Ramsey

I have now read far more of the book at reference 1 than I had thought likely at the time that I acquired it, as noticed at reference 2. A book about Archbishop Ramsey written by the rugby player, parson and academic of reference 5. A Cambridge man like his subject. While Ramsey was one of the last Archbishops who counted in the public life of this country: from the point of view of the faithful, it was all downhill afterwards.

Noticed here because it struck me that some of what goes on in the public life of parsons is rather like that of politicians. What happens when you put a bunch of people together to run something or other, most of whom care deeply about what should be done - while differing sharply, one from another, about what exactly that should be. A problem, I believe, more common among the intellectuals of the left than the thugs of the right. I associate to the phrase 'the narcissism of small differences', made popular by Freud in the early 1930s and for which see references 7 and 8. I thought that study of someone like Ramsey and his doings would be useful input to the education of wannabee public servants - politicians even - rather in the way that study of the end of the Roman Republic can be - and which once, I suppose, formed part of the famous Oxford course called PPE. Which is not to be confused, as Bing does, with the messy business of the PPE contracts dished out during the plague.

I also associate to once reading that in the Soviet Union of old, when they were trying to build industry in the frozen north, they did much better with people who did it for the money than with the faithful, than with Young Communists (Komsomols, aka Комсомольский) and such like people. These last were much keener on arguing about things than on getting on with the job.

Ramsey started out as a rather awkward child, to the extent that nowadays he might well have been referred to the School Psychiatric Service, assuming that such a service has survived years of cuts. But he was eventually found to be clever, with a penchant for theology and with a gift for public speaking. As an adult he was very good with young people. Like many who have achieved high office in the established church, he put a lot more time in at universities and seminaries than in parishes. And like some, he was far more interested in prayer than in administration - in which he had little interest and for which he had little talent - although he did well enough at the tricky and then important business of choosing bishops or, more precisely, helping the Prime Minister and Monarch of the day to choose bishops.

He cared deeply about many of the issues of his day: nuclear disarmament, race relations, capital punishment, divorce, contraception and homosexuality, taking a more liberal stance than many of his colleagues - and indeed than many in the country at large. But he did lead and he did care - which last earned him the respect of many of those with whom he disagreed.

His failure as Archbishop of Canterbury was his failure to pull off the reunification of the Anglicans and the Methodists, so obviously the right thing to do in the face of falling footfall to us atheists - but not to a big enough majority of the Anglicans of the late 1960s. He had rightly set a very high bar - unlike the people who went on to give us Brexit.

He was reasonably relaxed about the even more tricky subject of the proper relationship between church and state - but he had plenty of colleagues and there were plenty of people in the country at large who could get terribly steamed up about it. A matter which could easily soak up lots of quality time and which is indeed important when faith is still strong, as it still is in some Muslim countries. Just think of those far off days when an Archbishop could hold his hand in the flames rather than sign up to something in which he did not believe. See, for example, reference 9.

I don't suppose I shall finish reading the book and shall probably skip the sections on his management of the Anglican Church worldwide, but I am very glad to have found it. My thanks to the executors of the Reverend  Paul J. Gibbons, its first owner. At least, I suppose that is what the story is.

PS 1: the image of is a painting of Ramsey from his time as Bishop of Durham, painted by G. J. D. Bruce, presently in Auckland Castle. Oddly, neither Bing nor Google could produce what I wanted on the search key 'michael ramsey archbishop cartoon', despite his appearing in quite a lot of newspaper cartoons in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

PS 2: the Bishop of Durham signs himself Dunelm, not to be confused with the people at reference 6. York, by way of comparison is Ebor. Something to do with the Romans.

PS 3: jumping sideways from the putative School Psychiatric Service, my father, who spend much of his working life in the School Dental Service, would have been shocked by the current state of children's teeth. Things may not be as bad as they were when he worked in places like the Hartlepools of the 1930s, but for a rich country they are not very clever, certainly not very equal. However, I find this belief hard to check, with reference 10 being the best that I could do in a few minutes. Easier to make glib statements than to check them!

References

Reference 1: Michael Ramsey: A life - Owen Chadwick - 1990.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/bacon-lite.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archbishop_of_Canterbury.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ramsey.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Chadwick.

Reference 6: https://www.dunelm.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences.

Reference 8: Civilization and Its Discontents - Sigmund Freud -1929.

Reference 9: https://www.luminarium.org/renlit/cranmerspeech.htm.

Reference 10: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oral-health-survey-of-5-year-old-children-2022/national-dental-epidemiology-programme-ndep-for-england-oral-health-survey-of-5-year-old-children-2022.