THE SPECTATOR REVIEWaBOOKS
Storm Jameson writes on Ivy Compton-Burnett Other reviews by Geoffrey Hudson, Denis Brogan Peter Fleming and Malcolm Cormack Auberon Waugh reviews a novel by John Rowan Wilson
Edward Norman: Anglican difficulties
The simultaneous publication of two works on the organisation of the Church has, by chance, projected an interesting contrast. The Future of the Christian Church* by the Archbishops of Canterbury and Malines-Brussels is a thoughtful, theolo- gical and properly ecumenical assessment of the possible dispensations of grace which might yet translate Christianity, through the organisation of the Church, into the language of the later twentieth century. Crockford's Clerical Directory 1969-70t, on the other hand, is an astonishing list of the ministers of religion who are actually supposed to be capable of doing this. It was a happy chance which led Cardinal Suenens, in his article to warn us of the dangers implicit in idealising the example and structure of the Early Church, and to * The Future of the Christian Church Arthur Michael Ramsey and Leon-Joseph Suenens (semi Press £1.25) • t Crock ford's Clerical Directory 1969-70 (Oxford University Press £13.50) argue the case of progressive revelation; for the Church described in Crock ford is most certainly not like the Church of Antioch or Jerusalem.
It is curious that the publication of The Future of the Christian Church—originally a series of joint addresses delivered in New York City—was intended to reveal the harmony of thought between the two archbishops, because they show them- selves to be, in fact, quite different. Both, it is true, are noted liberals. But Dr Ramsey is a far tougher thinker and per- haps a better theologian—though it would be invidious to explore the extent to which this view might be sustained. Cardinal Suenens says that `Conservatives' are characterised by 'an amazing ignorance of history' and venture `to canonise opin- ions that are the products of a particular period of history.' Such is the frailty of all human endeavour that this is partly so on some occasions, but historical analysis also tends to be a civilised entertainment which even responsible people can get quite wrong. The Cardinal, for example, goes on to suggest that the Church should have led the Revolution in Russia in 1917; which is an arresting thought. The pleas- ure to be derived from reading Cardinal Suenens's stuff however is the discovery of a good man, even when his ideas reveal the sort of familiar resort to empty ver- balising which always seems to happen when institutions so lose confidence in themselves as to rush down the steep slope towards contemporary intellectual fashion. It is not, for example. particularly helpful to be told that 'in the "today" of the Church the past is at once contained and transcended', especially when the 'today' Church looks like the one described in Crock ford.
Dr Ramsey's chapters disclose an op- timism about the future mission of the Church which is rather more securely based. It is based, that is to say, on an assemblage of theological constructions which are identifiably illiberal. Neither Our Lord nor the apostles, he writes, en- couraged the belief that 'mankind would become gradually more religious, more ethical in its behaviour, more educated, more just in its social and economic life.' Human life, indeed, was ordained upon a planet given over to 'catastrophic happen- ings', a place where 'evil in horrible forms' is encountered for ever. The Archbishop does not, as it happens. list the guerrilla fighters in Southern Africa or the contem- porary theatre as among the more horrible forms of evil, but he is critical of the false security which contemporary Christians find through certain manifestations of social and political activism. 'The Church is called to serve without ceasing'. he says, `but never to commend itself to the world by providing what the world would most like and approve on the world's own terms.' The trouble, he might have added, is that most Christian activists, in the very act of spilling headlong into the latest pos- tures of secular radicalism. are generally unable to recognise that they are on the popular side. (Only too familiar are the furies of advanced atheist propagandists, who, having attacked Christianity, find that nearly all the clergy of the Church ac- blaim their searing dismissals as authentic Ittodern statements of the Faith.) The preface to Crockford's Clerical Directory is by tradition a commentary on the present stale of the Church of England, and a personal critique. The anonymous author, who writes with wisdom and balance, conveys an impression which is scarcely calculated to move the reader to tmassailable confidence. Many things are found to be as they should be, but many others, as the criticisms of the author make clear, are not. Most important, the author spots within the Establishment the drift to sectarianism—though he does not use the word—and is especially correct in drawing attention to the tendency of epis- copal appointments to reflect the peculiar requirements of individual dioceses rather than the more general needs of the Na- tonal Church. This is, in part, the result of the Howick Commission on Crown Appointments, which has provided ma- chinery fashioned to allow the Prime Min- ister to hear the views of dioceses when episcopal appointments are being consid- ered. (It is, of course, necessary for mod- ern churchmen to imagine that, until the dawn of their own influence, the bishops were all bookish savants remotely with- drawn to palace and library, and that to- day appointments, to follow the new usage, are of pastoral professionals, white- hot with contemporary concern, whom only the tedium of administrative respon- sibility has mercifully restrained from be- ing let loose upon the public.) The author of Crockford's preface is splendid in his frank appraisal of the need for more learning in the Church. 'By and large', he writes, 'the present malaise among the clergy, young and old, comes from too little rather than too much theo- logy.' The point is an echo from one made about the quality of the episcopate that it should include 'scholars, statesmen. pro- phets, as well as good pastors and'admin- istrators.' And so it should. A Church long distinguished for its line of noted thinkers—the Church of Crammer, of Hooker, and of Malcolm Muggeridge- ought not to dispense with its inheritance as a modern university might dispense with its scholarship.
