THE CRUSADERS:

The Pope's disapproval worries Blair more than marchers (Matthew d'Ancona, 23/02/2003, Daily Telegraph)

It used to be the solemn practice of medieval crusaders to seek the indulgence of the Pope before they rode off on their steeds to the Holy Land. Some wrote impassioned letters to the Pontiff for the good of their souls, but many made the pilgrimage to Rome in person. Yesterday, on the eve of another mighty conflict in the sands of the Middle East, the Prime Minister was granted a private audience by John Paul II. But there was to be no indulgence - no papal imprimatur - for this Christian soldier. Mr Blair may believe that he is embarking on a "just war": the Holy Father does not.

When President Bush called the war on terrorism a "crusade" he was pilloried as a Bible-bashing redneck. It is too easily forgotten that Tony Blair deployed that word first, in a Newsweek article on the Balkan war in 1999, long before the atrocities of September 11. The Prime Minister's robust Christian convictions and his readiness to take military action have always been intimately linked in his own mind. He does not see himself as a crusader in any aggressive sense; but there is no doubt that he seeks authorisation for war, as well as personal spiritual solace, in the Gospels. [...]

The extent of the Prime Minister's attraction to Roman Catholicism remains a matter of controversy. Downing Street was furious in 1998 when the Press Association revealed that he had been attending Mass at Westminster Cathedral on his own. Cardinal Hume wasn't too thrilled either by what appeared to be doctrinal dilettantism. On the Anglican side, it was claimed that the Prime Minister, as an alleged crypto-Catholic, could not make sound appointments to the episcopal bench. I recall an unswervingly Protestant minister seething to me at the time that his boss's decision to take Catholic Communion was "unconscionable": as so often over the centuries, London murmured of a "Popish plot".

Number 10 tried desperately to close the story down: one of the most menacing phone calls I have ever taken from Downing Street was from a spin doctor convinced The Sunday Telegraph was going to disclose an alleged discussion between Mr Blair and a Catholic priest. In short, I would be amazed if the Prime Minister converts to Rome while he is in office. But there is no doubt that he is powerfully drawn to the certainties and liturgy of Catholicism (and to its canon law: visitors to his study have been startled on occasion to see a well-thumbed copy of Paul VI's bull on human reproduction, Humanae Vitae). So yesterday's audience will have been freighted with personal significance for Mr Blair as a station on his own private pilgrimage.

Downing Street insists that the Prime Minister has a "clear conscience" on Iraq, and that may well be so. But that clarity has been hard won. According to one Cabinet Minister, the Prime Minister spent a great deal of time towards the end of last year wrestling with the prospect of war and convincing himself that it was just. "It was very private," the minister told me, "and very intense." The joke among his officials before Christmas was that it was easier to engage the Prime Minister's interest on the nuances of St Thomas Aquinas than on the detail of public service reform.

There has always been a strongly Christian strain in the British Labour movement, of course, but one which has emphasised the duty of the believer to avert war at almost any cost. Labour pacifism and CND have their roots in Christian socialism. The theologian to whom Mr Blair says he owes most, John MacMurray (1891-1976), offers little comfort to the politician about to commit troops to battle. "We went into war in a blaze of idealism," wrote MacMurray of his experience in the Somme and at Arras. "We learned that war was simply stupidity, destruction, waste and futility."

The Prime Minister's faith has led him to a quite different, more muscular position on the morality of conflict. "Christianity is a very tough religion," he wrote in 1993. "It is judgmental. There is right and wrong. There is good and bad." In an interview with this newspaper in 2001, he avowed his belief in "the necessity to make judgments about the human condition" and drew an explicit connection between that conviction and his conduct during the Kosovo crisis. There is, in fact, a consistent recoil from appeasement in what he has said about Christianity over the years.

It seems fair to wonder whether America and Britain would any longer be willing to go to war with evil regimes if they were to be led by non-believers. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 25, 2003 2:53 PM