As the Prince of Wales approaches his 65th birthday, Charles Moore argues that he has made a success of his current, unique role, and that bodes well for his next
Time has also allowed the seeds the Prince of Wales planted long ago to bear fruit. For about 40 years, his search for that path through the thicket has taken him into countless areas; youth opportunities, business in the community, the environment, inter-faith relations, food and farming, literature, liturgy, architecture, the armed services, crafts, enterprise, education and medicine. Often, his outspokenness has caused alarm, and sometimes he has seemed to lack judgment.
But two things have emerged. The first is that these causes are not, in fact, a ragbag. They represent a consistent approach to life in which the material and the spiritual are linked. He believes that what people eat, how they grow it or rear it, what they live in, the language they use, the art they produce, how they pray, how they look after one another and care for their health, all relate.
For much longer than anyone else in public life, he has done a huge amount to establish these connections. The Prince has got there first, and got others to follow after. There was a tremendous stink in Buckingham Palace when, in 1985, he planned to attend Mass in Pope John Paul II’s private chapel when visiting him in Rome. In the end, he was told he could not do so. There was also scoffing when he spoke of wanting to be “Defender of Faith” rather than the Faith. But it turns out that the Prince saw more clearly than most the importance, in religion, of maximising what people can share. The man who sneaks off to Mount Athos, dabbles in Eastern mysticism and searches for what is best in Islam is the same man who stands up for the King James Bible. It works. He has become the main unofficial leader of interfaith trust.
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