Last June, 'Archbishop' Justin ("Buy my Crude! Sixpence a barrel!") Welby was asked about the 'politically incorrect' monuments and memorials which clutter up most of England's historical churches and cathedrals. (Vide The Times 10 November 2020)
"Some will have to come down, some names will have to change. The Church, goodness me, you just go round Canterbury Cathedral and there are monuments everywhere, or Westminster Abbey. We are looking at all that, and some will have to come down."
A lovely passage, in which incoherent syntax precisely matches buffoonery of content.
I feel that the time has come for me to update for you some words (1944) of Dom Gregory Dix about Anglican Bishops. You will easily spot where I have arrogantly tampered with his finer original.
"Even when the stately summer of the Carolines was over, the 'Whig grandee' bishops of the eighteenth century and the 'Greek Play' bishops of the nineteeenth still had something for which the well-meaning attempts of a gasolene salesman to appear Woke do not always quite compensate. It was a dignified tradition, with much of solid good about it, despite its gaps. But ... the loss of the old otium cum dignitate has brought with it a lowering of the general level of clerical scholarship, which counted for a good deal in the building up of that particular tradition."
POST SCRIPTUM Which monuments, according to Oilby, must 'change their names'? Nelson, perhaps, to be renamed 'Hamilton'? Nominations are invited.
[BTW ... on November 9 I let nostagia for an Anglicanism which still lingered on into the 1970s get the better of me. A friend has kindly sent me a 1972 video of Exeter Cathedral, which includes clips of the Rt Revd the Father in God Robert Cecil Mortimer, almost at the end of his long pontificate, solemnly administering Holy Orders in his Cathedral Church of S Peter. I hope the friend who sent it will provide a link to it.]
ReplyDeleteHere's the link. Bishop Mortimer appears begloved at 9:18
www.nfb.ca/film/exeter/?fbclid=IwAR0j1Tw1dA_PYR-WO1Bp5RTpdR6QAPEoJaW6pCpIyRnPa7oEod6ZVmQCfmQ
Link to Exeter
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nfb.ca/film/exeter/
Nothing to do with Anglican church memorials, but, after the renaming of Gladstone Hall at Liverpool University a few months ago, I wonder if the Afro-Caribbean England cricketer of the 1980's, Gladstone Small, will have to change his first name?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Eccles is Saved blog for June 27th 2020:
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, over at the Church of England, Archbishop Justin Welby has commented on statues at religious sites. "Some will have to come down. Some names will have to change," he said. Of course, the C of E has been tearing down statues since the 16th century, so this should come as no surprise. However, changing their names is a new venture, which shows that he has been reading 1984 very carefully.
It was probably someone else, but I've been putting it about quite widely and can provide a link here: https://www.nfb.ca/film/exeter/?fbclid=IwAR3bLCFUvtF9fqbRtBMUe2pv3jgbiKOUlUGpZkyx9Q0H-KGY1sZQe5Cqq10.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful memories; not just of the cathedral (+Robert Exon supported by a youthful-looking Michael Moreton and Frank Rice, DDO from the time of my first teenage approach to a few months after my priesting), but also of Devon as it was when livestock markets took place out of doors and country sports were ok. The little old man among the morris dancers was a master at Tiverton Grammar School, notorious for the violence with which he corrected refractory pupils. The past is a different country.....
And a happier one, Matthew
ReplyDeleteI wonder who was the last Church of England Bishop to wear liturgical gloves?
ReplyDelete