The Spectator's Notes

12 January 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

Whenever I think of Ann Widdecombe’s reaction to the news last month that Tony Blair had become a Roman Catholic, I still feel upset. Miss Widdecombe said that he had ‘some questions to answer’: she had examined his voting record in the House of Commons and noted that it had ‘gone against the Church’s teaching on more than one occasion’. So what? There is no Catholic in the whole of history who has not gone against the Church’s teaching ‘on more than one occasion’. A fortiori, there is no Catholic convert who has not done so before he or she became a Catholic. Does Ann Widdecombe see Mr Blair’s failings as some sort of disqualification for conversion? Doesn’t she know that you don’t become a Catholic because you are perfect, but because you are imperfect? Doesn’t it occur to her that she, as a Catholic, should be killing the fatted calf in Mr Blair’s honour?

Muslims in Oxford have put in for permission to broadcast the call to prayer from the Oxford Central Mosque. Oxford already has the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, and this will soon have a 108ft-high minaret and a 75ft dome. So Gibbon’s famous fantasy has partly become fact. He imagined what would have happened if Charles Martel had lost the battle of Poitiers in 733: ‘…the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.’ I wonder what the solution to the call to prayer problem is. If the authorities permit the call, they will be extremely unpopular with the great majority who do not want our public space Islamicised. But if they forbid it, they will be accused of Islamophobia if they continue to allow church bells. It would be a sad solution if the city which Gerard Manley Hopkins called ‘bell-swarmèd’, the place whose bells ‘summoned’ John Betjeman, had to fall silent in deference to multiculturalism.

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David Watkins

January 12th, 2008 1:44am Report this comment

Charles Moore, who thinks Ann Widdecombe should be killing the fatted calf in honour of Tony Blair, should re-read the Gospels. The prodigal son publicly and passionately repented: "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son". Of all living statesmen, the invicibly smug Mr Blair is hardest to imagine using such words.

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