King hated the ‘loathsome political correctness’ of
most churches
Charles said in a newly uncovered 1998 private letter
that he was drawn to the Orthodox Church as it was the only Christian
denomination that was not ‘corrupted’ by political correctness.
As sovereign, Charles is supreme governor of the
Church of England, which is the denomination that he was christened and
confirmed into.
His comments, made in 1998 while he was Prince of Wales, are therefore likely
to be seen as a veiled criticism of the church he was destined to lead upon
taking the throne.
The letter, marked “private and confidential”, was
sent in 1998 from Balmoral Castle to Dudley Popak, an interior designer who had
worked with the royal family.
Popak died in 2005 and the letter was among a collection of royal
correspondence sold at auction by Lay’s Auctioneers of Penzance, Cornwall,
for more than £1,700.
The King has often expressed a fascination with and
affinity for the Greek Orthodox Church into which his father, Prince Philip, was baptised.
In his letter to Popak, Prince Charles, then aged 49,
wrote: “Personally, the older I get, the more I am drawn to the great, timeless
traditions of the Orthodox Church. They are the only ones that have not been
corrupted by loathsome political correctness.”
It is not clear what particular policies of the Church
of England or other Christian churches had prompted his irritation by 1998. The
Church of England had recently changed its laws to permit women to become priests, ordaining the first women
in 1994, but there were no signs of royal opposition to the move.
In 1998 it was still four years away from the church
dropping its opposition to the remarriage of divorcees with living ex-spouses.
Moreover, this was a move that ultimately benefited Charles, as it allowed the then
Archbishop of Canterbury to give his blessing to Charles’s marriage to Camilla, whose ex-husband was still
alive.
The church has faced criticism from traditionalists in
recent years over its move to allow priests to bless gay couples, but this change was
still 25 years away when Charles wrote his letter.
A spokesman for Lay’s, the auction house that sold the
cache of six letters, said: “It is an interesting, candid and intriguing letter
in which Charles expresses his interest in the traditions of the Orthodox
Church. The royal family aren’t supposed to make political statements as a
rule, certainly in public, but these remarks were made in private
correspondence.” Buckingham Palace does not comment on private correspondence.
A choir performed Psalm 71 in Greek at the King’s
coronation last year, while he is said to have turned to a Greek Orthodox
priest, Archimandrite Ephraim, for guidance after his cancer diagnosis.
Kaya Burgess
Religious Affairs Correspondent
Thursday October 31 2024, 9.00pm, The Times
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