Sir: Charles Moore's article is so full of confusions that
it is difficult to know where to start to disentangle it. He follows the trend, set by the Archbishop of York, to deal with the issue in terms of personal size rather than truth, even though he rightly criticises the Archbishop for doing so. For trivialisation, Moore beats the Archbishop by several column inches.
From then onwards we are back with the tired and ignorant language of 'liberals' and `traditionalists', language which is increas- ingly accusatory rather than explanatory. To say that to ordain women to the priest- hood would be 'establishing a new religion' is silly. Many of the ordained women in America are more traditional than the men. To claim that 'liberals' do not believe in authority is absurd: the devotion of many liberal churchpeople to the authority of the Synod, the bishops and the bureaucracies, and the consequent neglect of Christian communities at the grassroots, is a major part of our present problem — as Mr Moore himself pointed out on Any Ques- tions on the same day as his article. Indeed, in my view, one of the chief problems of the liberal tradition is its middle class charac- ter, its deference and its fear of conflict. And if George Austin is correct in referring to 'the liberal establishment', presumably they have quite a lot of authority of their own.
What is certainly true is that many 'liber- als' and many 'traditionalists' are extraordi- narily ignorant about the tradition in its richness, complexity and depth. I would want to plead — and have often pleaded for more tradition not less, but if people dig deep into the living tradition they must be prepared for some surprises and not a few challenges to their current conventions. And this is really the heart of the problem: that people who call themselves traditional- ists are often not rooted in the tradition at all but cling rather fearfully to the conven- tions of several decades past.
Kenneth Leech
St Botolph's Crypt Centre, Aldgate, London EC3
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