But it is what the majority of the English has seemed to want. The figures for regular church-going may have gone into free-fall but the numbers who would claim to be Christian and to visit churches for those occasions remain surprisingly high - more than half the adult population, in fact.A sort of easy, undemonstrative and tolerant ambling along with religion, not wanting it to be too intrusive but wishing its comforts to be available in need, has been the English way. Its frustrating for those who want religion to represent much more of a total commitment and it is offensive to those who want religion relegated to the margins, but it has given countless communities what they wanted through all sorts of upheavals that have destroyed more absolutist churches in other countries.The trouble is that now no one believes in this any longer at the top of the organisation itself. Otherwise it could never have survived the succession of supreme governors from George IV to Edward VII who lived lives all too obviously at total variance with its teachings. No, the primary job of the established Church, and the one that has kept it going for 450 years, is to provide spiritual sustenance and to make available the sacraments of baptism, marriage and death to the local community.Even to spell this out sounds quaint and old-fashioned in a more secular age.
It's not so much the royal marriage or the debate over women bishops that has done it, although each in its own way is a symptom of an institution in accelerating decline. It's that nowhere in any of the debates at the synod this week or any of the discussion about the marriage of the Prince to Mrs Parker Bowles and the succession of Charles to the throne is there any sense that the C of E understands its role as the established church of England or even wants it any longer. Yet, without that role, the Church is bereft of its raison d'?e. It becomes just another sect, only one in deep economic trouble and profoundly divided on many of its core issues. Its communities may go on in their individual parts but not as a whole.If this were just a matter of the Church as part of the "establishment", - the role its critics, and many even within the Church, seem to assume - its position as a prop to political power could be seen as eminently dispensable. No longer required to anoint the King or Queen and take a central part in the pomp and circumstance of royal rule, the Church could concentrate on its religious duties to the benefit of allBut the function of the established Church is much more than this.
He had the Irish way with words, an Irish wit, and occasionally an Irish temper.In 2001, he suffered a stroke but remained, according to his second wife, Roma, "strong, courageous and gallant". His invention, made with a student of his called Willie Ganz, revolutionised heart surgery. The catheter, which is still used today, enabled bedside monitoring in critically ill patients by measuring heart output and capillary pressure in the lungs. This improved the care of patients with heart attacks, serious burns, acute respiratory failure and many other conditions.Swan was born in Sligo in Ireland, the son of two general practitioners.
