Comment at end
12th July, 2009
Doing God with Tony Blair on the quiet
Britain’s ‘priest to the stars’ reveals the secrets of conducting mass at No 10 Downing Street
By Father Michael Seed – Times, 12th July 2009
I don’t know quite what to make of these excerpts from ‘Saints & Sinners’, but if they are typical of the book this is clearly NOT the usual expected ‘God’ book from a churchman. Co-written by Michael Seed (aka ‘priest to the stars’) and Noel Botham it seems to have sparked some critical comments at The Times.
This criticism may emerge from the usual anti-Blair stance rather than an anti-the author/Catholic Church position, or from REAL concern over any lack of discretion. I doubt if the Blairs will be too put out. And as for Basil Hume and the Pope – laughing at oneself if religious seems to be a prerequisite. Well, for Christians and Jews anyway.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie are welcomed by the prefect of the papal household, Bishop James Harvey (R) for the funeral ceremony for Pope John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square, Vatican City State, Friday 08 April 2005.
(The headings to each section are mine.) If you’re a skimmer rather than a devourer you can skip to each section by clicking these:
BLAIR’S PRAYERS AND SADNESS ON IRAQ
While this is not the place to debate the rights and wrongs of any war, I think it is apparent that Tony thought and prayed long and hard about how to respond to the atrocities in America on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent developments.
In this context, I have seen Tony almost tearful in sadness — most especially at the deaths of our service personnel. I believe there was no element of opportunism in his decision to invade Iraq. There was a serious conviction that it had to be done. Of course he fully understood the consequences of his actions.
BLAIR “LOW” OVER LEAVING NUMBER 10
One of the few times I saw him particularly low was after his decision to step aside in favour of Gordon Brown. While there was a certain relief when he decided to go, I am convinced he would rather have departed after losing a general election.
1995 – BLAIR ALREADY ATTENDED MASS
The first time I met Tony Blair, he was sitting between a young prostitute and a homeless addict. They had no idea who he was. I was on the opposite side of the table with his wife, Cherie, and Peter Mandelson was on the next table to ours — though he spent most of the meal hovering around Tony, obviously concerned that he might be seen in the company of “sinners”.
They were at an event I had helped organise to bring together the haves and the have-nots. It was called the Big Banquet, and the country’s senior religious leaders were acting as waiters.
Most were reluctant to do their assigned tasks, so I had to bully them slightly. But soon the Bishop of London, the Salvation Army general, the moderators of the Methodist, Baptist and United Reformed Church and Cardinal Basil Hume, all in their robes, were circling the reception area with drinks, serving the homeless, the recovering drunks, addicts and prostitutes as well as our better-known guests.
At the time, 1995, Tony Blair was leader of the opposition. I was then unaware of his resolve one day to join the Catholic Church. He and his family, when in London, went to mass in a church near their home in Islington. But after Tony became prime minister in 1997, they began attending mass at Westminster Cathedral, my workplace.
The Blairs’ eldest son, Euan, and later his younger brother, Nicky, attended my confirmation classes, as did some of the other pupils from the London Oratory school. I suspected that, at times, they could be quite unpleasant to Euan. I’m sure that it was just verbal and nothing physical but it made me aware of how difficult it must have been for these two brothers to have the prime minister as their father.
2000 – SEED’S FIRST VISIT TO DOWNING STREET TO ADMINISTER COMMUNION
The first time I was invited to Downing Street was the day after Leo was born in May 2000. Cherie had contacted me when she returned home from hospital and asked if I could go to their flat and administer her holy communion.
I suggested because of my record in “converting” people to Catholicism, it might spark gossip that Tony was planning to become a Roman Catholic if I was seen going through the front door in Downing Street. She didn’t seem particularly bothered but said perhaps it would be better if I went in around the back. She instructed me how to get in through a gate off Horse Guards Parade in the side wall of Downing Street, and take a small alley that led to the prime minister’s garden.
I followed my instructions and came to a half-raised, large sash window, where a security officer in white shirt and black trousers waited to help me climb inside. I was met and guided upstairs by Mrs Blair’s mother, Gale.
