A sterile argument
Why does the debate conducted within
Words are spilled at an enormous rate, but The sterility of the argument partly
reflects the fact that, even among chur-
chmen it is conducted mainly between peo- ple who are more interested in politics than in religion. Most start from a position of
Christian traditions on the subject are young men may be inclined to castigate any not simple, and their exposition would re- publication that is sufficiently readable to quire rather more scholarship than a weekly be bought regularly by thousands of peo- magazine usually has on the premises, but it ple, but anger is, by its nature, an emotion is at least clear that war in itself has never that quickly exhausts itself. If Private Eye been always and everywhere repudiated by had never managed anything more than the Church. It has been regarded as an or- righteous (or even unrighteous) indigna- dinary human activity. The Church has tion, it would very soon and very deservedly considered it more as it has considered corn- have disappeared. Every fortnight since it merce than as it has considered murder. It started, it has managed to amuse somebody has attempted to lay down rules, and it has intentionally. In the age of the Arts Coun- taken circumstances and probabilities into cil, that must rate as one of the prouder account. The Church has sought regula- achievements of English letters.
tion, not extirpation. Of the moral effects of satire, the least
Again like commerce, war has agonised claimed the better. Those who say that the the Christian conscience. There have always subjects of their gossip and raillery 'deserve been those who have believed the market to it' are as humourless as the people who try be a form of robbery, and those who have and sue them. Those who parade the in- denied any man his right to strike his vestigative reporter as the essential guardian fellow. For those unable or unwilling to of liberty and moral standards are bores. bear the harshness of the world, the Church The world depicted by Private Eye is a has reserved the high honour of monastic world of rascals: there has to be something life. But the Church in the world has treated rascally about the people who spend their both war and commerce as aspects of fallen time depicting that world. And if some man's sorry condition, not as sins per se. It moralist points out that life as shown in is therefore most improbable that Chris- Private Eye is not a truthful representation tianity could clearly condemn any particular of reality, one can simply answer that the sort of weapon: for it is the intentions of absence of accuracy (and sometimes even of the users and the question of against whom the least jot or tittle of veracity) makes the the weapons are directed which make the product that much more diverting. he churches about the ethics of difference. If, as is commonly believed, nuclear weapons are directed against the in- nocent, the Church has reason for condem- nuclear weapons seem so uninteresting?
nation. But the notion that a weapon made by the splitting of the atom is wicked in a scarcely any of the discussion of the subject way that a sword beaten out at the forge is seems to go deep. The battle lines are clear- not is as primitively un-Christian as the ly drawn, but unfortunately neither side's belief that the foetus in the womb is pro- dialectic is strong enough to deter a tected by none of the moral laws that pro- retaliatory strike from the opponent. tect a newborn child. The discoveries of Rutherford and Einstein did not unleash a new category of evil on the world.
being strongly either pro or anti the Bomb private Eye used to be forbidden by
and then ransack Christian traditions for parents and schoolmasters. But now it ammunition. The discussion of the Chris- has come of age, and there can hardly be a tian doctrine of a 'just war', for instance, is home or school in the land which would feel used not to understand that doctrine's place it necessary to confiscate such an establish- in Christian thought, but to make whatever ed institution. Lord Gnome's great organ, the desired point is. The recently published and its chief organist, Mr Richard Ingrams, report of the Church of England's working are a comfortable part of English life.
party on nuclear weapons, though admit- Governments have come and gone. tedly morally serious, and written by Chris- Morals and the value of money have plum- tian men, is not a document of the Chris- meted. Homosexualists have penetrated the tian faith, but a point of view about inter- Liberal Party, and Dave and Deirdre Spart national relations in the 20th century. control the Labour Party. Yet Private Eye Any Christian discussion of nuclear endures, the still point of a turning world, weapons must first consider not whether the unkindly light amidst the encircling the Church has justified war A or condemn- gloom. It is its unchanging quality that has ed war B, nor even whether the Church has completely altered its status. The wildly defined the moral limits of war in general, ribald satire of the early 1960s acquires, but how the Church has understood war when still flourishing in the 1980s, a charm itself. What sort of human activity is war? through its anachronism. Private Eye is one Is it radically different from other human with the the dansant and the tango.
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