{Discourtesy in the Church}[20th January 1991]

[Redbook8:179][19910120:0945g]{Discourtesy in the Church}[20th January 1991]

19910120:0945

[continued]

I must say that the more I see of clergymen the more they seem to me, in general, to be unrestrained by the normal courtesies which enable civilisation and society to survive: the Greco-Christian virtues of kindness, tact, sympathy, truthfulness and the search for truth, etc., and the skill of harmonising all these without losing any of them.

I am not talking about their treatment of me, weird though that is; but recently I have seen one clergyman repeatedly humiliate another, much older, in front of members of the latter’s own Parish Council, and in his church. Clergymen are peculiar.

In some ways I look forward to facing them again at a Diocesan Selection Board, if only to tie up loose ends; the prospect of ordination seems remote. But at other times the whole thing seems a task of potentially unending weariness.

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