The Henson Journals
Fri 22 August 1930
Volume 50, Pages 234 to 235
[234]
Friday, August 22nd, 1930.
A fine day after the storms of yesterday. Our guests went into Durham to view the buildings there. I began the Newcastle Address but made little progress.
A numerous company attended Ella's "At home" including Bishop and Mrs Wild. He is distressingly infirm & slow in his speaking. Mr Hope, an official of the Durham County Council, with his wife came also. He is an upstanding man of 34 with a candid face & a pleasant expression. He was at S. John's, Oxford, intending to take Orders when the War broke out, and during that horrendous experience he became unsettled in his opinions, & abandoned his intention. Now he was returning to religion. Talbot, the Vicar of Brandon, brought an old acquaintance of mine, Mr Onslow Terrier whom I used to meet at diocesan gatherings 40 years ago, when I was the Vicar of Barking. He is now a hale man of fourscore. He said that I had not changed in appearance at all. I tired myself by showing a large party over the Castle, and 'talking large'.
[235]
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The church newspapers contain a good deal of criticism and comment on the Lambeth pronouncements. Gore writes to the 'Church Times' indicating some form of deliberate protest against the 'Birth–Control' resolution. Father Woodlock is, of course, fiercely denunciatory. Carnegie Simpson approves.
It is certainly unfortunate that the Modern Churchmen are holding their annual conference just now, and going out of their way to shock the religious public as much as they can. Their references to the Bishops are uniformly belittling and insolent, and the opinions on the problems of sex, which they advance, are ever expressed in the crudest & most offensive way. It is not so much what is actually said that does so much harm, as the sneering tone in which things are habitually spoken about. Even Inge who is capable of the finest thinking, degenerates woefully when he keeps company with the Churchmen's Union, whose chairman he is: & his habit of smart writing, eminently suitable to the 'Evening Standard', too easily prevails against the principles of his religion, & the proprieties of his office. The others are on a lower level – Major, and Hardwick, & Bezzant.