The Keys Newsletter

EPIPHANY 2002

THE MASTER WRITES

One of my Christmas presents was Eamon Duffyıs new book, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village. Unlike his The Stripping of the Altars in which he paints on a vast canvas, Duffys new book is an account of the destruction of the Catholic devotion and community life of just thirty-six families in the tiny Devonian village of Morebath on the southern edge of Exmoor. Of course his account is suffused with his extensive scholarly knowledge of the wider scene in London and throughout the kingdom, yet it is because his story reveals the feelings of 
powerless, ordinary people, without the means or influence to avert the terrible destruction of their heritage, that it tears at the heart.

  Duffy unlocks all this from seemingly unpromising material. The basis for his story is the detailed parish accounts which the priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, wrote in his own hand between 1520 and 1574 while he had the care of the villagers' souls. Although there is a need for some reading between the lines to comprehend the full significance of the dramatic events through which the parish was living during the 54 years of his tenure, the accounts are suffused with notes recording the priest's quirky pride, generosity of spirit, and appreciation of the value of the contributions of 
everyone in the parish in difficult times.

  In the early years of his incumbency Morebath is revealed as a happy, devout community, where none was rich, most were poor, but none was destitute. The church was a source of pride for which all families of the village felt responsible, men and women, and young men and unmarried girls. Almost all heads of families, and these included both men and women, took part in adminstering the affairs of the church, and organising the practices and expressions of devotion. The Morebath Church of St George was always kept in good repair, and it had received regular gifts and endowments from the parishioners: a new altar for the local virgin saint, St Sidwell, new images, offerings for the regilding of existing statues, candlesticks, new church furniture. Funds were always being collected to pay for the candles before the statues. And yet, as the grip of the protestant changes tightened after the breach with Rome, the beloved church was progressively stripped of its ornaments, its bells, and its vestments. But it was also effectively bankrupted by the levies on the parish church, 
for the king's wars in France and Scotland, and by the requirements of King Edward VIth and his Commissioners to purchase expensive new service books, bibles and psalters for the protestant services. These exactions forced the sale of most church possessions which had not already been commandeered or destroyed. At the same time, it was no longer permitted to raise funds in the traditional ways by social functions such as young men's ales, on traditional feast days, nor from the keeping of a parish flock of sheep (in happier times each sheep of the flock had been farmed out among the parishioners so that no family had the expense of keeping more than one 
sheep with their own flock).

  Sir Christopher was an educated, rather eccentric but essentially law-abiding priest, who nevertheless was driven to fund the purchase of arms for five young men of the parish who took part in the Rebellion of 1549 against the Protestant Prayer Book. This ended in a bloody defeat and a wave of executions, and three of the five never returned.

  The account books clearly show the joy and relief that the parishioners felt at the accession of Mary Tudor. How piteous was their delight in bringing out again the few Church treasures which they had managed to conceal from the Commissioners, who had been determined to extirpate everything that related to the Catholic past of England. It is so moving to read this and know that within five years all that joy would end, and they would be compelled by law to submit themselves to the Elizabethan Protestant settlement. I found one tale particularly heart-rending. In 1528 
the parishioners had decided to started a fund for the acquisition of a set of black vestments so that requiems for dead parishioners could be celebrated with appropriate dignity. Over the years funds had been accumulated, in tiny donations and from parish fund-raising, and from small bequests in the wills of poor parishioners. By July 1547 (after 19 years of saving) they just had enough to acquire a set of splendid black vestments from a workshop in Dunster. Yet within a few weeks of this date the 
Commisioners for the West had forbidden clergy from wearing black vestments over ecclesiastical dress, and the tolling of all bells for the dead, and for the celebration of All Souls, had been officially banned.

  Alas, the story has resonance for other ages. It shows how a determined central authority, without popular support for its agenda, can, by a process of propaganda, and by proceeding inexorably through little changes (many of which may seem too tiny to be worthy of dramatic resistance), can finally destroy all that a community holds dear, and create a mood among ordinary people that the process of change, reform and "modernisation" is inevitable. Our own time has lessons to learn from the plight of the poor people of Morebath

Yours in Domino,

Antony

PROGRAMME FOR 2002

Thursday 24 January: Feast of Our Patron St Francis de Sales and the Annual General Meeting. The Speaker on OLiterature and the Goodı will be Ian Robinson, one of the authors of A New Idea of the University
.
Wednesday 13 March:  Following the great success of his book, Piers Paul Read will speak to us on The Knights Templar.

Edward Leigh MP, the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committe of the House of Commons, has agreed to talk to us in the early part of the year.

