The Marriage of Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles

in the Register Office in Windsor , followed by a Service of Prayer and Dedication, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on 9 April 2005 .

I am glad that Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles are getting married. It seems to me appropriate in all the circumstances that they should be married by a civil ceremony, and clearly right that this should be followed by a Service of Prayer and Dedication conducted by Archbishop Rowan.

I think it right that the couple should be married; I hope that their marriage will be an encouragement for his sons; and I believe that their getting married is good for Marriage, good for the Monarchy, and good for the Church of England. I wish Prince Charles and his bride every happiness together, and I have them, with his parents the Queen and Prince Philip, very much in my prayers.

Particularly having spent a great deal of time over six years leading the process around Marriage in Church after Divorce which the General Synod concluded with its debates and resolutions in July and November  2002, I understand the thinking of those who as fellow-members of the Church of England have expressed concerns about Prince Charles’ marriage, arguing that as a divorced person married in a Register office he should not one day succeed his mother as King and as Supreme Governor of the Church of England; but I  continue to disagree with them, and I shall try briefly to explain how I see all this.

None of us old enough to remember can forget first the wedding of Charles and Diana back in 1981; then its highly distressing – and public – break-down including the appearances of each of them on television; and then her death and the events surrounding it. All of us must still fervently wish that it had all been otherwise.  So it seems to me appropriate that this fresh marriage should take place not in church but in a Register Office; but equally appropriate both for a thoughtful and regularly-worshipping Anglican (as the Prince is) who has expressed his remorse on a number of occasions for the breakdown of his marriage, and for the heir to the British  monarchy rooted as it is in  this country’s tradition of Christian Faith as the Church of England has maintained it, that their civil marriage should be followed by the Service of Prayer and Dedication conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I have no doubt that Charles and Camilla are serious in committing themselves to each other in marriage; and I pray and trust that by the time he succeeds to the throne their marriage will have proved a blessing for them and for their children – and in particular for his sons – and a wholesome example of marriage for the country. It seems to me those  who say otherwise come close to saying that uniquely for these two there is no possibility of God’s forgiveness and so of a good marriage.

Nor, in the eyes of the Church of England, is a marriage made in a Register Office somehow less fully a Marriage than one made before a priest in church. The commitment in each case is the same, that of the Church’s teaching: the exclusive commitment of a man and a woman to each other for the rest of their lives.

Lastly, it seems to me to have been entirely appropriate that the marriage, and the service following it, should have been postponed for one day so that the Prince could represent his mother the Queen at the funeral of Pope John Paul II, so that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister could attend it - and so that the two events did not clash, which would have been widely and naturally seen as an act of disrespect for the Roman Catholic Church and for the late Pope himself.

The Queen shared personally in welcoming the Pope to this country in 1982, and has consistently respected and appreciated the position in this country of the Roman Catholic Church and the contribution of Roman Catholics to its life. With the Pope’s strong and consistent encouragement Roman Catholics and Anglicans are almost everywhere in England mutually valued friends and colleagues in Christ within the wider ecumenical friendships of both Churches. The Prime Minister’s wife is a Roman Catholic. The late Pope is respected and valued, too, by so many British people of other Faiths (to whom across the world he has very remarkably reached out in friendship and respect). He has been among the most remarkable men of his generation; and he is a Head of State.

So I see no ground at all for seeing the postponement of the Prince’s marriage, on account of the Pope’s funeral, as evidence of some “erosion of confidence in our institutions” – that is to say, in the Monarchy and in the Church of England – let alone as betokening “the strange death of Protestant England”; it seems to me simply and obviously to have been the right thing to do..

So whatever our sadness and regrets about events in the past, I ask all who will read this to join me in regular prayer for Prince Charles and his wife, and in wishing them every happiness through the years to come.

+Michael Winton:

8 April 2005