Supermarket style
Sir: Yes, John Rowan Wilson is right. I have much the same background and experience, and the prospect outlined is surely a probability. The key to it is his comment, 'the kind of society we have chosen for ourselves.'
This choice brings problems. We arc very familiar with them. But who is going to do the listening? Today's pressures are building up a very considerable public indeed whose main need is: for someone just to give time and listen. The doctors, and social workers, etc., just do not have time to cope with the sheer volume. Anyway, society demands results from • them and moans when it does not get them. Society has given up demanding results from the Church—to the eventual. mutual benefit of both % Society is free to accept, and the Church to proclaim and offer, the saving work of Jesus Christ, and neither is blinded any longer by the pressures of respect- ability and status into unthinking acceptance. This is not to say that there- is a dichotomy between Church and society at the deepest level, for Chris- tians: themselves believe the opposite. But non- Christians do-not All of which means that the Churah is free to listen. The present ferment in the Church often leaves its older members worried that they are no use. This is rubbish, for their experience and the 'authentic maddening patience of the thoroughly sorted-out man who believes in an after-life' (Observer review, 2 April; Penelope Gilliatt com- menting upon A Man for All Seasons) qualify them for this task.
And how is society going to accept these good people as being on the level and totally confiden- tial? That is another problem. But the demand is certainly there, and it comes from many sides.
Ben Lewers Good Shepherd House, Chester Road, Hounslow, Middlesex
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