twentieth century, among them the Catholic convert Saunders Lewis. He was a brilliant academic and playwright, as well as a poet, and was the main influence in founding the Welsh Nationalist Party in 1925, and its first leader. Lewis was a close friend of Archbishop Michael McGrath, who held the Cardiff see from 1935 to 1961. An Irishman and a Celtic scholar who learnt Welsh, he became a cham- pion of its culture. In turn, he sponsored the man who is now Bishop Emeritus of Menevia, Daniel Mullins, to become a highly respected Welsh scholar and keen ecumenist. Apart from learning the language, Archbishop Stack will face many challenges. He has stated that he wishes to identify with the devolutionary movement. With its new legislative powers, and the probability of Wales becoming a separate jurisdiction before long, it is important that we have strong, cogent Christian voices here. In these matters Archbishop Stack will be supported and joined by other church leaders, especially the Church in Wales (Anglican) bishops who have met their Catholic colleagues several times, and even issued joint pastorals.
T
here is much to learn from the recent history of Anglicanism in Wales, especially since its disestablishment in 1921. Previously to a large extent
the Church of the squirearchy and those who served them, it has slowly achieved full incul- turisation. On the other hand, the Catholic Church in Wales is still often identified with Irish, Italian and English elements, though this is gradually waning. “Cambro Celtica” has been largely ignored by the Catholic authorities in London to our loss. Yet the Welsh politician David Lloyd George could at the same time see the historic significance of Pope Benedict XV’s move. In a telegram to the Lord Mayor of Cardiff at the time of the installation of the first Archbishop of Cardiff, he had this to say: “Welshmen without distinction of creed will rejoice in today’s ceremony. It is a signal vin- dication of the enduring vitality of Welsh nationhood, and the appeal which Giraldus Cambrensis in vain carried to Rome in the twelfth century for an independent archbish- opric for Wales has in the twentieth century been conceded by the Holy See.” Perhaps Benedict XVI may follow the vision of his namesake and encourage the Welsh Catholic Church to involve itself intimately in the life of Wales. The time is propitious. Wales is slowly finding its feet, having become a political unit for the first time since the days of Owain Glyndwr in the early fifteenth cen- tury. The Anglican Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, is in the forefront of the movement of nation-rebuilding that is taking place. He speaks out on political and social and cultural matters, as well as religious ones. He is seen by some in Westminster political circles as a “turbulent priest”, but not so in Wales. Archbishop Stack will find it hard not to join him in his campaigns.
■Harri Pritchard Jones is a Welsh Catholic and joint chairman of Literature Wales.
CHRISTOPHER HOWSE’S PRESSWATCH
‘The assumption that religion is unpopular overlooks vigorous signs of life’
God seems to have taken the place of Mrs Thatcher as a source of easy laughs for stand-up comedians. So it takes someone with his wits about him to stand up for God. According to James Harding in The Times, one of his predecessors as editor of that paper, William Rees-Mogg, recently told him that once “it was Cardinal Basil Hume who best made the case for God. Today, it is Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi.” Since Rees-Mogg is celebrated for having predicted in 1975 that Britain was moving into an ice age (shortly before a summer of searing heat), his auscultation of global trends may be best judged in hindsight. But he might be on to something in Lord Sacks. “After several years in which the
new atheists – Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking – have made all the running,” James Harding pointed out in his interview with the Chief Rabbi, “Sacks offers an intelligent, optimistic credo that allows for the happy coexistence of science and religion: ‘Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning’.” Lord Sacks himself quoted Einstein: “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” James Harding commented: “For those people who know that the science is right but still want to believe – and I count myself in their number – this is a cake-and-eat-it argument made with erudition, scholarship and some charm.” In a remark that might also be made on behalf of Catholic exegetes, Lord Sacks declared that there was no contradiction between science and the book of Genesis: ‘No rabbi ever read Genesis literally until modern times!” This complements his definition of fundamentalism as “the attempt to move from text to application without interpretation”. Another point (now controversial) that the Chief Rabbi made in the interview was that “without religion, you cannot sustain a moral society”. This contention was specifically attacked by Catherine Bennett in Sunday’s Observer under the headline: “It’s time to kick the clerics
off the moral high ground”. Her argument deployed a fairly high quotient of question-begging, taking it as read that in the provision of Labour’s Equality Bill, for example, Rowan Williams “won his Church a special bigotry exemption”. And, in her vocabulary, taking someone to a clinic to be killed becomes “assistance for dying people who want to control their deaths”. As for stand-up comics, the broadcaster Marcus Brigstocke transformed himself last week into a run-round comic to publicise his new book, God Collar. It is based on his comedy routine at the Edinburgh Fringe two years ago. At the time, the drama critic of my own paper began his review: “Any comedian who lays into Richard Dawkins for being smug and condescending is OK by me, even if that comedian happens to be as habitually smug and condescending as Marcus Brigstocke.” This week’s Independent on Sunday explained that the book attempts to “explore the ‘God-shaped hole’ that his friend’s death left in his psyche”. Again there is reference to Richard Dawkins, the new atheist-in-chief. As Brigstocke puts it, “In the same way that Dawkins tries to unify secularists, and the Churches variously try to unify and bring people together, this is an attempt to unify the confused. Because there’s an awful lot of us.” It is hard to disagree. Yet, just as Mrs Thatcher was repeatedly elected while comedy club audiences roared with laughter at gross insults lobbed her way, so the assumption that religion is unprecedently unpopular overlooks vigorous signs of life. John Harris, visiting Liverpool for The Guardian, was impressed by work with drug-addicted prostitutes undertaken by an evangelical group. But he felt obliged to preface his article by saying: “It’s a particularly remarkable feature of modern British life: the way that in certain circles even the mention of the most modest form of theistic belief is enough to bring down great torrents of hostility.” In The Guardian too, Deborah
Orr equated “belief in the rational explicability of the universe” with belief in a “higher power”. She too felt the need to defend herself, by asking: “Is this really so wrong? Why can’t a soothing belief in the comprehensibility of existence offer something that feels like spiritual peace?” Why not, indeed? The only difficulty is accounting for the rational explicability of the universe without stumbling across God.
■Christopher Howse is an assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph.
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