Using new brooms
A new appointment is not an opportunity for sweeping aside
all that has gone before. Paul Griffin appeals for humility
and a respect for the work previously done by others
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ociety needs new brooms. This is a great truth, but it often right battle in the right way against hellish forces from which i,
outgrows itself when the fat Lady of fashion waltzes on a layman, am comparatively sheltered. i do not shoot the pianist
and sings her piece, leaving instead of a great truth a nasty because the fat Lady goes off note. Yet a warning may be timely
mess. The damaging fashion is the very un-British one of boast- against the dangers of following current lay customs.
ing, of over-valuing and trumpeting our own qualities. The pro-
spectus of any little school will announce not that it does all it A gentler approach
can against great difficulties to educate the children of not always There is a stage in sheepdog work, which is called something
very impressive parents, but that it is a Centre of Excellence. The like the Collect, when the shepherd and his dog meet the flock
book you are reading is ‘The Number one Bestseller’. and establish kindly but firm authority over them. if they rush
again, there is the young person who walks confidently into in, shouting and barking, the flock scatters. So with the Church.
a job interview, and announces that he or she possesses all the The pressure of outside fashion to say: ‘i know exactly what you
qualities required to turn a moderate affair into a world-beater. i need, and am the man to change everything here’ is not kind to
blame some business schools, which breed super-troubleshoot- those who have borne the heat of the day under previous incum-
ers confident of their abilities to run anyone’s affairs and even bents and vacancies.
show off on television about it. all sorts of firms employ young Though i grant that laypeople too move around and are not
graduates to go in and advise specialists in their own business. necessarily permanent residents in one place, and also that a
and, of course, there is ofsted. lot of us, being part of the Church of England, are terribly ill-
informed, thanks be to God that some laypeople stay, are on the
Admitting fallibility ball, and will still be on it after their father in God, in a Church
Maybe this is what the world needs. Maybe my instinct is of generally shorter tenancies, has gone away to some new
wrong to send my child to cautious, humble teachers, or to undertaking.
appoint a candidate who admits to a degree of inadequacy what is more, we are actually proud of past progress, a bit sen-
rather than one who admits to none. But surely the Church sitive about it, and not happy to act as augean stables for some
must have none of it. Despite Pope Gregory, we are ‘non angeli, go-getter. we know that in a few short years or so go-getters get
sed angli’: not angels but, well, anglicans. we admit human up and go, and it will be all to do again.
fallibility, rather than trumpeting our superiority. No teenage The laos, despite the similarity in pronunciation, are not noi-
archdeacons for us! some little insects, but soldiers of Christ, who according to a dif-
There are occasional stories of men appointed to new posi- ferent fashion would have been led into battle. They want to feel
tions in the Church who sail in with just the air of infallibility they are free creatures, but will follow a good man to the end. if
that the fat Lady encourages, and who forget that a new broom they hear someone appointed to guide them say: ‘Hey! i’m the
is there to sweep, not to destroy; i sincerely hope that the Church one that knows it all!’ they draw uneasy comparisons with life
does not follow fashion. our Lord was a new broom, and made it in the business world, and suspect him of being a follower of
clear that his function was to fulfil what was already there. the latest fashion in new brooms. Then they find the fat Lady
This is not a general criticism. The ordained Church fights the distinctly off note.
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directly with specific human sin, we and whom does it include? old days of Matrons, I remember a
wonder whether this constitutes a sort of Matron crying out: ‘I’ll have no pain in
continual purging, a foretaste of later? I Purifying and purging my hospital!’ But of course she had pain
cannot tell, but I am reminded also that Archbishop Laud put it well in his and suffering. Even if she managed to
Judgement can overtake institutions great prayer: ‘Gracious Father, we shield the owner of the gangrenous leg
as well as the human beings that run humbly beseech thee for thy holy catholic from the direct pangs of the saw, that
them. We hear stories of sects that spring Church. Fill it with all truth; in all truth first look at what remained cannot be
up, claiming to offer God’s truth, but with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge described as pain free.
suffer destruction. We look then at our it; where it is in error, direct it; where The dear lady could not outdo her
own sect, and ask ourselves how far anything is amiss, reform it; where it is Maker, and have no pain in her universe.
we ourselves can be spared from God’s right, strengthen and confirm it; where it Even so, one sympathizes so much with
cleansing purpose. is in want, furnish it; where it is divided her that one entertains wild hopes that
Our own Church, we may say and rent asunder, make up the breaches when the cleansing fire comes to us it will
defensively, is at least a part of the Body of it…’ One does not fail to notice seem no more than Mother calling the
of Christ in the world, and, Christ being that word ‘purge’, with its overtone of children in from play, ‘For goodness sake,
faultless, is safe from Judgement. I doubt cleansing fire. dears, wash that muck off before you have
if we really believe that. It is a question of In our Church, as in ourselves, much s u p p e r.’
what constitutes this eternal perfection, is to be discarded; and there must be Even so, it will need pretty fierce soap to
this true Church. How far does it spread, pain of a sort, I feel sure. In the good do that job.
May 2008
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newdirections
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