13 August 2000

To which Rex replies...

Dear Peter,

Dear oh dear.  Can't leave you on your own for a moment, can I?  Seeing my
alcohol-assisted burblings splashed all over the Net is a little alarming,
but I'll try to live with it.

Archdeacons irrelevant?  What a grotesque idea!  They, and they alone, are
the true repositories of, etc., etc., write it yourself...

You may have been unfortunate in the priests you've met.  I've known a
number of people in the priesthood who seemed to me genuinely holy.   But
that, surely, is not quite the point.  As you rightly say, priesthood is not
a "state" (in the sense of outstanding spiritual enlightenment) but nor is
it, as you assert, merely a "job".  I see it as a calling, or commissioning,
whereby some hapless Joe who like all of us is an embarrassingly inadequate
mere mortal becomes God's sacramental representative.  When a priest
officiates, something supernatural is happening, quite regardless of whether
the priest is or is not a schmuck or hypocrite or atheist or pain in the
arse, because God is a great deal bigger than the priest and has chosen to
work through him/her.  One of the bible verses to which I cling is 2
Corinthians 12.9: "my power is made perfect in weakness."

So you wouldn't expect me to agree that priests are "worse than irrelevant"
in one's quest for God - unless of course one chooses to focus on the priest
rather than on God - and I can't help feeling you're in danger of
caricaturing sacerdotal religion.  Your phrase, "exactly about control", is
succinct to the point of being cryptic.  Do you mean sacerdotal religion is
essentially a device for controlling society?  If so, you're ignoring its
spiritual content.  Do you mean it denies the individual believer's
relationship with God, insisting instead upon (as some choose to call it)
"priestcraft"?  If so, I find it hard to think of Christian examples, but
must tread warily here as you know more about comparative religion than I
do.  Or do you mean it's unduly prescriptive about spiritual reality, and
sets out to stifle any insights or revelations which happen to be novel or
inconvenient?  That's a more powerful charge.  The only thing I would say,
in that case, is that we're now discussing a failing to which priestly
religion is prone; we're no longer discussing the *purpose* of such
religion.

Glad to hear
Magnificat continues to carry all before it.  You mention "Kevin" - are we
talking about the one who works in the Newkirkgate and knows his way around
the London scene?  Sorry you're finding Dolly unrewarding at present.  Oddly
enough there's a connection between his sartorial obiter dicta and - you
guessed it - the priesthood.  A well known Edinburgh clergyman gave me some
of his old sweaters, having become too fat to wear them.   ("Behold, a
glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!"  Matthew
11.19.)  I walked into the Port o'Leith, sporting one of them, and Dolly, in
the course of a conversation about psychological weakness, and seemingly
without the least intention to be either frivolous or bitchy, remarked that
I must have a fairly robust sense of myself and an indifference to other
people's opinions, or I wouldn't be capable of wearing such a sweater!
Bless his little cotton, er, socks.

And you're right: calling you "honey" was patronising in the extreme.  If
I'd thought about it I would have called you "old girl", like Celia
Johnson's husband in Brief Encounter.
Take care,
Rex