I am very pleased that Tim Stanley is going to be on Question Time tomorrow, so I hope that he will take this post in that spirit.
Southern, public school, Tory Catholics are so rare that they all know each other. Not only in the media. At all.
(Tim, I ought to make clear, is a state school convert and an erstwhile Labour parliamentary candidate who is doing a kind of impersonation of them.)
(Tim, I ought to make clear, is a state school convert and an erstwhile Labour parliamentary candidate who is doing a kind of impersonation of them.)
Yet they have somehow managed to take control of the highest-circulation broadsheet newspaper in the country. Specifically, a kind of ultra-traditionalist tendency within them has done so. That is a tiny body of people, but one that is now able to get itself even onto the Question Time panel.
As the academic study of the media broadens and deepens, someone really should, and doubtless will, write a doctoral thesis on how this happened, for the perfectly good reason that it is important, and for the even better reason that it is interesting.
Meanwhile, in terms of regular attendees, the Catholic Church is the single largest religious organisation in England, as also in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Therefore, the single largest subculture of the religiously observant in England must be that huge majority of Catholics which is pretty much orthodox either entirely or on everything except contraception, which is at least ordinarily present at the Ordinary Form, which is state-educated, which is in general broadly leftish and quite often very left-wing, which is overwhelmingly Labour-voting at parliamentary elections, which is mostly Labour-voting for everything, and which is heavily concentrated in the North, in the Midlands, in parts of London, and in certain redoubts elsewhere.
Therefore, the single largest subculture of the religiously observant in England must be that huge majority of Catholics which is pretty much orthodox either entirely or on everything except contraception, which is at least ordinarily present at the Ordinary Form, which is state-educated, which is in general broadly leftish and quite often very left-wing, which is overwhelmingly Labour-voting at parliamentary elections, which is mostly Labour-voting for everything, and which is heavily concentrated in the North, in the Midlands, in parts of London, and in certain redoubts elsewhere.
Those account for a fair number of the MPs of whom you never hear. Only about one in 20 MPs is ever on national or even any television, and only about half of those on any regular basis or when any sizeable number of people might be watching. Among the other 19 out of 20 are a good many of those mainstream Catholics.
But, unless I am very much mistaken, and I apologise if I am, they do not exist at all in the media. People who grew up in it and who claim to have left, yet who cannot stop going on about it, yes. But never people who are still in it.
So, being ignored MPs or nonexistent commentators, mainstream Catholics, the largest religious community in each of the four parts of the United Kingdom, are never on Question Time. Whereas Tim Stanley is. And good luck to him. But what about everyone else?
Careful now, you are not from that background yourself. You have fitted into it very well and you did so straight away, a governorship of a flag ship school as soon as they could fill in the forms and everything. But you are not a typical voice of Northern, state school, Labour Catholics who don't mind the New Right any more, or even less, than Tim Stanley is a typical voice of Southern, public school, Tory Catholics who will only have the Old Rite.
ReplyDeleteI have never claimed to be.
ReplyDeleteIt could be worse. Stanley is all right as they go. I quote from you on the day of the Papal canonisations:
ReplyDelete"Today, let us commit to the powerful intercession of Pope Saint John XXIII and of Pope Saint John Paul II the cause of orthodox Catholic witness in the United Kingdom.
Instead of a cartel of theologically illiterate, economically neoliberal, internationally neoconservative, personally debauched fops who think that their political opinions are the Faith and that its practice is an enormous camp joke, including an opportunity to pick up men.
A cartel headed and controlled by a man who has dedicated his life to damaging the Church by means of malicious gossip, and who has had only too much success hitherto, yet who has managed to arrogate to himself the position in our public discourse where an orthodox Catholic ought to be.
Orate pro nobis."
Not arrogated it to himself enough to get a spot on Question Time. He has to watch one of his proteges, barely into his thirties, on it instead. I doubt he'll tune in. It will be worth watching for that knowledge alone.
He has been a Labour PPC, they never gave you anything above parish level. Unbelievable.
ReplyDelete