What does the National Mission offer? On Tower Hill the bishop seems to have been chiefly busy with a wrangling demonstration that ten thousand a year is none too big a salary for a man subject to such demands and expenses as his see involves.So far from making anything out of his see he was, he declared, two thousand a year to the bad.Some day, when the church has studied efficiency, I suppose that bishops will have the leisure to learn something about the general state of opinion and education in their dioceses.The Bishop of London was evidently unaware of the almost automatic response of the sharp socialists among his hearers.Their first enquiry would be to learn how he came by that mysterious extra two thousand a year with which he supplemented his stipend.How did he earn /that?/ And if he didn't earn it---! And secondly, they would probably have pointed out to him that his standard of housing, clothing, diet and entertaining was probably a little higher than theirs.It is really no proof of virtuous purity that a man's expenditure exceeds his income.And finally some other of his hearers were left unsatisfied by his silence with regard to the current proposal to pool all clerical stipends for the common purposes of the church.It is a reasonable proposal, and if bishops must dispute about stipends instead of preaching the kingdom of God, then they are bound to face it.The sooner they do so, the more graceful will the act be.From these personal apologetics the bishop took up the question of the exemption, at the request of the bishops, of the clergy from military service.It is one of our contrasts with French conditions--and it is all to the disadvantage of the British churches.
In his Piccadilly contribution to the National Mission of Repentance and Hope the bishop did not talk politics but sex.He gave his hearers the sort of stuff that is handed out so freely by the Cinema Theatres, White Slave Traffic talk, denunciations of "Night Hawks"--whatever "Night Hawks" may be--and so on.One this or another occasion the bishop--he boasts that he himself is a healthy bachelor--lavished his eloquence upon the Fall in the Birth Rate, and the duty of all married people, from paupers upward, to have children persistently.Now sex, like diet, is a department of conduct and a very important department, but /it isn't religion!/ The world is distressed by international disorder, by the monstrous tragedy of war; these little hot talks about indulgence and begetting have about as much to do with the vast issues that concern us as, let us say, a discussion of the wickedness of eating very new and indigestible bread.It is talking round and about the essential issue.It is fogging the essential issue, which is the forgotten and neglected kingship of God.The sin that is stirring the souls of men is the sin of this war.It is the sin of national egotism and the devotion of men to loyalties, ambitions, sects, churches, feuds, aggressions, and divisions that are an outrage upon God's universal kingdom.
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The common clergy of France, sharing the military obligations and the food and privations of their fellow parishioners, contrast very vividly with the home-staying types of the ministries of the various British churches.I met and talked to several.Near Frise there were some barge gunboats--they have since taken their place in the fighting, but then they were a surprise--and the men had been very anxious to have their craft visited and seen.The priest who came after our party to see if he could still arrange that, had been decorated for gallantry.Of course the English too have their gallant chaplains, but they are men of the officer caste, they are just young officers with peculiar collars; not men among men, as are the French priests.
There can be no doubt that the behaviour of the French priests in this war has enormously diminished anti-clerical bitterness in France.There can be no doubt that France is far more a religious country than it was before the war.But if you ask whether that means any return to the church, any reinstatement of the church, the answer is a doubtful one.Religion and the simple priest are stronger in France to-day; the church, I think, is weaker.
I trench on no theological discussion when I record the unfavourable impression made upon all western Europe by the failure of the Holy Father to pronounce definitely upon the rights and wrongs of the war.The church has abrogated its right of moral judgement.Such at least seemed to be the opinion of the Frenchmen with whom I discussed a remarkable interview with Cardinal Gasparri that I found one morning in /Le Journal./It was not the sort of interview to win the hearts of men who were ready to give their lives to set right what they believe to be the greatest outrage that has ever been inflicted upon Christendom, that is to say the forty-three years of military preparation and of diplomacy by threats that culminated in the ultimatum to Serbia, the invasion of Belgium and the murder of the Vise villagers.It was adorned with a large portrait of "Benoit XV.," looking grave and discouraging over his spectacles, and the headlines insisted it was "/La Pensee du Pape./" Cross-heads sufficiently indicated the general tone.One read:
/"Le Saint Siege impartial...
Au-dessus de la bataille...."/
