Traveling lives

Killing four hours in Istanbul Airport isn't easy. The last time I was here, my connection (to Astana, Kazakhstan) had left here before we had even left London Heathrow. While waiting for a substitute flight with Air Astana we were given vouchers for a gourmet meal in Burger King. It wasn't funny.

This time I am doing some reading. Which brings me on to…

… two books I have read recently that have proved worth recommending.

Charlotte Methuen's Luther and Calvin: Religious Revolutionaries is a beautifully written introduction to the life, teaching and impact of two of the great European Reformers. Sometimes, when listening to English evangelicals talking about ' the Reformers' in awed tones, it might seem that these were paragons of orthodoxy, defenders of simple revealed truths about God and us. We quickly reduce them to simplistic-but-useful reinforcers of our own theological preferences. Sometimes it seems we award them the same authority as that claimed by the popes they opposed. Read the reality and a different picture emerges.

Of course, they were creatures of their time and they didn't know the end of their own story. But, their stories make it clear that their theology developed and changed, their theology was often driven by their politics, and their theology might well have developed even further if they had lived on (or in other times and contexts). We dig them into a framework that suits our own preferences and then quote them accordingly. It is always amusing to hear Hooker quoted by all sides in current Anglican debates…

Reality is always more ambiguous and more complex than our debating points would allow.

The full(er) picture is to be found in Diarmaid MacCulloch's magisterial Reformation, but Charlotte Methuen's concise book does the business. It is surely coincidental, but reading the book during the synodical debates on the Anglican Covenant and women bishops caused the ringing in my head of lots of bells.

The second book I finished on the plane from Manchester to Istanbul. I know of Mark Thomas only from the occasional telly programme and his very funny People's Manifesto. Extreme Rambling is a powerful, poignant and perceptive record of his walk along the length of the Barrier erected in Israel-Palestine. He walked it in three stages, meeting people along the way and asking lots of questions. It isn't an encouraging book unless you approve of Israel's treatment of Palestinians and think the illegal settlements are a really good idea. But, it is so well written – a personal narrative that takes you into the heart of some of the fundamental problems of this beautiful and tiny piece of land.

Having read up on the history and politics of Sudan, I am now on to William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise. Ideal for a plane journey.

[Written Saturday 12 January, posted Monday 14th. Boyd book finished...]

 

Posted with Blogsy

 

Loss, Liebe and Liverpool

All has been quiet on the blogging front – again. No loss of interest, but just life being full and a lack of conviction that I have anything useful to say about anything. I might have commented on Mark Thompson's appointment in the USA or developments in Syria or the usual preoccupations of the Church of England or Robin van Persie's move to Manchester United or Bruce Cockburn's gig coming up in Selby on 6 September or several other matters. Even the post-Olympics funny stuff might have got a look in if I could have been bothered. I thought of reviewing a book I was sent over a year ago, but, having read it, a review would have been unkind, so I decided not to do it.

Feeble-hearted, I know.

But, then, last weekend our house got burgled and the culprit (who has been very clearly caught on CCTV) nicked my computer and my car. So far neither have been found. So, the first week of holiday has been taken up with police and the sheer hassle of trying to recover data. I'll come back later to the conundrum that really takes the pip.

Anyway, the burglary and it's associated inconveniences account for the 'loss' element of the title. The local newspaper did a piece in which I apparently 'condemned' as 'sick' the burglar. Just for the record: I didn't condemn anyone; I only said I 'felt sick' when I saw what had happened. But, the paper does a good job exposing such crimes.

So, before leaving home today for a break away (in a place where I am assured there is very poor mobile reception and no Internet connection… a bit like a planet without air), I noticed Samira Ahmed's Guardian article about the learning of German in the light of yesterday's A Level results. She highlights the very concerns I have been banging on about here for the last few years – that language learning (not 'teaching' – that's a different matter) in England is so poor and given such a low priority that our young people will eventually find themselves culturally impoverished, professionally disadvantaged and intellectually weakened by their monolingualism. As Ahmed points out, we Brits are missing a trick with German and Germany – but we will only really notice the cost in twenty or thirty years time.