George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney and Head of the Australian Bishops' Conference, will address us during a stop over in London on the occasion of one of his visits to Rome in late September or early October. Archbishop Pell is on the drafting Committee which will be producing the Report and recommendations following the recent Bishopsı Synod in Rome. The date for the meeting will be given to members as soon as we have it. His Grace has recently proposed that Governments in western countries should make changes to the tax, benefit and pension arrangements in western countries so as to strengthen the family, and so reduce the potential for the huge social and financial costs which fall on the community as a result of family breakdown. His ideas have been the subject of controversy and 
debate.

The Keys weekend will be from Friday 20 to Sunday 21 September. It will be centred at Winchester and will particularly concentrate on the city's Catholic connections. There will be a visit to the Cathedral, where Queen Mary Tudor married Philip of Spain on the feast of St James, 1554. We are hoping to have someone to talk to us on the Marian years. We also plan to visit Winchester College, which now has a Catholic chaplain. It is suggested that some Keys members might like to stay at The Winchester Royal Hotel. This historic building has early Catholic and recusant connections. Dr Milner was keen to turn the building into a seminary in the early 19th 
century, but instead it became a convent of Benedictine Nuns of the Glorious Assumption.  It became a hotel in 1857 after the convent moved to the Old Hall in East Bergholt. The convent chapel has been turned into Milner and Sheldon rooms in the hotel. More details about the weekend later.

There are a number of other speakers planned for the coming year and we will let members have details as soon they are finalised.

Catholic Central Library

Many Keys members have supported the campaign to keep the Catholic Central Library together and located in London. Our Chaplain, in particular, has been instrumental in arranging for some very useful funding from one of the private trusts of which he is a trustee. Other Keys members have supported the Library by becoming members, or made personal donations. Cardinal Murphy-OıConnor has just written to library members about the Library's future. The text of his letter is given below.

Dear Member,

As you will know, when the Friars of the Atonement sold their premises in Francis Street, Westminster, my predecessor, the late Cardinal Hume, entrusted the books of the Catholic Central Library under a licence agreement to a distinguished body of Trustees. This was to ensure that the valuable collection of books and journals was kept together and that the Library continued to provide its important service to you as members and to the wider public. As you  know, the Library's origins go back to 1915, and it has been supported since then in various ways during its long history by 
religious communities, the laity and my predecessors.

  The new Trustees formed a charitable trust, and leased the existing premises at Lancing Street, Euston.  Fortunately, Joan Bond, who had been the Librarian for many years, agreed to continue to run the Library. She has been helped in her work by a splendid team of volunteers which she has assembled. Many of you have also performed heroically in helping to move the books from Francis Street to Euston, and later helped move a part of the collection to Camden Town.

  I am glad to know that the service is in many ways better than ever. The accounting functions have now been computerised, the computerisation of the catalogue of the books is moving forward rapidly, and the Library is on Email and has its own website. This means that it is now able to deal with enquiries from all over the world. The Library has expanded over the last four years with a regular programme of new acquisitions and though important gifts and bequests of further books and periodicals. I know that the Trustees have ambitious plans to set the Library at the heart of a 
Catholic cultural centre.

  The one significant difficulty has been the fact that not all of the collection has been able to be housed at the leased premises in Lancing Street. The premises of Our Lady of Hal, Camden , where about one third of the books are stored is about to be redeveloped, and some are still in the crypt of the Church of St Pancras, where their condition is far from ideal. Over the last four years the Trustees have made valiant efforts to find alternative permanent premises in London where the entire collection could be housed together and full access to members and the general public provided. But none of the sites which they have considered have proved to be sufficently large, reasonably accessible by public transport, or affordable. Nevertheless, under the patronage of the Duke of Norfolk and my predecessor, an appeal was launched in 1997 which has raised well over £100,000. Yet it has obviously been difficult to sustain further fund-raising without certainty about future premises.

  My own view is that the ideal would be if the Library could be kept together and located in one place. Joan Bond has told me about the use of the Library being made by pupils at school, young people, and enquirers about our Faith, as well as members with their own research projects and interests. The Trustees have very naturally asked me whether the Diocese itself would be able to allocate suitable premises. Within the Diocese there are many priorities for the uses of premises and sites, and it is by no means certain that every requirement can be fulfilled, however desirable each one may be.

  However, at a meeting with your Trustees on 13 November I told them that I would make every effort  to find a site that would enable the entire collection to be kept together and to meet some of the other exciting plans which your trustees would like to see accomplished. During this period I am pleased to announce that Joan Bond, who was due to retire on 1 January 2002, has agreed to stay on for the time being.

  I hope to write to you all again in about six months time to inform you of the results of our efforts.

Yours devotedly,

Cormac Murphy O'Connor
Archbishop of Westminster


MONSIGNOR A.N. GILBEY:
LANDLORD TO THE WHOLE CONGREGATION

From the White Bear, via the Black Swan
ad Cenam Domini

"As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it (the church)"
Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no 112, 9 July 1711.

