Yes, do set the world on fire

Aiming at a family of six would be a good way for the newlywed royals to do it.

To paraphrase Walter Bagehot, that expert on the monarchy, a royal wedding is a wonderful occasion for pomp and pageantry. I have been viewing this grand event all last Friday morning on my mother’s television and would be quite happy to watch the Horse Guards prancing along the Mall all day. My sister phoned and said she had planned to celebrate the occasion in her local pub – only to discover it had declared itself ‘republican’ and was therefore shut. What curmudgeons some people are!

Three things about the wedding ceremony itself particularly interested me: Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, quoting that great Catholic saint, Catherine of Siena, whose feast day falls on 29 April: “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, telling the young couple that marriage has been ordained by God primarily for the procreation of children (I think his words were “the increase of mankind” but it comes to the same thing.) And the young couple’s own prayer, read out during the marriage ceremony:

“God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage. In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy. Strengthened by our union, help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

This prayer moved me deeply; no other royal wedding has ever included a personal prayer as far as I know. Despite the enormous pressures that will now descend on the shoulders of this pair, they have a touching wish to fulfil their official duties and accept their responsibilities, which will be many and onerous, with a generous heart. When a “pre-nuptial agreement” was suggested to Prince William before his wedding, an agreement which was made before the wedding of Crown Princess Viktoria of Sweden and her (commoner) husband, apparently he rejected the idea out of hand. A commentator said that he completely trusted his bride and thought them unnecessary.

For her part, the newly created Duchess of Cambridge brings patience, modesty and discretion to her marriage, as well as reserves of emotional stability stemming from her own happy, normal family life. Prince William was undoubtedly damaged by the unhappy domestic atmosphere he grew up in; his wife, please God, will help to heal the wounds of his past. Some Christian commentators have been unduly critical, pointing out that the couple have been living together for several years before their wedding. This is not the best way to start married life – but who within their circle of family, courtiers and peer group, would ever have pointed this out to them?

As I watched the ceremony and listened to its words, a negative association came into my mind. It was a news item I had read about Moscow hosting the world’s first demographic summit on 29-30 June, with the theme of “The Family and the Future of Mankind.” It is being hosted by the World Congress of Families; its Director, Larry Jacobs, states, “By the year 2050 there will be 248 million fewer children under five in the world than there are today.”

The summit is being held in Moscow because Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is making a desperate bid to raise the Russian birth rate by up to 30% in three years. At present in Russia unofficial statistics suggest that there are nearly 4 million abortions per annum, as against 1.7 million live births. These doleful statistics speak for themselves. It is called the demographic winter.

What does this gloomy news item have to do with the wedding of Prince William and his bride? It is simple: such is the magic and symbolic power of the British monarchy that this young couple’s married life will inevitably set a new standard for the country’s views about the meaning and purpose of marriage. Look at the way the marriage of Queen Victoria gave the name ‘Victorian’ to a whole cluster of ideas about the strength, stability and fidelity of the marriage and happy family life that she and Prince Albert enjoyed with their nine children.

So I hope that the newly married couple will set an example of long and faithful married love to our society – something the bridegroom’s parents could not achieve, as well as other members of the Royal Family and many couples in the country at large. I also hope their marriage will be fruitful, as Archbishop Rowan Williams reminded them, and that they will burst the bounds of the average family size. Six children, I suggest, would be a good number and might encourage others to follow their example. Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh, echoing the propaganda of the environmental brigade, have both spoken pessimistically about the need to curb world population. The fact is, as Putin knows only too well, we need to increase it before too many countries suffer irreversible decline.

William and Catherine: never forget what is “real and important in life” and take the opportunity of your life together to “set the world on fire”.

Francis Phillips writes from Buckinghamshire in the UK.

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