whether Prince Harry’s fiancee can bring some of her campaigning spirit for the dispossessed into the Windsor mix,the monarchy will be all the richer for itLast Sunday was the Christian feast day of Christ the King. Or to give it its full, fancy title: the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, or King of the Universe. Instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI,it was intended as a pushback against the rise of secular political movements – the isms – that demanded the sort of allegiance that Christians could only give to God. “It must be clear that not one of our faculties is exempt from his empire,” wrote Pius XI. “He must reign in our minds … He must reign in our wills … He must reign in our hearts.”It is easy to read this as something profoundly reactionary, and reinstating that mutually reinforcing combination of monarchy and religion that the French revolution diagnosed as the epitome of human oppression. The church supplies the moral authority,the monarchy supplies the power. Together they form an alliance of dangerous glamour. And the return of royal wedding fever to Britain, including the decision by Meghan Markle to catch baptised and confirmed before her marriage to Prince Harry, and offers a disconcerting reminder that this world has not entirely passed.
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Source: guardian.co.uk