Grow up, Bishop Pete

"BISHOP Broadbent is entitled to his views," says Lambeth Palace, confronted with the news that Pete Broadbent, Bishop of Willesden, has used his Facebook page to denounce the royal wedding, the happy couple, the monarchy, and the hereditary principle,

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He refers to the wedding of Charles and Diana as "the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll." He gives the William/Kate marriage seven years.

In, fact Pete (if I may be so familiar) makes the sort of outburst which, 500 years ago, would have earned him a good hanging, drawing and quartering for treason.

But that was in an age when the monarchy could hit back. These days, as this republican and depressingly hip modern bishop knows, the Windsors are sitting ducks.

So he can thunder: "They don't have a good track record on the permanence of marriage" and get away with it when he would never dream of making the same remark about some dysfunctional underclass family in Willesden.

For one who despises the monarchy, Pete Broadbent, who has since made a rather unconvincing apology, seems happy with a career in the Church of England, a body created by a monarch which is as much part of the royal system as carriages and corgis. A bishop condemning the monarchy is like a skydiver criticising gravity.

Grow up, Pete. You are not a radical outsider. You are a bishop who has sworn loyalty to the Church and its monarch. While you and all the other bishops are entitled to your views, they are very strange views indeed to be held by someone who is totally immersed in the system. Right up to your silly mitre.