Catholic World News News Feature

The Reluctant Convert January 01, 2005

By Tara Holmes

Speculation that Prime Minister Tony Blair is on the brink of converting to Catholicism has been reignited by a new political biography of the British political leader. The Blairs and their Court, by Francis Beckett and David Hencke, claims that Blair will be received into the Church when he leaves office. The book draws on a string of Catholic sources, including friends of Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, clergymen, and prominent media commentators. The authors claim there is “conclusive” evidence pointing toward Blair’s conversion. One key source in the book maintains that there will be no announcement of his plans to join the Catholic Church until he steps down as prime minister.

Blair, an Anglican, is hoping to secure his third term as prime minister in 2005. He is expected to call the next general election in the spring, although one British newspaper has predicted the vote could be held as early as February 2005. In the unlikely event that Blair is not re-elected, he could be free to embrace the Catholic faith earlier than planned.

The prime minister’s wife and their four children are all practicing Catholics. Today, while serving as prime minister, Blair attends Mass on a regular basis with his family and has received Holy Communion in Catholic churches both in Britain and abroad. But Downing Street has repeatedly denied that he has any intention of converting to Catholicism. Blair has continually refused to comment on his religious beliefs, insisting that his faith is “a private matter.” In April 2002 in an interview for the Guardian, he refused to be drawn into a discussion on whether he had plans to become a Catholic, saying: “Surely being a Christian is what is important.”

TAKING COMMUNION

To understand Blair’s faith, it is helpful to wind the clock back at least eight or nine years prior to his election as Britain’s prime minister. In April 1996, when he was leader of the Labor Party, he gave a rare interview on his Christian beliefs to the Sunday Telegraph. In the article, he attacked “the narrow self-interest of Conservatism,” and claimed its values were at odds with the Christian message. His remarks provoked an outcry from critics in Westminster circles who accused him of “hijacking Christianity” by aligning it to his party’s political beliefs. His poor voting records on abortion and embryo research also came under attack.

Naturally, the controversy was aired throughout the British media and I remember writing a report for The Universe, a Catholic weekly, where I was then working as a journalist. It was at about this time that I started receiving regular telephone calls from a source in the Westminster archdiocese who wanted to discuss another controversial aspect of Tony Blair’s Christianity: my source claimed the Labor leader was receiving Holy Communion in a London Catholic church with his wife and family. The priests there, according to my source, were turning a “blind eye” to this clear violation of Church rules because they did not want the embarrassment of refusing the Eucharist to a figure of authority. The fact that Blair was, and had been, receiving Communion on a regular basis, was an “open secret” among clergymen and parishioners. But up until that moment no one with direct knowledge of the situation had dared to speak out.

On June 30, 1996, The Universe finally decided to break the story after several weeks of investigation. Under the headline “Tony Blair’s Mass Secret,” the report revealed that the Labor leader was receiving the Eucharist at St. Joan of Arc Church, in Highbury, London. Before going to press, the journalist working with me on the story had invited both the parish priest and Tony Blair to comment on the report. The priest conceded that Blair had attended Mass in his parish, but would not discuss the matter of Holy Communion. Blair, himself, issued the following one-line statement through a spokesman: “Because this is a private matter, I do not wish to comment on it.”

In the days and weeks that followed, the disclosure that Blair had breached the Code of Canon Law by receiving Holy Communion without being a member of the Catholic Church, provoked a flood of anger. Canon law states that non-Catholics are only allowed Communion when there is a danger of death or “other grave circumstances.” The Code also states that the Eucharist may be given to a non-Catholic who does not have access to the minister of his own church.

BLAME THE MESSENGER

Yet The Universe was the target of massive criticism from both inside and outside the Church for covering the story. Some critics even claimed the revelation was not in the public interest. Of course the opposite was true. Almost every British newspaper picked up the story, many giving it front-page coverage. Within Church circles, there was much speculation—some of it approaching the level of paranoia—about the source who had approached the newspaper. A senior Catholic figure contacted the editor, demanding to know the name of the source. Labor Party supporters condemned the story as a sinister “Tory” plot aimed at ruining Blair’s chances of becoming the next prime minister. There was much anger and bitter recriminations. It would be putting it mildly to say the story had touched a raw nerve.

