Jennifer O’Connell: Of course the Vatican welcomed Johnson home

Weren't the wedding pictures lovely? The tumbling wisteria, Carrie Johnson in her thrifty, rented, Greek-designed gown, gazing adoringly at her man as the sunlight glints in his artfully tousled hair. It was all so sweetly romantic, you had to really squint to make out the double standards.

The fact that it took place in a Catholic church – not just any Catholic church either, but the grandmother of them all in Britain, Westminster Cathedral – despite the groom Boris Johnson being a twice-divorced Anglican rightly raised the hackles of Catholics. But double standards in either the Catholic Church or the life of Boris Johnson surely can't come as a surprise to anyone.

There have always been two tiers within the Catholic Church: one for a powerful, male, privileged elite, another for everyone else. Or, as one Church of England priest, Fr Paul Butler put it on Twitter, "one canon law for the rich and one for the poor".

Johnson – who was baptised a Catholic before converting to Anglicanism in his teens – had every right to get married in a Catholic church because "sacraments are not a reward for the righteous", insisted Austen Ivereigh, an Oxford academic and the pope's biographer. Tell that to the same sex couples who are not allowed to avail of a church wedding – or even a blessing by the Vatican – because it is "impossible" for God to "bless sin". This declaration was issued in March and approved by Pope Francis, less than a year after he seemed to muse in favour of civil unions in a documentary. It was not meant, he said, as "a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite".

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Those “truths” can be conveniently malleable when required. The Vatican’s teachings have flexed and bent over the years to allow it to condemn generations of women who got pregnant outside of marriage, and deny them their freedom, while ensuring that paedophile priests got to keep theirs. Bendy truths facilitate it turning a blind eye when heterosexual Catholics all over the world cheerfully ignore its rules on sex and contraception, but force it to take a hard line when it comes to homosexual Catholics. And on and on. Actually, you don’t have to squint to see the double standards.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is a subject close to Pope Francis's heart, and one he has frequently railed against. But while he is undoubtedly sincere and I admire his determination to change the tone of the church's communications, the head of the Catholic Church lecturing the world on double standards is like Jeff Bezos holding forth on the evils of consumerism.

What kind of mental reservations must he have to draw on to talk about poverty and hypocrisy while presiding over an institution of literally incalculable wealth? It was reported last week that total revenues at the Vatican had fallen to a mere €213 million due to the pandemic. Things are so dire, the Financial Times says, that “to plug the gap it has said it will use money from its reserves, the exact size of which are unknown and encompass vast real estate holdings around the world and other investments controlled by APSA, its sovereign wealth manager”.

Johnson might be Anglican, but culturally his approach to the world is at one with the Vatican’s. He, too, loves a bendy truth, whether he’s misleading the voters on Brexit or losing track of how many children he has. He, too, makes noises about valuing women’s role in society, while maintaining a record on that score which is, to put it kindly, risible. He described the children of single mothers in a 1995 article as “ill raised, ignorant, aggressive and illegitimate”. You don’t need reminding of the history of the church’s views on single mothers.

‘Blokey’

Amusingly, Johnson calls himself a feminist these days, but his refusal to apologise for past remarks suggests he hasn’t parted ways with the version of himself who rated colleagues as “hot totty” or pontificated about how Malaysian women went to university to find a husband. As recently as last year, an analysis of decision-making in his government found it to be “incredibly blokey”.

The Vatican is also, it’s fair to say, incredibly blokey. The pontiff seems determined that it should evolve with the times, even if “the times” occasionally seem to mean the 19th century, and has made some moves to create space for women. But they served only to underline how total and absolute the exclusion of half the population from any position of authority still is. Women are now officially allowed to read at Mass! A nun was appointed co-undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops! At this rate, we’re no more than a few centuries away from women priests.

Johnson and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church also share a disdain for alternative ways of looking at the world. He has turned sneering, shrugging and scoffing at those he disagrees with into a lucrative career. The church is more diplomatic in its dissing of other dogmas. Still, the view of canon law on confirmations or weddings which happen in other churches is clear, as we were reminded last week: they don’t count. (Marina Wheeler QC, Johnson’s second wife for 25 years and mother of four of his other children, may beg to differ. Then again, she probably wouldn’t bother. He is her “least favourite topic of conversation” and barely merited a mention in her memoir, which may be the ideal form of revenge against someone like him.)

Elitist, hypocritical, incredibly blokey – of course the Vatican, the ultimate bastion of privileged male entitlement, welcomed Boris Johnson home, in spite of the minor obstacles of his Anglicanism, his two divorces and his numerous well-publicised infidelities. His Catholic wedding wasn’t a “reward” for his righteousness, but it was a reminder of how the elite still get to make their own rules.