‘Codes of conduct’ and their ilk are a case of hard cases making bad law.  Where all is well, then no code of conduct is necessary and where there are problems, the rights introduced by a code would stymie whatever progress might have been made under the plain, traditional guidance of the bishop.

The Church of Ireland has traditionally been a self-regulating church.  The free market system whereby parishes stood or fell by themselves ensured clergy were called to account by the people who paid them; local accountability meant, mostly, that problems were contained.  A pooling of resources in dioceses, (with the noble intention of facilitating ministry in situations where local finance was difficult, if not impossible), has achieved little by way of supporting the mission of the church and has allowed the erosion of local accountability, to the extent that some people can do virtually nothing and be ensured of payment and a free house.  A managerial approach to the problem, which is implicit in a code of conduct, will only reinforce problematic clergy in their perception that they have inalienable right to house and stipend, even if they do nothing whatsoever.

The answer lies not in yet another piece of bureaucracy, but in a reversion to old ways of doing things; making parishes places of responsibility and accountability and insisting clergy adhere to the terms of their ordination promises.  The Book of Common Prayer Ordinal, still used until the late 1980s, required no code of conduct, the duties of the clergy were set forth in unambiguous terms,

Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his Spouse, and his Body. And if it shall happen that the same Church, or any Member thereof, do take any hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence, ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue. Wherefore consider with yourselves the end of the Ministry towards the children of God, towards the Spouse and Body of Christ; and see that ye never cease your labour, your care and diligence, until ye have done all that lieth in you, according to your bounden duty, to bring all such as are or shall be committed to your charge, unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there be no place left among you, either for error in religion, or for viciousness in life.

Take the words of the priests’ ordination service seriously, and no code of conduct is required; refuse to take them seriously, and no effective code of conduct will be possible.

Gertrude Stein, that fan of Pablo Picasso, her purchases of his work establishing her name as an art collector just as her collecting helped establish his name. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held an exhibition over the summer, ‘The Steins Collect‘.  It cost $25 to see it, (making us appreciate how much it meant to have free galleries in Ireland), but the exhibition of the works of Picasso and Matisse made it money well spent.  The Steins certainly did collect, Gertude and the other Stein family members were gifted with extraordinary artistic prescience.

Gertude Stein’s sexuality contributed to a rift with her brother Leo. It was a rift prompted also by disagreements over art -Leo’s objection to Cubism meant his departure from the Stein house meant that works by Matisse went with him, while Gertrude kept those of Picasso - and by personal envies.  The rift over sexuality was a reflection of the thinking in the opening years of the 20th Century when more inclusive attitudes and greater understanding of sexuality were still decades away. Gertrude Stein’s relationship with Alice B.Toklas was to become the stuff of history (and a good deal of myth and legend).

Were Gertrude Stein alive and well today, she would be no more welcome in many parts of the Church of Ireland than would have been the case had she come across from Paris a hundred years ago.  The position of the dioceses representing the majority of the membership of our church is that homosexuality is, at all times and in all places, wrong.

To suggest that Christians have progressed in their understanding of science, so that we see Scripture as presenting us with meanings of why rather than explanations of how, and that we might similarly move in our understanding of sexuality, is to invite a simple rebuff.  ’If something is sinful in the past, it is sinful now, and will be sinful in the future’. Trying to argue that even definitions of what is sinful have changed – look at the way we live, the way we dress, the way we keep Sundays, the role of women – achieves no progress in the argument.

To Gertrude, of course, it would have made no difference what a group of religious people thought.  Gertrude Stein was to become an iconic figure in years of social revolution.

Of course, in the great scheme of things, it makes no difference what the Church of Ireland thinks, society moves on regardless of what a tiny church might say.  The world looked on aghast in the 1990s as our church stood behind the events at Drumcree, events that reflected a sinful sectarianism that had cost many lives ; it will not even notice if we decide to implode over what consenting adults do in private.  It will be of no more consequence to most people than whether we prefer Matisse or Picasso.

