I believe in me. Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AFP/Getty

I became a priest on a hot summerâs day at Lichfield Cathedral. I was as prepared as I thought I could be for the vows I was about to take. What I wasnât prepared for, though, was the whole paraphernalia of ecclesiastical haberdashery. It seemed so unimportant. Friends had been trying on cassocks and dog collars for weeks before. I hadnât given it a second thought.
How naive I was. Putting on a clerical collar changes how people treat you. It is such a powerful symbol, so freighted with meaning, that you instantly become an object of projection. Put on a little circle of plastic around your neck, and the person gets obliterated by the parson. I felt I had disappeared. In time, I came to hate wearing it. I still do.
So, despite the many and various ways in which I have been outraged by Harryâs attack upon his own family, the one batsqueak of sympathy I have for him is my understanding of what it feels like to be hidden behind oneâs role. Not just hidden, but almost obliterated by it. In Spare, he explains that one of the things that attracted him to former girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, was that she had not been struck down by âthrone syndromeâ. Unlike so many others, she didnât see a prince, she saw Harry.
In the months after I started wearing all the churchy kit, I noticed some strange and rather foolish changes to my behaviour. For one thing, I started swearing more. Nothing too wildly offensive â at least not with parishioners â but enough to attempt to disturb the grip that this little magic ring of plastic had on other peopleâs imaginations. I also over-shared. It sounds childish to state it so bluntly â and it was pretty childish â but I wanted people to see me. I felt the need to re-assert the identity that I felt had been surrendered to the office.
Though the priesthood carries with it a whole world of expectation, my experience of projection is nowhere near that experienced by members of the Royal Family. Nonetheless, it does give me a small insight into the temptation that Harry has unfortunately given in to: the temptation to draw back the curtain and tell the world who you really are. âSee me!â this poor troubled man is screaming, âSee my pain!â. In Harryâs case this act of defiant self-disclosure has been turbocharged by the whole Californian culture of authenticity. Of being true to yourself. This couldnât be more different from the ânever explain, never complainâ iron curtain philosophy of his family.
To those who admire the âbe true to yourselfâ mantra, Harry is a hero of self-expression; to those who donât, he is a self-absorbed cry baby. Mostly, I donât.
The philosopher Charles Taylor has written with great insight about how this difference chimes with a centuries-long shift in European culture about where meaning is to be found. It used to be the case that meaning was found beyond oneself. As the psalmist put it: âI will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help.â Meaning is to be discovered out there, in Godâs order, in nature. Our purpose is to follow the star, or something beyond oneself. God doesnât really mean some big quasi-person from whom you receive instructions; it means something more like an understanding of things â universe, human existence â as seen from the widest possible angle. But secularisation has shifted this emphasis: meaning is no longer out there, but in here. You follow your own star. Your star, your truth.
The tragedy of Harry is how badly he has been let down by this expressivist philosophy. Because the problem with âsee meâ is that not everyone will see the same thing. And not everyone will like what they see.
In that fascinating movie The Two Popes, there is the following little exchange:
Pope Benedict: This popularity of yours, is there a trick to it?Â
Pope Francis: I just try to be myself.Â
Pope Benedict: Huh. Whenever I try to be myself, people donât seem to like me very much.
I doubt Pope Francis would ever say anything so crass as âI just try to be myselfâ. But in so far as this is a fictional conversation between personifications of modernity and pre-modernity, it captures the difference rather well. My sympathies are with the fictional Benedict because, like him, I often donât feel particularly likeable â which doesnât matter so much if meaning and affirmation is to be found outside the self. But Harryâs overwhelming desire to express all the details of his inner life puts him straight into the jaws of the tabloid press, who can make anyone look unlikable. âSee meâ is a dangerous thing to utter when the audience is Rupert Murdoch.
Benedict, by contrast, knows that his God is a very different kind of judge. And his rueful shrug at not being as popular as Francis contains a kind of freedom from fear that âI just try to be myselfâ has not yet discovered. There is enormous liberation â and not only in the priestly vocation â to be found when you realise âitâs not all about me!â. The psychological hell of Harry Windsor is that he has made it all about him. And the poison of this position is leaking everywhere.
None of which is to disparage the workings of the inner life. As it happens, I had the same psychotherapist as Harryâs mother, and she pretty much saved me from emotional disaster. At its best, therapy is not about âmy truthâ but about reality and how one learns to live with that reality when it doesnât necessarily have your egoâs best interests at heart.
Harry may think that telling his truth is all part of his healing process. But many of us will only remember an entitled brat dissing his father and his brother, and telling us too much about his frostbitten penis. No healing will come from this.
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