Category: Blog Entry

I’d forgotten what a good place the Lake District is – much more Alpine in atmosphere than Scotland.  But it is crowded in a way which makes one yearn for the wide open spaces.  I’d forgotten too how rich in the material of childhood it is.  Up the road is Coniston where much of Arthur Ransome’s story of the Swallows and Amazons was set – Titty tacking up the field to Holly Howe and Mother rowing across to Wild Cat Island with long steady strokes …  Beatrix Potter is nearby as well with all the childhood material of Jemima Puddleduck and the others.  And finally Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage – evocative not so much of Wordsworth as because it is the proper name of Blogstead na Mara.  I could happily retreat into all that, however nice these clergy are!

I’m off to the Lake District for a couple of days to do a retreat with a group of clergy in the first three years of ministry. I find that these events always leave me in a state of some confusion in my relationship with my own experience. Faced with the bright-eyed and freshly-minted enthusiasm of those who are only going round the treadmill for the first or second time, I sometimes feel like a tired old hack. On the other hand, one of the reasons why ministry becomes more difficult is that you become more aware of the challenges – you set the bar higher all the time – less aware of yourself and more sensitive to the context, I think. And of course, as a bishop I have the clarity of mind and purpose which comes from those who don’t have to chair the Easter Vestry/Annual Meeting any more.

Lines attributed for some reason by Private Eye to Idi Amin

‘Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee

I am the greatest, God bless me’

Still – if I find myself in difficulty, I’ll fall back on my mantra. Never a dull day in ministry. Lots of anguish, pain, distress, frustration. Much of it at the hands of the church. But never a dull day. And there is still the ‘lump in throat’ stuff – young couple at the Communion Rail this morning with their baby. It stood out all over them how much it meant to be there as a family – but neither they nor I could begin to put it into words.

Enjoyed Richard Ingrams in today’s Independent who quotes Malcolm Muggeridge’s suggestion that all Prime Ministers fall into one of two categories – clergymen or bookies. He cites Atlee as clergyman and Wilson as bookie. On that basis, I suspect that there have been more clergymen than bookies – Thatcher, Major and definitely Blair. Bookies – Home, possibly. Which brings us to the great bookie tradition of Irish Prime Ministers – Charles Haughey certainly – and Bertie Ahern who resigned this week because of the continuing enquiries into his finances by the Mahon Tribunal.

It is a tragedy that it should end like this for Bertie Ahern because his contribution to the achievement of the Belfast Agreement was immense. The fact that he left the negotiations at a critical stage early one morning to attend his mother’s funeral and returned to Belfast later that day won him immense sympathy and respect among people on all sides in Northern Ireland.

Ingram’s conclusion is that we are better off with bookies – quoting George Bernard Shaw who described ‘the worst of all political scoundrels – the conscientious high-principled scoundrel.’

Sadly, he fails to ‘go the extra mile’ by asking how many clergy [and bishops?] of our acquaintance are actually bookies … Father ‘Money just resting in my account’ Ted, of course. But not, I think, Bishop Brennan.

Forty years since the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.  I read the speech again this evening.  It is simply amazing – for me the essence of prophetic oratory.  As often, the bits which are not often quoted come as the greater surprise:

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: in the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

I was asked for a 50 word comment today on Tony Blair’s ‘Faith and Globalisation’ Lecture yesterday at Westminster Cathedral.  In some ways, he has it right.  The great conspiracy – difficult word – of the secular society is that religion has ceased to matter.  Plainly religion, for better or worse, is a major force in shaping societies and events across the world.  Right too in suggesting that, taking the sweep of history, one can point to immense benefit which people of faith have brought to social reform, the relief of poverty, the building of peace.  Considering his huge contribution to the Irish peace process – probably his greatest legacy – he doesn’t really seem to understand that the greatest danger of religion is not extreme religion – but the way in which religion allows itself to be subverted and distorted in the service of political and cultural causes.  So it was in South Africa, in Ireland and now in the Islamic world.  And over the whole lecture looms the unstated feeling that his decision to go to war in Iraq was a faith-shaped decision.  If you want a searching analysis of the too-rapid recourse to war, read Peter Selby’s recent article in the Church Times – Why war is never a final solution

No Martin Luther King, I think.

The preoccupation with numbers which has seized the media in the aftermath of Nick Clegg’s interview …. leads me to mention some other numbers which I stumbled across while cruising through Steven Croft’s ‘Ministry in Three Dimensions.’

