IT HAS been 18 years, and I still have one big regret about my wedding. Why did I pick the wrong tune for the first hymn? I asked for John Stainer’s slightly plodding take on “Love Divine, all loves excelling”, because that was what we sang at school. Ever since, when 408 in The New English Hymnal appears on the pew sheet, and our organist plays William Rowlands’s more elegant intro, my wife will give me a look and I will sigh: “I know. I know. Blaenwern’s better.”
She left the hymns to me, but the choreography was all her, which is why, on that sunny June day, I was at the back of church, waiting for my bride to arrive so that we could advance on matrimony, arm in arm. She insisted that she would not be given away by one man to another. Down with the patriarchy. It didn’t feel especially revolutionary, though it was still quite rare in our circle that the father of the bride didn’t walk in with his daughter as her supporter.
In Sweden, I learnt from The Observer last weekend, the situation is reversed. In the land of equal parental leave and a gender-balanced parliament, it has long been the tradition in Lutheran churches that bride and groom come in together. Increasingly, however, Swedish women are asking to be “handed over” by Pappa — inspired, the paper claimed, by Hollywood weddings and their Princess Victoria entering for hers in 2010 on the arm of King Carl Gustaf. About ten per cent of Swedish weddings now begin in this fashion.
That has led a pastor near Gothenburg to try to get it banned. Sara Waldenfors has submitted a motion to the autumn meeting of the Swedish Church to end the practice. “Even if the scene appears pleasant to the couple, we cannot overlook what it symbolises: a father handing over his daughter to a new guardian,” she said. “It is a question that the Church has to own.” Others argued in reply that freedom of choice mattered as much as gender equality.
None, though, addressed the real problem with the wedding procession, which is why so many refer to being taken “down the aisle” when it should be “up the nave”.
THE Pope began the longest trip of his pontificate this week: a 12-day, 20,000-mile journey round Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and Singapore which far surpasses any of his 44 previous official visits. Many raised concerns about the health of the 87-year-old, who has to use a wheelchair because of a knee ailment, and the programme of 40 events, but John Allen, editor of the Catholic news site Crux, was quoted in The Times as saying: “He is trying to show his Biden moment hasn’t yet arrived.”
The Independent reported that the Pope would be taking a doctor, two nurses, and his personal secretaries in a vast delegation, and that, besides attending urban mass gatherings and greeting political and religious leaders, he would trek deep into the New Guinea jungle to meet Argentinian missionaries. He departed in humble style, however, The Sun noting that he was driven to Fiumicino airport in a Fiat 500, which the paper called “the family motor”.
AT LEAST he went with some new jokes for his speeches. David Sedaris wrote in this week’s New Yorker about being invited to the Vatican in June with 100 other comedians from around the world, including Chris Rock, Stephen Merchant, and Whoopi Goldberg, to hear the Pope speak about how laughter made the world go round.
Unlike many of the guests who had a strong religious faith, Sedaris was unsure why he was there, saying that it felt “like a reproduction of The Last Supper with one of the disciples replaced by Snoopy”.
Perhaps wisely, Sedaris decided against telling the Pope his favourite God joke, in which Adam is offered the most beautiful, sexually eager, and uncomplaining wife. “But it’ll cost you,” God says. “An eye, an elbow, a collarbone, and your left ball.” Adam thinks for a minute, and then asks: “What can I get for a rib?”
FINALLY, the Revd Richard Smail, from Oxford, used the letters page of The Daily Telegraph to seek advice about the cost-of-doffing crisis. “As a clergyman, I find myself constantly raising my Panama hat to parishioners, with the result that the front of the crown tends to fray very quickly,” he wrote. “A hat usually lasts only a year. Politeness is proving rather expensive.”
In reply, the Revd Ed Tomlinson suggested “swapping his frivolous secular headwear for something more appropriate”, such as a heavy-duty saturno from Gammarelli’s in Rome, while the Revd Donald Easton advised applying transparent silicone sealant, although he added: “I always used to wear a straw hat when digging in the Near East. Conditions could be rough, so repairs were sometimes needed — but never annually. Parish work in Oxford is evidently rougher.”
Patrick Kidd writes the Diary column in The Times, and is a churchwarden of All Saints’, Blackheath, in London.
Andrew Brown is away.