The Henson Journals

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Saturday, November 11th, 1922.

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Armistice Day – As we move away from the War, we are able to see its real magnitude, & to appraise its effect. What a full–flowing spring of malediction it was! All our present perplexities seem to run back to it. We are at out wit's end to know how to regain the positions from which it swept us. And, of course, we never can regain them, yet none better have been disclosed. Amid more considerable calamities the ruin of a church will hardly arrest much attention: but it is the case that the War has given the coup de grace to the Church of England. Discipline broke down completely, the Bishops themselves running in front of the forces of ecclesiastical disorder. Religion became an affair of sentimental 'devotions', and quasi–apocalyptic 'stunts'. In this anarchy of emotions & superstitions the very constitution of the National Church was subverted & the Church of England became sectarian under pretence of being 'Catholic'! As the tide of religious emotionalism ebbs all the old factors begin to re–appear, but the system which co–ordinated them has been destroyed. We are back again at the beginning of Edward VI th s reign when the Church had to face the religious implications of the breach with Rome. "The Mass" and "the Confessional" are the 'Jachin & Bronz' of the whole fabric of medieval religion. Can they be retained & membership of the medieval church abandoned? The medieval church is the Pope's church. Take the Pope away, & you have pulled out the key stone of the Church. All falls into ruins.

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The weather, after the storms of yesterday was brilliant. I finished my preparations for tomorrow, and then went out into the garden. Laws expounded his activities and projects. At 12.30p.m. M r Kirner, the Vicar of Stanton, the mother church of West Hartlepool was instituted into the chapel. He was accompanied by his wife & the two churchwardens. The public institution in the parish church which had been arranged to take place on Thursday night was cancelled on account of the new Vicar's sudden indisposition. Everybody stayed to lunch. I played bowls with William, and then motored to South Shields. The crowds in the street, swollen to more than common size by the celebration of Armistice Day, made motoring very difficult. It seemed miraculous that the car could be driven through the multitude without over turning any one of them, but William is a skilled and careful driver, & happily seems free from the treacherous infirmity known as "nerves"! I talked with Hudson Barker about the "Anglo–Catholic" movement. He belongs to the older type of High Churchmen, which valued what it regarded as 'learning' and which did commit them to some genuine intellectual activity, and who were conscientious pastors visiting their parishioners with regularity & purpose. He is really startled by a generation which read nothing but the "Church Times" & substitutes "the Confessional" for pastoral visitation. As the people don't & won't go to the Confessional the parson has nothing to do with them!

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