Fred our head waiter whispered in my ear: "Sir, yer know we Gilbraltarians don' like pries's, but I never tink of de Monsignor as a pries'. I tink of eem as a reeal hentelman". Dixit Gilbey, in his sharp and "very, very" rapid mutter, eyebrow raised 
quizzically, head turned sharply. "Whatıs-theat-he-said?" hearing acute, well on in his nineties, even in the clatter of the Travellersı Club Coffee Room at his corner table over lunch, and, rallentando, "I donıt take that as much of a compliment. Now shall we have a half-carafe of the club Sauvignon to our potted shrimps?"

  So much has been written about this priest, who was the friend, guide, and mentor to "my three thousand spiritual children", as I heard him tell a man enquiring, how he was passing his retirement, and whom he saw. But the keeping in touch, the Mount Street evening Mass on first Thursdays and Fridays, what a Hound of Heaven! Grandfathers and grandmothers, grey-heads, white-heads, their children, their children with friends, chums, and fiancées, arrived, month after month, year after year, a steady drizzle, first pressings of the olive into the Innkeeperıs divine mayonnaise, them that were bidden to taste of My Supper.

  It began with a "sanctuary" entrance - described once "as though on casters", a Sarum bob, a Beaumont pass of the biretta down the line to the wing (Albert was never a Rugby afficionado) before he the craftsman, laid out his vessels with deliberation, and began the weaving and redeeming of our time, blood and bone, into His eternal living, in the Spirit with his Father. Twenty minutes saw the muttered miracle, before the Running Footman assuaged, with sherry, or beer, the flockıs thirst. Always a Gilbey, Alfred was at home in an inn, proud of his forebears. Twenty minutes later he was on the move ("Always walk everywhere you can"), to his dinner guests at the Travellers', and off to bed by ten-thirty. His disciplined, darting mind 
seldom failed to ask the loving, probing, question, as "You so kindly introduced me once, years ago, to that friend of yours in a brown suit who had had awful difficulties with x. Whatever became of his pretty niece who came with her motoring-car to fetch him home?" His power of recall was prodigious, and its fruits always pointed to the Kingdom, which was the whole end and purpose of his racy gossip, his gentle reminiscing, his "keeping the jungle at bay"
.
  From Oxford I had met him, when Master of the Christchurch and New College Beagles, in the sunshine of the Trinity Foot Puppy Show, and to me, Samaritan in Cambridge, he became a very dear friend for over thirty years. In the narrows between Magdalene and Trinity one evening in 1970 we met, he speeding towards Dick Laboroughıs rooms in Magdalene as I tried to find Little St Mary's. "Father, I know youıre not quite the man to ask, but.." "Of course, I am exactly the man to ask. Go right to the far end of King's Parade end then".

  Like Our Lord, he wept at death close to him. After his dear sister Carmenıs funeral I ran into him, on the club steps, looking badly broken up with grief. Like Our Lord, he was always alert to practical needs. "I always say the first line of defence against a serious problem is a good meal and a glass or two of wine." The innkeeper in him, again. As Newman wrote of St Philip,

  Ask not our all, but takes whateıer we spare him,
  Willing to lead us on from good to better
       As we can bear him.

  He knew my wife's family, having been at her parentsı wedding in 1957, "robed and in the sanctuary," before which my father-in-law had been at Peterhouse reading for his Ph D. Some years before my father-in-law and I had met, I had "embraced the errors of Rome" at Alfredıs hands. He married us, christened our children, and spent his last eight New Years with us. We have made through him many, many friends over the years, right across the social spectrum.

  Once, in the 1970s, as I referred to him as "The Monsignor" to one standing before the fire with us, califaciens se, he said reprovingly, "My friends call me Alfred". Indeed all generations called him Alfred. Awesome, in the old sense, it is when, in oneıs twenties, a man old enough to be one's father, to be addressed as Sir, or Father, so commands. Yet "like an an eagle he restores the vigour of thy youth" says the Psalmist, and, the day he died, I saw him entertaining a party of his friends to lunch with all the happiness and laughter of a man a third his age who has just won the Cheltenham Gold Cup. He adored people, unique, warts and all, made in the image of Almighty God. ³Es la persona que cuenta,² his Spanish mother taught him.

  I never knew the Cambridge Chaplaincy (formerly "The Black Swan") in his day, nor the Oxford one. Pusey House, Mary Magıs under that C. of E. "Curé d'Ars of Oxford", John Hooper, the Devonian succeeding Colin Stephenson when he went to Walsingham in 1958, and the study of Newman, drew me in; and it took years - like "walking a fox to death" on waterlogged arable across the Sussex Weald, rain running down your spine, and your horse's.

