Choosing a church (1): No more Peace

We're thinking of moving house to accommodate the child and my expanding bookshelves. As a consequence (of the child) we need to start thinking about schools, and as a consequence of that, I need to think about churches. Specifically, I need to think about churches that have good schools attached. As a result, I've been going to some churches in areas we might move to - this has not proved an entirely happy experience. So I though I'd start to jot down some rough criteria for churches in a series of posts. This one is going to talk about the Peace. For the avoidance of doubt, while I will do a great deal for the child, I will not go to churches whose main liturgical instrument is the guitar, and nor will I regularly attend a service led by someone not in clerical dress and who believes Jesus would like us all to clap more. All of what follows therefore assumes a church that is at lease middle of the road CofE and ideally a little higher. So far, I've avoided accidentally going to churches that spend too much time with tambourines.

Nonetheless, in all of them, bar none (and I realise now my church is guilty of this too), the Peace is excruciatingly awful. I've a number of objections to it, but at heart the issue is that it simply goes on far, far too long. I've not timed it, that's hard to do surreptitiously, but it exceeds my ideal by a significant multiple. The ideal length of time for the Peace, if any time must be allocated at all, it the time it takes to shake hands with your immediate neighbours, of whom there will be no more than six, allowing 4-5 seconds per person (and it doesn't take that long usually), you should have the whole thing done in half a minute. That could easily be shorter. Instead, it goes on and on, people come over from other parts of the church to say hello to friends, priests wander in your direction, especially if they've noticed the new person who looks young. And I try to look the other way, or read the hymnbook. Once, anticipating this grimness, I stood by a noticeboard and read there entire presentation about the local school. The Peace was still going on when I finished.

As well as being excruciatingly embarrassing, I also think it's unsound. There's a nice theological reflection on this here, which I found with a cursory google and broadly agree with. But I most profoundly disagree with it because it cheapen the church community. One of the great glories of the parish church is that is genuinely does forge community out of unlikely ingredients. What has masked the awfulness of the Peace in my church is that I do know most people; and so it's not an unpleasant experience to shake their hands in the middle of the service. Nonetheless it's a false bonhomie, a formalised handshake isn't real engagement, but it looks a bit like it, especially if you remember the other person's name. It's quick. formulaic and shallow. In reality and overlong Peace betrays a lack of community - if we were bound together properly, even a little, you'd do all this over coffee afterwards or even outside the service, not pretend to chat in a messy Peace.. Now real engagement has happened in all the churches I've been too, though not always in a way that pulls newcomers in. In which case, the Peace isn't only painful, it's pointless. Cut it down, or better still, leave out the audience interaction altogether. I'm looking (in vain) for the church that does that.

Bring back Paul III

As the cardinal-electors gather in Rome, doubtless trying to consider the challenges of the modern world, I suggest they should instead be thinking about the past, and the character of the great popes of history. There's a nice looking book on some obvious candidates, though I've not read it and would have a less  modern list. It does, however, include my absolute favourite Pope, Paul III (1534-49). And I think the cardinals would do well to consider his example.

Granted, there are some difficult elements in Paul's biography. It's doubtful he was very devout, as he delayed his ordination well into his church career, which he probably owed to his sister's relationship to the Borgia pope. He had numerous illegitimate children. For whom he carved out careers and titles for them at the expense of the papal patrimony. He made his 14 year old grandson a cardinal. Nor was the external situation he inherited promising. At his accession, the reformation was gaining traction across Germany, England had gone over the divorce, and only seven years before, his staunchest 'ally' had led an army into Italy that sacked Rome itself. 

By the time he died though, the catholic church was back. It took longer than his fifteen year reign to remodel the church, but the foundations were all laid under Paul: the Council of Trent was called, the Curia subject to proper scrutiny, the Jesuits founded, some nice art commissioned, and the work on improving the quality of priests begun. All these were to prove difficult, the latter so much so that Paul IV (1555-59) resorted to condemning errant monks to the galleys. Nonetheless, in 1534, the church chose a politician, a leader, and an administrator rather than a saint or a theologian, and it has many reasons to be thankful it did.

Were I catholic, and a cardinal, I would be looking to find the modern equivalent of Paul III.

Bibliography, February 2013

BOTM: M. Atwood, The Blind Assassin

R. Blake, The Blood of Alexandria
S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon
W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Silmarillion*
A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace

It's been a great month for quality, if not quantity. Four of the six books here would have been contenders for BOTM at another time. Gwynne's account of the Commanche was lively and engrossing, though didn't always live up to its own rhetoric. Zamoyski on the Congress of Vienna is a great excavation of a very complex moment in history, which also alerted me to the fact the Kissinger's doctoral thesis was on the same subject. I'm surprised I've never read Maugham before, but Cakes and Ale was brilliant, waspish, and very nicely done, if a little slight. However, all were worse than Atwood's Booker winner. I've not always gotten on with Atwood. I thought the Handmaids Tale clumsy and boring, while I found some of her earlier books unreadable. This is a masterpiece. Despite being very obviously literary in construction - it's a book with a book inside it which itself has a book inside it - it's compelling, magisterially written and still manages a good twist (or two) at the end. A triumph.