In the pages of The Universe, a fierce dispute raged for several weeks. Some clergymen and religious argued that the newspaper had gone too far in publishing the story. Others claimed that conscience came before the letter of the law, making it clear that a number of priests were regularly giving Communion to non-Catholics as “a matter of conscience” regardless of the provisions of canon law. Sister Josephine Tuckwell, CSA, a nun from East Sussex, went further, accusing the paper of creating “Catholic dirty linen to wash in public.” In a letter published in The Universe in July 1996, she issued the following stinging rebuke:

Of greater concern is the infringement of the Massgoer’s right to privacy in a matter concerning himself and the parish priest, who alone knows all the facts in what you describe as a “sensitive issue.” If the priest’s judgment is being questioned, comment should be submitted to the competent ecclesiastical authority, not to trial by media. No doubt many priests have to use their jurisdiction to decide whether a non-Catholic spouse may receive Communion, and turning the journalistic spotlight on an individual case can only make the matter more delicate and possibly result in some Massgoers being deprived of a permission that they might otherwise receive.

Later that month the newspaper received a petition from 132 parishioners at St. Joan of Arc Church, where Blair had been receiving Communion. The 5-page petition stated: “We deeply regret the upset articles like this must cause to the Blairs and whatever the rights and wrongs of canonical law we cannot feel this article was written with generous intent.”

CATHOLIC REACTIONS

Although the Universe coverage may have caused personal embarrassment to Tony Blair and to the clergy and parishioners of St. Joan’s, most Catholics evidently did not accept the notion that the story had done irreparable damage to the Church, or that it had been published with ill intent. Lay Catholics in particular called upon the Catholic bishops of England and Wales to enforce the rules on Holy Communion.

Peter Sims, a Catholic from Greenford, Middlesex, argued: Tony Blair considers it a “private matter” that he receives the Blessed Sacrament in a Catholic Church. The very term “Holy Communion” tells us that it is not. The Catholic sacrament is withheld from our separated brethren under normal circumstances precisely because they are not in full communion with us and with Rome.

Joseph Peach of Poole, Dorset, called on Blair to “play fair” and not “bend the rules.” He wrote: “A wise leader needs to learn obedience to avoid arrogance.” Cathy Miller, a divorcee from Canton, Cardiff, spoke of how her conscience did not allow her to receive Holy Communion in light of her irregular marital status. She also questioned the notion that attending Mass is a private matter. The Association of Interchurch Families, which represents baptized Christians in mixed marriages, did not endorse Blair’s actions either, noting that the admission of non-Catholics to Communion was always “by way of exception.”

The public furor also meant that the Catholic hierarchy’s hand was finally forced on the matter. The late Cardinal Basil Hume, then the Archbishop of Westminster, wrote to the Labor leader asking him to stop receiving Communion. A priest who served as a source for the authors of the new book on Blair claims that the cardinal “would have preferred to go on ignoring the situation”. But now the matter was out in the open, “he had to make a ruling”. The book states: “He could not afford to let people think there was one rule for a prospective prime minister and another for everyone else.”

In his reply to the cardinal, Blair promised to stop receiving Communion but added: “I wonder what Jesus would have made of it.” The book also claims that a friend of Blair’s, Peter Thomson, said he was much angrier than his letter to Cardinal Hume suggested. In an interview with a British tabloid toward the end of 1996, Blair said the controversy over his decision to receive Holy Communion was the low point of his year.

STILL BENDING THE RULES

So what had driven Blair to receive Holy Communion on a regular basis without becoming a Catholic? (The parishioners who supported Blair and condemned the Universe story had suggested in their petition that he may have been receiving Communion in the Catholic Church for as long as 10 years.) He must have known the rules. His wife is a cradle Catholic and would presumably have explained them to him.

