A Sydney Anglican Bishop says he is not a royal watcher, but Australians might benefit from looking past the fashion and focussing on the way Charles and Camilla married.
"I’m glad he’s cleaning his life up by marrying her," says the Right Rev Robert Forsyth, Bishop of South Sydney. "And I’m glad they included a public statement of repentance."
The couple acknowledged their past adultery in front of hundreds of guests, including Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip, during the blessing of the marriage conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
Together they recited a strongly worded prayer to God:
"We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us."
Bishop Forsyth says he's impressed with the stand the couple took.
"And I wish others would do it too - it’s a model worth considering in other cases of remarriage after divorce," he says.
Bishop Forsyth is at pains to point out that the Anglican Church is not the Church of England in Australia.
"So we have no special stake in the future monarch. We are an Australian church," he says.
But he believes that many of the criticisms of the Royal couple have more to do with the way they look than the way they have acted.
"There's a certain kind of very unworthy criticism of Camilla Parker-Bowles because she doesn't fit the stereotype of "beautiful princess' " that's immature," says Bishop Forsyth.
"How on earth can that sort of sexism persist in Australian life is beyond me. It's only because she's English or to do with the royal family that people have been able to get away with it."