THE PRIEST ON THE PRIME MINISTER’S WIFE’S BED
Cherie was in bed. I was about to give her holy communion when Tony bounded in, wearing his gym kit, and found me sitting on his wife’s bed. Confusion over, Cherie ordered him off to have a shower while I continued communion with her. When he came back, looking slightly more presentable, I blessed him and baby Leo.
It was Tony who showed me downstairs to the front door. I asked him: “Don’t you think I should go out through the back window where I came in? If I’m seen leaving, everyone will think you’re my next convert to the wicked Papists.”
BLAIR HAD NO CONCERNS ABOUT RUMOURS ON HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEFS
“Don’t worry about that. Let them all think what they like! You’re going out through the front door and must come in that way in future.”
As it happened, when the policeman let me out with my little bag, the media had all gone home — and it would be six years before anyone would recognise me and break the story of my “meals on wheels” service, which was my codename for the Downing Street masses.
AFTER 9/11 THE BLAIRS’ SECURITY REQUIRED MASS AT HOME
After the birth of Leo, the Blairs continued to attend mass at the cathedral, sometimes Tony or Cherie alone, sometimes together, or sometimes with the children. Then came 9/11 and, sadly, everything changed.
For a while the Blairs showed up randomly at different churches all over London. No one knew where they might pop up. But that became quite silly and difficult because of the ever-increasing security requirements, and it was decided it would be easier and safer for everyone if mass was celebrated in their home.
We held our little services in the parlour, either on Saturday night or Sunday. The family would sit on a long couch on one side of a coffee table and I would sit on a second, identical, couch, facing them.
MEETING ALASTAIR CAMPBELL – BLAIR’S “WE DON’T DO GOD” PRESS SECRETARY
One day I was letting myself out of the Blairs’ apartment, carrying my small bag, when I encountered Alastair Campbell on his way up to see the prime minister. I believe he had been jogging in some marathon or other and was clad only in shorts and a skimpy vest and carrying a little bag of his own.
He looked extremely healthy and fit and had lost a lot of weight. It was odd being face-to-face with the very man, the Adonis of new Labour, who had famously quoted to the press: “We don’t do God.”
I had never met him properly but each of us was aware of who the other was. He probably knew everything about me, down to the number on my passport.
“Father Seed,” he said.
“Alastair,” I replied. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting you in the flesh before — and what a lot of it you’re showing.”That flustered him, so I added: “I’ve just been doing God with my little bag of tricks”, and I shook it under his nose. I had always wanted to say that.
KEEPING THE BOOZE FROM THE “SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIAN INVASION”
After a number of months, I no longer needed to bring communion wine or my missal with me as I kept a bottle in their drinks cupboard in the corner, along with my holy books. It wasn’t a heavily stocked cupboard although in the latter days before the “Scottish Presbyterian invasion” of No 10 and No 11, I rescued three bottles, one an extremely fine brandy that I still have for special occasions.
A MASS SECRET KEPT FOR SIX YEARS
My celebration of mass at Downing Street didn’t hit the media until a year before Tony left office. The story broke because Mrs Blair and the children had gone off on a summer holiday, leaving Tony in London to sort out various emergencies, and a parishioner of mine, who could not stand Labour and knew that Tony was there alone, saw me emerging from No 10 and tipped off the press. I was upset but Tony showed no reaction, and Cherie, when she learnt, was not at all concerned.
Then in May 2007 I was appalled to read a front-page story in The Times that claimed I had predicted “to friends” at a memorial service that “Tony Blair will declare himself a Roman Catholic on leaving Downing Street”.
The background to the “scoop” was very simple: during a reception in the House of Lords following a memorial service for the late Lord Carter, a rather pompous guest had come up to me and asked me if there was anything in the rumour that Tony Blair was to become a Catholic. I gave my standard answer to this question: “Why don’t you telephone Mr Blair and ask him yourself? I have nothing to say about the matter.”
However, it transpired the guest had apparently spoken to a third party, who had in turn spoken to The Times. The story caused a great deal of consternation. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, my boss, sent me the most upsetting note I ever received from him.
A letter from Cherie Blair went a long way to help calm down the cardinal, and when I bumped into Tony I was able then to assure him I had spoken to no-one about his faith or possible reception into the church. He patted my shoulder and told me not to worry, saying: “These bits and pieces about masses and so on I don’t mind at all, and neither should you.”
