Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

I know this is “old news” but I’ve barely had time to eat, sleep, and groom lately, let alone blog. So, now that I have a second, I thought I’d take this opportunity to state what I think is a huge hypocrisy. And it all stems from the Charles and Camilla brouhaha. I realize that a lot of people could care less about Charles and Camilla. To make my point, I was trying to talk about it with Kevin in the car this morning (as we carpooled to work) and I could tell the whole saga just wasn’t exactly his cup of English tea. His eyes started glazing over – and that’s a dangerous thing when you’re driving 75mph on the freeway.

But here goes anyway … This is a blurb I found on the BBC website:

“In the eyes of the Church of England, both Charles and Camilla are adulterers who must carry some blame for the breakdown of their first marriages. They knew each other long before Charles met Diana, and Mrs. Parker Bowles' husband is still alive. So they cannot be married in church. The solution offered to them, as to many others, was to marry in a civil ceremony and then have their union blessed in a religious service.” (Go here to read the rest, if you care.)

This, to me, is a perfect illustration of following the “letter of the law” and ignoring the “spirit of the law.” If a church feels it cannot perform a wedding, how can they justify blessing it? Doesn’t it all boil down to the same thing (which is approval)?

I’m not arguing that Charles isn’t entitled to move on with his life. It’s obvious that he and Camilla are perfectly suited for each other. You can tell he loves and adores Camilla with the core of his very soul … and apparently this has been the case for three decades. You can see it in his eyes. Unlike the photos of him and Diana, when he’s with Camilla, he seems at peace with the world. Camilla completes him. What he should have done was marry her in the first place. But he didn’t. And the Church of England needed to make up its mind and either refuse to marry him or bless him OR decide it’s okay and do both. But, instead, the Church of England decided it wanted to have its cake and eat it too. And I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the madness of it all.