  Also as a mediaeval historian at school and a land lawyer, the chain of title, whether to an estate or a cabbage plot it matters not is, literally, crucial. I have fought bloodily to establish my clientıs legal right to the footpath behind the line of cottages in which she had one, for the coalman, or "he highwayman, who came riding, riding, riding up to the old inn door". A fortiori (all the more so, my sisters and brothers, as ICEL would trasnslate it) in the matter of eternal truth, alone worthy of our consideration.

  The Gilbeyıs roots were in the Bishopsı Stortford area of Hatfield Forest where Daniel (1728-1785) was Ranger. His son Daniel acquired three inns in Stanstead and himself kept "The White Bear" there; and Henry, "Old Harry Gilbey", had "The Bell" there too, and, after his dramatic coaching career was ruined by the railways, The Red Lion at Hockerill, at the end of his short life. He was Alfred's great-grandfather, and the Prince Regent showed him such friendship and favour it was speculated whether they were father and son.

  Be it as it may, the Inn is a powerful Christian image. Our Lord revealed something of Heaven when he said "In my Father's house there are many rooms". As you will know the discourse goes on, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me. I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me, so that where I am you may be too". Here is Jesus the Innkeeper exercising his Eternal priesthood of sacrifical love towards every passer-by.

  Civilised people have always esteemed the virtue of hospitality. Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, harbouring the harbourless, are the first, second and fourth of the Seven Corporal Works of mercy, as Alfred taught. Difficult travel made it important to entertain strangers. Abraham and Sarah, both elderly, entertained Yahweh and two angels at the Oak of Mamre, and the promise of Isaac was their reward ("The Oak of Mamre" might be an Inn, like ³The Rose Revived² at Babcock Hythe, or "The Lamb and Flag" at Kingston Bagpuize, known to my generation of undergraduates as "Dudley's". It survives, extended, and as good as ever).

  The writer to the Hebrews reminded them "always to welcome strangers". St Paul told the Romans, "If any of the saints is in need you must share with them; and you should make hospitality your special care", and the point is made again and again in the First Epistle to Timothy, in writing to Titus, and by St Peter in his first Epistle, "Welcome each other into your houses without grumbling".

  As we know well from St Luke, there was no room at the inn for Our Lady who was with child, so Our Lord was born in a stable. On that parched road the Good Samaritan took the victim to an inn. It was the alien and heretic who rescued the mugged man, saw to his wounds, took him, on his own mount, to an inn, and paid his bill in advance, assuring the innkeeper "whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again I will repay thee".

  St Paul, or whoever wrote the Epistles to Timothy, Creteıs first bishop, enjoins hospitality. In St Johnıs Good Friday account of the Passion, St Peter warmed himself at the fire with the others, "calefaciens se" as we hear in that stripped and haunting plainsong, where, in the Agony in the Garden, our Lord, in Newman's words, "did teach his brethren, and inspire, to suffer and to die". And the maid, keeping the door, said "Oh yeah, you was wi' Oim all roight, Oi reckermoize yer Galileean axent, dunnoi".

  And then the cock crew, and He looked across at the prince of the Apostles. Some prince then, with tears, like us, when we truly repent. Can our eyes resist the eye-contact over the centuries from the High Priest's Court, the same yesterday, today, and forever?

  We are strangers and sojourners, in via, and here we have no abiding city, for we seek one which is to come, with many rooms, God's Inn, an inn, stabulum, or hospitium, which provides shelter, sheets, supper, and rest.

  With a background of innkeeping, and later country houses, it was natural that, when illustrating the live nature of faith in the conversations he had with converts which lead to his book, We Believe, Alfred said. "Faith is a live gift, like a pony or a puppy. You have to feed it, groom it, clean it out, exercise it. It is a live creature, which can die on you if you neglect it. So it is with Faith. It is a live gift, not like a book or a picture, which remains the same however much you neglect it." I cannot find the quotation in We Believe, but I distinctly recall Alfred saying it, urgently and emphatically, long years ago. How apt, like Our Lord's parables, the treasure hid in a field, the lost penny (over which Beethoven raged), the pearl of great price: examples, the lot from everyday life. And everyday life is the flax from which sanctity is woven, the parched, or alternatively, waterlogged land, is the soil of the Divine Gardener to make into Paradise. Our Lord was, remember, mistaken for the gardener on one 
supremely important occasion. But this servant of his, who chucklingly often referred to the "Great Indoors" was his Innkeeper at "The Black Swan" in Cambridge.

  Alfred Gilbeyıs great-grandfather, "Old Harry Gilbey", the innkeeper-coachman, was the first recorded member of the family to show the love of horses which became Gilbeyıs best known characteristic. He ran the Cambridge-London coach till about 1840 when the railways ruined him.

