THE SAD END TO A CANTERBURY TALE
analyses a clerical comedy that turned into tragedy
IT IS one of the ironies of modern Britain that the Church of England, an institution in manifest decline, none the less has huge publicity value. The attack on the Archbishop of Canterbury in Crockford's was the most notable Advent story for many a year, and a racy one too, with its mystery hero/villain and the stampede to expose him, until it was suddenly trans- formed into tragedy and pathos. I thought the Times right to give an entire page to extracts from the preface, not least because this version, so much fuller than the sensationalised snippets used by most papers, revealed it as a superior piece of writing, making some important points — notably that 'Synodical goverment' far from proving 'an experi- ment in popular democracy', is merely another disguise for liberal elitism. Read in context, the criticism of Dr Runcie does not strike one as outrageous but a neces- sary part of a cogent and thoughtful case. Whatever else emerges from this affair, it is clear that the death of Dr Gareth Bennett is a considerable loss to a church not over-stocked with talent.
What struck me was the ruthlessness with which not only reporters from the nationals but a good many clerical hatchet- men too set about unmasking the author, with dawn stake-outs disturbing the clois- tered calm of Oxbridge colleges and cathedral closes, while the members of the church Left-liberal ruling establishment waited to strike the moment the culprit was identified. Even by Anglican standards the degree of humbug was unusual, the same sort of people who, at the time of the recent Synod, were insisting that on no account must there be a witch hunt of clergy who practised homosexuality — nobody was asking for one anyway — were instantly engaged in just such a hunt not only for the author but for someone who had a hand in this year's Crockford. There is nothing more savage than a progressive witchhunt, as both the Watergate and the Iran arms scandal proved. Now that they have their sacrificial victim, I hope the torquemadas will call it a day.
The attack certainly succeeded in one object, to throw the liberal junta onto the defensive. Both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph called on Dr Runcie to pack it in. The Sunday Express's John Junor went even further: would expect the resignation of the Archbishop of Can- terbury in days rather than in weeks.' Another anonymous writer, this time on the leader-page of the Observer, thought the publication of the preface 'bears all the signs of having been part of a concerted move to undermine the position of Dr Robert Runcie', with 'the journalistic hounds of the Right in full cry' and 'Mrs Thatcher's bully-boys', having tamed the BBC, now 'intent on doing exactly the same destabilisation job on the Church of England'. The Sunday Telegraph, in a front-page splash, attributed it to 'a power- ful alliance of leading churchmen and Conservative Party politicians', Mrs Thatcher included, who were 'lining up to block the succession of the Archbishop of York, Dr John Habgood, to the See of Canterbury'.
Both suggestions are preposterous. As one of the 'journalistic hounds of the Right', I am unaware of any conspiracy and the article I wrote was an entirely personal and spontaneous reaction to the Crockford story, of which I (unlike Dr Runcie) had no advance warning. The Sunday Telegraph suggestion is even more absurd, since Mrs Thatcher has no need to `line up' people to stop Habgood getting Canterbury. All she has to do is to exercise her plain and unfettered constitutional right not to appoint him — as she will almost certainly do should the need arise. One thing I am certain of in this affair: there was no conspiracy. If there were, an unnamed clergyman told the Sunday Times, 'then Machiavelli must be a close relation of the Archangel Gabriel'. In fact it is obvious that Dr Bennett was simply expressing his own opinions.
Habgood, whether conspired against or not, was certainly sounding off in Runcie's defence, perhaps unwisely as it may turn out. Indeed clerical pens were busy all over England indicting letters to the respectable papers. Cardinal Hume was another high- placed ecclesiastic who tried to assist the stricken primate. But the list of Runcie's achievements he compiled was not im- pressive: his work on 'the pastoral prob- lems of urban decline' and on 'the vital cause of Christian unity' seemed to be about it. True, he had had 'a historic encounter with the Pope at Canterbury', and had welcomed 'significantly' the recent beatification of 85 papist martyrs; he had also been nice, it seems, to His Eminence himself. So what? Dr Manning could have produced a more spirited letter than this.
Another man busy writing epistles was the Bishop of Norwich. Two points arise from his efforts. First, he achieved the dubious distinction last Saturday of pub- lishing identical letters in both the Guar- dian and the Daily Telegraph, presumably without letting the editor of either publica- tion know he was also sending it to his rival. When I was an editor I had a rule that anyone who did this to me was thereafter on my black list, along with notorious bores, vexatious litigants, etc. Secondly, I notice that in the Guardian his letter was signed in the traditional way, thus '+Peter Norvic'. In the Daily Tele- graph, by contrast, he was presented as 'Rt. Rev. Peter Nott, Bishop of Norwich'. Is this abandonment of the Morning Post approach to convention part of the Tele- graph's attempt to drag itself, spluttering and wheezing into the late 20th century, along with its recruitment of such leftish writers as John Mortimer? If so, is it not a case of throwing out the crozier with the fontwater?
The Times letters page, I was glad to see, bristled with episcopal crosses last week: on Friday, with nine, it was a veritable graveyard. -I-Peter Norvic' also made his appearance here, but on the different, though related issue of 'Talent in the Church'. He was going on about 'in-service training for the clergy' and let slip the (to me) rather sinister information that he had just launched 'a comprehensive system of personal files for the clergy of the Church of England'. Isn't this compilation of per- sonal files something progressives were supposed to be against? I was also intri- gued by the letter, immediately below '-I-Peter Norvic', from Paul Kettendge, a layman. If, he argued, it was now fashion- able to describe clergy as 'executives', archdeacons as 'senior managers' and the bishop as the 'managing director', then `who, pray, are we in the pews — the shop-floor workers or the shareholders?' A good question and one unlikely to be answered as the struggle to unseat the Company Chairman continues.
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