A tale of two bishops - former Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie's biography; Roman Catholic Bishop Roderick Wright's sex scandal and resignation

National Review, Oct 14, 1996 by Anthony Lejeune

THE first bishop, Roderick Wright, Roman Catholic Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, disappeared, leaving his shepherdless flock perplexed. They prayed for him: but were not perplexed for long. It soon emerged that he had run off with a divorced woman whom he had counseled eight years earlier. She left a message for her two teenage children, telling them, when they came home from school, to seek help from nearby relatives. (DEAR KIDS, I'VE LEFT YOU FOR A BISHOP -- Daily Mirror.) He has since submitted his resignation, and it has been revealed that he is the father of a 15-year-old boy by another, and now very indignant, woman. (HE LIVED A LIE, SAYS MOTHER. CHURCH LEADERS SHOCKED -- Daily Telegraph.) Worst of all, church spokesmen seemed to feel, he sold his story to a tabloid newspaper for an alleged e300,000. ("I SINNED . . ." -- News of the World.)

The whole incident has provoked a fresh debate on whether the requirement of celibacy for Roman Catholic priests should be abandoned. The argument has acquired new impetus, in Britain as in America, both from a shortage of priests in some areas and because some Protestant clergy, seeking refuge in the Catholic Church from the ordination of women, are being ordained as priests although they are married. Celibacy for Church of England clergy was abandoned in the sixteenth century so that the marriage of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer could be recognized.

Some two thousand Roman Catholic priests in Britain are thought to have left the Church during the past twenty years in order to "pursue a relationship." The responses of Cardinal Hume, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, to the Argyll affair was that the rule might have to be relaxed. Modern society's "obsession with sex" made the ideal of celibacy harder to sustain: too many excellent men were being lost to the priesthood. Cardinal Winning, however, the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, disagreed; sympathetic though he might be with "Brother Roddy," the principle could not be compromised. (BISHOP MUST DUMP LOVE TO STAY PRIEST --The Sun.)

The problem is, of course as old as -- indeed much older than --Heloise and Abelard. Transgressions have never been uncommon. The bishop of Galway had to resign four years ago, when it was revealed that he had fathered a son. As Cardinal Hume pointed out, the celibacy of the priesthood is a law of the Church, not of God, and is therefore alterable. It remains, nevertheless, intimately bound up with most Catholics' idea of priesthood as a special and sacrificial calling. Nor is the argument unconnected with modern attitudes to marriage. Willingness to take a vow of lifelong celibacy and willingness to take a vow of lifelong matrimonial fidelity are two sides of the same coin. If one is considered too hard, the other may seem so too.

The second Bishop's Tale inclines more to comedy than personal tragedy, but it made equally big headlines. Robert Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wanted his biography written by some safe hand. So he approached Humphrey Carpenter, the agnostic son of an Anglican bishop and a well-regarded biographer, notably of J. R. R. Tolkien. Carpenter agreed but found himself unable, or unwilling, to construct an orthodox biography, probably because it would have been too dull. Instead, from a series of wide-ranging tape-recorded chats with Runcie, Runcie's wife, and various people who knew them, he compiled a mischievous, highly entertaining, gossipy book about the archbishop and his dealings not only with fellow churchmen but with establishment personages from the Queen downward.

Runcie had imposed no restrictions on Carpenter's use of the tapes, for which indeed he received a modest sum of money: but, when he read the manuscript, he was appalled and tried vainly to have it withdrawn. "I have done my best," he said in a letter included as a postscript, "to die before this book is published. It now seems possible that I shall not succeed . . . I shall try to keep my sense of humor and the perspective of eternity." What he had wanted was more serious consideration of a twentieth-century archbishop's role. Carpenter, being a writer who likes to be read, concentrated on lively anecdotes and unguarded comments. Newspaper serialization and summaries have highlighted these even more.

Runcie, for example, admitted that he had long known about the Prince of Wales's adulterous affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, and had considered the marriage to Diana (which he described publicly as "the stuff of fairy tales") to be an arranged affair. He had found the Prince, the future Supreme Governor of the Church of England, to be more interested in a vague spirituality: "I think he had given up on the Church of England before I arrived." Runcie had counseled Diana as if in a confirmation class, but this was not a big success. "When you began on abstract ideas you could see her eyes clouding over. Her eyelids became heavy." He had been a friend of Lady Fermoy, her grandmother, who "was totally a Charles person and regarded Diana as an actress, a schemer -- all of which is true, of course."