You realise quite how the Church in this country has changed when, right here in the old coal and steel belt, the most actively Catholic teenager you know, all of whose ancestors have been Catholics since forever, has no idea when St Patrick's Day is and no inclination to find out.
Yet Anglicans remain convinced the Catholic Church is very Irish.
ReplyDeleteI have a theory that that is a euphemism for class. Anglican clergy are very middle-class. Catholic ones are, in rare cases, extremely posh. But otherwise, they are utterly working-class in rather an old-fashioned way. Men like that in clerical collars are unnerving to many, and probably most, people who grew up in the Church of England.
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