ANOTHER VOICE

We have looked in amazement on the unearthly and found it commonplace

CHARLES MOORE

The case of the Church of England at this moment is a very dismal one, and almost leaves men to choose between a broken heart and no heart at all.' So wrote Gladstone to Lord Lyttelton in 1850. The occasion was the Gorham judgment. The Revd G.C. Gorham had been presented to the living of Brampford Speke, but his Bishop, Phillpotts of Exeter, had refused to institute him, on the grounds that he was unsound on the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. Gorham took the case to law, and eventually the judicial committee of the Privy Council decided in his favour. There was outrage among High Church- men that doctrine should be settled by the civil authorities. Several, including the future Cardinal Manning, went over to Rome. Gladstone agonised, but stayed.

I thought of this long-dead dispute when I heard last Wednesday evening that the General Synod of the Church of England had decided by two votes to pass legislation allowing women to be ordained priests. Strictly speaking, the comparison does not work, for the argument here is not about temporal power in spiritual matters. The Synod's members were exercising what the parson in the Somerset church I attended on Sunday called their 'democratic rights', and Parliament's opinion will only be invit- ed afterwards and will not be invited on the principle at all. But there is an emotional similarity between the cases.

First, there is the sheer absurdity of all ecclesiastical controversies. What on earth (or, more to the point, in heaven) did it matter what the vicar of Brampford Speke thought about baptismal regeneration? What does it matter that a Church body meeting in Westminster has said that a thousand or two Englishwomen can call themselves priests? Surely the great truths that Jesus taught and the love He bestowed upon the human race rise above all such stuff?

One shares such exasperation, until one follows its logic through. If no Church dis- pute matters, then no Church matters, and if no Church matters then religion becomes no more than what any individual chooses to make it. Many believe exactly that. But to me it seems a recipe for solipsism and madness. A Church is the greatest of all human institutions, and for the reason that it is not merely a human institution; so its fate matters to humanity.

In this particular case, it matters most to

that part of humanity which is English, and to the millions in other parts of the world whose churches have grown from the Eng- lish root. And because I am English, and for more personal reasons as well, it mat- ters to me. Like many others, I have about 18 months (the time before the legislation comes into force) to decide what to do.

In assessing the consequences of women's ordination, one can be reasonably confident that the appearance of the national Church will not change very much. Large, though steadily declining numbers of people will marry in its buildings and be buried or burned according to its rites. The Queen, though she is said to oppose women priests, will bear the indignity as she has borne so many others, and continue as Supreme Governor. Bishops will still sit in the House of Lords (for as long as there is a House of Lords), and the Archbishop of Canterbury, even if he is a she, will crown the new monarch (assuming we have one). People who do not know what their religion is will still put 'Church of England' on forms which demand an answer.

It is also possible, obviously, that every- one will come to accept women priests. It may become clear that something which the universal Church has not countenanced throughout its entire existence is indeed a natural development of what it has always believed. The chief arguments that one hears for women's ordination — that women can 'do the job' just as well as men, that many women feel 'deep hurt' that they cannot be priests, that the Church should fit in with public opinion and the spirit of the age — only serve to make me more big- oted in my opposition. But it surely is odd to assert that women cannot be priests. If Rome and the Orthodox and the Anglican Communion all agreed that they could be, I should be surprised, but I should hardly feel that I had any right to hold out against it.

So there is a chance that, after a painful period, the Church of England, invigorated by a new spirituality, will show the way for the whole of Catholic Christianity and Dr George Carey will be up there in the big league with St Paul and St Augustine.

But I do rather doubt it. For the historic achievement of the Church of England has been to develop an institution which is part of the universal in its understanding of divine truth, but national and particular in its political and cultural manifestations. It

has been as if, when Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to Peter, He allowed a special version to be cut which would loose the complicated mortice which locks in the English heart. Thanks to this infinitely sub- tle adaptation to time and place, Archdea- con Grantly was able to step into the shoes of the fisherman. It is a comic idea almost, but it is also a very touching one, and I have believed it.

Now I wonder whether I can any more. For the vote by the Synod declares that the universal understanding of all Christian his- tory can be overturned by a majority of those worthy middle-class, middle-aged persons who have the time to play the poli- tics of deanery and diocese, and it there- fore suggests that that majority is happy to cut itself off from that history and that uni- versality in favour of its own beliefs and preoccupations. Such people have the power, foolishly ceded to them by Parlia- ment in 1974, to decide what the Church of England is. They appear to have decided that it will be a sect. If that is the case, the person who wants to be a member of the whole Church must leave.

But an even more melancholy prospect confronts the Catholic Anglican. It is that the edifice which he thought he knew and loved was always built on sand. Newman came to that view, and he expressed it thus, in lectures delivered in response to the Gorham judgment:

If, indeed, we dress it [the Church of Eng- land] up in an ideal form, as if it were some- thing real . . . as if it were in deed and not only in name a Church, then indeed we maY feel interest in it, and reverence towards it, and affection for it, as men have fallen in love with pictures, or knights in romance do battle for high dames whom they have never seen . . . But at length, either the force of circum- stances or some unexpected accident dissi- pates it; and, as in fairy tales, the magic castle vanishes when the spell is broken, and noth- ing is seen but the wild heath, the barren rock, and the forlorn sheep-walk, so it is with regards to the Church of England, when we look in amazement on that we thought so unearthly and find so commonplace or worthless.

I hope that is not what I am about to dis- cover. It is particularly sad to think that, if I do, I shall not be able to bring up my chil- dren in what I had thought was their chief privilege in being English. Anyway, we all have 18 months. Is there a Roman Catholic priest who can help me make up my mind?