GIVEN the events of
recent weeks, you could be forgiven for wondering if there is
anyone left in the Church to resign or retire. I now poke my head
around the vestry door on a Sunday morning, just to check that
there are actually people in the building. Each member of the
congregation who approaches me I now view suspiciously as one
likely to proffer his or her P45, or at least refuse to join the
new electoral roll which parishes up and down the country are
compiling.
First Lord Williams
retired, and came back to raise the spiritual and academic tone of
our fair city of Cambridge. People kept commenting gravely that
"He'll be doing very little, you know. . . I doubt we'll see him
for a few years."
This is not quite how it
has turned out, however; for, freed from living martyrdom at the
hands of an unholy trinity of the General Synod, the Global South,
and ECUSA, Lord Williams has thrown himself into Cambridge life
with glee.
Whether it was trouncing
the egregious Richard Dawkins at the Union, giving a tour de
force at the Divinity Faculty's main theology seminar, or
finding time to preach for our local chapter of the Guild of
Servants of the Sanctuary, one senses something of a new lease of
life. The immensely cheery photograph of our former Primate on the
Magdalene College website suggests a man who has felt a distinct
lifting of the burden since his retirement.
NEXT up was Pope
Benedict. We had all thought the Anglican Patrimony was the Collect
for Purity and a wife, but Papa Benedetto has demonstrated that the
main thing that he has learned from the Church of England is that
there is no divine requirement to suffer in silence at the top
until the whole thing finally kills you.
I confess to a certain
glee that he has yet again upset all sorts of expectations. Just as
the first act of the man whom everyone thought would carry on Pope
John Paul II's policies was to dismiss to a life of penance his
predecessor's favourite demagogue, the head of the Legionaries of
Christ, so his encyclicals have been thoughtful and rather Lefty
from a man admired by the Catholic extremists of the
blogosphere.
With one hand he widened
access to the Tridentine rite; with the other he abolished the
triple crown on the papal coat of arms. Last but not least, the
centralising Pope who dismissed two or three bishops a month during
his reign now demythologises and rationalises the papacy at one
stroke by resigning from it.
APART from his theology,
one of the main reasons I have always admired His Holiness (as I
note we can still call him) is his dress sense. This is all the
more laudable in the modern RC Church, where - as the novelist
Alice Thomas Ellis once wrote - if you visited a place where you
knew that the RC church had been recently constructed, you had only
to ask for the most diabolically ugly building in town, bar none,
in order to find it instantly.
Up and down Italy, over
the past eight years, the windows of people's front rooms have been
denuded to produce lace albs for the Curia, and chasubles that
previously had kept Red Rum warm after his third Grand National win
were either put in the bottom drawer of the sacristy, or, damaging
the cause of ecumenism further, given to a local Protestant church
that didn't know any better.
Instead, some
vertigo-inducing mitres, and brocade that would make Messrs Watts
& Co. go weak at the knees, have graced basilicas across the
world. You cannot help but smile further that Pope Benedict's
concessions to retirement amount to the removal of a shoulder cape,
and a change in the colour of his shoes. Retirement need not mean
tartan slippers, cardigans, and a shapeless Pakamac.
THE next one to go was
the poor Cardinal Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews. Much
speculation ensued about whether he took the pastoral care of his
clergy to levels unforeseen in Pope Gregory the Great's Regula
Pastoralis, but I am sure the real reason for his resignation,
or at least the Pope's early acceptance of it, was his
clothing.
Every BBC library picture
one saw of the benighted prelate seemed to involve polyester albs
with zips up the middle, horrific eucharistic vestments in lurid
colours unknown to Mother Nature, and - my pet hate - the stole
worn over the chasuble: surely the triumph of authority over
charity (if you'll permit me to symbolise the two vestments
respectively in that way).
His departure, whatever
else it signified, has at least advanced in a small way the
Ratzinger project for the return of beauty to the Church.
AS IF all this weren't
enough, here, in Ely, our Bishop has not resigned or retired, but
has come down with appendicitis, poor lamb. Plans for whirlwind
visits of deaneries and back-to-back meetings with local worthies
have all had to be put on hold while our father-in-God exhibits, in
rather more extreme form than he or we expected, the Lenten
campaign "I'm not busy".
It is not entirely clear
that the corollary of that was supposed to be "because, post-op, I
can barely walk". If it was, you can see why it has not been added
to people's Facebook profiles.
We wish him a speedy and
comfortable recovery.
FOR some members of my
congregation, however, we are beyond that point. The parish profile
I was given when I applied for the post of Vicar informed me that
there were, on average, four funerals a year (we're a youthful
bunch at Little St Mary's, and those who aren't are so holy that
they naturally get assumed when they die).
Since my arrival, nine
months ago, I have not only already done my annual average of four,
but, in fact, twice that number. To clerical readers who do that
number a month, I can only plead that you do not put this paper
down in disgust or write me a firm letter. I am not complaining,
just beginning to wonder whether the Archbishop, the Pope, and the
Cardinal have taken a hint that I have missed.
Perhaps it is time to
start making those additional voluntary contributions to my pension
that the Church Commissioners keep writing to remind me
about.
The Revd Robert Mackley is the Vicar of Little St Mary's,
Cambridge.