Can you really believe in an archbishop who permits such incomprehensibility?
‘The photographs that stay with us, haunt us, are always those of particular faces.... ’ Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury on the pictures of the Asian disaster’s victims. He was writing an article which the Sunday newspaper where it appeared heralded on its front page as suggesting that the disaster had made him doubt the existence of God. His office later made a statement, the gist of which was that the Archbishop was still of the opinion that God existed.
It was generally assumed that the Sunday Telegraph headline had rather embroidered Dr Williams’s words. After all, it is a Sunday paper. But some of us are unsure as to whether the front page did not capture the Archbishop’s meaning all too well. His article spent more time worrying about God than justifying Him. He recalled that in 1966, at the time of the Aberfan disaster, as a sixth-former beginning to think about studying theology at university, he watched a television discussion about God and suffering ‘with disbelief and astonishment at the vacuous words pouring out about the nature of God’s power or control, or about the consolations of belief in an afterlife or whatever’.
Those ‘vacuous words’ sound as if they were more comforting than Dr Williams’s all these years later. He did not seem to realise that it is at times like this that many of us want to hear from the clergy about ‘the consolations of belief in the afterlife or whatever’. Dr Williams’s own words were hardly a defence or explanation of God’s ways in relation to the disaster: ‘The rest of us need to listen; and then to work and — as best we can manage it — pray.’ It did seem slightly odd that an archbishop thought that prayer was something that we had to manage as best we could.
So it would be even more appropriate if God had written an article which the Sunday Telegraph front page could dress up as saying that the Asian disaster had made God doubt the existence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. ‘The photographs that stay with us, haunt us, are always of particular faces. In this case, an amiable, hairy lefty who seems more interested in being right-on than righteous.’ ‘But,’ God could continue, ‘in a very real sense it is not for Me to say what the Archbishop is talking about. I remember, when I was beginning to think about creating the world, that it would eventually contain plenty of Church of England clergymen who had no idea how to explain in sermons and Sunday newspaper articles what I was all about.
‘It would be an insult to the earthquake victims for Me to try to say what it all meant — Dr Williams’s article, that is. There are no magical solutions to what he was talking about. The question is: how can you believe in an archbishop who permits incomprehensibility on this scale? What is the answer? That is the question. The rest of us need as best we can manage it — to read.’ A heavenly spokesman would later issue a statement explaining that His words had been distorted and that the balance of probability was that Dr Williams existed, even if Dr Williams did not seem to be sure that He did.
Being in the appropriate part of France over the last week, I realised that he who — for the region concerned — is perhaps the most famous living Englishman was about to appear on the local soil. Jonny Wilkinson would be playing for Newcastle at Perpignan. Once more we were reminded of the absurdity of belief in the global village. Most of the globe was unaware of this event. But for this part of the globe — the stretch of France roughly from Montpellier through French Catalonia and across the south-west to Toulouse — the event was huge.
‘Angel or demon — but who are you, Jonny?’ was the headline in the daily MidiLibre. ‘Wilkinson is impenetrable, unpredictable, even disconcerting,’ the report began. To the English, he is none of those things. No impenetrable Eric Cantona, he; and the whole point of him is that he is not unpredictable; he nearly always gets the ball over the bar. Perhaps French newspapers have difficulty with the idea of an uncomplicated celebrity.
Perpignan’s manager was asked if he had a plan anti-Wilkinson. He replied unconvincingly that it was not his habitude to have a fixation about a particular adversary ‘even if he risks playing in my zone’.
Down the autoroute we went to Perpignan, then, to see the angel or demon in the manager’s zone. Perpignan was ancient Catalonia’s capital before Spain and France became what they are now. Those of us of only average height, or below it, must enjoy going there, as we enjoy going to anywhere in Spain, because the men are short and thus make us feel tall. We are reminded of France’s diversity. It is hard down here to think of her as also the home of the tall, Germanic-looking people of Alsace.
Near the stadium, we parked on the pavement, match days being too important for parking restrictions. About half a dozen swarthy, dark little men alighted from a white van ahead of us, talking an obscure dialect. They were of course Geordies.
Wilkinson’s photograph covered the front page of the local L’Indépendant; the caption describing him as ‘the best rugby player in the world’. A placard inside the stadium proclaimed: ‘Visitors. You Are in the Cathedral of Catalan Rugby’, though in French, not Catalan. But all loudspeaker announcements were in that language. At the first, the friendly man next to me explained that that was Catalan. I asked him if he spoke it. He proudly emphasised that he did. ‘It’s like Spanish, isn’t it,’ I asked. He proudly emphasised that it was not.
The crowd had eyes only for Wilkinson. Boos preceded his successive triumphant spot kicks. After a while an unidentifiable Newcastle man went down injured in a mêlée. The boy of about ten next to me shouted gleefully to an elderly man behind, ‘Grandpère, c’est Weelkanson, Weelkanson.’ This time, it emerged that it was another player. The child was crestfallen. But later Wilkinson was helped off injured. Men around the ground applauded him as he left. The child was delighted. Everyone was happy except the Geordies. The proceedings would have been incomprehensible to the rest of the global village; reassurance that the place does not exist.
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