THE SPECTATOR
THE CHURCH'S SUICIDE NOTE
The anonymity of the preface to Crock- ford's Clerical Dictionary is traditional. It is a survival from an age in which most journalism was anonymous. It continued to be a useful device into the present age because clergymen who put their names to opinions critical of those who are powerful in the Church tend to suffer. They tend not to gain preferment.
The tradition ceased to make sense, however, when Crockford's was taken over by the official church authorities. Those authorities refused to take responsibility for the anonymous preface and yet con- tinued to commission it. When, as hap- pened this year, the preface criticised the church authorities, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular, outcry was inevit- able. The anonymity gave those criticised the excuse they needed to evade the questions which the preface raised: they could rail against the wickedness of un- signed personal attack. They gained the moral advantage, somewhat spuriously. Now they have, somewhat spuriously, lost it. It is true that church leaders like the Archbishop of York are intolerant of dissent in a way that appears to be inconsis- tent with their liberal principles, but none of them can have expected or hoped that their vilification of the anonymous author would end in his death. Now Canon Gareth Bennett, who did write the preface, has killed himself.
It would be quite wrong, however, to represent Canon Bennett as a martyr. Suicide is strictly forbidden by the Christ- ian religion. If Canon Bennett was deeply upset by the attacks on him, by the effects of his preface and by denying his au- thorship, he deserves every sympathy. But he had no right to kill himself. What matters for the Church of England is not the sad story of his death, but what he actually said in his preface. It is one of the best recent analyses of the Church's crisis.
Canon Bennett's preface is not a vicious personal attack. To be sure, it contains one or two donnish acerbities, but its remarks on Dr Runcie's achievements are not gratuitous (nor by any means wholly hos- tile). They are made necessary by the context. The preface seeks to explain why the Church of England is adrift. It cannot avoid criticism of the Church's leadership.
The preface identifies four elements which held together the Anglican Com- munion. These were the 'state- establishment' — an authoritative system which provided a national church, a com- mon liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, a common ministry and ordination, and a conservative theological tradition in the English universities. All these elements are now weakened or destroyed. The Establishment has largely been taken over by church bureaucrats; the liturgy has been fragmented; the ministry is no longer common because of disputes about epis- copacy and the ordination of women; the teaching in universities and theological colleges now provides 'a minimal know- ledge of classical Anglican divinity or its methods'. This collapse has created a spiritual and intellectual vacuum. There is not a power, vacuum, however. The preface argues that recent years have seen a growth of the collective power of bishops, particularly archbishops, and of the staff which support them. This power is visible in the Crown Appointments Com- mission. In the name of giving the 'Church' more control of its own destiny and taking that control from the secular power, the Cominission has actually made episcopal appointments more conformist. Few now can get advancement who do not share the liberal views of the two current archbishops. Evangelicals and Anglo- Catholics are under-represented on the Bench of Bishops; liberals are heavily over-represented. And it is liberals, Canon Bennett argued, who are peculiarly unfit- ted to understand the Church's crisis: . . . deep in the liberal mind is a conviction that with a little procrastination and an application of pastoral 'sensitivity' the changes which they propose can be forced through.
The trouble with the Church of England is not that it is undisciplined. Press com- plaints about its failure to weed out homosexuals are beside the point. The Church of England has never had a strict central command structure. The trouble is rather that which the Crockford's preface identified — a decay of all the traditions which give the Church its life and a wilful failure by the hierarchy to recognise this decay and remedy it. There really is a danger that the Church of England will fall apart — the most likely occasion being the ordination of women. Dr Runcie is not reducing this danger and therefore de- serves to be criticised. For the Church it is a matter of life or death.
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