Blair meets Benedict

Did the Prime Minister pop in to a Virgin Megastore at Heathrow Airport to buy his gift of Mozart CDs for the Holy Father?

BBC News footage of him presenting the classical collection to the Pope clearly shows a secruity tag still attached to the back of the presentation box!

I know his audience might only have lasted 20 minutes but I thought he could have done better than that!

Mind you, at least it's an appropriate gift from someone for whom - in meeting Benedict XVI who was opposed to the Iraq War - it's time to face the music!

Those security tags can be a right pain in the arse to get off sometimes...

ISTR that there were strong suggestions a little while ago that Tony Blair might be ready to "move over to Rome" and embrace Roman Catholocism - something he might have a bit of difficulty doing whilst still PM (Church of England being established and all that.)

Probably quite an interesting - and reasonably significant meeting.

Is there not laws in the UK (or until recently) that banned Catholic Prime Ministers?

James Callaghan (Prime Minister 1976-79) was Roman Catholic.

I don't really get it all. Isn't Anglisism almost the same thing as catholosism besides no pope? I know they are closley linked, but I'm RC.

There are Anglo-Catholics and other high Anglicans in the Church of England - but the main sticking point between most Anglicans and Rome is the position of the Pope - or even the concept of the Pope. There are quite a few high Anglos who've defected to Rome over various issues - one of the main ones being the ordination of women Priests in the Anglican church.

I wouldn't describe them as entirely "closely linked" - you only have to look at areas of Ireland (and to a lesser degree Scotland) to see how "closely linked" they are in extreme cases. However compared to days gone by many local churches are closely linked, and there is no longer the same fear of the unknown.

The styles of worship vary widely within Anglican and RC churches - so much so that there can be more overlap between some RC and Anglican churches than between churches in the same denomination. However there are still very major theological barriers that would need to be reconciled for them to move closer (role of women, role of the pope etc.)

In the UK - the Church of England is "Established" - which means it is closely tied to the state (The Queen is "Defender of THE faith" - which many take to mean she is defender of the Church of England against Rome. This dates back to Henry VIII splitting from Rome to allow him to divorce ISTR from school history lessons a gazillion years ago, and Elizabeth I continued the split including the issue of Mary Queen of Scots - who was Catholic)

There are still all sorts of odd legislation which are not exactly RC-friendly. The monarch can't be married to a catholic ISTR?

The Prince of Wales is, reportedly, uncomfortable with the title "Defender of THE faith" and in these days of multiculturalism would rather be "Defender of faithS"

I thought anglican was seperate from the protestans, like in scotland and NI, so that's why i said that.

Edit: Well, I'm catholic, and I happen to like the fact that women can become preist or whatever you call them. W/E....

It is quite complicated (isn't everything?) - however Wikipedia entry for Anglican is quite a useful source of some information on the difference between the terms Anglican and Protestant.

Most of the CofE (Church of England) churches I have known have been relatively low - and thus definitely identified as Protestant, but I've also been to high anglican, high RC, and low RC churches - all of which were pretty different.

Thanks .Not really sure what high and low is though

"High" and "low" refer to a scale of Protestant vs. Catholic styles of worship, "high" being Catholic, and "low" being Protestant. Thus "high" churches, like Catholic ones, will tend to put higher emphasis on the sacraments, especially communion, whereas "low" churches will stress teaching and more literal interpretations of the Bible, etc.

The Church of England has always been a broad church that contains elements of both Catholic and Protestant styles, and can be seen as a kind of halfway house between Catholicism and Protestantism. However, its 39 Articles explicitly reject certain Romish teachings such as transubstantiation, the infallibility of the Pope, celibacy for priests and the doctrine of "salvation by works". So it is officially a Protestant church, though not *as* Protestant as the "non-conformists"; that is, Baptists, Methodists and so on.

High Church is 'smells & bells', sung masses etc.

Low Church tends to include less music and ceremony, in a generally simpler form of service.

I was brought up 'high' Anglican (would be Anglo-Catholic except that there's no such recognised demarkation within the Church in Wales - which disestablished itself from the Church of England in 1920) but have graduated to a more relaxed 'low church' form of worship these days.