The Cafe

The case against transparency
Gary Dickson

Transparency is the new watchword, indeed the near-universal battlecry.  Critics of the Roman Catholic church and the NHS (SR 260) have shouted for it. Time and again we have been urged to promote it, vote for it, demand it. But is that what we really want? Does full disclosure translate into personal nakedness? A public undressing that brings on more than a dressing down? Being turned inside out is not a pleasant prospect. Our innards, physical and psychological, should remain free of public gaze. Do we want the psychotherapist's couch to metamorphose into a public forum under the slogan 'All must be divulged'?  
     In the western world, the culture of shame became the culture of guilt.  Instead of ritual humiliation (now confined to playground bullies), we were urged to have a conscience. That way we can punish ourselves privately and efficiently. When that began is open to conjecture. (My secular historical opinion is that 1215, when annual private confession was made obligatory for Christians, is the crucial date for the beginning of the great transformation.) The nice thing about guilt is that, when the mechanism is turned on, it saves the state money on prisons.
     But all that is about personal fig leaves. Should it also pertain to public bodies? Corporations are non-corporeal bodies, but do they deserve body rights? Should they be protected against peeping Toms (or peeping Kenneths)? What they share with individual, human bodies is an instinct for self-preservation. Survival is the fundamental issue. Death takes many forms, individual or corporate, but when it threatens the most plausible option is to avoid it.
     Scandal amounts to a death threat. Universities, like churches, do everything to avoid it, for it undermines their overriding purpose: continued existence. Institutions exist to grow in wealth, repute, influence. That is their main intent, regardless of their highfalutin declared aims. Individual universities want more buildings, greater endowments, world famous professors, top students. All that talk about serving something called education is the merest piffle. The same with churches and religion: growing congregations, successful fund-raising, a satisfied clergy and an enthusiastic laity. That's what is sought. Not saving the damned, but saving themselves. This is institutional biology, rather than cynicism. It is simply human nature as applied to corporations.
     Therefore, the cry for universal transparency is bound to fail, for it undermines life-saving opacity.

Gary Dickson chooses not to divulge his institutional affiliation in order to protect the innocent

The church in decline
Mary Kane

I thank Kenneth Roy for his all too real article 'The last pan drop' (SR 262).  He is right to say this is happening the length and breadth of the country and I totally agree that most people with or without a religious outlook must be saddened at this demise.
     From personal experience, the church I attend has a new minister, forward-thinking, very modern and young – doesn't use the pupit, doesn't wear a dog collar or gowns – but he is bringing younger people, new to the area, into church.
     Is this, and the other changes he is making, being welcomed by the majority of the faithful? Of course not, 'Ah liked it the auld wey – Ah dinnae like change – why can we no' have oor usual type o' service – he's too young' etc. and so it goes on. The church is dying and what will they do then? Thank you, Kenneth, for highlighting this although I do believe it won't make much difference, we still wring our hands and say 'oh dearie me'.       

The church not in decline
Brian Fitzpatrick

Kenneth Roy (SR 262) strikes too dreary a tone on the future of the Church of Scotland and more so the wider church in Scotland. Parish mergers, closures and re-purposing of old church premises are common to all the mainstream churches. 
     Yet it would be a mistake to see this as all a matter for doom and gloom and let the tocsin sound. Few people now sit in their churches for fear of hellfire and damnation still less for the social cachet of the pew and that is a welcome change. Most, like me, do so because we wake up each morning believing some seemingly impossible things: that despite all my faults a creator God loves me and all humankind and he loves us so much He walked this earth, died for us and rose from the dead. When you believe those inconvenient truths, some minor property concerns in Ayr or elsewhere tend, at best, to be background radiation.
     Certainly, the churches owe a duty of custodianship and care to the fine premises handed down to us by past generations of worshippers. But they cannot become the raison d'etre of the church. She is not some spiritual National Trust but has greater concerns on her plate: changing this world to look a bit more like the next. My own parish church (acquired by us Pollokshields Papists from the Free Church in a bout of triumphalism much rued over past years) is literally falling down round our ears. Yet our Sunday congregation remains – by far – the largest public gathering in the area, followed only by the local mosque.
     Our Episcopalian neighbours have a fine church but a smaller congregation. We already have agreed to share their church with them when our bricks and mortar finally fail. Our own attractive but dearly flawed building might then allow some much-needed public space in the area. But the church here isn't failing nor falling down. In due course, we'll most likely merge with an adjoining parish. One driver will certainly be the shortage of priests (if Presbyterians think ordination levels are a worry – pop over to Rome and get very worried). Yet, every weekday some 40 or so Christian souls gather for the morning liturgy of the Word and Communion presided over by one of our parishioners should our priest not be here to say Mass.
     There is no shortage of such presiding parishioners and we have more extraordinary ministers than we need. We also enjoy better relations with local congregations than ever before – a real and local ecumenism well beyond a nod and a smile. The greatest challenge to Scotland's church folk in the coming years is to avoid the temptation to see every change as a failure and reverse and not a new beginning. God willing, we will.

Brian Fitzpatrick is an advocate
    

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