Optimism or Pessimism

Letters from France
Optimism or Pessimism
By Robert Thompson
Jun 11, 2008, 05:05

A week or two ago it was announced that Mr Peter Phillips, the eldest grandson of the Queen of the United Kingdom and of other lands, including Canada, was to marry a young Canadian woman, Miss Autumn Kelly. Incidentally, I thought that Canadians called the season which comes between the summer and the winter the "fall" rather than using the English word "autumn", but that is irrelevant to the question now being asked.

This was an announcement of no particular interest until a further detail was added, namely that she was to renounce her Catholic faith and join the Protestant Church of England in order to enable him to retain his position as eleventh in the line of succession to his grandmother.

Under the rules of succession in force in the United Kingdom, any member of the present (since 1714) British royal family who either becomes a Catholic or marries a Catholic is barred from succession to the throne. This currently excludes several members of the family who have not thought it either necessary or very important to preserve their place in the line of succession.

For any Catholic, it is essential that one should obey one's conscience, and it is not therefore appropriate for anyone else to criticise her decision to become a Protestant, if this is what her conscience tells her to do.

What is fascinating is why this ground is put forward, and makes me ask whether Mr Phillips, the Queen's only daughter's son by her first husband, is an optimist or a pessimist. The only reasoning behind such a ground is that there is some real chance that Mr Phillips might find himself king through the successive death's of his uncles, his mother, and his cousins. It brings to mind the old film "Kind Hearts and Coronets".

Which is it? Do Mr Phillips and his bride seriously believe that he might become king, and, if so, should we consider this to be optimism or pessimism?

This is the fascinating question.

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