The Henson Journals
Mon 30 June 1930
Volume 50, Pages 106 to 107
[106]
Monday, June 30th, 1930.
A very comfortless hot day, close & gusty. Harris went away after breakfast. We all liked him very much, & enjoyed his conversation. I wrote a sort of preface to my E.C.U. address: & then started to cleanse the Augean stable of my study – dirty, dusty, disgusting work!
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In the afternoon I went into the Park, & picked up five "Lazzaroni", to whom I showed the Castle. They were a very poor lot, but quite well–mannered. It is rare that a pit–boy is anything else.
Pattinson and I motored to Evenwood, where I admitted to the perpetual curacy, Wykes junior. His old father from Winston, attended, & read the lesson. There was quite a fair attendance of the parishioners. I was impressed favourably by the choir of 10 men and 19 boys. Both the last incumbents, Simpson and his predecessor, Richards, have been good men, & their labours have not been wholly pointless. We gave Davison a lift back to West Auckland. He is full of gross cases of abuse of the "dole": and, no doubt, they are many and gross. But how to escape from the necessity, in policy & in equity, of continuing the "dole" I cannot see.
[107]
The Bishop of Ripon has again 'rushed in' where the 'angels of the churches' ought to fear to tread. The Times gives great prominence to a sermon which he preached last night in Ripon Cathedral. His language about the Anglo–Catholicks is about as deliberately offensive as it could be.
"However great the desire to afford reasonable comfort to that section, they must respect the authority of, and accommodate themselves to, the peculiar character of the Church they belonged to, and not to try to play the cuckoo in the Anglican nest". He then proceeds to make some very crude references to the conflict in Malta, as illustrating the spirit of the Roman Church, & concludes: "Anyhow, that new & curious development in our political relations with the Vatican was one more fact which added significance to the meeting of the Lambeth Conference, & marked it as the ordeal of Anglicanism". He might, if he were not too conceited to heed anything save the sound of his own voice, reflect that, by thus emphasizing his rigorously partisan attitude, he is going as far as one man can to destroy in advance the influence of the Lambeth Conference. He can see nothing in in beyond an instrument for ousting the Anglo–Catholicks & thus vindicating the Protestantism of the Anglican Communion!