PRIESTS, POLITICS, AND THE POPE
SIR,—A Monsignor may, be head of the Government in Austria: there may be a "Catholic " 'centre party in Italy without protest from Rome: priests in Italy and Ireland are reported as instructing their flocks for whom to vote: the Pope of his own 'free will may allow General Franco—the head of a revolutionary right-wing dictatorship — to nominate the Bishops of Spain: and this, according to Mr. Wightwick, is the Church not attaching itself to any particular regime.
A few French priest-workmen are involved in riots, and are said to be active members of trade unions and friendly with Marxists, and are reported to have commended the Communists' work for working-class interests; and this brings forth from the French Bishops a condemnation of "those who would like to attach the Church to a specific economic or political regime."
I admit freely that the Bishops did not explicitly state that the ChUrch never is so attached; but that is the reasonable implica- tiop which alone gives any point to their words. And that is what I call "hypocritical
nonsense." After all, the " attachrhent " is about as great on the one side as the other, and amounts to what Mr. Wightwick calls "co-operation." It would have been perfectly honest, and readily comprehended, if the Bishops had confined their condemnation to those who seek to attach the Church to any Marxist regime.
Two further remarks; Mr. Charles Edwards's letter was a reductio ad absurchon. I do not believe that he really misunderstood my meaning, but in case he did I should say that I was referring to the "Roman hierarchy in France," not to every Bishop in Christen- dom; and the context—I thought—made this clear. And secondly, with all respect, I cannot believe that the issuing of encyclicals from the Vatican, which is unlikely to be much troubled by the rigours of capitalist or communist regimes, is as likely to bring about social justice as the suffering and experience of priest-workmen, who, if reports are correct, are likely to be forbidden membership of trade unions, where their work might be of some real use.—Yours faithfully,
3 Chapel Hill, Ey:home, Dover
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