  One article about Alfred, one only, really stuck in my craw. It was in The Times on Michaelmas Day, 1998. Libby Purves wrote it. It was chippy, to go with fishwifely roots, egalitarian (Alfredıs rudest word). I understand and sympathize with her revulsion at the fawners; although she and the Rosie Boycotts of this world must seethe to know how their brash educatedness supports his views about educating females at the Universities! Boycott champions euthanasia, Alfred taught us how to make a good death.

  Spanish women are strong meat, as we know from our Summer School. The girls, even at twelve, know their own mind. Even when not head-turners, they move well, laugh a lot, complain well, work hard and play well. Their mothers and aunts work hard, banking, lawyering, and run their houses with panache. Manero, moda, tono are the words, and drive - impetu, viveza convey the rest of this Espanism. There may well be folk living who recall Alfredıs Spanish mother, Maria Victorina Ysasi, from their own parents and grandparents, whose education, absorbed no doubt through her large family and governesses, made her a superlative upbringer of her seven children, of which Alfred was the youngest; the eldest Henry, having been born in 1888. The Virago Factor, is what makes some highly educated women so unattractive, just as limp young fogeydom can emasculate a male.

  Alfred's Spanish good looks, dressed en clerique on a train between Dover and London, when coming home from Rome as a seminarian, elicited the friendly diffidence of "Father, is-this-your-first-visit-to-England?", having told which, in his nineties, he chuckled with tears at his long years' happiness, and the absurdity, that he had never felt more English than at that moment in which he looked so foreign. Another memory at which he chuckled was that of the incogruity in England of a new children's nurse, from Italy, not Spain, who had them all on their knees hearing the 
muffin man's bell as he went round the London Square, with her fingers tightly to her lips. "In ginocchio, in ginnochio! Il Santissimo." And down on one knee in their nursery the Gilbey children all went, in that vanished Edwardian world of straw, Hansom cabs and horse-dung, growlers - and reverence: evoked by the music of Elgar, Parry, and Wood, and the paintings of Munnings and Sickert.
  Back to Libby Purvesıs rather unsportingly cruel (the epithet would be lost on her) article, actually more about class (to rhyme with farce and Cartholic, as she explained) than "poor, dead, Gilbey." And why not? "Class" sells, as do "Sex" and "Money". Purves is a journalist, but not a writer, a distinction Alfred occasionally made (not about her) and, of course, understood, as he did most subtle nuances. The italics would have been his. La Purves got Gilbey so wrong, as his photograph alongside her article showed, and insulted his memory grossly. For all that, pithy it 
was, no anodyne in partibus fidelium, and, sure of his ground, peaceful and free from umbrage, he would have taken no slight. Him, however, we shall remember, not her, in another generation.

  "How" she had rightly asked aged ten "could any Mass be private?" Indeed. And where b'Jaysus would we be widout Farder OıBubblegum? La Purves need not be over sensitive about the ³Irish and plebeian roots² of her mother. "Gilbey", as most called him, was ever at pains to emphasize his yeoman ancestry.

  His great-uncle Walterıs baronetcy (1893) was granted largely for his improvement in the breeding of horses, his Father, "Old Harry" having done so much for their welfare before the railways had ruined him, and hastened his death in early middle-age. The first Sir Walter was brought up "very short of tin" in Regency slang, and with his younger brother, Alfred, the Monsignorıs grandfather, co-founded the wine merchants W & A Gilbey. They used their native qualities to cooperate with other members of their family in making a fortune. And today, after the takeover by international Distributors and Vintners, and the later management buyout, young 
recidivist Gilbeys are backsliding  into the wine and catering business once more. "As Alfred would say 'Good on them'". Modern expressions he would never use, but ones his younger friends would, were often prefaced with "As Alfred says."

  Jane Kidd tells the whole tale rivetingly in Gilbeys, Wine and Horses (The Lutterworth Press, PO Box 60, Cambridge, CB1 2NT, 1997, ISBN 0 71882940 9). So many questions about Alfred, his sense of sartorial style, his courtesy, his single-minded determination in face of adversity, his generation of living in retirement a very private life yet always subject to the scrutiny of fellow members and club servants, with humour, dignity, always with good manners, almost never giving way to temper or impatience, are explained by the inn-keeping ancestry, and the collapse of his great-grandfatherıs business. How he used to delight in taking Stagecoach ("all motor coaches now, you know," guying himself again)' from London to his cousin Walter's at Henley.

  Now and then, entertaining guests at the corner round table he liked for a party in the Coffee Room at the Travellers', and keen for them to have more toast, he would "elevate the toast rack," his strong fingers "heaving it higher, sir priest", shooting his stiff cuffs ("so comfortable in hot weather, they let the air circulate") and, in a self-guying way, call the waiterıs name "Oh, Hayzoos!" and if he did not hear, again, "Hayzoos! Pleeaase!" The Iberian pronunciation of Jesus is Hayzoos. He is Mister 
Jesus, promoted from wine waiter to night porter and security man, strong, wholly dependable and unflapable, and calming too, when the cab for the 6 a.m. train does not show up, (and he adores Alfred still, many's the vignette we swap, waiting). Gilbey quickly added, realizing half his guests were not members, "My unkind friends think Iım blaspheming."