He was finally received into the church by Cardinal Cormac in his private chapel in Archbishop’s House, four days before Christmas that year. I wonder if he had wanted to become a Methodist or a Baptist, whether the media would have shown the slightest interest. It’s just that Catholics have such a seriously naughty image that people get excited. Maybe it is to do with the Catholics’ plot to blow up Parliament or the head-lopping excesses of Mary Tudor.
THE POPE LOVES ENGLISH ALE & COLLECTS LONDON BEER MATS
Meeting Cardinal Ratzinger
I met Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict, when he was the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the head of what was originally known as the Holy Inquisition.
At his headquarters in Rome I was asked to wait in a room the size of the Buckingham Palace Throne Room. Moments later, Cardinal Ratzinger entered through a secret door disguised as part of the wallpaper. His opening words to me were: “Father Seed, you’re very young.” I kissed his ring and replied: “You don’t look that old yourself.”
Rumour had it that he was a dour old hardliner but I found him to be neither. He really did look much younger than his years and he was both friendly and chatty. His English is perfect, and through his friends I later discovered his love of the English ale Spitfire, brewed in Kent by Shepherd Neame, and his collection of London beer mats.
I have, since our meeting, had both couriered to him on several occasions by visiting clergy. He is always enthusiastically appreciative, they say, and I understand that his tastes have not changed.
CARDINAL BASIL HUME’S “DRUNKEN” ALIASES
On the eve of his enthronement as archbishop, Cardinal Basil Hume went for a late-night stroll in his ordinary clothes and returned to find himself locked out of Archbishop’s House. He was caught by a policeman as he tried to climb over the choir school fence.
“I told him I was the new Archbishop of Westminster trying to get into my home; that I had forgotten my key and didn’t remember the telephone number. The policeman looked at me a bit oddly and said he thought I had better go with him,” Basil related to me. There was a hospital nearby for the mentally ill, some of whom were allowed out into the community. “I think the policeman believed I was one of those.”
They were very polite to him in the police station and asked him where he was from. “I’ve come from Yorkshire to be the archbishop,” he told them. Only when they managed to locate someone who knew Basil well did they escort him home.
He was a modest man who loathed ostentation, much preferring ordinary clothes to his cardinal’s robes. Sometimes he would sit around in just his vest without his socks and shoes.
He also had an eccentric sense of humour and an amazing ability to switch, in an instant, into three different characters whom I called “his people”: the drunken Irishman, the drunken Scotsman and the drunken Geordie, with the strong native accent of his home town of Newcastle.
He used “his people” to voice beliefs he couldn’t express as a cardinal. Exasperated with a situation, he might remark: “Let’s have a drink of whisky — that’ll solve the problem,” in his drunken Scottish accent.
When he appointed me as his ecumenical adviser — on encouraging Christian unity and bringing faiths closer together — he suddenly switched into his drunken Irishman: “Someone’s got to look after these troublesome Protestants, Michael, so it might as well be you.” I was shocked until I spotted the twinkle in his eyes.
His passion for Christian unity was unfortunately matched by his dislike for a number of the then government’s policies. He especially hated the poll tax and blamed Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister.
Occasionally, when we drove past Downing Street the cardinal would lower his window and shake his fist and, in his drunken Geordie voice, say: “Maggie out! Maggie out!”
© Michael Seed and Noel Botham 2009
Extracted from Saints and Sinners by Father Michael Seed and Noel Botham, published by Metro Publishing at £16.99 on Wednesday. Copies can be ordered for £15.29, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135
MY THOUGHTS
Father Seed obviously admires Mr Blair. But if you are left with the impression that there is a fondness for alcohol and alcohol-related items in Christianity, particularly at the top of the Catholic Church, I blame it on the communion “wine”. Bad habit, drinking.
Joking aside, I have often been surprised by the humour and humanity of catholic priests.
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Tags: alastair campbell, Blair low on leaving Number 10, Cardinal Basil Hume, doing God with Tony Blair, Father Michael Seed, priest to the stars, Saints & Sinners, The pope and English beer and beermats
