This week’s Spectator has a very nice piece on why St George should be replaced by St Alban as the patron saint of England. It’s reasonably argued, contains sufficient facts to be plausible, so why am I enraged by it ? I’m not really all that worried by it being based on a sermon by a Church of England priest, nor by the idea itself. This :

This article is based on a sermon given by the Prebendary Graham Claydon at St Paul’s on St George’s Day.

Yes, on that very Saint’s Day, in the grandest cathedral of the nation’s church, the man selected to celebrate the main service stands up and says :

But there were problems in adopting him from the start. For one thing, he had no connections with England; for another, he is the patron saint of Christian soldiers, and came to us dressed up as a Crusading hero. The Crusaders’ shield was to become our national flag. As another George has so recently discovered, now is not the time to be looking back to the Crusades for national identity and inspiration.

Sheesh.

The late Archbishop of Westminster ( for non UKites, that’s the Catholic Archbish of England ), Basil Hume, once prayed publicly for the Conversion of England. He was loudly condemned for it, but I fear the Prebendary has made a few converts to that cause albeit inadvertently.