HUME THE HOUSEMASTER

Piers Paul Read asks why

the Archbishop of Westminster opposes the wishes of Catholic parents

IT IS sad that, in an age when so many Roman Catholic bishops have been ex- ecuted, tortured, imprisoned and exiled for their faith, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Basil Hume, should be de- fying the government of Mrs Thatcher only to protect his own power as head of an educational bureaucracy against the newly- established rights of Catholic parents. This he did recently in writing to Kenneth Baker declining to appoint governors to the Cardinal Vaughan School in Kensing- ton which, against his wishes, had voted to opt out.

The struggle, which has gone on now for several years, is over whether this small Catholic comprehensive in Kensington, which has an unrivalled reputation for academic, artistic and disciplinary stan- dards, should lose its sixth form and be absorbed in a reorganisation of Catholic schools in the area which envisages a sixth form college in St Charles Square. This project, the brainchild of the Westminster Diocesan Education Service, was never popular with the parents of the more successful schools and the largest, the London Oratory, refused to take part, despite pressure from Cardinal Flume and even an exchange of letters with Rome. The scheme was also opposed by both parents and teachers at the Cardinal Vaughan School, who realised that its qualities would not survive relegation to the status of a neighbourhood feeder school for the nearby sixth form college. It was in a different position, however, to the London Oratory School, whose trustee was the community of Oratory fathers. Here the trustee was the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster who, during the passage of Kenneth Baker's Education Act through Parliament, had asked to have the power to veto any decision by parents to opt out. His request was refused; but the Cardinal is now seeking to frustrate the parents' choice.

Two questions are prompted by his decision. Has it anything to do with the Catholic faith? And if it has not, why has such a kind and benevolent man con- fronted the Government on a political issue to the great distress of those Catholics who do not share his point of view?

The Catholic Church as such has no constitution. There are certain scriptural texts (Thou art Peter. . .', etc) which underpin the claims of papal and episcopal authority; there is a Code of Canon Law; but the principal means of arriving at an accepted body of belief are the Councils of the Church, the most recent of which was held in the Vatican in the 1960s. Here a Declaration on Christian Education was made which in many ways reads like a prologue to Kenneth Baker's Bill.

As it is the parents who have given life to their children, on them lies the gravest obligation of educating their family. They must therefore be recognised as being pri- marily and principally responsible for their education. . . . Parents, who have a primary and inalienable duty and right in regard to the education of their children, should enjoy the fullest liberty in their choice of school.

This statement of Catholic principle would appear to be entirely consistent with grant-maintained schools. Certainly in France Cardinal Lustiger, the Archbishop of Paris, believes that the 'community organisation of autonomous schools' should not be confined to the private sector but 'should be extended to state schools as well'. Nor should the bishop as trustee take control of such schools from the parents 'that would be an example of the obscuran- tist clericalism which some people still consider as characteristic of Catholics' but rather should be responsible only for `the Catholic nature of these schools'.

Why, then, is Cardinal Hume so deter- mined to sabotage the Government's plan to give English Catholic parents control of their schools? Undoubtedly he believes that he is acting in the best interests of his flock. That this flock should be something

`It's like living in a Welsh holiday cottage.'

of an abstraction is only to be expected in a man whose schedule of public appoint- ments all over the world leaves little time for meeting, let alone listening to, the actual parents of the children he is so eager to help. Thus he has delegated his powers in this context to the director of the Westminster Diocesan Education Service, Mrs Kathleen O'Gorman, who is also undoubtedly sincere but is a busy woman who is spared the need for extensive consultation by her stated conviction that she is directly inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Some ascribe the outrage felt by the Cardinal at the defiance of the parents to the excessive influence of Mrs O'Gorman.

Others believe that he has committed himself to her socialistic scheme in order to live down his own past in private educa- tion. He was, after all, not just a monk but also a teacher and housemaster before becoming Abbot of Ampleforth, which provides its excellent education for around £7,000 a year, and where the community would undoubtedly react unfavourably to any attempt by the Bishop of Middles- brough to bring it under his control.

The influence of Ampleforth upon his outlook may be subtler still. As Hugo Young once put it, 'he remains the very model of the well-educated middle-class Englishman, with the institutional biases to be expected of one who has spent 35 years in a public school, albeit one which was also a Benedictine monastery.' Living in that isolated monastery for so many years of his life — he was a boy at the school before he became a monk — he has had little experience of life outside an author- itarian institution. At Ampleforth every monk owes strict obedience to the Abbot, and in the school the headmaster holds all the reins of power. At Westminster, too, there are few checks and balances on the authority of a Cardinal Archbishop.

Moreover the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church at large discourages both clergy and laity from expressing a dissenting voice. As a result there is now more glasnost in Moscow and Peking than there is in Rome or Westminster. Cardinal Flume not only seems to prefer to work in an atmosphere of consensus but also to be prejudiced in favour of the structures of the corporatist state.

Yet it would be a pity to think of him solely as the head of an archiepiscopal administration, for beneath the shell of the busy prelate is the kernel of the contempla- tive monk. This, one suspects, is the man he was really meant to be: in his most recent book — a collection of essays on ecclesiology — the prose springs to life when he is writing about prayer. Until now, the monk has been somewhat obscured by the role of the administrator and statesman, but his friends can see a time when the monk will give up his obsession with his bureaucratic preroga- tives and give Catholics the full benefit of his spiritual powers.