‘In what way?’

‘The Church of Ireland people – they would all be fairly well-heeled’.

‘Maybe in some places. There wouldn’t be much tweed and corduroy in my community’.

Do people really see us as though we are characters from fiction – The Irish RM meets William Trevor?

There is a passage in John McGahern’s Amongst Women that seems to encapsulate perceptions of Irish Protestants.  Moran, the central character is turning the hay, but the machine breaks.

In a way it was a relief to him that the pins had finally broken. He had no confidence that he could row the hay on the uneven ground. Now at least his dread was at an end.

Rose watched carefully. ‘If Daddy can’t get it to work nobody can.’

He looked at her angrily, as if the statement itself was deeply compromising; yet it was one he could not reject. ‘We’ll just have to go back to the old rake and fork. Thank God there’s no appearance of rain. If we hang round this tractor much longer
curiosity will bring Ryan across that bloody wall.’

They were coming close to the end of the rows when old Mr Rodden and his sheepdog appeared in the field. He entered unobtrusively under the barbed wire between the trees in the outer corner. He wore a straw hat and flannels and wide red braces over the neat white shirt. The collar was closed. He wore a tie and tiepin in spite of all the heat. Both Rose and Moran went towards him at once with smiles and outstretched hands. Moran considered it an honour to have him in the meadow. Rodden was a Protestant. His farm adjoined Moran’s but it was at least six or seven times larger and he had lately handed it over to his son. Though Moran had been a guerrilla fighter from the time he was little more than a boy he had always insisted that the quarrel had never been with Protestants. Now he identified much more with this beleaguered class than his Catholic neighbours. No matter how favourably the tides turned for him he would always contrive to be in permanent opposition.

‘I came’, Rodden said, ‘to congratulate the newly married couple. I heard they were home. And because the machine was idle.’ He wished Sheila and Sean many years of happiness and brought a message from his wife inviting them to tea at four before they went. He praised the work and weather and then asked, ‘Why aren’t you using the tedder? It’d save hours.’

‘I just broke the pins. I never seem to be able to work it on that high ground.’

‘Have you no spare pins?’

‘Lots.’

He made Moran replace the broken tines while he made several small adjustments. Then he instructed Moran to spinthe tines slowly and after watching them a bit made further adjustments before he was finally satisfied that they were level.

‘I think it will work on any ground now’,  Rodden said. Moran then deliberately started to row the roughest ground while Rodden leaned on his stick watching. To Moran’s disbelief the tedder worked the rough ground as if it were a table. After watching for a while Rodden waved his stick to signal that he was about to leave. Moran stopped the tractor and walked Rodden in the manner of local courtesy to the point where he wanted to leave the meadow. The girls and Rose and Sean waved while Michael caught the beautiful black and white collie for a parting pet.

‘It never tedded that ground so well. How did you manage to do it?’ Moran inquired as he left him at the fence.

‘It was nothing. It was just that bit tight.’ Rodden had been taught as a child that any boasting was a symptom of inferiority. ’I only made a few small adjustments.’

Are we seen as being like Rodden? Landed, well dressed, polite, understated? If it is, then I wish I could take people to see another side of reality.

In retrospect, it was of anthropological interest that someone in the 21st Century still believed that they could instruct people how to behave; that there were still clergy who believed that they could assume the attitude of the late Archbishop McQuaid and presume to govern every aspect of people’s lives.  To be fair to him, he would have found numerous counterparts on the other side of the sectarian divide; there were plenty of Protestant clergy ready to voice opinions about the company one should keep; the places one could go; and the conduct one was allowed. In their own way, both the elderly priest and those on my own side probably meant well; they genuinely believed their strictures to be necessary.

