Another voice
The state of the churches
Auberon Waugh
T know nothing of Erith and Crayford, 1 Mr James Wellbeloved's constituency on the eastern fringes of London. I have never been there and don't want to go. His 61,000 constituents can go and boil their heads as far as I am concerned. They may have a de- cent standard of living down there or they may not. It is all the same to me. I don't care.
In this, I differ from the Revd Malcolm Smart, who is Rector of Greenford. Green- ford, I think, is probably on the extreme north-west fringes of London, somewhere north of Osterley. On the map, at least, it looks a pleasanter sort of area than Erith and Crayford, but one can't be sure. There were nearly 20,000 Conservatives in Mr Wellbeloved's constituency at the last count, so it can't be all bad. At any rate, Mr Smart is planning to leave the delights of Greenford. He has been adopted as Labour candidate for Erith and Crayford, with its reasonably comfortable Labour majority of 2,773 in 1979.
In the neighbourhood of Greenford, or so the Daily Express tells me, he was known as 'the caring people's priest'. Now, we learn that, 'with his good looks and his stunning personality', this 38-year-old political person could soon be an MP. He first became a priest, he explains, because he wanted to work with people: 'I was also a Christian, and working through the Church seemed a valid way of working with people.'
In this, he was completely different from those priests who want to work with orang- utans, or more specifically caring orang- utans. Similarly, he would have little in common with those who feel really at home only with hedgehogs. Needless to say, this strange preference for working with people caused endless trouble with the eccle- siastical authorities. "I have caused a stink or two," he grins.'
One of the more encouraging things about this slightly absurd figure is that he should have been accepted as a Labour can- didate in what might normally be con- sidered a reasonably safe Labour seat — Mr Wellbeloved's majority in October 1974 was 8.46 per cent. He seems to be in two minds about his eventual emergence as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. On the one hand, he has no per- sonal ambition for himself, feeling, no doubt, that politics is not really about per- sonalities. 'Ambition,' he declares, 'is wan- ting a compassionate and caring society, and a decent standard of living for all.' On the other hand, it may well be that neither this society nor this standard of living can come about unless he is prepared to make the necessary sacrifice and move into Downing Street. 'If being Prime Minister gives one the chance of bringing the necessary things to society, then yes. Oh YES!'
Readers of the Spectator may decide that I invented this Reverend Malcolm Smart. So I did, under another name, in a novel called Consider the Lilies which was about Church of England clergymen and pub- lished in 1968, but nobody read it at the time and it has long been out of print. The real Mr Smart was showing his good looks and stunning personality in an interview with Adella Lithman in the Daily Express last week — 14 years later. He is listed in Crockford's Clerical Directory, so plainly he exists.
One of the more encouraging things about this buffoon, as I say, is that the Labour Party should have adopted him, but any discussion of the implications of this important development in the future shape of British politics must be left to my learned friend Mr Ferdinand Mount. An even graver cause for rejoicing, it seems to me, is that the Church of England should have got rid of him. Mr Smart does not seem to attach much importance to this aspect. He feels that he is not really giving up his mission to the human race.
`I am determined to be an MP but I am not giving my work up. Church is about people. Politics is about people.'
Yes, I think I understand. But it is ob- viously better that Mr Smart should work off his obsession with people and their stan- dards of living in politics. And it seems to me that since Dr Runcie has taken over from the frightful Lord Coggan, there is a new spirit of common sense in the Church of England which almost balances the ad- vance of fatuity in public life exemplified by that uniquely fatuous document, the Scar- man Report. The importance of Mr Smart's defection is that it illustrates how politics has taken over where religion left off. The Church of England, at least, has grown up a bit.
I wish I could say the same about the Roman Catholic Church in England. Last week Alexander Chancellor, in his Notebook, seized upon a report of the Catholic Commission for Racial Justice which urged that the ludicrous Jamaican cult of Rastafari should be treated as a `valid religion' and allowed to practise its worship of Haile Selassie, if not its sacramental smoking of cannabis, on church premises. Two Catholic bishops en- dorsed this report, and no doubt at least one of them will find himself on the mat as a result of it. if the Archbishop of Westminster still has a mat. But that is not the point. The new Catholic Church seldom
exposes itself in this way. On this occasion we had a Catholic bishop stating that the Catholic religion did not condemn the smoking of cannabis as sinful as it did not condemn the use of alcohol or the smoking of cigarettes. Only the legal aspect presented problems. No doubt his back was against the INall and he was speaking off the cuff, but even, so I grow a little tired of having to teach these wretched Catholic bishops their own religion. The Catholic Church has alwaYs condemned deliberate alcoholic intoxica" tion, even if the sin is usually a venial one. Since the only purpose of cannabis is to toxicate — it has no nutritional function then its use must always be seen as an oeca° sion of sin. Cigarette-smoking raises entire- ly different moral questions which have nothing whatever to do with intoxicationl the worship of Haile Selassie or racial justice or the question whether Christ was a Negro. But it is very seldom, as 1 say, that the new Catholicism exposes itself so easily. We all jump on' the ridiculous Bishop Leo Me- Cartie, auxiliary Bishop of Birminghal and his pathetic Commission for Rasta Justice with whoops of joy as if we had caught an extremist in the act. But these wilder flights of fatuousness are not tile main problem. The main problem is to he found in the vast supporting infrastructure of milder wrong-headedness, often quite plausible, which needs to be exposed , patiently, and at tedious length, before one can reach the conclusion that under lia,s.1 Hume and Derek Worlock the Catholle Church in England has become, on balance, a force for untruth and absurdaY rather than a force for charity and truth, Obviously, like the Church of England under the terrible Dr Coggan, there are deep reserves of common sense, not to sat wisdom, experience, truth and charity. No doubt they will surface again under better leaders. But they contribute little or nothing to the Catholic Church's present aspect la England, and it is in this context, I feel, that we should consider the Pope's impending visit.
Nobody can doubt that the visit will Pro" vide an enormous boost for the English Catholic hierarchy, and also for English, Catholicism's self-esteem. Two questioa.s which Archbishop Heim (the ApostOhel Delegate, shortly to become pro-nun cl°' should ask himself very seriously are: does the Catholic hierarchy in England desergi such a boost? Will it serve any useitt purpose? If he can think of any gain commensurat(3e, with the damage it will do to the cause .; reconciliation with the Church of England' then of course there may be a case for allowing the visit to go ahead, with all its attendant risks. But I would have thong; ; that there are better uses for the Pope popularity than to bolster a spirit _A° football-team loyalty behind a muddled demoralised and on balance wrong-heade,, hierarchy in one of Christendom's least a` tractive outposts.
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