So, here I am. In Liverpool watching our two year old grandson grow before my eyes. He and his mum are coming on holiday with us. And when we get back at the end of next week we will see Liverpool hammer Manchester City at Anfield before heading home. The new season begins, my fantasy league team is ready, optimism is high. And holiday will see me get stuck into four Patrick Gale novels before I tackle Hilary Mantel's Bring Up The Bodies.

And my query? My iPad was synced to my computer. The computer has been stolen. If I now try to sync my iPad to my new computer, it will only do it by erasing anything on the iPad that isn't on iCloud or wasn't bought from iTunes. Is it possible to sync what I have on my iPad onto my new computer (iMac) – so that I won't lose my apps, downloaded music and everything in iBooks? Or am I stuffed?

Posted with Blogsy

 

Wounded healers or unhealed wounders?

One of the remarkable things about the wonderful Olympics 2012 is how the humble champions speak of the journey to the podium. It is easy to hear them speak of “twelve years of training and preparation for this event” without realising that those twelve years were made up of over 4380 days. In some cases every single day involved rigorous dieting and training – come rain, snow or sunshine.

This is not the job of wusses. If many words could be used to describe what is involved in such athletic commitment, one of them might be ‘resilience’. And it is a word deserving of wider reference and application.

In a culture of what I have called elsewhere ‘consumerist narcissism’ (or ‘narcissistic consumerism’?) – in which self-fulfilment justifies any cost – resilience is not needed. And in a Christian church that looks for instant healings and panaceas for every bit of conflict or challenge, resilience is often underplayed. For resilience implies continued struggle, acceptance of adversity, re-direction into altruism.

So, it is timely that Justine Allain-Chapman has just published a book that addresses (far more intelligently than I could) the ‘role of adversity in healing and growth’: Resilient Pastors. In it she shines a helpfully critical light not only on the superficial ‘make it better’ default of many of us, but also on theologies of liberation that focus on the liberation at the expense of the adversity that cries out for it. There are both personal and pastoral implications for individuals and for those who exercise pastoral care unwisely or uncritically.

In a book that is realistic and compassionate, we also find helpful recapitulation. Although I had to fight the temptation to underline every use of the word ‘resilient’ in almost every sentence of the first chapter, the author recapitulates at every stage the argument and rationale thus far. Each chapter ends with a highlighted summary of what has gone before. Bigger brains might find this unnecessary, but I found it helpful.

Clearly, as anybody closely involved with pastors/clergy will recognise, we need resilient pastors in today’s church. Allain-Chapman rightly questions whether the contemporary “emphasis on the wounded healer motif is that it emphasises woundedness rather than healing”. (p.106) Surveying literature on ‘resilience theory’, she shines fresh and challenging light not only on our understanding of pastoral need, but also of pastoral practice. Moving from a look at the desert as a place of tough encounter, she takes a brief illustrative perspective from the Bible… and then from the Desert Fathers:

To go through the desert experience involuntarily can be both overwhelming and crushing. To embrace it can prove both constructive and liberating. (p.54)

Identifying three stages of the desert metaphor which promote resilience – embracing the desert; encountering God and the self; altruistic living and pastoral responsibility – she then explores how these work out when we choose to face up to the struggle and not simply look for a quick resolution to it. She invokes the theology of Rowan Williams in seeking a contemporary application of the early Christian experience of these things.

So, this is an excellent book for those who want to think seriously about real humanity, genuine Christian struggle, authentic pastoral engagement, and the dangers of what Bonhoeffer famously called ‘cheap grace’. The style isn’t always easy, but it is a book worth persevering with.

A bit like life and adversity, I guess. And, while we are at it, it reminded me of the disconnect between hugely admiring the commitment of the Jessica Ennises of this world while sitting in a comfortable chair drinking another beer…

Posted with Blogsy

 

Stuff of the soul

Here is a photo from last week of a young friend from Austria standing beside a road sign in Liverpool last week.

Penny Lane is famous the world over because the Beatles sang about it. But, when I was a kid, it was the place we went to the barber’s or the shops. The ordinary became the extraordinary. And, despite the Beatles tours, it still is a place ordinary people go to the bank, the barber’s, the shops… and engage in the stuff of ordinary life.

