A Tale of Two Westminsters

There is a firm expectation that the See of Westminster will be filled very early in the New Year, and a persistent rumour that it will be filled by one of the Holy Father's closest allies, Fr Aidan Nichols OP.

Well, don't hold your breath. It was, after all, the then Cardinal Ratzinger who described Episcopal appointments in England as "a golden circle that we cannot break". But, like all German intellectuals and unlike his predecessor, he is genuinely interested in this country. So you never know.

It is a commonplace that there is no Christian Democratic party, as such, in Britain. But that is quite mistaken. Rather, well into living memory, there used to be three. Out of three. And then, without the slightest reference to the electorate at large, there was none.

The last hope of that tradition within the Bloc Parties was the pro-life social democrat, John Smith. Can you imagine him waging the Iraq War? Can you imagine him legalising human-animal crossbreeding, the production of babies as spare parts, or the listing of two women as the parents on a birth certificate? Of course not.

Now that, except where very unusual individual candidates are concerned, it has become a mortal sin to vote for any of them in a parliamentary election, a decent appointment to Westminster really could make a very significant difference. Fr Nichols's last book, The Realm, was scathingly and brilliantly critical of all three parties, by name.

Cardinal Nichols, or a Cardinal very like him, is just what we need to put out the message, not least in Scotland where the hierarchy has been absorbed into the Nationalist nomenklatura and in Northern Ireland where its main focus is understandably the Republic, that only pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war candidates are morally acceptable, and that where the parties fail to provide them, then the congregations of the churches (by no means only the Catholic Church) should simply do so instead.

That was how all three of the old parties were started, after all.