Fatal flaw
Sir: A contributor to your Christmas issue (Diary, 17/24 December) asserts that 'probably the greatest, most moving reli- gious experience of the British in recent years was the mysterious and scandalous death of Canon Gareth Bennett'.
LETTERS
Before this sad event passes into the realms of mythology — or is it hagiogra- phy? — it may be as well to attempt to see it in perspective. If Gary Bennett's hard- hitting criticism of the 'liberal ascendancy' in the Church had been made above his own name in a learned journal, it would have triggered off a healthy debate and no more. But anyone other than an academic unused to the ways of the world, in writing an anonymous preface for the official year-book of the Church, would have foreseen that the kind of acerbic comment with which it was spiced would in this context cause a much greater explosion.
Then he compounded misjudgment with (quite unnecessary) evasion. Finally he took a way out which his every instinct must have told him was a denial of the faith by which he had lived.
He was a tragic figure then in the true Greek sense of the word — a good man who through some fatal flaw, some unex- pected circumstance, finds himself in a situation whch he cannot handle. But 'heroism' and 'sacrifice' are not the words I would associate with his death.
Of course the press had a field day. 'Hounded to death', 'Broken by the Church he loved' were among the head- lines that left a wry taste in the mouth. Nor could I feel happy about the publicity given to his funeral (four bishops, as it, at the requiem?). Certainly any attempt to use his death for partisan purposes is a disser- vice to his memory.
James Cobban
14 St Swithin's Close, Sherborne, Dorset
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