum:
Well, the Coronation liturgy was not as good as in previous times. A Hindu read the epistle (wearing lay clothes); a female “bishop” read the Gospel; the King wore trousers under his robes instead of knee breeches; the “bishops’” copes were underwhelming; and (worst of all) the nobility was not wearing coronation robes and coronets, and didn’t even pay homage to the king. The music was uneven—some nice bits (Byrd) and some cringe-inducing noise (whatever those people in white suits swaying back and forth were singing). There was no tiered seating in the Abbey, and in front of the Abbey a miserable plastic tent roof, instead of a royal annexe. It was a novus ordo coronation. A priestly ordination at a trad order is done better (not to mention more efficaciously).