  Or, another time, when two waitresses, "these dear gairls" passed by on the other side, gently cross, he remarked "these gairls practise custody of the eyes, like nuns." Gilbeyıs point was, nuns are meant to guard themselves from visual temptations, but club servants, or waitresses in a restaurant, are meant to watch their tables. Members of a club, or customers at an hostelry ("an" is archaic to suit our subject) should receive attentive service. What is more, he would have had unconsciously in mind that to make bad use of time for which I am paid is both a sin against justice (The Manual of Catholic Prayer, Burns and Oates, 1962), and fair set, if as a waitress you ignore the table, to spoil the smooth flow of the party, and make the diner, and your employer, cross too. That was the inheritance of the innkeeper in Alfred, and of his Catholicism.

  Of yeoman stock whose scions (the gardener's language) prospered through the wine trade and licensed victualling, the last thing he was, was snobbish. Individuality and Degree he cherished, because that was how he saw humankind as it is. The Peerage, Vaux of Harrowden, passing through the female line, came into the Gilbey family through a Mostyn marriage, which seems a wise way to stop any one title getting too attached to property, or one family, yet keeping hold of the hereditary principle.

Jeremy Walters




ARCHBISHOP FOLEYıS ADVICE ON DEALING WITH THE MEDIA

Below is the text of an address given by Archbishop John F. Foley, President of the Pontifical Council for Social  Communications, at the Fourth International Conference of Institutional Communications held at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome in 2001. The editor is grateful to Andrew Soane for drawing it to his attention.

First of all, permit me to apologise for the title of my talk printed in your English-language folders: "The Press Offices of the Church: a decisive Wager for information." I donıt know what it means! So instead I am going to share my own experiences in the United States and in Rome in dealing with Church-related information.

  As you all know, Jesus said: "The truth shall make you free." I am convinced of the liberating aspect of truth: first, of course, the truth about God, about Jesus, about ourselves that we know in Him and through Him; second, truth in general, because all truth is in some way a reflection of God; third, moral truth, the correlation between what we know and what we say.

  It is not for nothing that the devil is known as the father of lies. Therefore the first principle of all communication, but especially, of course, communication on behalf of the Church, is never, never, tell a lie. When you tell the truth, you never have to cover your tracks; you don't have to think up a new lie consistent with the old one. Literally, the truth will make you free.

  Naturally, you have to make sure that what you are saying is the truth, and you have to phrase your statement, or your response, precisely, to reflect the truth that you know, and not to report rumours or mere opinions.

   A habit of truth is very liberating. When one has a reputation for truth, there exists a wonderful atmosphere of credibility, and people are open to what you say because they know that you will never deceive them. I guess that you could say that truth is not only morally right; it is politically correct. It establishes an atmosphere of trust.

  Have I ever been asked to say something that was not true, or have I known someone who who has been asked to say something that was not true in Church communications? My answer is "yes". Have I personally ever lied or have I ever counselled anyone to lie? My answer is "no."

  I am convinced that those who wanted me to say something that was not completely true did not think that they were doing wrong, but thought that they were doing what was best for the Church. When asked why I did not follow instructions to say what I knew was not true, I replied that not only was what I was asked to do morally wrong; it was also dumb. The truth will always come out; perhaps it is already known by those to whom you are communicating. A failure to tell the truth is a scandal, a betrayal of trust and a destroyer of credibility.


  So sacred is the responsibility to tell the truth that one must be ready to accept dismissal, for refusal to tell a lie. So important is the reponsibility to tell the truth that the effectiveness of all your work as Church communicators will depend upon your reputation for honesty and integrity, your credibility. Once such a reputation is established, that people can believe anything you say, then they will be open to accept what I call "good news": ideas about possible feature articles on people and movements in the Church that do extraordinarily good work in the name of Jesus, for the poor, the handicapped, the sick, the forgotten.

  I mention the latter stories, because I think that many people are hungering for good news. Most people want to lead good, or better lives. How can they live the spiritual and corporal works of mercy? We must be ready with practical examples which will be newsworthy, and which will provide inspiration, motivation and encouragement.

  However, God knows we have enough bad news in the world and in the Church, and unfortunately bad news is often what gets the most attention. A television news director once told me that his interest in airports was in crashes, not landings! And so, unfortunately and unfairly, the interest of the media in the Church is often in discovering weaknesses in an institution which preaches virtue.