Why start with this? Partly because it formed the starting point for my book Finding Faith: Stories of music and life – in which I try to write about life and God and the world in ways ordinary people can understand. In other words, I am not writing for academics or people familiar with church. Secondly, however, is the reminder that there are two ways of addressing human questions: one is to start with God or the Bible or texts and go from them to our experience, the other is to start with human experience and then relate it to the other things. The former is OK for people already ‘in the club’, or who ‘speak the language’; the latter is where most people naturally start – with the experience they have, the questions they face, the life they live.

(In writing this I am reminded of my initial attempts as a vicar to write baptism preparation materials for our baptism preparation teams to use with the parents of those wanting their children baptised. The first materials failed – they began with biblical texts and were largely alien to those unfamiliar with them. I re-wrote them, with each session beginning with the experience of the parents, and then finding a biblical story or analogy that provided a vocabulary to express – or a framework in which to play around with – God, the world and us.)

Having watched the remarkable, soulful, poignant, funny, colourful, magnificent triumph that was last night’s Olympic Games Opening Ceremony (our Austrian friend was there), I turned to a book by Rosemary Lain-Priestley which she had kindly sent me, and which is called Does My Soul Look Big in This? I have a problem with books that look as if they will indulge in introspective narcissism and the title and cover didn’t encourage me. The reality was different.

Rosemary Lain-Priestley is a well-known broadcaster and writer, and I know her as a trustee of the Sandford St Martin Trust which I currently chair. She begins where people are, uses her own experience as a springboard for ruminations on spiritual development that is rooted in the real stuff of life, relationships and society. Taking the whole person seriously, she muses around the things of life that make or break us, that build or demolish us. She starts with real human experiences, real questions, then digs down a bit and rummages around what is thrown up. She draws on biblical (and other) stories to illustrate or amplify, often bringing to life images that had become over-familiar.

En route she quotes from people like Richard Rohr, Andrew Rumsey, Purple Ronnie and others. She considers what feeds the soul when we endure or enjoy experiences such as change, loneliness, depression, pilgrimage, joy, connectedness and gift. It brought to my mind people such as Mike Riddell and evoked Leonard Cohen’s “there is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in”. Like Danny Boyle’s Olympic representation of Britain, it is self-deprecating and humane throughout.

Written by a woman, most illustrations are self-consciously female. But, as a bloke, it is always vital to be compelled (or invited) to look through the lens of someone ‘not like me’. The Church of England gets a kicking I would want to argue with, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I would commend the book to anyone – it offers a recognition of common experience and invitingly suggests a way of living in and from that experience.

 

The reading list

Two days in and three books down.

 
I haven’t the first idea what an algorithm looks like or what it does or how it does it. It’s something mathematical and that finishes it for me. But Robert Harris‘s The Fear Index takes an interesting look at the sort of thing that went wrong in the financial and banking sectors: hubristic gamblers ceding too much to computers on the grounds that they can do the sums quicker. The moral questions come thick and fast.
 

Julian Barnes has written a beautiful novella in The Sense of an Ending. Apart from the narrative itself, which kept me intrigued until the final page, the writing is wonderful. The idea of someone having to re-write their history in the light of information that arises later in life about events that happened when younger is a familiar one to anyone with a pulse. But Barnes ruminates on mortality, relationships, loss and regret. And there is a poignancy running through the narrative that captures the common experience of thinking that life should be better than it usually is:

Just as all political and historical change sooner or later disappoints, so does adulthood. So does life. Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. (p.105)

 
Discuss.
 
John Bell needs no introduction. For many people his name is synonymous with the Iona Community. HIn addition to his prolific output of music and hymnody, he broadcasts on Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme. He is never boring – he uses words as if each one matters and finds the language to engage as well as inform. Rooted deeply in the language and content of the Bible, he brings to his speaking and writing a prophetic, reasoned passion that demands an equally biblical response. His second volume of ‘thoughts’ and essays is entitled All That Matters and cannot be read without some response.

 
One taste reflects back onto the questions raised by Harris and touches on Barnes’ sense of mortality:

The prophet is someone who reads into the present state of society and discerns two things: the consequence of present actions in advance of a crisis, and an alternative reality which is worth striving for. (p.55)

 
A fourth book, which I am reading a bit at a time, is David Crystal‘s wonderfully informative and entertaining The Story of English in 100 Words. Number 7 is ‘Mead’ and in Old English you could call someone who had drunk too much of it ‘medu-werig’ (mead-weary). From Barnes I learned the word ‘lucubrations’ (look it up – I had to!), but I can see I’m going to get far more use out of ‘medu-werig’.