If the social revolution of the past decades were not enough, their authority has been completely swept away by new technology; censorship, barriers and prohibitions have become mere punching at the wind.  The Internet is an anarchic republic: ‘anarchic’ because it is without rule; republic because it is the ultimate ‘res publica’, the ultimate public thing.

The church is thrown back into the First Century, having to struggle for a voice, having to compete for people’s attention; it is compelled once more to speak to people instead of speaking at them.  The church is no longer sustainable as a hierarchy, as a monolith issuing edicts everyone will obey.

Attending a conference recently, a speaker suggested I write something on a subject.

‘I have’, I replied.

‘Where?’ she asked.

‘On my blog’, I said.

It prompted a look of bemusement, as though I were an eccentric who had answered a question with a complete non sequitir. ‘I get more readers online than you would in your journal’.  She looked doubtful and I decided an attempt to explain algorithms and rankings was pointless.

The church would prefer the times of journals with editors because control was possible; like the old priest anxious that my Protestant prayers would not sully his people’s ears, printed publications could be controlled, even censored when necessary.  There is no possibility of controlling the Internet, no possibility of returning to the old days.

The church will step out into the anarchic republic and engage with people or the 20th Century will be its last.

At the beginning of Lent each year we encounter the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness.  The first temptation, the simplest, is that to turn the stones into bread.  It is a temptation that meets with a sharp retort from Jesus, ’Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’.

Jesus is saying that there is more to life than the material things, that there are things that cannot be bought; values, attitudes, emotions, that are as important as bread.  It is worthwhile to return to these first principles, because what the Irish farming community is facing is a policy shift by the European Union that, in the name of reform, threatens to create a rural economy where profit is what matters, where the values of community that have been the very basis of Irish society are no longer considered important.

The proposals for the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy tabled last week, which include plans for flat rate payments, represent a trend towards fewer and bigger farms, which may be a rational move if one is an economist or a politician sitting in Kildare Street or in Brussels, but is money all that matters?

Fewer more viable, more profitable, more productive farms may be thought a good outcome, but what is the reverse side of that coin? Fewer farms means fewer people; fewer members of the local community; fewer customers for local businesses; fewer children in the local schools; fewer jobs for young people; a downward spiral begins as whole swathes of countryside become depopulated.  A rural economy that is financially profitable, but is socially impoverished, is that what we want?

Man shall not live on bread alone; man cannot live by bread alone—we must recognize that we cannot organize our society merely on the basis of profit. The disastrous state of our economy should be lesson enough on what happens when we simply let  market principles shape all our decisions.  If we made our decisions merely on the basis of profit, most of our churches would be gone.  We recognize that there is more to life than profit in our parishes, let us similarly recognize that there is  more to life than profit when we consider our communities.

The Common Agricultural Policy, at its inception, embodied that Gospel view of the world;  it was an acknowledgment that farming life was about more than just a profit and loss account sheet, that there were values that mattered that were other than just material ones:

Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome of 25th March 1957 declares:

1. The objectives of the common agricultural policy shall be:

(a) to increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress and by ensuring the rational development of agricultural production and the optimum utilisation of the factors of production, in particular labour;

(b) thus to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, in particular by increasing the individual earnings of persons engaged in agriculture;

(c) to stabilise markets;

(d) to assure the availability of supplies;

(e) to ensure that supplies reach consumers at reasonable prices.

Note the language used, it is the language of values, of aspirations: ‘rational development’, ‘a fair standard of living’, ‘reasonable prices’.  The Treaty aspired to a rural society that was about more than just making a profit.

This diocese has a direct vested interest in defending our communities, without them we shall have no diocese in twenty years’ time! But we should not speak because we have a vested interest, we should speak because it is right to do so.