  One cardinal once asked me, "What is the answer to this interest of the media in scandals within the priesthood?" My answer was: "Virtue, and, in the absence of virtue, candor, which is another form of virtue."

  I am in no way implying that the media are always right. They can and do make mistakes, and their mistakes can ruin reputations. I recall the case of the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, who had been accused of immoral activity with a young man who had been a seminarian. The cardinal was exemplary in the manner in which he responded. He called press conference and said that he had never betrayed his vows of chastity, and that he was not guilty of the action with which he was accused, but he said that he forgave his accuser. Later the young man retracted the charge, and the 
cardinal travelled more than one thousand miles to express his forgiveness to the young man.

  While the young man had been guilty of a serious fault of calumny, and had perhaps been misled by a lawyer, I have always felt that much of the blame rested with those in the media who were irresponsible.

  In fact I met those responsible for such decisions in CNN and asked: "How could you accept the word of a young man who was an admitted drug user and male prostitute, and who said that he had suppressed the memory of a sexual encounter with the cardinal only to have it recalled years later by a psychologist? How could you not investigate further before ruining the reputation of one one of the best known and most repected churchmen in the United States?² They admitted that they were wrong and they said that they were sorry. I hope that the incident has made them more careful in reporting accusations.

  When I asked Cardinal Bernardin himself why he did not sue for libel those news organisations which had published or broadcast the charges against him, he said that his idea of forginess was not only to forgive the young man but also those who had published the false reports as long as they had admitted their error. Any other action, he said, would only prolong coverage of the calumny and distract the Church from its primary responsibility to preach the Gospel.

  Just a short time later Cardinal Bernardin gave an outstanding example not only of resignation but of pastoral service during his terminal illness. He publically announced that he had incurable cancer and he reached out to others suffering from the disease and ministered to them through visits and over the telephone, to give them insight into the meaning of their suffering and into the reality of eternal life with 
Christ. While Cardinal Bernardin had led an extraordinary life of leadership in the Church, perhaps nothing better reflected his spiritual strength than his response to the false accusation and his acceptance of suffering in his final illness.

  For press officers in the Church, and for leaders in the Church, perhaps nothing better illustrates the truth of what St Paul said in his letter to the Romans: "Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." What is the challenge for those involved in Church communications?

  - First of all, finding out the truth in crisis situations and reporting it accurately and fairly;
  - Second, ,preparing reports on Church activities and initiatives that will be accurate and informative, and will help the media and the public to understand what the Church is doing and why it is doing it;
  - Third, to have ready an inexhaustible source of story ideas of "good news" which the media can use on slow news days or on seasonal occasions, and which they will be ready to accept because they know that they can trust you, and because they know you are trying to help them and their readers, and not to use them for your own or even for the Church's advantage. People donıt mind being helped; they resent being used and exploited.

  I began by recalling the words of Jesus: "The truth will make you free." Truth is indeed liberating; it is sin that brings slavery, the slavery of vice and deceit. Jesus called Himself "the light of the world." If we are to help in the ministry of the Church to bring the light of Christ to the world, the true light that dispels the darkness, then we ourselves must be models of integrity and of truth. The light is never served by a lie; Jesus is never served by falsehood.

  Jesus is not only the light; He is the way, the truth and the life. What a wonderful privilege it is to share with Him in the ministry of bringing light and truth to the world!

John Foley

REVIEW

The New Idea of a University

By Duke Maskell & Ian Robinson (Haven Books 2001 £18.50)

Higher education in Britain has turned into a gigantic fraud. The red brick revolution ushered in by the Robbins Report of 1963 sought to bring the spirit of Oxford and Cambridge to the provinces. By contrast, the Dearing Report of 1997 merely ratified the crassly economic approach to higher education that had been adopted by all the political parties in the intervening decades.

  Gone without trace is the dream of introducing whoever is interested to a tradition of liberal humanism. John Majorıs Charter for Higher Education (1993) speaks instead of "delivering a service to customers who buy education in the form of courses which have aims and structures, with the whole apparatus effectively managed by professionals." The philosopher's stone in the Charter, as in the Dearing Report, is that "the student of any subject whatsoever will acquire transferable skills, like problem-solving and effective communication, which will equip him to play his part in increasing the Gross Domestic Product." In this way higher education can reconcile the opposing demands of Treasury officials and humanities dons. This solitary criterion, of increasing national wealth, is officially held to justify the whole vast edifice of subsidised higher education.

  But Ian Robinson and Duke Maskall point out that the government's economic advisers offer no evidence whatever that higher education increases national wealth. The authors are also very doubtful whether the skills acquired by students in particular courses currently being taught by universities have any value for obtaining and mastering a job after university in an unrelated field. In other words they are sceptical about the acquisition of transferable skills. Indeed they doubt whether many 
specific career-related courses taught at universities would prove to be of real value when a student starts on the job. Their years of experience in teaching in univeristies make them doubt whether a university course in tourism would be of any real benefit to students who subsequently worked in a travel agency.

