No Reconciliation without Contrition and Confession

It was highly amusing for me to read the comments to my “Winnowing Weasel Words” piece, recently published by CWR.

First, I was described as an American, and then, when the editor pointed out that I am an Australian, it was said that this didn’t matter, since I was the “darling of the American neo-cons”. Anyone who has read my publications will know that my doctoral thesis, published as Culture and the Thomist Tradition, was critical of the American neo-conservative tradition and that I have never recanted.

The joke about neo-conservatives is that they are liberals with teenage daughters. One of my intellectual heroes, the late and great Alasdair MacIntyre, once declared in an interview that ever since he understood liberalism, he had wanted nothing to do with it, and that was when he was 17 years old. I think I was a bit older before I reached the same conclusion. The London-based publisher Bloomsbury is in the process of printing a collection of my political theory essays due for release in May 2027. It will carry the title Catholic Social Theory Unwhigged. “Whig” is a word from the British political lexicon. The late Michael Novak picked this up and coined the concept “Whig Thomism”. The forthcoming Bloomsbury book is my summa contra Whig Thomism. I doubt very much that it will get a favourable review in the neo-con flagship journal First Things.

The truth of the matter is that I am more of a paleo-conservative than a neo-conservative—or in British parlance, a Tory rather than a Whig. Paleo-conservatives never had liberal moments. They have opposed every revolution since and including the Reformation. This includes the French Revolution, the American Revolution and the Sexual Revolution. Moreover, they are usually strong monarchists. I have never met one who wasn’t. Their hearts are deeply infused with the culture of old Catholic Europe. They hold people like Kant and Bismarck and Voltaire and Rousseau in utter contempt. They fall asleep reading Locke. Worse yet, when it comes to the United States, they typically think it should still be part of the British Commonwealth, with Charles III as its king. Americans in general, and not just neo-cons, often wince and twitch at the suggestion, though in recent times some people are warming to the idea.

Chaos in the House of Windsor

This is the perfect segue to the real subject of my piece, and that is the chaos in the House of Windsor. For those who do not follow British royal news or Hollywood gossip the backstory is that in 2018, Prince Harry, younger brother of Prince William, married Meghan Markle, a divorcee educated at a Catholic school in Los Angeles where the nuns completely lost the plot in the late 1960s. The nuns became hippies. The cardinal of the day went on television and warned good Catholic parents not to send their daughters to the school because the nuns had become communists.

There is a great account of this in the 1999 book Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team by Mark S. Massa. I don’t know if there were any nuns left during Ms Markle’s time, but suffice to say that Markle turned out to be an advocate for all the fashionable cultural Marxist causes, including abortion on demand and sex-change operations. She has indeed been described as the “queen of woke”.

Once engaged to Prince Harry, Meghan Markle caused mayhem in the royal family. She got the courtiers off-aside, didn’t even bother wearing a pair of shoes to the lunch where she first met Prince William and Princess Catherine, thought it was a joke that she was expected to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth, and thought that she should be paid appearance fees for her performance of royal duties. The press, having initially been wildly enthusiastic, turned against her. Prince William went to speak to Prince Harry about the problem. They allegedly had an argument that turned physical and Prince Harry lost his balance, falling onto the floor and breaking a dog’s breakfast bowl.

Meghan then became increasingly upset that people didn’t seem to love her the way that they loved the late Princess Diana. She told Harry she felt suicidal. He believed her. They ultimately planned an escape from royal life on what they called their “freedom flight” back to Los Angeles. Harry was warned that he could not be a part-time royal and a part-time professional celebrity. There was no possibility of a half-in/half-out lifestyle. He chose what the British press called the “Megxit” option. They abandoned royal life. However, Queen Elizabeth was merciful and did not strip Harry of his Duke of Sussex title. Once in LA, both he and Meghan continued to use their royal titles to market themselves in celebrity circles.

Harry wrote a memoir called Spare (2023), in which he talked about losing his virginity behind a pub wall with someone who wasn’t even so much as a girlfriend. He bragged about taking drugs and killing members of the Taliban; he talked about having once had a frozen todger (British slang for the male reproductive organ); and he said lots of very unflattering things about his father, his brother, his sister-in-law and his father’s second wife, Camilla. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, both Harry and Meghan accused the British royal family of racism and Harry later accepted an award for standing up to racism within his family circle.

Spare sold very well and made millions of dollars, but every other business venture flopped. Meghan’s cooking shows were watched because they were so bizarre they had to be seen to be believed. In one episode, for instance, she demonstrated how it is possible to “elevate” a bag of pretzels by moving them out of the bag in which they were sold, putting them into a fresh cellophane wrapper, and then tying a ribbon around the cellophane. Constant media stories about whether or not the couple’s two children were actually carried by Meghan or brought into the world via surrogacy agreements resulted in the couple putting out a video where Meghan, looking very pregnant, twerks to hip hop music, and Harry walks backwards and forwards across the video lens gesturing towards his private parts.

Confession, contrition, reconciliation

Fast forward to this past week, when the couple returned to the UK. The public does not know why. Explanations include that Harry was about to find himself at risk of being imprisoned for five years for lying on his US visa application, that the pair have been living billionaire lifestyles on a millionaire’s income and need to milk King Charles for money, that they have realised that the children need to be educated in the UK if they are to be taken seriously as British royals, that Harry is massively homesick, that the marriage is imploding, and even that Harry has another love interest in California and that Meghan therefore wanted him out of California.

Nobody but the couple, and perhaps a few insiders, know the truth of the matter. The rest is all speculation.

What is known, however, is that King Charles wants to see the pair in some sense rehabilitated. And he wants Prince William to forgive Harry for all the emotional pain and reputational damage that he and his wife have caused.

And this is where the whole situation is becoming theologically interesting. The big question now being debated is: should William forgive Harry? In a recent poll, only 4 percent thought so. At present, public sympathy is with William and Catherine. However, the Church of England is dominated by woke types and a line is being run that Prince William must show that he is a good Christian by offering the pair an olive branch. And only if he does so, is he ready and worthy to become a Christian king.

If I were Prince William, my response would be to point to the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15: 11-32, and refer people to what happens when the prodigal son returns from squandering his inheritance. The words used by the prodigal son are “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” This is what is called a confession.

When the son first realises he has been an idiot, he says to himself, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants’. This is what is called contrition or sorrow over one’s sins. It precedes confession.

Finally, reconciliation occurs when the one who has been the idiot acknowledges his sins and sincerely asks for forgiveness. The sequence is: contrition, confession and then reconciliation.

If I were Prince William, I would be saying, “I accept that I am a Christian Prince and must comport myself accordingly. I accept that Christ preached mercy and forgiveness.” But I would also be saying that before any such forgiveness can be given, there must be obvious signs of genuine contrition and a genuine confession. I would also suggest that the genuine confession take the form of the pair going on television and before the cameras admitting that they created “narratives” to make other members of the family look bad. I would also say that such forgiveness need not include allowing the pair to perform royal duties in the future. It should not restore them to the status of working royals. A woman who enjoys twerking but has a problem with curtsying does not meet the minimal standards required for royal life.

If they are restored to “working royals” status, there will be a huge number of royalists throughout the UK and the broader Commonwealth realms, reconsidering their political philosophies. If making Meghan and Harry working as royals again were to be the end of this soap opera, I might just have to ask the American neo-conservatives for forgiveness for my royalist past.

At the moment however I am living in hope that Prince William has the wisdom and the courage to comport himself as a Christian who knows his scripture. And that he can explain to the powers that be within the Church of England that according to the Gospel of St. Luke, genuine contrition and genuine confession precede genuine reconciliation.