SIR,—It is not hard to see, after reading Mr Auberon
Waugh's 'Christmas Sermon,' what it was Fr Charles Davis found so unbearable about the Church of Rome in this country. Mr Waugh may be a good deal more literate and literary than the Rev Ian Paisley of Belfast, but he hasn't much to learn from him in terms of virulence and misrepresentation. If Cardinal Heenan is the smiling face of English Romanism, is Mr Waugh the serpent under it? I think many of Mr Waugh's fellow-Catholics will find the taste of his article as nasty and vicious as will any Anglican.
If out of his rhetoric one attempts to extract some points rational enough to comment on, then the following might be made. (i) Anglicans do not crowd into their churches at Christmas for their annual sing-song. They come to receive Holy Communion, an act as meaningful to them as being at Mass is to a Roman Catholic. (ii) The scandal of mixed marriages lies in the fact Rome sets prospective hus- band and wife at variance by requiring from the Anglican partner not concessions but total surrender in the matter of the religious upbringing of the children. The present situation amounts to emotional blackmail as far as the Anglican partner is con- cerned. Mr Waugh's parody of the Archbishop's plea for some recognition of the rights of the Angli- can's conscience in this situation is scurrilous. (iii) Since the numbers of the total Roman Catholic com- munity in this country amount (on his own Church's claims) to around 4,000,000, he is claiming that nearly 90 per cent of them attend Mass each week. Can he substantiate this? His figures for the Church of England are, on his own admission, just his own invention. (iv) How would Mr Waugh substantiate his remark (about Anglicans and Nonconformists) 'of course none of them do believe'? What evidence (as distinct from prejudice) would he care to offer in support of his description of the Church of England as 'idle, dishonest, time-wasting, pseudo-religion'? The SPECTATOR must be hard pushed to have to publish such clap-trap; and Mr Waugh would do better to stick to fiction or writing tracts for those of his co-religionists who are still living in the past rather than reproduce in a responsible magazine his bitter and dated polemic.
Previous page
