Liturgical lost cause
From Mr Charles FitzGerald Sir: Fine and beautiful rhetoric from the Revd Peter Mullen (`Jesus wept', 15 Jan- uary); but I fear he is on a loser.
And why should I be so defeatist about the preservation of such a great and good thing as the Church of England's liturgy as revealed in the Book of Common Prayer? Because the culture of low expectations is now so all-pervasive. Because the elite that used to guide Church as well as State has long since abdicated and either sent its sons into the City to deal in filthy lucre or into the media to show off their intelligence as critics, leaving the field to be regulated by those who can only think to pander to the lowest common denominator.
`What there has been can be again' is a good and hopeful slogan, but — at least in the case of the Church in which I was origi- nally brought up — I fear it must mean scrapping the whole bench of bishops and abolishing the Synod altogether. Unlikely, I suspect, in my lifetime.
Charles FitzGerald
Forton, Longparish, Hampshire
Previous page
