Ricorderete lo scandalo di qualche settimana fa, con la ragazza musulmana invitata a recitare in chiesa le cantilene del Corano, nelle quali si negava l’esistenza di colui che, in quella chiesa, si dovrebbe andare a pregare:
Musulmana recita corano in cattedrale: “Cristo non è figlio di Dio” – VIDEO CHOC
A seguito del gesto, il reverendo Canon Gavin Ashenden, uno dei 33 cappellani della Regina Elisabetta si è scagliato contro la scelta durante un programma radiofonico. Successivamente, viste le polemiche per le sue parole, si è ‘dimesso dopo discussioni con Buckingam Palace sulla vicenda, per essere più libero di esprimere le proprie opinioni’. Il prete anglicano, uno dei pochi che ancora difende il Cristianesimo nello scristianizzato Regno Unito, ha parlato così:
“After a conversation instigated by officials at Buckingham Palace, I decided the most honourable course of action was to resign,” Reverend Ashenden wrote.
“I have held the position for the last nine years. But over the last few years people who objected to my defending the Christian faith in public wrote to both Lambeth Palace and Buckingham Palace to try to get the association ended.
“When I was confronted with these attempts to silence or defenestrate me, my reaction was to ask ‘in what way is a priest defending the faith on behalf of a monarch who was Defender of the Faith, incongruous or improper?’
Reverend Ashenden said it was “wrongly assumed” that as a Queen’s Chaplain he had “the Queen’s ear” and that by expressing his own views there was a danger they would be construed by the media as those of her Majesty.
“There is a very important convention that the Queen should not be drawn into public affairs where she is deemed to be taking a position,” he wrote.
“She needs to be above ‘positions.’ That is how the monarchy rides out political turbulence.”
He concluded: “Because I think it a higher and more compelling duty to speak out on behalf of the faith, than to retain a public honour which precludes me doing so at this time, I resigned my post.”
