Michael Gove - sectarian idiot, or stalwart of Protestant faith?

[Jimgward]

Mrs May is our first Catholic prime minister
michael gove

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comm ... -zmbgdqjz3

The PM’s outlook on life is informed by traditional Anglo-Catholic beliefs that pose a risk to our post-Brexit future

As sacrifices go, it may not seem very much. But as symbols go, it says a lot.

Theresa May’s decision to give up her favourite crisps for Lent may not have been headline news. I suspect, however, that it’s at least as important as anything else we’ve discovered in the past ten days. Because it goes to the heart of the beliefs that guide, and the background that has shaped, our prime minister.

The principle of Lenten sacrifice, of giving up something cherished to recall the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, is a discipline observed by many Christians. But it is particularly a feature of Catholic practice. And Theresa May is, I believe, Britain’s first Catholic prime minister.

An Anglo-Catholic rather than a Roman Catholic, but no less a Catholic for that. One of the many wonders of the Anglican Church is that it comprehends both those who think of themselves as definitively Protestant in the tradition of Thomas Cranmer and those who believe they are continuity Catholics practising a spirituality and believing in a theology that has passed down from St Augustine to Pusey and Keble. Theresa May’s father, Hubert Brasier, was a priest who very much subscribed to the latter tradition.

Her unique brand of conservatism appeals to Labour voters
He trained at the College of the Resurrection, at Mirfield in Yorkshire, an Anglo-Catholic centre which combines preparation for Anglican ministry with a monastic community. The prime minister has herself revealed something of her family’s specifically Catholic approach to worship when she was a guest on Desert Island Discs. She chose two hymns. And one of them, Therefore We, Before Him Bending, is particularly theologically significant. It is normally sung during a service known as Benediction of (or with) the Blessed Sacrament, an Anglo-Catholic ritual which was illegal before 1917, so incendiary was it in the eyes of Low Church Protestants. The Rev Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, has explained that Benediction, “the worship of the holy sacrament — or ‘wafer worship’ as Protestant scoffers often describe it — is pretty hardcore Anglo-Catholic stuff”.

Now, of course, growing up in a household steeped in Catholic spirituality is one thing. Carrying that through to one’s life and work quite another. But I believe the best way of considering the prime minister’s approach to office, in the round, is to see it through the prism of Catholic thought and practice.

Particularly Catholic social thought. There is a coherent and distinguished political tradition, pioneered by, but not unique to, Catholic intellectuals which attempts to steer between the twin dangers of excessive individualism and oppressive statism. It has its roots in the philosophy of Aquinas, borrows from the work of Aristotle and was revived for the industrial age by Pope Leo XIII with his encyclical De Rerum Novarum (Of Revolutionary Things) in 1891.

Catholic social thought places emphasis on the cultivation of virtue rather than the exercise of liberty or the accumulation of prosperity as mankind’s goal. In economic terms it thinks of the common good, with individuals given the chance to find dignity in the exercise of skill, as the guiding principle rather than profits or abstract equality targets. And it is particularly concerned about the dignity of work and workers. It celebrates vocation, believes in worker participation in industrial decision-making and sees firms as institutions which exist to serve society and imbue individual lives with purpose rather than just maximising shareholder value.

It is striking how much of the prime minister’s rhetoric and policy reflects these beliefs. In interviews, including most strikingly in the New Statesman last month, she refers repeatedly to the common good. Her flirtation with workers on boards, interest in corporate governance reform and laceration of capitalists who plunder firms rather than protect workers is all of a piece.

Just as the Catholic social thinkers of the late 19th century were reacting to the capitalist ruthlessness of utilitarians and Manchester Liberals while also guarding against the growing allure of Marxism and revolution, so the prime minister’s supporters see her reacting against the excesses of unfettered globalisation and corporate greed while also guarding against the dangers of a populist and protectionist counter-revolution.

Until recently the principal intellectual upholders of Catholic social thought in British politics have been identified with the “Blue Labour” tradition — individuals such as Jon Cruddas, MP, Adrian Pabst and Lord Glasman. The occupation of this philosophical terrain by Mrs May is in line with her broader incursion into Labour’s electoral heartland.

Paradoxically, it is precisely Mrs May’s conservatism — her ethic of service, attachment to traditions and unease with globalisation’s wrenching pace of change — that makes her so attractive to Labour voters outside the major cities. But it also exposes the government to a longer-term risk. Britain’s path to preeminence in the past followed our break with Catholicism and embrace of the Reformation. We pursued a global, maritime, buccaneering, individualistic, liberal destiny — the spirit of our capitalism was infused with a very Protestant ethic. Now that we are once more freeing ourselves from a conformist Continent to make our own way in the world the question of whether we need to be more radical to maximise opportunities or more cautious to reassure and protect is central to our politics. I can see the case for both. Which may not be very crusading. But I suspect it makes me genuinely Anglican.

[outasite]

There a few things I would call this back stabbing ********. But I do not want to end up in the Pit.

[Devil]

Anglo-catholicism is part of the Protestant Anglican Church and the boss-man is the Archbish of Canterbury. Gove is just a political idiot who bends in the wind.

Anglo-Catholics reject all these [Roman Catholic] claims except that of Primacy on the following grounds: (i) There is no evidence in Scripture or anywhere else that Christ conferred these powers upon St. Peter; (2) there is no evidence that St. Peter claimed them for himself or his successors; (3) there is strong contrary evidence that St. Peter erred in an important matter of faith in Antioch, the eating together and social intercourse of Jewish and Gentile Christians affecting the whole future of the Church and the Christian Religion, and this lapse was so serious that St. Paul withstood him to the face; (4) he did not preside at the first Council of the Church in Jerusalem and did not hand down the decision of the Council; (5) he was Bishop of Antioch before he was bishop anywhere else, and, if the papal claims are in any way true, the Bishop of Antioch has a better right to hold them; (6) that St. Peter was ever in Rome is disputed, and the most that can be said for it is that it is an interesting historical problem; (7) there is no evidence whatsoever that he conferred such powers upon his successors-to-be in the See of Rome; (8) there was no primitive acceptance of such claims, and there never has been universal acceptance in any later age.