The claim that Blair wanted to worship alongside his family did not quite wash. In The Blairs and their Court, Beckett and Hencke insist that this is not the whole truth. Before he became prime minister, Blair would attend Mass on a regular basis at Westminster Cathedral. He was usually on his own, and would always receive Communion. According to the book, the priests there knew him well. He would attend either the 9 am Mass with his family or the 5:30 pm Mass by himself.

The situation set alarm bells ringing in the Church of England, and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury at that time, Dr. George Carey, wrote to Blair. “There are many who are deeply troubled by a view being disseminated by the press that you are about to ‘convert,’” Archbishop Carey observed. To quell such rumors, he urged Blair to “be seen occasionally, at an Anglican or free church act of worship.”

In his reply, Blair claimed that had attended Mass on his own only once. He had expected his family to join him and they had been delayed, he explained. The book’s authors insist that this was untrue, claiming that Blair had been a regular worshipper at the cathedral for several years, whether his family was with him or not.

Since Cardinal Hume asked him to desist from taking Communion, Blair has relied heavily on a provision in canon law that allows non-Catholics to receive the Eucharist. Anglicans are permitted to receive Communion in a Catholic Church when no Anglican church is available and they are in “grave spiritual need.” When he is traveling abroad and there is no Anglican church nearby, Blair has often received Communion in the Catholic Church. In a front-page article in October 2004, the London Catholic Herald stated that Masses, including one on the Feast of the Assumption on August 15, had been arranged at Blair’s request during his summer vacation in Italy. It is also understood that Cardinal Hume had indicated to Blair that it was unacceptable for him to receive Communion in a Catholic Church in Britain but “all right to do so when in Tuscany for the holidays...as there was no Anglican church nearby.”

Last summer, while on holiday with his family in Tuscany, Blair took Communion while staying at the estate of Prince Girolamo Guiccardi Strozzi in Cusona. Local clergy in Florence, however, did not believe that Blair had satisfied canonical norms. They wrote to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, to complain. They argued that the Anglican church in Florence was only a half-hour drive from his vacation home; therefore Blair had broken the rules insofar there was an easily available Anglican church.

FAITH IN QUESTION

In their book, Beckett and Hencke maintain that Tony Blair also received Communion during a visit to the Vatican in 2003. They observe:

Apart from the well-publicized formal meetings with the Pope in which the latter [the Pope] argued against attacking Iraq, there was one utterly private meeting. The Pope’s secretary, Bishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, said a Mass just for the two of them, and both received Communion from him. The Pope would not have allowed that unless he was sure his visitor was, in his heart, a Roman Catholic.

The Vatican has neither confirmed nor denied this report. If indeed it is accurate, and the Pope is persuaded that Tony Blair has embraced the teachings of the Catholic Church, why has the British leader not yet taken the final step on the road the Rome?

On one level, it is not hard to see why he might want to convert. His wife Cherie is a Liverpool-born Catholic with an Irish background, and their four children are being brought up as Catholics. Christopher Graffius, the Catholic Times political correspondent and a former assistant to the prominent Catholic peer, Lord Alton, argues: “The fact that Tony Blair goes to Mass regularly makes his conversion a possibility. One cannot doubt the sincerity of Cherie’s faith.”

But should we doubt Tony’s own faith? If one assumes that Blair, through the influence of his wife, is persuaded that the teachings of the Catholic Church are true, then what is to stop him converting now? Why hasn’t he joined the Catholic Church already? And if on the other hand he is not fully persuaded of the truth of Catholicism, why does he continue to receive the Eucharist at every available opportunity?

There are several theories on why Blair has not yet taken the step. First, to convert right now Blair would need real courage. If he did so, his political burdens would multiply, as he would be required to embrace the Church’s teaching on moral issues. Although Blair has claimed to be “personally opposed to abortion,” his stance on embryo research, cloning, and abortion has been consistently anti-life. A press release from the Westminster-based Society for Unborn Children in November 2004 illustrates the point. The statement criticizes Blair for having voted to make abortion legal at any stage of pregnancy, on three occasions. It also states that he has “promoted the distribution of the morning-after pill to teenagers and given his personal support for the legislation on human cloning.”

