Carrie Symonds made an honest man of Boris Johnson
/ TRAVELS IN MY MIND
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
– Jack Kerouac
On Bank Holiday weekend, Britain woke to the news that its prime minister had made an honest woman of Carrie Symonds.
Or, for those who bristle at the imputation that an adult woman needs to be made whole and honest in some way merely because she lives with someone, on Saturday, May 29, Carrie Symonds made an honest man of Boris Johnson.
Ah, but there’s the catch. Would the mere act of getting married make an honest man of Boris Johnson?
He has been married twice before and it seems to have had no effect on the state of his truthfulness or lack thereof.
This is a person who won’t even let on how many children he has fathered.
He’s the man who promised that Brexit would be a liberation, that “getting Brexit done” would lead to unimaginable riches and Britain’s greater glory.
He promised that the Brexit deal would take the whole of the United Kingdom out of the European Union (EU). Instead, of course, Northern Ireland is stuck in the EU single market for goods, with EU customs rules enforced at its ports and a trade border in the Irish Sea.
So, Ms Symonds can’t really make an honest man of Mr Johnson. That said, they have legalised their relationship, somewhat surprisingly, by getting married in a Catholic church.
What’s that all about?
Ms Symonds, it turns out, belongs to the Catholic faith.
Mr Johnson’s mother, apparently, was Catholic, Mr Johnson was baptised as one, later becoming an Anglican and marrying twice before in Anglican ceremonies.
That, it seems, is the reason Mr Johnson was able to marry in Westminster Cathedral, a remarkable twist in the story. According to The Daily Telegraph, “sources speculated that because he was baptised a Catholic, by not participating in Catholic ceremonies in his previous marriages, for which he would have required special dispensation from the Catholic church, those marriages would have ‘had a lack of canonical form’ and could therefore be considered invalid”.
That’s the kind of illogical leap Mr Johnson might appreciate.