The Gospel for Saint Luke’s Day that we read at church yesterday included Jesus’ words that the labourer is worthy of his hire.  Not having lived on a farm since 1967, it had been easy to forget the unrelenting labour faced particularly by small farmers.  Slipping and sliding along a by road in the parish one day last winter, when the daytime temperature was around minus ten, I saw a farmer who belongs to one of our churches fixing hosepipes to a tank of water drawn by a tractor, he was bringing water to his cattle.  It was the same day that someone had phoned to say that the official opening of the final section of the M7 had been cancelled because the main roads were too dangerous to travel.  It was a day that spoke of the different worlds inhabited by those who make the decisions and those whose lives are affected; it spoke also of the extraordinary, unseen lengths to which our farming community must go to try to earn a living.

There has been no leadership from our bishops; they can find three days to talk about sex but can find nothing to say about changes that would affect the very fabric of rural Irish society.

I would ask that the Church of Ireland engage with our communities; speak for those whose future is threatened; speak for Gospel values; tell the Government and the European Commission that we cannot live by bread alone.

There we go; the streets of Dublin echo with the drumbeats of footsteps running away.  The Archbishop in his Palace and the Customs Officer on the quay viva watch to guard virtue and Eire; the other Archbishop (Barton) draws the curtains and sits close to his study fire, saying nothing; and so the Hidden Ireland becomes the Bidden Ireland, and all is swell.

A century on from the Ireland of the young Sean O’Casey and it might have been imagined that a church with no reason to fear anything from anyone might manage some contribution of substance to the public discourse of the state.

For three days last week the bishops of the Church of Ireland gathered to discuss a matter of pressing ethical concern – not the economic crisis in Ireland, not the plight of hundreds of millions of people in Africa, not global concerns about the environment, but whether a priest should have registered his civil partnership with his partner of two decades. In response, evangelicals organized their own conference to discuss the matter (strangely, they never embarked upon such a course of action in response to any of the big issues in the world.)

In an Ireland gone from boom to bust, where hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs and where the poor and vulnerable must now pay the cost of the reckless greed of a small and influential minority, the bishops have still not managed a single statement in response to the culture of lies and deceit and the contravention of the Biblical imperatives to act justly and to defend the poor. Bishops quick to express opinions on matters of private sexual morality can find no words to condemn the scandal of taking from the sick and the weak to give to the wealthy and to the powerful.  The archdeacon who calls for the resignation of a bishop on the gay issue makes no such call on the bishops who passively tolerate injustice.

Archbishop Barton closing his curtains and pulling his chair closer to the fire was positively outspoken compared to his successors today. O’Casey would despair of us.

If economic theory could be applied to an agony column, Harford’s approach to the resolution of church disputes would probably offer similarly unconventional answers.  Free market economics might offer potential avenues out of an impasse.

The Church of Ireland has problems that would exercise the minds of a whole company of agony aunts, prompting each to offer their own subjective answer.  The debate on the church’s place for gay and lesbian people is deadlocked with the protagonists on each side claiming their position is sanctioned by Jesus.  If God is claimed to be on both sides, then a different way forward might be sought: ‘Dear Economist?’

In classical economics, the operation of the free market brings optimal decisions, but those decisions are not predetermined.  It is the exercise of choice, the processes of supply and demand, that shape the outcome.  What about allowing the free market to determine the sexuality debate?

Within the church there would be shouts of protest at such a suggestion.  The church claims to have an a priori basis for its decisions, that  there are principles set down in Scripture to govern decisions.  Yet it is apparent that there is no agreement as which principles apply, and Scripture itself includes an appeal to allow a free market solution, to allow people themselves to decide.  In Acts Chapter 5, Gamaliel, a member of the Jewish Council, suggests that the upstart followers of Jesus  should be allowed freedom to act as they wished, if their movement prospered, then it was of God:

When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them.  But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and ordered the men to be put outside for a short time. Then he said to them, ‘Fellow-Israelites,consider carefully what you propose to do to these men.  For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him; but he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and disappeared.  After him Judas the Galilean rose up at the time of the census and got people to follow him; he also perished, and all who followed him were scattered.  So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them—in that case you may even be found fighting against God!’

