Recorded history attests to
a cross-continental alliance between Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul
II. After all, she celebrated the fall
of the Berlin Wall: but to her dismay, the Euro, the Maastricht treaty (EU) and
political integration followed. Recent
events with Brexit, however, may prove to be her last laugh!
Margaret Thatcher was
raised in the Methodist tradition in rural England. John O’Sullivan calls her, “the incarnation
of provincial Methodist virtues—a very simple person, not riven by doubt about
essentials, and decisive for that reason.” (ibid)
She was decisive about a few principles that appear in the Pope’s
Centesimus Annus: subsidiarity and moral free-market capitalism. These two Catholic social teachings
unconsciously informed her worldview, although she may have called them simply “Euro-skepticism”. As I mentioned, the EU formed soon after
Thatcher’s resignation, but her legacy continues even to the present day, as
seen in the British patriotism of Daniel Hannan .
But for a British Prime Minister to align herself with the
Bishop of Rome in the Cold War is truly an irony of history as well. Certainly Elizabeth the 1st would not have
made such an alliance. Yet, Thatcher and
the Pope were not necessarily aligned afterward as best indicated by the dispute over
the Falklands. The Pope openly opposed
her aggression in that regard. For this
and other reasons of sheer stubbornness, she was known as the “Iron Lady
Thatcher”.
