The Spectator’s notes | 20 June 2013

When he arrived for the G8 in Co. Fermanagh, President Obama told the people of Northern Ireland that those living with conflict in far-flung places are ‘studying what you’re doing’ and that ‘You’re the blueprint to follow’. If they really were studying it, they would be less confident of the blueprint status. It is not true that the Belfast Agreement meant that, as the President put it, ‘clenched fists gave way to outstretched hands’. What happened was that the roughest major grouping on each side — the Paisleyites and Sinn Fein — saw that they could crowd out their more moderate rivals and divide the spoils of office between them. If hands are outstretched, it is more for public money than for peace. The undoubted benefit has been that it is not currently in the interest of anyone important to kill other people. But there has been no burying of past antagonisms and no serious contrition. Sectarianism, rather than becoming a thing of the past, is now institutionalised. In this respect, Northern Ireland today is not a future model, but an old-fashioned gangsters’ deal.

‘What is the future of Christianity in Britain, Mr Moore?’ I was asked as I rushed down the stairs to catch a train. I wished I had the gift of concision of the late William Douglas-Home, who, when asked in an exam paper ‘What is the future of coal?’, wrote ‘Smoke’. I had just been addressing a meeting of the Friends of the Ordinariate, the body set up by Pope Benedict to enable Anglicans to be in communion with the Catholic Church without abandoning the liturgical and spiritual traditions of their Anglicanism. It tries to bring reality to Jesus’ own statement: ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ One of the least-noticed changes in recent times is that the ecumenical movement, having originally been advanced by liberals, is now, in essence, evangelical.