If allowing the people to decide is appropriate in the Acts of the Apostles, why would the bishops wish to subvert that process?  Let parishes take their own stance and let parishioners choose what sort of church they want; supply and demand, good economics.

I remembered the words of a fax I got from a friend in the mid-90s, before we all had email.

“Are you lonely ?
Work on your own ?
Hate having to make decisions ?
Rather talk about it than do it ? Then why not

“HOLD A MEETING”

You can get to see other people
Sleep in peace. Offload decisions
Learn to write volumes of meaningless notes
Feel important and impress (or bore)
your colleagues.

And all in work time !

“Meetings”
The Practical Alternative to work”

A colleague in the North used to have a plaque on the wall of the vestry of his church: “For God so loved the world, he did not send a committee”.

The fact that the structures endure means there is a consensus they should do so – it would be useful if one of the tacit supporters of the cranky machinery of organisation which runs the life of the church would explain what it is all for.

Farming communities may be quiet and conservative, but in Ireland the church remains a central part of their lives.  They will be there in all seasons, week in week out; they might not always agree with the Rector, but will always support him.

There are parts of rural Ireland where levels of attendance are closer to the days of Thomas Hardy than to a 21st Century secular city.  Hardy’s story The Distracted Preacher has an opening that would have not been an unfamiliar experience for most clergy in Ireland until recent times, and would still be recognizable in some places:

Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man came temporarily in his stead. It was on the thirteenth of January 183- that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen. But when those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea – as many as a hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter- time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up the street at seven o’clock – which, to be just to him, he was never anxious to do.

It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and- twenty score adults in all?”

The story evokes memories of a harvest festival Sunday in the early-1990s.  A visiting harvest preacher looking at the Preacher’s Book in our little country church as he signed it.

‘You’ve had 300 people at the services today’.

‘Yes.’

‘Ian, you’ve only 250 parishioners’”.

‘Some of them have come twice’.

In fact, at least a hundred of them must have come twice because there were a good fifty of them who never came to church.

The good people of that rural parish in Co Down would have well understood the experiences of young Mr Stockdale 160 years previously.

In little corners of Laois and Offaly tomorrow, Mr Stockdale’s times still live on.

‘Up the Junction’ was part of the background music to the summer of the A levels and the transition from a provincial sixth form college to life at university in London.  The song seemed to grasp the gritty social reality of big city life.  I remember being determined at eighteen that I was going to take on the world head on; that the world of ‘Up the Junction’ would hold no fears.

Of course, it never turned out like that.  Far from facing ‘Up the Junction’, becoming a member of a conservative church in Northern Ireland,  the most conservative part of the United Kingdom, meant a move far away from the reality painted by the boys from Squeeze.  Of course, there was the occasional brush with grittiness, but churches by their nature were place where people were literate and who generally conformed to conservative social norms.  ’Good living’ was the label of people who were especially religious (a label for which I never qualified); by implication, those who were not especially religious were bad living.

There was little real interest in engaging with the Up the Junction-type realities on our doorsteps.  In one town, a meeting convened to discuss the problems of intimidation and violent behaviour by a group associated with a marching band and with paramilitaries brought the suggestion that if one of the band member became a ‘Christian’ then the whole situation would be changed.  There were nods of agreement from the others present and a realization on my part that I was out of step with the world; that there was felt to be no value in asking questions about the conditions in which the young people were growing up, or about where they learned the sectarianism that provided a motivation for terrifying neighbours and burning out those who did not respond as they expected to the routine bullying and intimdation.

Moving south of the border, those who featured in the Irish equivalent of the world of ‘Up the Junction’ were nearly all outside our predominantly middle class community. Social realism in south Co Dublin did not have much in common with 1970s Battersea.

Playing Squeeze back via YouTube, there is a moment of regret for never having faced their world; never knowing what it was like to feel ‘Up the Junction’.