Another voice

A plague of leeches

Auberon Waugh

It can only, I suppose, have been an accident that I was reading a book sent me by the Association of Polish Students and Graduates in Exile: Dissent in Poland: Reports and Documents in translation December 1975-July 1977* in the same week that The Times chose to print a letter on the Catholic left from one Reverend Kenneth Leech, of St Matthew's Rectory, Hereford Street, London E2.

The Polish documents are mostly taken up with the struggles of Polish workers to achieve a living *age under the brutally incompetent socialist system imposed on them, with Britain's connivance, at the end of the war. They describe the bloody reprisals exacted by the authorities after the strikes of June 1976, especially in Ursus and Radom; how the maintenance of the Ministry of the Interior, responsible for imposing the socialist system, costs more than the Polish state spends on education and health combined; how the waiting list for accommodation has now reached eight to ten years; how the sick are left lying for weeks in hospital corridors ...

But the chapter which interested me most concerned the struggle of the Catholic Church in Poland to survive persistent attempts by the socialist government to destroy it. Among the documents produced was this extract from a speech by the Polish Minister for Religious Affairs, Mr Kazimierz Kakol, to a group of party activists in May 1976: 'Even though as a Minister I have to smile to gain its [the Church's] confidence, as a Communist I will fight it unceasingly both on an ideological and on a philosophical level. I feel ashamed when Communists from other countries ask me why so many Poles go to Church; I feel ashamed when guests congratulate me on the spread of religion in this country. Normalisation of relations with the Church is not a capitulation. We will not make any compromises with the Church. . . We will never permit the religious upbringing of children. If we cannot destroy the Church, at least let us stop it causing harm.'

The reasons for this are not hard to see. In the first place, the Church remains an independent voice in a society where all means of communication are rigidly controlled by the state. Thus the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, can still draw attention (as he did at the Episcopal Conference on 5 May 1977) to 'the overwhelming tragedy of exhaustion suffered by our miners, who under pressure from propaganda machin

ery have hardly one free Sunday in a month, as not until three consecutive Sundays have been used for mining, might the fourth turn out to be free.'

In the second place, of course, the Church is a permanent reminder that of the two philosophies on offer socialism, unlike Christianity, offers a demonstrably unstable system of belief — that, even by the materialistic standards it advocates, it can be seen not to work.

Of course the Cardinal knows perfectly well why socialism cannot allow Christianity to flourish: a system of imposed belief which offers no hope cannot coexist with a voluntary system which offers it; and practical socialism, in any sense beyond mixed economy welfarism, can now be seen not only to require a gigantic apparatus of repression to impose and maintain it, but also to result in a brutally inefficient system of production and distribution which effectively denies workers the benefit of their labours and destroys the whole materialist justification which supports it.

So now let us turn to the Revd Kenneth Leech's letter in The Times which I read and reread under the dreadful suspicion that I might have composed it myself — even down to the signature 'Ken Leech' —'in a drunken moment, since forgotten. Father Leech was anxious to 'rebut' the assertion of Mr Ronald Butt (a journalist) that the Catholic Church has been the victim of Marxist infiltration (in the West, of course — he was not writing about the quisling 'Pax' movement of Poland, condemned by Pope Pius XII). His rebuttal takes the form of this counter-assertion: 'The left-wing orientation of Catholicism is not the result of a subversive conspiracy ... but is the necessary result of Catholic dogma. This needs to be asserted firmly and unequivocally. Catholic theology, if it is to be taken seriously, is bound to lead its adherents to the left rather than the right. To be a Catholic and a Conservative is theologically impossible'.

Father Leech advances as proof of this — 'if proof were needed' — the suggestion that `right-wing Catholics never seek to justify their political position by any appeal to Catholic theology', whereas the Catholic left 'is marked by its appeal to sound theology ... to the basic doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Kingdom of God, the Church and the Sacraments. In political terms, these doctrines are bound to lead to some form of Socialism.'

It is not the arrogance of these asser tons which takes the breath away so much as their ignorance. Father Leech has presumably never read Pius IX's Quanta Cura and Syllabus Erro rum of 1864; Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum of 1891; St Pius X's Lamentabili and Pas. cendi of 1907; Pius XII's Humani Generis of 1950 — to name only four of the most modern popes who were political Conservatives and are thus posthumously excommunicated by this new Terror of Whitechapel. But I think he is right in his main rebuttal of Butt, when he says there has been no deliberate infiltration bY Marxists.

What has happened to the poor Catholic Church (if I may follow his excellent precedent of making puns) is that it Is suffering from a plague of leeches;

One does not speak of 'infiltration by leeches, although it is true that the Nilotic strain (Limnatis nilotica) may enter the excretory openings of persons who bathe in infested waters. They are fascinating creatures in many ways, remarkable for breathing through their skins, for their bottom-creeping method of locomotion, for being erroneously used at different times in the treatment of mental illness, tumours, skin disease, gout and whooping cough — everything for which the 'enlightened' parent now prescribes an aspirin. They also have one of the most interesting reproductive systems imaginable, being bisexual but not self' reproducing, capable of simultaneously impregnating and being impregnated in 8 singular and (I should have thought) theologically acceptable `soixante-neuf relationship with their partners. There is no need to dwell on that aspect as Catholic priests, at least, do not reproduce. But my point about leeches is that whatever may be said in their favour, they are no longer thought remarkable for the usefulness of their contribution to the various bodies they attach themselves to. They are out of date. Not so long ago, people might have cried 'Good old Leech, have another suck', but that time is past. The great joy of the Catholic Church, if I may say so, is that historically it has been able to extend the same inspiration, the same degree of theological hope and, yes, the same succour, to revolutionarY

socialists like Mr Graham Greene and to beleaguered Conservatives like Mr Eve lyn Waugh, both of whom found that their Catholicism gave them more lo common than any trivial difference of political outlook took away. Father Leech demonstrates the brand of left-wing bigotry which is not so easily distinguished from greed — only he can suck. Send him to Poland.

Obtainable from the Association at 42 Emperor's Gate, London SW7 4HJ (priee £.2.40)