After months of speculation in the press, Tony Blair has left the Church of England and entered the Church of Rome.
This isn't an especially important story; although certainly an important figure, Blair is no longer Prime Minister. His wife and children are Roman Catholic, and he has never made any secret of either his religious faith in general or his attraction to the Roman version in particular. (Nor, we might point out, has he worn either those things on his sleeve as tools for getting elected, unlike certain American politicians we could name).
The Archbishop of Canterbury was polite enough to wish him well, which simply shows that Anglicanism isn't one of those religious movements that threatens to kill you if you quit. (You know who you are.)
Nope, all told this is pretty small fish. The big news will come when (as has occasionally been suggested) Prince Charles goes Orthodox. That will cause all sorts of trouble, and raise the serious question of how the future head of the CofE can very well be a communicant in some other church entirely. At which point somebody will no doubt point out that the Hanoverians were, up through Victoria's time, a bunch of Lutherans.
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