Noting former British PM Tony Blair's impending conversion to Catholicism (my link is to the Torygraph story), Diogenes over at Off the Record observes:U.S. presidential candidates, regardless of their heathendom, know they have to feign interest in religion to get elected, and typically hire consultants to coach them in the finer points of Christian doctrine, such as which half of the Bible the New Testament is found in. Europe is stuck in the opposite dilemma. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, widely rumored to become a Roman Catholic soon, claims his Christian faith was hugely important to him, but that he camouflaged his interest so as not to come across as a crack-pot.
That rings true, but of course it goes deeper than that. Diogenes beats me to it:
I hope Blair does convert and embrace a sturdy orthodox Catholicism. But something is out of order when a man's religion must be kept unused and its original wrapping intact until the burdens of adulthood are past. Blair's delayed conversion is reminiscent of the Emperor Constantine's delayed baptism: just as Constantine (we're told) put off his baptism to the last days of life in order to be able to sin boldly in the interim, Blair's career has been that of a dutiful Labour Party pol—pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-condom. It's hard not to welcome a convert, but to welcome him whole-heartedly is hard when his unrepented public life is a counter-witness to Church teaching about the social order.
I was going to say it all shows just far gone they are over there. But we're really no better over here. "Unrepented" indeed. How much repenting do we see among already "Catholic" American pols favoring policies similar to Labour's? Like Americans generally, they're just better at covering up their secular religion of materialism and sexual autonomy with ritual bows to something called "faith."
Sometimes the frank hostility in Britain to real Christianity is refreshing by comparison.
