ANOTHER VOICE
An exposition of the benefits of culturally insensitive Catholicism
AUBERON WAUGH
blether one liked her or not, Andrea Dworkin cut a strangely moving figure when she defended the American notion of Political Correctness — nowadays called Cultural Sensitivity — a few weeks ago at the Oxford Union. Sincere to the point of tearfulness, she ignored all the repressive aspects of political correctness — its denial of free speech, civil rights, logic, linguistic clarity, common sense or any of the other instruments of male oppression which it has singled out. Instead she identified `political correctness' as an avoidance of such `hate-words' as 'nigger', when applied to an Afro-American schoolgirl, an avoid- ance of genocide (she believed 200 million `native Americans' had been massacred by the white settlers) and vague opposition to a system whereby the non-white, poor majority was endlessly exploited and gagged by the rich, white minority. It was the sort of stuff that brings the roof down in almost any campus theatre the length and breadth of the Union, but at Oxford the undergraduates contented themselves with looking more impenetrable and goo- fier than usual, before voting Dworkin politely back to America.
Obese to the point of freakishness, unattractively dressed in ill-fitting work- man's trousers, stupid, ignorant, self-pitying and (as the Americans say) full of shit, she cut an undeniably heroic figure in the Oxford Union, enumerating what to her and her friends were self-evident truths: even if they could be disproved by the costlier information bases and crude logic of rich, white males, they must yet surely have carried some sort of prayer to heaven by virtue of her obvious sincerity.
If I say I detected the same sort of hero- ism, the same sort of sincerity last week in Charles Moore's cry of pain against the ordination of women in the Church of Eng- land, I hope nobody will misunderstand me. Charles is not obese, I have never seen him in workman's clothes, he is not stupid, Ignorant or self-pitying. Of all the Dworkin properties, as I say, heroism and sincerity are the two that shine out. The sincerity is quite worrying enough.
After the Synod vote on the ordination of women, Charles concludes: 'They appear to have decided that it will be a sect. If that is the case, the person who wants to be a member of the whole Church must leave . . . Is there a Roman Catholic priest who can help me make up my mind?' There are a few misunderstandings here which need to be cleared up. In the first place, it is only the Anglicans who see themselves as members of the Catholic church. They may believe that 'when Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter, He allowed a special version to be cut which would loose the complicated mortice which locks in the English heart'. Charles finds this idea touching, I find it smug, twee and rather nauseating. Outside High Church rectories and seminaries, everybody else sees the High Anglican phenomenon as a sect within a sect. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Perhaps Charles supposes that when Dr Carey starts laying his hands on women (I wonder if Dworkin would let him get away with it) in order to make 'priests' of them, the Apostolic Succession will be broken. But does he seriously imagine that by the same mistaken gestures Carey will be making the Pope infallible, the wine and bread at Roman Catholic masses transub- stantiate? Both these propositions are involved in joining the Roman Catholics as Charles tantalisingly suggests he might.
He intimates that if the Catholic and Orthodox churches agree to ordain women he, Charles Moore, will not hold out against them on behalf of the High Angli- can faction. But what if he joins the RCs, only to find them going one way, the Orthodox churches the other? I would be surprised if the Roman Catholics could hold out against the tide for more than 20 years. A poll of 300 RC priests conducted by the Tablet last week revealed 31 per cent in favour of female ordinations, 15 per cent `don't know'. In America, the figures are much worse. If ever — heaven forbid — we have an American Pope, they will be canonising pet animals within a month.
A little study of Church history should discourage too much pomposity about this or any other subject. In Addis and Arnold's splendid A Catholic Dictionary (1884) the matter is stated clearly enough:
Women are incapable of being validly ordained, in as much as both the healthy nat- ural instincts of mankind and positive Apos- tolic injunction (1 Cor. xiv 34; 1 Tim. ii 11) require that women should be 'silent in the churches'.
The entry goes on to explain that Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize Entries much reach The Spectator by 27 November 1992 ordained deaconesses, although entitled to make any amount of noise in church when reading homilies or gospels before the con- gregation, are not properly ordained — any more than female choir members are. 1 Cor. xiv 34 reveals the familiar passage, for- bidding women to speak in church — 'And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home.' 1 Tim. ii 11 is even more specific: 'Let the women sit in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over men, but to be in silence.'
The moment Christianity abandoned these precepts might have been a good moment to join the Muslims. Then, just across the page from 1 Tim. ii 11, the eye falls on 1 Tim. iii 2-4, Paul on bishops:
A bishop then must be blameless, the hus- band of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient; not a brawler, not covetous. One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all grav- ity.
As we all know, both the Catholic and Orthodox churches forbid bishops to marry at all. In this they both defy St Paul's injunction, and have done so for about 1,500 years. It is all very well to say that the clerical celibacy is a matter of Church disci- pline, while the injunction for women to be silent in church is a matter of unalterable truth, but there is nothing in the text to support such a view, and one may doubt whether it is capable of such an interpreta- tion.
Whatever pompous faces we choose to make at each other, the issue of Anglican ordination of women is a storm in a tea- cup. I think Charles Moore would be wast- ing a Roman Catholic priest's time, if he insisted on seeking advice from that quar- ter. All religion with him, I suspect, is a cel- ebration of his Englishness, possibly con- nected to certain frissons he experienced in Eton College chapel, and an overwhelming feeling that foreigners have nothing to teach us. If he really wishes to open his mind to the attractions of western Catholi- cism, I suggest he spends an hour or so with Dr Carey, or with the Revd Tony Higton, an Essex vicar and member of the C of E Synod, who has taken over the J.C. Flannel Godspot on the Sun. The new English are pretty dreadful people, for the most part, when all is said and done.
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