  In this penetrating, important, and often extremely funny book, the two authors trace the development of these policies to John Henry Newman's Idea of a University. Newman did essential work in defining the nature of liberal education, "the pursuit," as he said, "of that Knowledge, which is desirable, though nothing come of it, as being of itself a treasure, and a sufficient remuneration for years of labour." But, as Maskell and Robinson argue, Newman betrayed his own argument, by permitting a conflation of useful instruction (demanded by his adversaries) with education in its true sense of the disinterested pursuit of knowledge.

  Newman's essay was enormously influential in political terms; it persuaded the official class to protect the universities from the attacks of practical men for almost a hundred and fifty years. But in claiming that a liberal education is essentially useful, it provided democratic governments with a weapon which they have finally exploited: polytechnics have been turned into universities, the numbers of students in higher education have been increased from one-in-33 to one-in-three of the population cohort, with more to follow and all without official opposition from academics.

  On the contrary, what with the flow of funds and the opportunities for empire building, the universities have made love to this employment, defining their purposes according to the bureaucratic consensus. The 1996 mission statement of one institution declared that "it aimed to facilitate regional economic growth and national wealth creation," while the Government speaks of "investment in students as an investment whose rate of return is entirely unknown."

  To Newmanıs false promise of automatic usefulness, the twentieth century added the dogma of ever-expanding university access. These ideas together have all but destroyed liberal humanist education in the universities, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the development of critical judgement. While traditional requirements of scholarly rigour are depressed, or quietly abandoned, so as to increase student numbers, dozens of dubiously vocational courses, European Food Studies, Cosmetic Sciences, Hospitality Management, Tourism Studies, Pig Enterprise Management and the like have been introduced to satisfy the demand for relevance.

  The resulting edifice is subject to a particularly humourless and destructive form of bureaucratic scrutiny, the Quality Assurance process, whose working methods are determined by the need to produce objective data. Nobody enquires officially into the intrinsic value of what is going on in universities; only whether the course corresponds to its advertised description, what its attendance record is, or whether it is "accessible" to students. Money follows student numbers, and the pressure is on to pass as many students as possible, thereby ensuring popularity, increasing funding, and gaining political acceptance. Fraudulence and charlatanism flourish.

  The politicisation of the universities has proved in every way as disastrous as its opponents feared, but the reasons for this go far beyond anything that public policy can rectify by law or administrative action. To conceive of education as a system with objectives to be monitored is already to demonstrate the failure of the culture. "Culture cannot altogether be brought to consciousness," T. S. Eliot observed in the Notes towards the Definition of Culture; and "the culture of which we are conscious is never the whole." Sustainable and vital cultures are necessarily rooted in living traditions, social and religious, which far exceed and overreach the political realm. If the state cannot create such forces, it has proved adept enough at destroying them.

  Robinson and Maskell are unblinking in their assessment of the times, but they are not without hope that certain pockets of civilisation survive and can regroup, while their policy ideas are entirely without the element of consolation in prophetic doom which Eliot warned against. Everyone concerned with the future of education in this country must read their book.

Justin Shaw

New Yearıs Honours

It was particularly pleasing to see that Her Majesty has made Dr Mary Berry a Commander of the British Empire for her services in preserving and repopularizing Gregorian chant. Some members will recall her splendid workshop at Towards Advent in November 2000.

  It is also well worth mentioning the award of a knighthood to Brandon Gough. The Financial Times and the heavty-weight broadsheets think of him only as a "company director". He was senior partner of the Accountancy firm of Coopers and Lybrand, and is still Chairman of de la Rue, which makes the UK bank notes. He was the troubleshooter brought in to chair Yorkshire Water when it failed its customers some years ago. His public services to Goverment have included chairing the Higher Education Funding Council which allocates the money to universities and higher education institutions in England and Wales, and more recently, in work for the National Health Service, as Chairman of the Review Body of Doctors' and Dentists' 
Remuneration. His service to the Church has included work on the Westminster Cathedral Appeal Committee. But he is known in the Sevenoaks area as one of the regular servers at the 8 am Sunday Mass in Latin. He lives at Long Barn, the house and garden owned by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson in the -nineteen twenties before they bought Sissinghurst Castle. Brandon and his wife Sarah have improved the garden greatly. The Nicholsons made the gardening mistakes of their youth there, which have mostl;y been rectified so that it is now one of the finest gardens in Kent. I suspect that Brandon rather surprised the BBC some years ago when he refused on principle the use of Long Barn to shoot the rather unedifying TV 
drama of the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville West which was said to have been conducted at Long Barn.