Many Catholics seriously doubt the sincerity of the prime minister’s Christian faith because of his stance on these issues. In an open letter to Blair, William Keenan, a Catholic journalist and writer, argues that the prime minister is presiding over one of the “most anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and anti-religious governments in modern times.” His letter covers five main points:

1) Catholic chaplains are no longer allowed to be given the names of Catholic patients in hospitals, as the department of health has ruled that this would violate the Data Protection Act; 2) Teenage girls can now have an abortion without their parents’ knowledge or consent; 3) The right of Catholic schools to set their own admission criteria is under grave threat from increased government interference; 4) The government drive to force Catholic schools to teach sex education, including the promotion of artificial contraception, is in direct conflict with Church teaching; 5) The government is backing a Mental Capacity Bill—which leading doctors, lawyers, and clergymen believe will set up a pathway for routine lethal injection and “death-wish wills”—both verbal and written.

Anti-Catholic laws

Canon Timothy Russ, parish priest for Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence, agrees that moral issues are a major stumbling block on Blair’s path to Rome. In October 2004, the priest had been reported as claiming Blair wished to convert but did not yet have the time to focus on his decision. Canon Russ was believed to have speculated with Blair over lunch as to whether a Catholic could ever become prime minister.

This brings us to the second theory on why Blair has not yet become a Catholic. Technically there is no ban on a Catholic becoming a prime minister but there is still a provision in British law that makes it a “high misdemeanour” or criminal offense for a Catholic prime minister to advise the monarch on appointments to the Church of England. Catholics were barred from sitting in both the House of Lords and House of Commons from 1678 until the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829. Since that time there has never been a Catholic prime minister.

In recent years there have been several unsuccessful attempts to repeal anti-Catholic legislation. For instance the 1701 Act of Settlement enshrines anti-Catholic sentiment into British law. It prohibits a British monarch or possible heir to the throne from marrying a Catholic. The act was introduced at a time of widespread persecution of Catholics. But the law’s anti-Catholic provisions were enforced as recently as 1988 when the Duke of Kent’s son married a baptized but non-practicing Catholic and was forced to renounce his right of succession. The late Cardinal Thomas Winning, the former Archbishop of Glasgow, branded the act as “an embarrassing anachronism for both the royal family and the British Parliament.” He called for a change in the law to enable Catholics to play an equal role in the life of the nation. In December 2000, the Guardian newspaper called for the law to be axed, insisting that it violated article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.

Christopher Graffius agrees that anti-Catholic sentiment in British law is “repugnant” and “inappropriate” for the modern age. He argues: “Our laws say something about the standards by which we live. There is still a provision in English law that any Catholic who advises the Monarch should be banned from public office for life. Catholicism is the only religion to be singled out in this way.”

However, Graffius is doubtful that the law would be enforced if Tony Blair became a Catholic. In days gone by, a prime minister was expected to be a member of the Church of England. Today, Charles Kennedy, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, is a Catholic, and the opposition leader Michael Howard is Jewish and an active member of his synagogue.

WHY WAIT?

So, if the law is a “dead letter” and unlikely to be enforced, what other political problems could be preventing Blair from becoming a Catholic? Anthony Howard, a British political commentator who knows Blair and is writing a biography of Cardinal Hume, maintains that the prime minister has not announced his conversion because of sensitivities surrounding the Northern Ireland peace process. Yet this theory is not universally accepted in Westminster circles.

If there are no political grounds for stopping Blair from becoming a Catholic, is it personal reasons that have held him back? The authors of The Blairs and their Court suggest rather cynically that Blair’s reluctance to proclaim his faith is more likely due to an “instinct for secrecy.”

While the book raises some interesting questions, it overlooks the most central issue: perhaps Blair is not ready, for whatever reason, to make that final leap of faith. First and foremost, he most certainly needs to embrace the Church’s teaching on moral issues. The fact that he continues to attend Mass every Sunday with his family keeps the door open to the possibility that he may become a Catholic one day. Only God knows when this might be.

[AUTHOR ID] Tara Holmes is a freelance journalist in the United Kingdom and a regular contributor to The Times.