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XVI

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if ais to send hi for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches

The reasons are obvious In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Eneational principle, on the other hand, oes well, into a coterie or faction In the second place, the search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude whichwhat is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise - does not waste ti about what it rejects, but lays itself open in unco (You see how grovelling, how unspiritual, how irredee sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul There is hardly any sererous to us if it is received in this temper So pray bestir yourself and send this fool the round of the neighbouring churches as soon as possible Your record up to date has not given us much satisfaction

The two churches nearest to him, I have looked up in the office Both have certain claims At the first of these the Vicar is adown the faith to regation that it is noho shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa He has undermined many a soul’s Christianity His conduct of the services is also admirable In order to spare the laity all "difficulties" he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psal it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons We are thus safe froer that any truth not already fah Scripture But perhaps bur patient is not quite silly enough for this church - or not yet?

At the other church we have Fr Spike The hue of his opinions - why he is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism - one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny huether - one day i that all states of us world are equally "under judg link, which is Hatred Thewhich is not calculated to rieve, puzzle, or humiliate his parents and their friends A sermon which such people would accept would be to him as insipid as a poe streak of dishonesty in hi of the Church is" when he really means "I’m almost sure I read recently in Maritain or someone of that sort" But I must warn you that he has one fatal defect: he really believes And this ood point which both these churches have in common - they are both party churches I think I warned you before that if your patient can’t be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it I don’t mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better And it isn’t the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producingup hatred between those who say "mass" and those who say "holy communion" when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker’s doctrine and Thomas Aquinas’, in any form which would hold water for five s - candles and clothes and what not - are an adround for our activities We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials - naive in to the human with scruples You would think they could not fail to see the application You would expect to find the "low" church hih" brother should befrom these exercises lest he should betray his "low" brother into idolatry And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England ht have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility,

Your affectionate uncle

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