On his chances of becoming Prime Minister: “I don’t take it much more seriously than I take myself. It’s all good fun but it was summer froth. I’m a quiet West Country politician who has been of a little interest over the summer. I wouldn’t put it any higher than that.”
On appearing to be too strict a Catholic: “It’s very easy for the Catholic Church to appear dogmatic. Mercy is an important part of the Church’s teaching. Everything you say has to be tempered with mercy … One should always remember that the mercy of God is very great.”
On whether he invented his fogeyish image: “Funnily enough, people asked the same thing at Eton. They said, ‘You can’t really be like that.’ I just am. The most definitive answer I can give is that nobody would deliberately develop my image.”
On his preference for the Tridentine Mass: “If it’s available I like going to the Extraordinary Rite. We’re very lucky we get it in Somerset once a month. The more you go the more you will find that it is a good thing to go to. You get some time to think and it’s not all noisy – and there’s no risk of guitars. I think Mass can be too noisy and guitars should be banned.”
On his determination to oppose the legalisation of euthanasia: “We have bills coming before Parliament on this issue and I am very concerned about this because I think it’s very easy to use the very troubling cases to allow for exceptional circumstances which you find, quite quickly, become the norm. And then people are pressurised into ending their lives early because they’re a burden on their families and so on. Whether our motives are religious or practical, people who are nervous about euthanasia need to be very well prepared to stop that going exactly the same way as abortion, which went from being something specifically about the mother’s health to being a variant form of contraception.”
On his favourite popes: “My great hero is probably Pius IX because of his traditional view of the state and the Church, and his Syllabus of Errors was a clear view … Pope Benedict was a wonderful inspirational pope for the Church both as a cardinal and as Holy Father.”
On the tensions of conservative Catholicism: “The difficulty with being a relatively High Church member of the Church is that I have to accept what the Church does within its own ambit as a matter of its own authority, and if it’s legitimate within the Church’s teaching it’s not up to me to say whether or not they should do it.”
On EU judges: “The requirement not to be rude about judges applies only to judges in this country. It does not apply to judges in the EU, so let me be rude about them. Let me indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of EU judges.”
On the difficulty of being a man of faith in public life: “I think we live in an increasingly secular world even though quite a large number of MPs do have a religious belief. But the perception is that, as Alastair Campbell famously said, ‘We don’t do God.’ That has made it harder for some politicians to feel comfortable admitting their faith, and I think it’s possibly harder on the Left than it is on the Right.”
On being told to “f— off and die” by a heckler at the Conservative Party Conference: “And if I do, will you please pray for my immortal soul?”
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