Another voice
The Muggeridges submit
Auberon Waugh
On Sunday, in the church of St Teresa, Taunton, we sang a hymn whose words, written out in the hymnbook, went like this:
'Kum-ba-ya, 0 Lord, Kumbaya Kum-ba-ya, 0 Lord, Kumbaya Kum-ba-ya, 0 Lord, Kumbaya 0 Lord, Kumbaya.'
They were words I had first heard sung by Judith Durham and The Seekers 20 years ago, but it did not then occur to me to wonder what they meant. The song is said to be a Negro spiritual, and presumably the Negroes who sang it in the southern states of America retained some folk-memory of a meaning it might once have had in some West African language or tribal dialect. But if this was so, the meaning has long since been lost, and there was no indication in they hymnbook that any particular mean- ing should be attributed. To the congrega- tion, mostly composed of Irish Taunto- nians, the words were quite simply double Dutch.
There is a coherent argument to be ad- vanced for preferring double Dutch over any other language for the purpose of ex- pressing the ineffable, but such an argu- ment sits oddly on the lips of those who have just destroyed the Church's ancient liturgy in medieval Latin on the grounds that they had just noticed how nobody spoke medieval Latin any more. So far as I know, the hymn 'Kum-ba-ya' is the only one yet to be written in an incomprehensi- ble language, but it might well be the precursor to a whole liturgy in double Dut- ch. This preference for double Dutch (or possibly uncomprehended 19th-century Gambian) over the beautiful, hallowed phrases of Church Latin would be in keep- ing with the deep hatred which the modern Church shows towards the last 1,500 years of its own history, the violent repudiation of its own accumulated wisdom.
As things are, I suppose we can invest the words 'Kum-ba-ya, 0 Lord' with any meaning we choose. I chose to sing them as a little anthem of welcome and congratula- tions to Malcolm and Kitty Muggeridge, who had been received into what remains of the Catholic Church the day before. Malcolm spoke of 'a sense of home- coming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that has long been ringing, of finding a place at a table that has long been left vacant', but there was a suggestion, I thought, in the press coverage of the event (it scored front-page photographs in all three quality Sundays) that the bell had been ringing suspiciously long, that the Muggeridges, both ap- proaching 80 years old, had cut their Augustinian 'but not yet' (sed noli modo) rather fine.
Never mind. I am happy they have got away with it. 'They both exuded happiness, as though it was bursting from their hearts,' said the priest who received them, Father Paul Bidone. He it was who introduced a coachload of mentally handicapped children to fill the moments of silent prayer in the service with what were variously described as 'inarticulate cries and murmur- ings', or 'occasional cries and clapping'.
I observe that the place at table which was waiting for him after the ceremony was at the house of Lord Longford, who was his sponsor or godfather. Since Lord Longford (or Mr Pakenham as he then was) also sponsored my own reception into the Catholic Church 43 years earlier, this might be a good occasion to compare notes.
There was no chorus of mentally han- dicapped children to welcome my reception into the Church with whistles, hoots or shrieks. Nor was any such chorus available in St Teresa's church on Sunday. Perhaps they are produced only on solemn pon- tifical occasions, as the cast rati used to be in earlier times. I just had an older sister, a female cousin and a collection of aunts. Nor, I fancy, did I exude happiness as though it was bursting from my heart after the ceremony. In those days, one was ex- pected to bellow like a Turk. But the chief difference, as I maintain, is in the sort of Church to which our common godfather in- troduced us. One could agree that just as my Mr Pakenham has developed and ex- panded from being a sickly private soldier in the Ox and Bucks to becoming first a baron, then an earl, a member of the Privy Council and Knight of the Garter, so the Catholic Church has grown richer and bet- ter in the intervening period. But whereas anyone can see that Lord Longford is one and the same person, it is much harder to spot any resemblance between the two Catholic Churches. I wonder which one Mr Muggeridge thinks he is joining.
In former times, I should explain, the priest muttered away in Latin at one end of the church and the congregation followed or not as they chose, often getting on with their private meditations or devotions in- stead. Nowadays, everything has to be done together, like some spiritual PT class. To rub in the idea that religious devotions are a communal effort, and that man's relation- ship with God is now a communal, not a personal, one, people are required to shake hands and recite the Creed in its earliest
form of 'We believe' rather than beline; I find the new emphasis Persa,':ot. distasteful and historically inaPPr°,PI. there might have been a case tinae',,, fc special conditions of the early Chutc'oll: stressing human fellowship in religion,4 not since Thomas Aquinas; frOst„re-gr ticularly today there is every need 'j phasise the opposite, that man's retivi ship with God is essentially and unicia—fc personal one, so is his accountabilitY. pretend otherwise is to degrade ll_Atal:1:1 nature still further just when it ne'll'"6. rescue itself from the pressures of ea"- ,
tivism. thcl
Whatever Mr Muggeridge ma Y say -°,.e,1 contrary, I suspect that he is a modern 0;6 early) Christian rather than a traditional'the evolved) one. He writes of his 10Y in. Di Christian re some sort t exactly nactilgynmas b iinfdreedfickt ball supporters' club. More revealing'Y' 9 writes of his particular admiration feroo6 Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the_lec„rch. greatest intellect of the Catholic (-"";nor mwhuowtas nothing if not a Christian nis 1 , 0110 St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274. the was the greatest Catholic intellect in of Church's history, absorbed everYthiagthe value Augustine had to contribute intaipt evolving philosophy of the Churell,' sit( present conditions are exactly the oPvicoe. of what they were in Augustine's toot Then, with the collapse of the great ft()„,s. Empire, the danger was social disinteYacisj tion: nowadays the danger is s despotism. r,„irchl ' In other words, I fear that the tm-, new recruit has not really worked na' position inside it. But the fact t11,atoo welcomed the chorus of mentally hall, ubleot ped children proves not only how 111s, is in the right place, but also 11°"e art beautiful intellect is still working. The, bi rii ad' mmiarnayeexplanations for his pleasure, heft At its simplest and most traditional, tti was the reminder that simpletons (Paci'lef Anne Stanesby, of Springfield 1-1°sPtl Advice and Legal Representation Pt% t have always been thought to occarhob special place among God's children af innocents. Less traditionally, there irti pleasant thought of Channel Four 611101) its way into TV personalit)'s ,00. moments. Then there is the agreeable at mentary these young people Prcwideu fni theChuricn all Church's tnpirnegsse.nt preference simplicity IA have Finally, where lesser men won.- l been appalled to see a solemn event redr"oo, to something approaching black iPtile there is the reminder, enshrined Tools. gargoyle decoration of so many cathed that that Jesus was an inveterate joker, °lois one explanation for everything Must a Lica] be kept in reserve, that it was all a Prac„cer- joke. So long as Mugg retains that Pe'airs, tion, he can never be lost. All that rerrlor I suppose, is to wish him a heartY ba-ya.
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