Let's start again

RELIGION
R D Kernohan, in the second part of his look
at sectarianism, suggests bold solutions
to Christian division

Photograph by Islay McLeod

In the first part of this genteel polemic I hope I offended the right-thinking people of the modern Scottish establishment, for whom anti-sectarianism comes the more easily because many of them despise and reject all 'sects'. In this one I risk offending many of those who still adhere, in more than a nominal sense, to the Reformed and Roman Catholic variants of the Christian religion.
     Among them the mood of the day is to speak as little as possible of differences, even to gather together for comfort in face of an occasionally hostile and more often indifferent western world. They find areas where practical and pastoral co-operation are sensible and may take even unexpected forms. I know of one remote kirk session which, lacking a more obvious candidate for session clerk, has found a Roman Catholic to do the job.
     But too many 'sectarian' insights into the needs of the universal visible church are being neglected. Ironically the sector of the universal church (apart from various independent Evangelicals and the Pentecostalists) most self-confident in its historic identity today is the Eastern Orthodox Church, liberated but unreformed. The irony is that its serenity and sense of eternity, its grasp of unseen truths that endure as political systems rise and fall, can go with worldly prelacy, subservience to unpleasant powers that be, and such archaic eccentricities as the total exclusion of women from Mount Athos. It can be a church of martyrs and placemen. In the east it recovers or rebuilds its cathedrals. In the west it attracts a trickle of converts, pious and often scholarly people, but they are probably a symptom of spiritual inadequacies in other churches rather than of new roots in western soil.
     Some conservative Protestants will be surprised that I do not attribute the same self-confidence to the Roman church, so evidently still rich in power and prestige, sharing in the continuing growth and vigour of Christianity outside Western Europe and North America, even influential enough in Britain to hanker after changes in the relations of crown and church. (Alas, this is an age all too reluctant to leave well alone.)
     In fact the Roman church is failing, despite significant internal reform and revival at the Second Vatican Council, to have the influence on western society that its apparent power and numbers suggest it should have. It failed (and I am sorry it failed) to get would-be constitution-makers for Europe to recognise the Christian basis of European culture and politics. A range of evidence, from the low birth-rate in Italy to the stances of Catholic politicians in the USA and Britain on abortion and homosexual issues, suggests that the right of private judgment is no longer a Protestant prerogative. The great estate of dogma remains firmly a papal and clerical property but in matters of morals and even faith there seems to be a right to roam – widely asserted if not officially recognised.
     Of course on the Protestant side things are even more confused and we can scarcely cast stones. But I raise, even if I cannot answer, three questions which would have been more vigorously asked before now if the old Scots traditions of religious disputation had not been all but silenced in an anti-sectarian hush. The first two are not mere Protestant mischief but genuine perplexity. The third is based on fantasy but faces up to reality.
     Why in so democratic an age does the Roman church seem so untroubled in its monarchical and hierarchical system?
     Is its concept of a male and compulsorily celibate priesthood, whether an asset or a curse, a tenable policy in the modern world?
     Are the internal confusions and contradictions of all the Christian churches now so far advanced that they should consider dissolving themselves with a view to re-formation – as one body if possible and if not on lines which reflect modern differences and not ancient divisions?
     I ask the first question because a few years ago, when there was much talk of a 'national pastoral conference' in England, I wondered whether the late Cardinal Winning would fancy exploiting the wonderful public relations opportunities in giving Scots Catholics their own 'general assembly'. He rather enjoyed his visit to the Kirk's. I can only conclude that most hierarchies prefer the assurance of power to the stimulating opportunities of publicity and possible discord. But it does seem remarkable that in so democratic an age as ours, and when the Roman Catholic church has identified itself with democratic movements from Poland to the Philippines, it has faced so little internal pressure to create national representative institutions. I am not so naive as to suggest that lay Catholics do not make a massive contribution in skills and perhaps advice to their church. But I am surprised that at a time when Anglicanism has moved some distance towards the Reformed position, in which clergy and others have always shared governance, the Roman position (at least to an outsider) seems both so static and so unchallenged.
     It is less surprising that things are equally static over priestly celibacy, even though this is a mere long-established rule and no doctrine, even though the rule allows Eastern Uniate and a few other exceptions, and even though it's more certain that Saint Peter was a married man than that he was the first bishop in Rome. All ecclesiastical institutions tend to venerate tradition, respect precedent, and worry about money. But I wonder whether, both for practical and pastoral reasons, the rule will be long tenable, especially if half the church's membership is declared ineligible anyway. Not even the most determined Protestant will take any joy in the disappearance of Scottish Catholic seminaries and the pressures on smaller numbers of priests, for this reflects the broader decline of religion in Scotland and Western Europe. In any case, we have troubles of our own when marriage is under strain or out of fashion and just over half the General Assembly tolerates a bizarre variation on the great Scottish theme of 'the manse family'.
     For all that, it is neither unfair nor 'sectarian' to question whether defence of marriage and the family, which is one of the strengths of the Roman church and urgent needs of modern society, is best served by the exclusion of  married people from the most effective institution for pastoral leadership.
     Amid these difficulties it is tempting, if rather facetious, to ask whether we might not be better to declare a decade of ecclesiastical amnesia, forget all our traditions, look at scripture afresh, and see whether we could start again, whether as one church or a confederation of different ones aligned according to modern social and theological divisions. Of course we won't. One of the weaknesses of the ecumenical movement so far has been a failure to recognise the tenacity-in-tradition of even quite small and sometimes struggling denominations.
     I had an object lesson in that when on a group which negotiated an apparently amiable and flawless union of the Kirk with the Scottish Methodists. The scheme sank without trace when it reached the Methodist congregations and synods, and we should have thought more about how it would look to them. The whole 'catholick or universal Church' (as the Calvinist confession calls it) may have to await organic unity with the same uncertainty as it awaits the revelation of the still deeper mystery of what Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans about the ultimate reconciliation of Christians and the Jews, 'beloved for their fathers' sakes'.
     But that should not inhibit us from thinking boldly and speaking plainly in the meantime.