No hypocrite
From the Rev Leslie Aaiun
Sir: In seeking to make a virtue of hypocrisy so as, further, to accuse the Archbishop of Canterbury of being laudable as a hypocrite, your correspondent Hugh Macpherson. displays ignorance which is unforgivable in one who claims to write a 'political commentary' (September 9). Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the Church of England knows that, notwithstanding your correspondent's description of it as that great preserver of ancient traditions and beliefs,' few institutions have struggled so assiduously to discard useless traditions, whilst holding to its fundamental beliefs — which it would be hypocritical to discard. Moreover, anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the present Archbishop knows that, whatever faults he would humbly own himself to possess, others cannot accuse him of making a virtue of hypocrisy. Ought he to have denied that which was a fact, when he spoke of the late Prince William's ' devotion to the services of others '?
Furthermore, to suggest that the Archbishop lives in such an ivory tower as to possess a naive belief in the activities of young men' is to display an ignorance which ought not to be paraded in The Spectator for few public men know more than he what the young are about . . .
Hugh Macpherson says that the Archbishop 'can be given the benefit of the doubt by the public.' In his characteristic humility, the Archbishop always would ask this — but one reader, at least, is not prepared to give your correspondnet the benefit of his particular doubt.
Leslie Aitken The Rectory, Alvechurch, Birmingham
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