My Lords, I intervene in the gap merely to remind the House that we learn to live with anomaly—indeed, we might say that we are an anomaly. The difficulty comes when we seek to right that anomaly, and that is the problem with which we are faced. We can live with things because they work, until we decide to put them right so that they are right. The problem here is that we are not quite putting them right.
Last night, in the cellars of this House, more than 200 of Her Majesty’s loyal servants—Members of both Houses and servants of these Houses—gathered for the Ash Wednesday mass. We were not checked by the police to see whether we had taken bombs or any kinds of dangerous things down—the days to which the right reverend Prelate referred have gone—but we are as much citizens of this country as anyone else. If we are going to right the inequalities, we should recognise that. I shall vote later on, against many of my co-religionists, in favour of righting an anomaly which
I think exists as far as gay marriage is concerned. It is an insult to every loyal Catholic that we still talk about the history, when, on both sides—let us say with equality—people behaved in an entirely unchristian way.
There is a simple way forward, which is to recognise that the head of state does not need to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England in the same terms. That was true in the past, because King James II was a Catholic and head of the Church of England. The dreadful William of Orange was technically a Calvinist and lot of other things as well, and he was the head of the Church of England. George I, who could hardly have understood the liturgy of the Church of England, was a Lutheran and was head of the Church of England. Indeed, we have those problems here today. The Church of England does not technically recognise the orders of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, yet it has allowed its head to communicate in a church whose very ceremonies it holds to be invalid. If that cannot be the basis of sorting this problem out, I really do not understand it. What worries me is that we are not saying that this is the moment to see the monarchy again as the symbol of unity and as the symbol of equality. This is the moment to say that Catholics have as much right as any other members of this great country. I am ashamed of the fact that the Government have failed to do that.
The Queen is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England as far as the law of Christ allows. Can the Church of England really believe that the law of Christ allows it to say that there is inherent at the heart of our great country this fundamental statement, which is that, after 400 years, we can welcome His Holiness the Pope to the Houses of Parliament but we cannot allow those who in all faith—and I am a convert after all—have recognised the nature of the Catholic Church and have joined it?
I finish simply with this. I do not agree with my great old friend Lord Luce. This is not a matter of negotiation between the churches. Are we really going to say that an individual is going to be told that he must put either his faith or his heritage at risk? Talk about Paris is worth a mass! I am ashamed of a Government who cannot see that this matter should have been resolved in this Bill, instead of which we have half a Bill and it is not one that I am prepared to support.
2.39 pm