Another voice
The swing, the swing
Auberon Waugh
On Wednesday of this week Dr Edward Norman, who has been Dean of Peterhouse, Cambridge, since 1971, celebrated his fortieth birthday, in the middle of his excellent series of Reith Lectures. One's first reaction to this nondescript piece of information may be tinged with jealousy, that he is an extraordinarily young man to have been chosen for this honour. But his career has been a brilliant one since leaving Chatham House School some twenty-two years after its other distinguished Old Boy. Reading simultaneously for his PhD and Holy Orders, he was appointed a university lecturer in history at the age of twenty-five (according to Crockford's Clerical Directory twenty-six according to Who's Who) and Dean of Peterhouse at thirty-two. I am not sure about Peterhouse's contribution, but if it is anything like that of my own college at Oxford, Christ Church, this is a very grand appointment indeed.
The Governors of the BBC, in choosing such a. young man for this year's Reith Lecturer, plainly took a risk: that his ideas, however brilliant, would be so avant-garde as to be unacceptable, even incomprehensible, to a majority of listeners; at best he would be wasting his sweetness on the desert air of our contemporary intellectual climate, at worst he would cause various old age pensioners to swallow their dentures and would wreak untold havoc among the sixth form study groups, housewives' discussion circles, psychiatric wards and senior citizens' philosophical societies which follow Reith lectures as religiously as they read the Guardian's leading articles every morning.
In the event, these fears have probably been justified. Dr Norman's thesis is no less than revolutionary: that Christianity is now among the chief pressure groups working towards the demoralisation of Western values, the ultimate destruction of Western society and its replacement by something far worse, an atheistic, repressive, murderously incompetent Marxist tyranny.
This phenomenon, if such it be, has not gone unremarked, of course. No doubt Dr Norman has been fulminating in Cambridge for as long as his tender years allow. Peter Simple invented Dr Spacely Trellis, sinister Bishop of Bevindon (twenty years ago?) to warn us of these dangers. Ever since I started writing weekly columns, fifteen years ago in the Catholic Herald, it has been one of my constant themes. All that has happened is that people are now, belatedly, prepared to show an interest in such arguments. The fashionable intelligentsia will give them a whirl. In a country which tends to regard most intellectual activity, as sus pect, Reith provides one of the few guarantees of respectability.
But when we talk of a shift, even a swing, in intelligent opinion we must surely try and define what we mean by intelligent opinion. How many divisions has the Dean of Peterhouse? How many Christian leaders, let alone humble parish priests and ordinands, can nowadays be described as remotely intelligent? How many are prepared to change their ideas? What chance has Dr Norman of impressing his own Archbishop of Canterbury (whose intellect was recently described as 'a disgrace to the House of Lords') let alone the Roman Catholic parish priests of Taunton or Dulverton, in Somerset, or Tiverton in North Devon?
In his second lecture, Dr Norman was too generous to the Catholics, suggesting that because the Vatican does not actually provide material support for terrorist revolutionary movements in Africa and the Third World, as the World Council of Churches does, its political involvement might be less harmful. One does not know what effect the new Pope will have, of course. It is possible that Ringo II will prove a new broom to sweep away all those functionaries and minor officials behind the scandalous encyclical Populorum Progressio, Pope Paul's Marxist manifesto of 1967.
I don't know, and can only speak about the grass roots of English Roman Catholicism the church as seen in Taunton, Dulverton and Tiverton. For 150 years nearly two hundred the Church stood solid as a rock against intelligent, fashionable opinion. Democratic, nationalist, liberal, evolutionary, ecumenical (in its post-Conciliar sense), collectivist, egalitarian, socialist, collectivist, revolutionary, ideas swept the fashionable intelIigensia in great waves and the Church either ignored or more often actively resisted them all. It has more experience of resisting the pressure of intelligent opinion than any organisation on the face of the earth, including the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Suddenly, sixteen years ago, just as intelligent opinion was beginning to question them, it decided to accept all the ideas it had been resisting for so long, or very nearly all of them. I would like to think that somewhere in the recesses of the Holy Officer there is an old monsignore with grave doubts about the Copernican theory of the solar system, so rashly approved by Pope Clement VII in 1533'.
But the important thing to understand about the Catholic Church is that although all its ideas have changed, nothing else has. It defends the new orthodoxy with the same ruthless singlemindedness, the same bin!: kered, not to say blindfold, resistance tu intelligent outside opinion as always. I eat?: not speak for.Vatican foreign policy, but 01 everything else the collectivist takeover i5 absolute. The individual worshipper has been effectively expunged from the liturg. The Nicene Creed has been rewritten as 'We believe in one God', rather than believe in one God', although a nrioment:s intellectual reflection will admit that this statement is meaningless, of not more tesi tamentary value than the chanted slogans°, a football crowd -'Up the Spurs', 'Arsell'u Rule'. How can I possibly know whether the person behind me believes in one God, 01 hundreds„ or none, or whether he has give: a moment's thought to the Procession of tile Holy Ghost? Belief is simply not a CO' munal activity, but if this obvious fact Can be allowed to intrude on the fidelity nc; parish priests in Taunton, Dulverton ant Tiverton, what chance have the intelligen' opinions of Dr Edward Norman, MA, 1'"' BD, FRHistS? The same, alas, is true in the secular field; Two months ago, on 22nd September 191' The -Times printed a beautifully wlittr,e11,, historic, wondrous first leader entitle41` the Side of Liberty'. It argued that int: ligent opinion was moving away fro; egalitarian and collectivist illusions towar a saner, more mature assessment of th's world around it and cited as evidence of 1h1 the wondrous etc writing to be found in tu Spectator when compared to the tired, Of trig stuff in New Statesman. Rut This, of course, is all to the good-0. what chance has intelligent opinion of seen'd ing through to the nation's primarY secondary schoolteachers, let alone its Po"t, ical and trade union leaders or the grea silent majority, in less than ten Yearsq .t; Nothing is more fickle than intelligent Ol?„1,1,li ion, and there is no reason to suppose it "1... remain interested in non-socialist alteat natives for as long as that. It is true °lip, there are signs of unusual and slig alarming intellectual activity in the C° servative Party at the moment. We all v.' come John Biffen back on the Front Wilco one of the few likeable or even rein°tieto' trustworthy Conservative politicians ev1, have sat there. But the swing against scflpet ism is not a disinterested one. It is a di-o. response to socialist policies on educati°As personal taxation and the trade unions: ret, soon as the monetarist policies of Mr 131f•ng and Sir Keith begin to be applied, producloy greater economic dislocation than Englishman alive has ever known, ligent opinion will flock back to its social remedies. to Of course the dislocation is bott0,05e occur eventually, but one must not sii14701. that the country will ever accept it ta`tcs untarily. Monetarism is sornething must impose itself on the ruins of our 0100, ing political system. For the present, last 2 socialist ideology is an absurdity, altilf,i31contradiction. It is essential to let the n," ists complete their work of desmie before suggesting an alternative.
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