The problem for the Church of England, as for all churches, is that the level of or- dination candidates, both in numbers and in intellectual quality, has been sinking in recent years; and when everybody has finished remarking that the unlettered are as godly as the learned, the fact remains that the decline amounts to a serious crisis for religion. People are always an- xious to believe a whole universe of ab- surdities, if they are presented in the right social language: so one may reasonably suggest that the crisis now is not a crisis of faith but a crisis of orthodoxy. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in The Future of the Christian Church, notices the de- cline in vocations to the ministry, whilst leaving the diagnosis unresolved. 'Future historians will be better equipped to assess the causes of this than we ourselves can be at this moment', he writes. But he suggests, nevertheless, with truth that many young men find their aspirations satisfied in social service outside the office of the Church. No one who has looked into these matters could arrive at any other conclusion. The realm is indeed pul- sating with good works. The real danger is that the Church, apparently anxious for its share in the general scramble for secu- lar redemption, will allow its ministers to slide into the vocation of the amateur social worker. Everything has its due place, as St Paul was always fond of say- ing, and social work, if unaccompanied by the education of the spirit, is unlikely to fulfil the requirements of the commission recorded in the Scriptures.
`What the unbelieter reproaches us with is not that we are Christians, but that we are not Christian enough.' Thus Cardinal Suenens, and he is right. The author of the preface to Crockford notices a varia- tion of this, in cadences which read like a sort of ecclesiastical Mercurius: 'We have recently read an account of ministrations provided by a group of the clergy for those attending one of the mass "Pop" Festivals which have occurred in various parts of Britain in the last two or three years', he remarks in a section on 'Young People and the Church'; 'the present pub- lic preoccupation with sex may also in part be evidence of a search for God.' The observation is a bit oblique. The issue, however, can scarcely be considered to have gone unexplored. It is not long since a divine of the Church of England, now a bishop, suggested that Jesus might have been a sexual deviant, and the theologians have all been discovering—to the univer- sal surprise—a secondary conscience sprung from their pursuit of libertarian principles. The ministrations of the Church ought certainly to extend to all the interests of humanity, but the vulgar will always manage to substitute the medium for the message (as one of their cult heroes puts it), and nearly all expressions of the contemporary pursuit of sensation can find their advocates within those parts of the clerical profession which preach the inherent Christianity of trivial diversions and portentous cultural accomplishment alongside the simple truths once enuncia- ted on the hills of Galilee. The author of Crockford, one suspects, would find this a disagreeable result of his invitation to have the issue of the Church's position on such matters re-examined. He is right to raise the question; it is only that the re- sult is rather predictable.
`I think it is daft—absolutely daft— that we should have to belong to separate ecclesiastical establishments', the Arch- bishop of Canterbury is quoted as saying in the foreword to The Future of the Christian World. Should Cardinal Suenens ever allow his eyes to rest upon the pages of Crock ford's Clerical Directory he might well disagree.
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