Thursday 14 April 2011

An important event .... upstaged?

In the world of theatre, you upstage a fellow actor by coming on to the stage behind them so that, because they are facing the audience they do not see you, but since the audience are facing the stage they (the audience, that is) do see you. Your poor fellow actor remains in complete ignorance of who is really entertaining the audience, quite possibly at his or her expense. In some situations, the stage actually slopes gently downwards from rear to front, so that you can be quite literally "upstage".

The apathy towards a certain big wedding on the part of Catholic blogs is interesting. It is commented on here and here, to which blogs I tip my (virtual) hat. I think the second of these comments is particularly worth reading. There is clearly a value that Catholics should recognise in the fact that William and Kate (sorry, I have to call her Katherine now) are getting married, and that the said ceremony will be a religious ceremony rather than the registry office re-marriage of another royal who shall remain diplomatically un-named.

But quite apart from such socio-political-religious implications, the royal wedding is a national occasion and, regardless of what one might feel about its rights/wrongs or pros/cons or anything else about it, Catholics should feel part of a national occasion. Does the absence of attention to the wedding in Catholic blogs indicate that Catholics, and Catholic bloggers in particular, do not feel that they have any stake in this national occasion? If that is indeed the case, it would be interesting - and perhaps challenging - to explore the reasons for that lack of a sense of belonging at a national occasion. After all, the way in which the people of Britain responded to Pope Benedict's visit here last October really did make that visit a national occasion, the various protests notwithstanding. Surely we should now reciprocate that generosity towards Pope Benedict by a similar generosity towards William and Kate's (sorry, Katherine's) wedding.

Now, of course there is another big occasion that weekend that might be attracting more attention from Catholics. One cannot help but feel that William and Kate (sorry, Katherine) have been upstaged; but that is not a good excuse.

PS. I do have to plead guilty here - I am rather more interested in the beatification than the wedding. I have to say, though, that despite the above post, I have not yet been able to articulate exactly why I am  so un-interested in the wedding. I will give it some thought ...

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