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The somewhat controversial visit of the Pope highlights the role of religion in culture and society. Too often the discussions revolve around unhappy issues where the churches have fallen short. In this melting pot the relationship between Rome and Canterbury becomes confused and detached from history.

The Roman Catholic Church was devloped  on the framework of the falling Roman Empire over whose territory it spread the Gospel and developed a culture and civilisation founded on clergy rather than soldiers. It was an an age when scholarship, writing, teaching and the moral code was under the final control of the Pope in Rome, rather than with the King of whichever country. With Martin Luther came the birth of the Protestant revolution.

At the time of the Reformation politics and religion were virtually one and the same. In choosing the Protestant cause, England finally asserted its independence from Rome which had held sway over it, off and on, since the landing of Julius Caesar. In our unwritten Constitution the Church of England is the guarantor of spiritual and cultural independence.

Unlike Roman Catholicism, the Church of England champions an evolving interpretation of the Christian Faith, based upon mankind’s own evolution and understanding of the mysteries of science and life. Thus married clergy, divorce, abortion, women priests, gay bishops all in time find their place within the fabric of the Church and the society it represents. There are debates and difficulties but in an essentially democratic structure, these issues play out.

Rome is the antithesis of this idea. It is an autocracy, based on a finite interpretation of the Christian Faith, unmoved by the evolution of knowledge, fixed in its own law, demanding its own discipline. Its will must be imposed regardless of the consequences in human suffering, as in, for example, condoms in Africa. There is a sharp divergence between what the Roman church teaches and what the Faith is supposed to represent.

In this context the Pope’s description of our country’s championing of equality of sexes, races, sexual orientation and faiths as aggressive secularism (this was the coded message to what his close advisor and friend calls a third world country) these words may not, after the glow of hospitality has faded, prove to have been well chosen.

They do underline why this country is not and never will become Roman Catholic and they confirm that union between Rome and Canterbury can never happen until the Vatican walks into the modern world.