** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 772 17 May 18 THE HARRY & MEGHAN SHOW OR THE WANING OF THE MONARCHY

BEHIND THE GLITTERING ROYAL MARRIAGE SHOW AT WINDSOR, THE WANING OF THE MONARCHY?
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‘Why do the Queen and other members of the royal family live in sumptuous palaces? Whence their wealth and privileges? Why are they are waited on, hand and foot, by scores of servants and lackeys who minister to their every wish? Why are they chauffeured around in vintage Rolls-Royces and Bentleys? Protected by hosts of secret agents and submachine-wielding cops? Where is the democracy, where is the equality Britain preaches in that? Why can’t the Queen and her decrepit husband live in a simple bungalow in Hastings or Romford, like thousands of normal old pensioners? Why can’t Charles and Camilla, William and Kate, Harry and Meghan, with their cute little brats and other royal parasites quit their luxurious mansions and go to live on a council estate like hundreds of thousands of ordinary people? And do an honest job? Why not?’

Bob, a bolshie friend of mine, demanded all that on FB. A tad intemperate but…does he have a point? ‘Love covers a multitude of sins’, St Peter wrote. The love between Harry and Meghan is hardly a sin. More likely a con. It cannot conceal its being part of a wily PR strategy to stupefy the people into supporting a dubious monarchy, whose sell by date is long past.

‘Meghan the Menace’. So, according to the fun Popbitch newsletter, have Buck House courtiers nicknamed Prince Harry’s bi-racial bride-to-be, Meghan Markle. Mind you, not that ruffling a few feathers is bad. Meghan might be a ‘shallow social climber’, as a relative called her, ‘ambitious’, a ‘ruthless, designing networker’, ‘a scheming hugger’, all that but…does it matter? Yes, it does. Because this Yankee girl is part of the great royal con game. Designed to hoodwink the great unwashed – like, cynics say, Meg has duped her carrot-headed bloke - into swallowing their soppy romance, hook, line and sinker. Actually, a diabolical establishment narrative. Inferring that the monarchy is good for the country. Or it is, rather, as playwright John Osborne once asserted, ‘a gold filling in a mouth of decay’?

Time was when the English monarch’s credentials came not from men but from God. It was the divine right of Kings’ doctrine. A dogma which cost Charles I his head. After the 1689 ‘Glorious Revolution’ the Crown has ruled with the consent of the people. And today Britain claims, rightly or wrongly, to be a democracy. An egalitarian society, governed by and for the citizens. All politicians swear up and down that is so. How do you square that, as Bob reasonably asks, with the immense, extravagant privileges and wealth of the royal family?

The Queen? A sweet nonagenarian. Unthinkable to be rude to her. Yet…she is officially the supreme governor of the Church of England. Alan Watts, former mentor of mine, held that the monarch, thanks to her quaint title of ‘Defender of the Faith’, represents a link with Heaven. That she brings the English nation closer to God. Beautiful idea but has Queen Liz been true to that? Note that ‘Faith’ in the title signifies the Protestant version of Christianity. Protestantism, if it means anything, means the Bible. Which Elizabeth took an oath to uphold when crowned. (Indeed, at her 1953 coronation  she was handed the Good Book, with the words ‘the most valuable thing the world can afford’.) Has the Queen, in her long reign, defended the Christian, Protestant Faith? Take the ordination of women and gay marriage. Can they be squared with biblical teaching? Not according to the service for Holy Matrimony in the Anglican Prayer Book. Or to what St Paul says in I Timothy 2:12. Could you then argue
that Queen Liz has been unfaithful to her coronation oath? That she is a traitor? Liable to being deposed, maybe even tried, like it happened to Charles I? Yes gods!

Of course, the Queen’s conscience may tell her that certain innovations do not contradict Holy Scripture. Given that the Anglican Church whose governor she is has passed both measures, she would be justified in thinking them permissible. That shifts the onus unto the erring, relativist and foolish Church of England – may God not forgive her. At best, the Queen is not guilty because she is inculpably ignorant of biblical truth. Would that let her off the hook? Hhhmmm…there is a difference though between subjective feeling and objective guilt. Even if the Queen believes in all conscience she is innocent, objectively speaking…another matter.

Poor Liz is 92. God knows how long she will reign. Prince Charles’ advent looms. King Charles III: an occasion to rejoice? Hardly, given he intimated that he wishes to be defender of ‘Faiths’, in the plural. Surely a theological and historical absurdity. His filthy rich Wahhabi friends, with whom he has danced the jolly Saudi sword dance, might be delighted but the bones of his noble ancestor, crusading King Richard the Lion Heart, would turn in his grave. Moreover, Charles and his Queen-to-be Camilla are adulterers, morally responsible for the destruction of the late, lamented Princess Diana, let’s not forget that.

Philosopher Jeremy Bentham asked of any English institution: ‘What’s the use of it?’ Historically, there was a use for the monarchy but…today? Not even the imminent Harry & Meghan glittering show at St George’s Chapel, Windsor (attended by tyrants like the horrid al-Khalifa ruler of Bahrain) can conceal the charade – no, the con - the monarchy has become.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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