Evangelical Alliance surveyed 3000 [evangelical] clergy in 1990 and got the following results.

7 out of 10 feel overworked

3 in 10 feel their families suffer because of their work

Only 2 in 10 have received training in management or leading teams

Out of a typical 60 hour week, an average of 22 hours is spent in administration

38 minutes per week are spent in personal prayer.

The last one is obviously the most shocking – the first thing to get squeezed by everything else.  And the cost of that is paid in all sorts of ways – for example I suspect that people are less likely to acquire the breadth or depth to move beyond ‘party’ or stereotypical responses to things.

Other ones?  I am not sure what ‘administration’ is in these terms.  I certainly spend more than a third of my working life sitting at a desk – and would defend it on the basis that good administration and communication is one of the foundations of ministry which is for sharing.  Overworked?  I certainly work too many hours – but ‘feeling overworked’ is occasional rather than common.  Too many hours means life out of balance and not enough time for family and being.

Training?  ’nuff said.  Time for bed.

We’re nearly there. Diocesan Review is steadily turning into Diocesan Policy. I’m always fascinated by this phase of the process. You don’t quite know how it’s going to turn out – it’s like walking purposefully towards a piece of scenery and watching the shapes, outlines and shadows become clear as you approach.

The name is a bit of a preoccupation at present. I’ve always been keen to find names which are slightly non-specific – don’t raise mistaken pre-suppositions and prejudices and therefore invite rejection – and which lift the heart rather more than anything with ‘policy’ or ‘strategy’ in it. We used to have a ‘Dry Bones’ Group in the parish. Best, I think, is something which connects us to the biblical tradition. Given our problems with age profile, Abraham gets the odd mention – as does Lazarus. Or maybe we should give our gradual move away from the ‘English Church’ tag a bit of a nudge by choosing something Celtic.

My last experience of this phase was in Down and Dromore – where the consultant produced the name Think Again – evangelism in neutral language.

Those who work with me will rise as one to say that, even under the most severe provocation, I never allow myself to become ruffled, upset, annoyed.  Certainly never to suggest to somebody who is being ‘Gordon Ramsay’ impossible that the Kingdom might be ushered in a little faster if they would just do as I say …

That’s why it is so refreshing – and, I have to say, a bit startling – to find judges just telling it as it is.  Or at least as it seems to them.  That’s what made the Macca-Mills judgement so interesting and agonising.  It happened again today at the Princess Diana inquest when the Coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, told the jury that the evidence her butler, Paul Burrell, gave was clearly “not the whole truth”.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be paid to be so ….. judgemental?

‘Escape from Victory’ – that’s the Father Ted episode with the classic line … and I couldn’t find it …  It was shown this evening.

Dougal goes to a priest’s reunion with his contemporaries.  He comes back and says to Ted, ‘D’you know what Ted?  They’d all become firemen!’

‘Did it never occur to you, Dougal, that you might have gone to the wrong reunion?

Poppy points out that I have been rather monopolising this blog over the last while.  She’s been a much-travelled cat – having spent February in Anna’s apartment in Belfast.  She’s becoming quite used to travelling back and forth across the Irish Sea. d I think she regards P&O as slightly more stylish than the Stena HSS – I think I overheard her referring to the latter as a ‘floating McDonalds’.  She has also been becoming an increasingly outdoors cat – well, in ten minute bursts anyway.  For much of her life in Portadown, she was confined to the house because of the dangers of the road nearby.

You’ll be glad to know that Catholic Ireland is alive and well.  On my last visit to Blogstead na Mara, I found ‘pre-signed Mass Cards’ on sale in the local paper shop.  I’ve just found a [double!] CD of the Rosary on sale – featuring the Bishop of Raphoe – price 10 euro and all proceeds in aid of Action Prostate Cancer.  Amazing

No I couldn’t resist putting this in – our visit to President Mary McAleese’s St Patrick’s Day Reception.  This was the day she quoted Ulster poet, John Hewitt, ‘We build to fill the centuries’ arrears.’  On her left, her husband, Martin.  The person on my left – whom my hero, violinist Nigel Kennedy, would probably call the ‘geezer in the gaiters’ – is Very Rev Robert McCarthy, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin – successor to Dean Swift.

Speaking of Nigel … I’m gradually realising that one of the games one plays on the side in this blogging business is that of attempting to get links back to one’s blog established in ever more exotic places.  So I’m quite please to have my link on Nig’s [un] official Fan Club Website  You’ll find it on the Links page as David from Perth – well – nearly there!