Some on the internet have been claiming that, if his ambitions are fulfilled, Andy Burnham – newly minted MP for Makerfield – would be Britain’s first Catholic Prime Minister. That accolade has already been bagged, however, by Boris Johnson, who turned out to be Catholic, at least nominally, in time to declare his previous marriages null (due to lack of form: the form only Catholics are obliged to fulfil) and get married in Westminster Cathedral.
Mr Johnson’s Catholicism is similar to Mr Burnham’s, in being a matter of having been baptised in the Church, and not having repudiated this in a “juridic” manner. Neither man appears to believe what the Church requires, or to keep its rules of behaviour. Boris and his wife Carrie are to be congratulated for their four children since their marriage in May 2021; it seems the grace of the sacrament has triumphed over Johnson’s anti-natalist views. For, despite having at least nine children in total, he believes that the world is overpopulated, and lamented the overturning of the putative constitutional right to abortion in the US.