 

Three books of words

Richard Littledale is a Baptist minister in Middlesex and has built a following on his blog, Twitter and through broadcasting on BBC Radio 2. Having published two books on ‘preaching’, his latest book goes back to the basics of good communication. Who Needs Words? takes the reader into the rich world of modern communications, addressing themes around ‘fundamentals’, ‘practice’ and ‘how to make progress’.

I wrote the Foreword to the book, so it might seem obvious that I would commend it. But, I do so because it is the sort of book to give confidence to those who feel a bit daunted by the plethora and complexity of modern communications media. It is intended to be a handbook, written from a Christian perspective, but offering good stuff to anyone interested in communicating better.

Richard offered a good example of how media interconnectivity works by heralding publication with weeks of tweeted quotations, blogged extracts and a wide range of tempting questions – making the book itself land on fertile ground. It’s good to practise what you preach!

Reading this has also opened my mind to wider questions of culture, theology, world view and communication. These questions never go away, but sometimes the stimulus peaks. I have just ordered (but, obviously, not yet read) the new book by Stanley Hauerwas entitled Learning to Speak Christian.

The review I read of it reminded me of Walter Brueggemann’s great book Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles. In it he reminds the Christian community, now ‘in exile’ in a strange post-Christendom land, of the need to keep alive the ‘language of home’. This itself echoes the cry of the exiles in Babylon (Psalm 137): ” How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” This isn’t just a plaintive snivelling by self-pitying losers; rather, it is the gut-wrenching soul-searching of a people for whom the evidence of their eyes and of their immediate experience denies all that they have believed about God, the world and meaning. Their understanding of history, the assumptions about their identity, even the language they use is called into question by their predicament.

The same question is a real one today. How does the Christian community keep its confidence and it’s language alive when both are threatened by a changed and changing culture? It is not enough to simply retreat into nostalgia or to bemoan current conditions; instead, we need to grapple intelligently and creatively with the roots of the Christian world view and learn to use a language that expresses what Brueggemann calls ‘newness after loss’.

The third book is one that uses words so well that it cuts across much of the mythologising, generalising and complexity of the world’s inter-religious coexistences and conflicts. The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold is subtitled Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam. The book comprises 34 journalistic dispatches from Africa (Nigeria, Sudan and Somalia) and Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines). The research is detailed as well as academic and relational. She puts flesh and blood onto the histories of these conflicted countries and exposes why they are the way they are. She is both critical and generous in her judgements, seeking always to understand and interpret, not simply to judge or categorise.

Reviews were mixed because she leaves implicit what many would want to be made explicit; but that is, I think, a strong point of the narrative. Anyone involved in or interested in the modern world should read this excellent book. Contemporary conflicts (I am most interested in Sudan because of the diocesan link between Bradford and Northern Sudan) are explained and illustrated – and all in an accessible way. It is the most helpful and explanatory book on the subject that I have read for a long time.

In her Epilogue she says:

Religious strife where Christians and Muslims meet is real, and grim, but the long history of everyday encounter, of believers of different kinds shouldering all things together, even as they follow different faiths, is no less real. It follows that their lives bear witness to the coexistence of the two religions – and of the complicated bids for power inside them – more than to the conflicts between them.

This observation is one well illustrated also in William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain.

 

Withering hypes

I need to confess my cultural ignorance. I have never read some of what are often called ‘the classics’. This deficit doesn’t usually make a massive difference, but, having now visited the wonderful Haworth – only a few miles from the wonderful Bradford – several times in the five months since we moved back up north, I am embarrassed by knowing a good deal about the Brontës without having read any of their books.

I can feel a bout of Jane Austen coming on as well.

I once made the mistake of telling the Archbishop of Canterbury that I found Dostoevsky boring – three attempts at ‘Crime and Punishment’ had never got me beyond page 82 as “nothing really happened”. After a short silence in which he probably wondered about my credentials, he replied that he was about to write a book about Dostoevsky. (I went out and read everything Dostoevsky had ever written – my next conversation with Rowan Williams might need to be a bit more intelligent and a bit more informed.)

