Christian catastrophe
ir: The Spectator for 14 April seems to 11ave usurped the matter of the Church Tines or the Tablet. Three of your regulars --- Charles Moore, Auberon Waugh, and A' N. Wilson — addressed themselves to ecclesiastical subjects. To one who like me regards the advent of Christianity as a cusaster for civilisation comparable with television, Communism, and the discovery fof America it is not surprising to find that adaY's clerics revert to type and peddle cite nostrums. Except for a few isolated Incidents in which they put up a handful of cathedrals illuminated an MS or two (with ar■ack of dispatch or critical awareness that panes compositors might envy), and Fainted some pretty but horribly wooden tc°11s, Christians have always been inimical ° culture, pleasure, and disciplined speculative thought. Who suppressed the Poems of Sappho? Who pillaged the library at Alexandria? Who drove libido aviv-iderground for two thousand years? transmuted 11°' bY an inversion of alchemy, the the golden Latin of Cicero into rile dross of the Vulgate? Who have ine,peatedlY killed their fellows with an ferocity unparalleled till Stalin's
Russia? Rightly was Christianity described as a creed fit only for women and slaves although, to be fair, it was in its middle period a remarkably successful instrument of social stability, keeping the lower orders in their place.
Charles Mosley
2 Riverview Mansions, Clevedon Road, East Twickenham, Middlesex
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