5 MARCH 1983, Page 39

Postscript

Time for a rest

Patrick Marnham Dehold a great priest who in his days

LP pleased God.' Perhaps this will be the text for the memorial service on that happy day when the Bishop of Birmingham is called to his eternal reward — happy for him of course, not for those who remain below, for their lives will be made con- siderably less amusing by his departure to the Great Pulpit in the Sky.

Only last week the Bishop, the Rt Revd Hugh Montefiore, 'raised his voice ... to combat the revival of anti-semitism in the West, after events in the Middle East, (the Times), and achieved his end by deciding that Jesus Christ was anti-semitic. The Bishop, who must have been reading the Bi- ble all his life, has reached Matthew xxiii and the passage that begins, 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you devour the houses of widows, praying long prayers. For this you shall receive the

greater judgment „ (Douai Version, 1582). He commented, 'It is an easy assump- tion on reading this passage to think that the whole Jewish people was included in this condemnation, and that all Jewry was responsible for the death of Jesus; and as a result all Jews are reprobate and damned.'

Montefiore then moved on to John viii where Jesus is driven from the Temple after rebuking those within for rejecting his teachings and following the lies of the devil; and decided that this would 'naturally' be taken as referring to the Jewish people as a whole and that it showed them all to be murderers and liars who deliberately set out to kill Jesus.

Warming to his theme, the Bishop then announced that St John Chrysostom had harboured attitudes towards the Jews that were not very far from those of Der Stunner. He concluded that in view of all this it was 'quite unrealistic to expect Jews ever to want to become Christians', except in rare cases like his own. Perhaps this is just as well. Birmingham has had some bar- my bishops and this one appears to be in the great tradition. He was converted to Chris- tianity while at Rugby School and, if such a procedure exists in the Anglican Church, it seems to be time for him to take a refresher course.

Jeffrey Bernard is unwell. Reading through Matthew xxiii and John viii it is very ha: d to see what the old fellow is on about. In the first case Jesus was argu- ing with his powerful enemies, the Pharisees; in the other he was up against a Jewish crowd who were defending Jewish truth against Christian truth. No responsi- ble Christian teacher today attempts to justify anti-semitism with reference to the New Testament. So why does the Bishop rake up all these old slurs as though they were the natural and ordinary meaning of the Gospels?

Bishop Montefiore, if memory serves, was the man who announced some years ago that Jesus Christ was a homosexual because he was unmarried. (You've got to give it to him; he does have his little no- tions.) On being appointed to his see he delivered himself of some random reflec- tions on the moral failings of the motor car. This distressed those members of his flock who spend most of their lives building these machines, but it did get him back into the newspapers. The Church of England is noted for its tolerance but if the Bishop is to be encouraged this will be thoroughly tested. What does he make of Matthew xviii, 8, for instance (`And if thy hand or thy foot scandalise thee, cut it off and cast it from thee')? Will we shortly be hearing that Christ has been responsible for IRA punishment squads? If the anachronistic application of St Matthew's Gospel is not to be a monopoly of bishops one might point out that when one reads Matthew xxiii, 23 — 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law, judgment and mercy and faith.' — it is not of the Jews that one thinks, but of certain bishops. And there are probably some tenants in north London who, on reading the passage quoted earlier ('because you devour the houses of widows... start to think oddly enough not of the Jews but of the Church Commissioners.

No doubt the doctors of the modern Church — the successOrs of the great John Chrysostom, 'the golden-mouthed' Arch- bishop of Constantinople who died in 407 in exile because of his devotion to the truth — would consider such applications of Christ's word inappropriate. No doubt they would be right. But how strange that one of them should claim that anything in the teaching of Christ could have inspired persecution and justified murder.

It would be no surprise to learn that the Bishop of Birmingham originally aban- doned his Judaism on the grounds that Abraham was unkind to animals (Genesis xv, 9-10: the division of a cow, a she goat and a ram into two pieces). Perhaps in the evening of his days he might return to it. Then we could at least discover what the Torah had to say about Spaghetti Junction.

Patrick Marnham will be travelling abroad for several months. From next week Postscript will be written by P.J. Kavanagh.