Anyway, embarrassment aside, I am half way through ‘Wuthering Heights’ – despite being told by a clever literary friend that, not being a 17 year old girl, I might not quite ‘get it’. Discouragements aside, I am now intending to read the Brontës. Then I’ll be able to go back to Haworth with my head held high(er).

So far – I am half-way through- it is OK. But, I am still not sure how to judge whether or not it is (or should be regarded as) a ‘classic’. Which criteria do we use to make such a judgement? Or Is it merely subjective? Is there any… er… evidence?

While writing this, the news has broken that Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend have won their appeal in Italy against their convictions for murdering the Surrey student Meredith Kercher. What is amazing is the stuff flying around Twitter and the blogosphere celebrating their release or condemning it. It isn’t clear what has led to which response. Does Knox look guilty? Does her lifestyle make her more likely than not to have been guilty? Or what? How do people in England or anywhere else know with such certainty whether they are guilty or not?

Cases such as this one get acres of media coverage because of the mixture of sex, violence, mystery and character – hyped in the tabloids at every stage of a complex presentation of evidence. There are heroes and villains and the language used of them suggests who is which. It isn’t clear that hype encourages good or wise judgement, but I am equally unsure how to judge the guilt of ‘foxy Knoxy’ as to decide what makes ‘Wuthering Heights’ a classic of English literature.

Maybe when I finish it…

 

A week for the weak

I spent a week in November reading (on and off, obviously) Sebastian Faulks’ excellent A Week in December. Faulks manages to take snapshots of characters and events that characterise something of the nineties and noughties in Britain.

A book to capture today's Britian

The tensions and comprehension gaps between a disillusioned young Muslim man – looking for some certainties and a place to belong – and his parents who have tried hard to assimilate and be accepted into British society is beautifully expressed. Even better is the lack of easy resolution: both end the book still not understanding the other and yet the need for human belonging has to find expression for both.

Many of the women in the book – wives of politicians, footballers and rich businessmen, for example – are depicted as casting around for love, identity and ‘place’. A literary critic shows up the superficial and personal nature of arts criticism: personal agendas and rivalries, jealousies and snobberies, all get exposed. There is a light shone on so many aspects of shallow culture that every page made me wince with both recognistion and embarrassment. Is this what we have really become?

The period covered is, however, epitomised by the character of John Veals, the high-finance money manipulator whose addictive lust is not for money itself (ironically, given his accumulation of the stuff) – and certainly not for his rather regretful wife and neglected children – but for the miserable pursuit of power and ‘winning’. Relationships mean nothing; the world is simply a playground for his exploitation; people are pawns in his trading games; rules are for breaking; laughter is for the sorts of people he despises. The final line of the book sends a chill through the soul as the sheer empty, vacuous, selfish and value-free monster of greed exposes what happens when you gain the whole world but lose your soul.

I guess Faulks could be accused of caricaturing the worst of contemporary Britain without depicting or exploring the best elements of a complicated multicultural society. But, you can’t do everything in a single book – and in this book he paints a picture which only the wilfully blind will fail to recognise. This picture begs many questions of what sort of society we really want Britain to develop in the next few years of the so-called ‘Big Society’… and that will form the subject of my next post.

 

Holiday reading

There comes a point before holiday becomes a reality when the desk has to be reordered, the email inbox emptied, the office in-tray cleared and the clutter of the previous year’s indecions (where to put things and whether or nto to keep them) sorted. I put off this point until as late as possible. Today that point has been reached.

Fortunately, I was able to postpone much of this because I got distracted by the need to select which books I want to take away with me – which novels need to be read and which theological books can continue to hold their guilt-inducing stare at me while they sit un-opened on my soon-to-be-organised desk. Apart from a couple of Robert Harris novels, I pulled off my shelves several books I haven’t read for a very long time. Unfortunately, they all seem to be miserable: Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Elie Wiesel’s Night. Oh dear.

