Queen Elizabeth is a surprising ecumenist

“Elizabeth has achieved a form of ecumenism simply by faithfully adhering to her own Christian faith”, writes Mary Kenny

Strange as it would seem to her, and stranger still to us, but Queen Elizabeth II, who last week celebrated her 90th birthday, has turned out to be a genuinely positive force for Christian ecumenism.

She didn’t achieve this by talking about ecumenism, or by pledging herself to any ecumenical cause. The idea would not have crossed her mind.

Elizabeth would have identified herself, as a young monarch and as a Protestant Christian, and, on the “broad church” Anglican spectrum which runs from fundamental Evangelical to High Church Anglo-Catholic, she would have been placed on the Protestant end. She is in some respects similar to her great-great-grandmother, Victoria, who was more at home in the “lower” Scottish church, with its plain (but long) sermons, and its dislike of high ritual.

Leanings

As late as the 1980s, Elizabeth restrained her son Charles from attending a Mass at the Vatican. Charles’s own religious leanings are towards the Greek Orthodox Church, which is known for its elaborate liturgical ritual.

Yet for all that, Elizabeth has achieved a form of ecumenism simply by faithfully adhering to her own Christian faith, and by making it clear that this is the guiding light in her dedication to duty. 

British Catholics have certainly come to admire her for her steadfastness in faith: Professor Jack Scarisbrick, Henry VIII’s foremost biographer, has called Elizabeth “our most sincere Christian monarch since the Stuarts”. He says her Catholic subjects are “more at ease with her” than any monarch since 1688. 

It’s not a message you’ll see any time soon on the walls of East Belfast, but Elizabeth will surely be judged by history to have brought British Catholics and Protestants together in a common acknowledgement of Christian faith. And she did it mainly by example.

Sandymount is very of its time

When I was growing up in Sandymount, Dublin 4, I never thought of it as a hub for writers. It was a quiet, mildly gossipey little village, with a Catholic, a Presbyterian and a Methodist church, and everyone got along very well. But it was neat and respectable, while I dreamed of La Vie de Boheme in Paris, where writers and artists dwelt.

Yet Sandymount has emerged of late as Dublin’s Montparnasse of writers.

It was a home for Yeats. It was associated with James Joyce, who featured Sandymount Strand in his Ulysses. And now, wonderfully, a bust has been unveiled in Sandymount to Seamus Heaney, also a resident.

And another writer also lived in Sandymount, currently seldom mentioned, but very successful in her day: Miss Annie M.P. Smithson. She lived in a lovely old house in Claremont Road. I adored her novels as a teenager: very patriotic and very romantic in an entirely decorous way. In that sense, very Sandymount – of its time.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

I once read a wise self-help book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. It was all about not making a fuss about small things – details, or episodes that ‘offend’ us which would be better forgotten.

A case in the Irish courts last week seemed like a doleful reminder that it’s daft to obsess over a trifle. A woman who was short-changed by a shop assistant by €15 sued the store, alleging that she had been called “a liar” during the erroneous transaction.

Solange Bakonsa bought items worth €5.62 at a Lidl store in Tallaght last year. She gave the cashier €21, and should have had change of €15.38. In error, the check-out cashier, Margaret Kieley, only gave back 38 cent to the customer, who duly protested. The store manager intervened, and on investigation, it was discovered that Ms Bakonsa was correct and was owed €15, which was remitted to her, with apologies.  

That should have been the end of it. Instead, Ms Bakonsa claimed that she had been called “a liar” by the cashier and sued Lidl for defamation. Judge Karen Fergus dismissed Ms Bakonsa’s claim, and awarded costs against her of €75,000.

A sober lesson in ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’. I’d also suggest that the lady was badly advised by her lawyer, if she had one.

She might also have taken the excellent advice in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6, which counsels us: “Go not to law.” 

Indeed.