AS A plea on behalf of the selfless,
healing power of compromise, it was hardly inspiring. Asked on
The Frock and the Church (Radio 4, Sunday) how a woman
bishop might engage with parishes that did not welcome her, one
cathedral canon reminded us that there was always the harvest
supper.
At the conclusion of a programme when opinions for and against
the ordination of women bishops were expressed in bracing fashion,
the official church line in support of the Synod proposal came
across as flaccid and ineffectual.
That is not to say that there are not perfectly convincing
people out there able to do the job. But the presenter, Charlotte
Smith, said that she was not able to get hold of them: neither the
Bishop of Winchester, nor either of the Archbishops, gave her an
interview - presumably a strategy intended to keep their tinder dry
before the debate.
To the average BBC Radio listener, Smith is the person who gets
up even earlier than the Today presenters to present
Farming Today, and who has a portfolio of reporting
credits on television and radio. Listeners might, therefore, have
expected a dispassionate account of the debate that is going to be
consuming the Church of England over the next few weeks.
It quickly emerged, however, that this was more of a
presenter-as-author piece, in which the presenter's own background
(married to a Roman Catholic, but unwilling herself to go over) and
opinions (she described Reform as a group for women fighting for
the right to be discriminated against) guided the project. I have
no objection to opinion pieces, but they need to be flagged up at
the outset.
Like the Anglican fudge that Smith was criticising, the
programme changed course as it encountered difficulties. We were
told that this was to be a Pilgrim's Way from Winchester to
Canterbury, but not even the most errant satnav would take you via
Buckingham (to interview Bishop Alan Wilson), and this device was
abandoned by the end of the show. We can only hope that the Church
has a better sense of direction.
In contrast, there is no doubting the authorial voice in this
year's Reith Lectures (Radio 4, Tuesday of last week),
presented by Niall Ferguson. The series is billed as a critique of
Western civilisation in decline, and last week dealt with the
banking crisis.
I could not help wondering whether the speech would have changed
had the news about Barclays broken in advance of its broadcast; for
Professor Ferguson invariably puts on an act of intellectual
daredevilry, appearing to propose something outlandishly
counter-intuitive. It is the revisionists' favourite trick: to take
an assumption and seem to turn it on its head.
In this instance, the assumption he planned to overturn was that
regulation of the financial system was a necessary result of the
recent turbulence. No, he proclaimed: it is regulation that got us
into this mess. A daring proposition, you might think - until you
heard the rest of the talk, which concluded with the proposition
that regulation should be simplified, and the Bank of England
should get tougher. At that point, you realise that spread
underneath the intellectual high-wire act is some sensible
netting.