| |
| | Politics | The spirit moves him - and cash does too |
 | | Private Eye's spoof column, St Albion Parish News, catches the mood beautifully when it mocks the nation's trendy vicar, his sanctimonious, self-serving ways and the barely disguised hint of menace. |
 | | That aligns him with the great medieval philosopher St Thomas Aquinas, not a Labour man. But chiefly he seems to be searching for what faith can tell him about the individual's relationship with wider society, with his or her community, as John Macmurray, Blair's philosphical guru at Oxford might have put it. |
 | | His much-proclaimed "values" - which he extracts from the Bible and, doubtless, the Koran - provide him with his optimism and drive, his belief in compassion and social obligation not so far from Catholicism's "social solidarity", though many Catholics would claim to be to the left of Blair on poverty or selective schools. |
| politics.guardian.co.uk /print/0,3858,4401794-110646,00.html (1176 words) |
|