King hated the ‘loathsome political correctness’ of most churches.
Charles said in a newly uncovered 1998 letter that he was drawn to the Orthodox church as it was the only sect that was not ‘corrupted’ by political correctness
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Kaya Burgess
, Religious Affairs Correspondent
Thursday October 31 2024, 9.00pm GMT, The Times
A choir performed Psalm 71 in Greek at the King’s coronation last yearYUIMOK/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGESThe King believed the Orthodox church was the only Christian denomination that had “not been corrupted by loathsome political correctness”, a private letter has revealed.As sovereign, Charles is supreme governor of the Church of England, which is the denomination that he was christened and confirmed into.His comments, made in 1998 while he was Prince of Wales, are therefore likely to be seen as a veiled criticism of the church he was destined to lead upon taking the throne. The letter, marked “private and confidential”, was sent in 1998 from Balmoral Castle to Dudley Popak, an interior designer who had worked with the royal family.Popak died in 2005 and the letter was among a collection of royal correspondence sold at auction by Lay’s Auctioneers of Penzance, Cornwall, for more than £1,700.The King has often expressed a fascination with and affinity for the Greek Orthodox church into which his father, Prince Philip, was baptised.In his letter to Popak, Prince Charles, then aged 49, wrote: “Personally, the older I get, the more I am drawn to the great, timeless traditions of the Orthodox Church. They are the only ones that have not been corrupted by loathsome political correctnes. It is not clear what particular policies of the Church of England or other Christian churches had prompted his irritation by 1998. The Church of England had recently changed its laws to permit women to become priests, ordaining the first women in 1994, but there were no signs of royal opposition to the move.In 1998 it was still four years away from the church dropping its opposition to the remarriage of divorcees with living ex-spouses. Moreover, this was a move that ultimately benefited Charles, as it allowed the then Archbishop of Canterbury to give his blessing to Charles’s marriage to Camilla, whose ex-husband was still alive.The church has faced criticism from traditionalists in recent years over its move to allow priests to bless gay couples, but this change was still 25 years away when Charles wrote his letter.