While musing on how to choose more cheerful books, I dipped into the Church Times and read the extract from Terry Eagleton’s new book On Evil. Hah! Even here it is grim! Or not…

Eagleton’s point is basically that evil is frequently portrayed as dramatic, sexy and glamorous. In some wonderful language he debunks all this and claims evil is basically boring and banal. Try the following:

[Evil] is boring because it keeps doing the same dreary thing, trapped as it is between life and death. But evil is also boring because it is without real substance. It has, for example, no notion of emotional intricacies. Like a Nazi rally, it appears spectacular but is secretly hollow. It is as much a parody of genuine life as the goosestep is a parody of walking.

Isn’t that perfect? He goes on:

Evil is philistine, kitsch-ridden, and banal. It has the ludicrous pomposity of a clown seeking to pass himself off as an emperor. It defends itself against the complexities of human experience with a reach-me-down dogma or a cheap slogan.

Wonderful! And then:

Hell is not a scene of unspeakable obscenties. If it were, it might well be worth applying to join. Hell is being talked at for all eternity by a man in an anorak who has mastered every detail of the sewage system of South Dakota.

I think I’ve met him!

But Eagleton, taking in Aquinas, Augustine and Blake, goes on to conclude:

…evil is a kind of spiritual slumming… The evil, then, are those who are deficient in the art of living.

This opens the provocative question of whether it is possible to think you are a Christian (Jesus talked of giving ‘life in all its fullness’) while actually being a life-denying, over-simplifying, boring, philistine, purity-obsessed, fear-driven (of hell?) parody of the real thing? It’s a question I am now asking of myself as well as of the Church.

Anyway, his book is now on order. I never expected to laugh at prose about ‘evil’. Thanks to the Church Times for publishing the extract – it’s brilliant.

Or, as my son would put it, wicked.

 

The Gospel According to Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is my kind of atheist. He takes Christianity so seriously that he takes a long, hard look at its texts and its history and writes something that engages with it. He doesn’t start out by assuming that all Christians are either stupid or credulous, but shines a different light on its origins in the light of its later (institutional) development.

I posted a couple of days ago about Pullman’s new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, having heard him on the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2. That was before I had read it. So, today I read it – it doesn’t take long. And I haven’t changed my mind. But see the excellent reviews by Rowan Williams and Alan Wilson – I won’t repeat them.

Pullman can’t resist being driven by a serious dislike and suspicion of the institutional church. It isn’t hard to understand why. But, I think that in order to grasp his critique, this has to be disconnected from his atheism and rooted in his understanding of Jesus and the Gospels. Although he wants to dismiss the bits of the Gospels he doesn’t like (or are inconvenient to his case), he does manage to shine the sort of light on them that should make Christian readers go back to the text and read them with the freshness that Pullman (the outsider?) brings to his reading. It certainly has its weaknesses, but doesn’t everything?

In fact, I came away from the book smiling at the conceit that forms the framework of the narrative, but pleased that he has done it. It is thoughtful, well-crafted and often moving. But, most of all, it is serious.

It seems to me that Christians ought to read the book and reflect (a) on why they read the Gospels the way they do and (b) why the institutional church can seem to some people so far away from the Jesus of the Gospels.

Atheists might read the book and then go back to the original Gospels to see how Pullman has tackled the narrative and its meaning. I am constantly amazed at how many people I meet who slag off the Bible clearly have never read it. (And, no, I am not lumping every atheist or ‘opponent’ into that category.) An atheist approach to Jesus (as he is depicted and recorded in the Gospels) can be enlightening even if not always compelling.

Pullman and Rowan Williams were on BBC Radio 4 this morning on Andrew Marr’s Start the Week. This sort of intelligent conversation (about a range of matters) lifts the spirit. But it made me realise that the mutual respect between Pullman and Williams is what sets them free to have this sort of conversation in the first place. They could agree that science is limited to descriptions of mechanics and cannot denote ethical imperatives. They understand myth, literature and thought. So, they can start beyond the cat-calling that characterises some debate about theism and atheism (from a ‘scientific’ perspective) – something that I and others can learn from.

(I wonder whether the story about Rowan Williams criticising the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will still hold up now people have heard the original discussion. He was clearly making a wider point about the problem for the whole of a society posed by the corruption of an institution so woven into its fabric – in other words, it isn’t just  aproblem for the Church, but for the whole of that society. An intelligent point – and one that got completely lost amid the hysteria about ‘credibility’. Intelligent points don’t make for good headlines, however, and Rowan walked through an open ‘media story’ door.)