The Henson Journals

[8]

Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, January 25th, 1920.

Shadowy figures like St. Joseph and St. Anne have been divinised and surrounded with picturesque legends; but St Paul has been spared the honour or the ignominy of being coaxed and wheedled by the piety of paganised Christianity. No tender fairy–tales are attached to his cult; he remains for us what he was in the flesh. It is even possible to feel an active dislike for him …. There are few historical characters who are alive enough to be hated.

Inge. 'Outspoken Essays'. P. 205

I prepared notes on my sermon on the Festival, designing to speak with sufficient distinctness to settle the Cross v. Crucifix controversy in Mordiford (or rather the issue since there is no controversy there yet) on the side of the former. After breakfast, Ella & Fearne went with me. There was a fair & very attentive congregation, & Binstead expressed himself as pleased with what I said. W. Hereford, the local squire and patron of the living, was in church, & spoke with me afterwards. He is said to be an intensely proud Tory squire of the oldest sort, to whom the suggestion of repairing a labourer's cottage is as a proposal to do sacrilegious violence to a church! "If Bolshevism does come to England, it will be bad enough in Mordiford" was the observation of one of his cottagers! Binstead said that his influence as pastor was really injured by the local repute of his patron and churchwarden!

[9] [symbol]

After some consideration, I wrote to Beattie offering him the Rural Deanery of Hereford, which Wynne–Willson has resigned. He has been 20 years in Orders, & 14 in this diocese. He is, I understand, persona grata to the clergy: he has private means, and keeps a car. In view of the extent of the Deanery, the last is not inconsiderable.

Fawkes sends me a cutting from the "Church Times" which contains an article on Clerical Celibacy, advocating life–vows for the clergy who feel themselves "called" to the single life. There is on the same cutting an article by Marcus Atlay on "The Anglo–Catholic congress", which is being organized for the end of June, as a counter–blast, or significant hint, or demonstration in view of the Lambeth Conference which begins its session in July! Fawkes writes: "The enclosed from the C. T. on Celibacy seems to me peculiarly hateful: a snare for conscience, by which immense harm can be done. My experience of Rome makes me sensitive on these points: one did not come out of Rome to find a feeble imitation of it at Lambeth. I have the poorest opinion of the people among ourselves, who call themselves "catholic Modernists". Freedom of thought is certainly more important than the Royal Supremacy; but for us, the Royal Supremacy efficiently exercised is the condition sine qua non of freedom of thought". Fawkes has seen the inside of the Roman cup, & he writes from personal experience.

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