{"id":103874,"date":"2018-05-22T00:24:54","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T07:24:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=103874"},"modified":"2018-05-21T10:27:27","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T17:27:27","slug":"some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/05\/some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding.html","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on the Royal Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u2026over at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicweekly.com.au\/mark-shea-americans-cant-help-love-royal-wedding\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>The Catholic Weekly<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Americans are supposed to not care about Royal Weddings because, you know,\u00a0<em>American<\/em>. We actually have it in our Constitution that you cannot have titles of royalty and nobility.\u00a0 If you come here and become a citizen you have to legally drop \u201cSir\u201d from Sir Anthony Hopkins or Sir Patrick Stewart.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s pretty bred in the bone to have something ranging from indifference to hostility to the whole Royals thing\u2014at least officially and in public.<\/p>\n<p>But truth to tell, Americans have a soft spot for English royalty anyway (Saudi royalty not so much).\u00a0 So bazillions of us watched the Royal Wedding and oohed and ahhed over the beautiful spectacle.\u00a0 Sometimes, to preserve the fiction of democratic equality, we spoke of it sort of like the drooling Soviet Party official sent to accompany Robin Williams\u2019 character to Macy\u2019s in\u00a0<em>Moscow on the Hudson<\/em>: \u201cLook!\u00a0\u00a0<em>More<\/em>\u00a0decadence!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that brings up something curious for me; something that, as an American, I\u2019m not supposed to think.\u00a0 It is this: something in human nature\u00a0<em>requires<\/em>\u00a0royalty and when we get rid of the political expression of that need we don\u2019t get rid of royalty, we just find new ways to create it.<\/p>\n<p>As C.S. Lewis, unhampered by American political commitments, said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMonarchy can easily be debunked, but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach \u2013 men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes or film stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison. \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicweekly.com.au\/mark-shea-americans-cant-help-love-royal-wedding\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Much more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026over at The Catholic Weekly. Americans are supposed to not care about Royal Weddings because, you know,\u00a0American. We actually have it in our Constitution that you cannot have titles of royalty and nobility.\u00a0 If you come here and become a citizen you have to legally drop \u201cSir\u201d from Sir Anthony Hopkins or Sir Patrick Stewart. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[836],"class_list":["post-103874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic-weekly-stuff"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Some thoughts on the Royal Wedding<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"...over at The Catholic Weekly. Americans are supposed to not care about Royal Weddings because, you know,\u00a0American. We actually have it in our\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/05\/some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Some thoughts on the Royal Wedding\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"...over at The Catholic Weekly. Americans are supposed to not care about Royal Weddings because, you know,\u00a0American. We actually have it in our\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/05\/some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Catholic and Enjoying It!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-05-22T07:24:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-05-21T17:27:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark Shea\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/05\/some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2018\/05\/some-thoughts-on-the-royal-wedding.html\",\"name\":\"Some thoughts on the Royal Wedding\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-05-22T07:24:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-05-21T17:27:27+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/#\/schema\/person\/c1a9ac1e557d3c626974fd6692818ad5\"},\"description\":\"...over at The Catholic Weekly. 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