[P.D. James] James is, the profile shows, a thoroughly decent, thoughtful, and very charming person, the sort of person you\u2019d welcome as a neighbor or even as a mentor or model. She\u2019s a poster girl for the kind of urbane, skeptical, unflappable, worldly-wise Englishness beloved of Anglophiles. You can\u2019t help but feel that the world is a better place for having P. D. James in it.<\/p>\n
And yet part of that Englishness is a kind of religion whose appeal I don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s partly the agnosticism about the next world \u201d\u201d I want a bit more definite knowledge than that in exchange for my Sunday mornings \u201d\u201d but more the loss of the participation in the Divine life of which the promise of life eternal is a part.<\/p>\n
Reading the profile after Mass today, it seemed to me that she gave up what is most entrancing about the Christian Faith….<\/p>\n