Archbishop Carey speaks

OCCASIONALLY, a book appears which has an importance not only in what it says but in the circumstances surrounding it. If modern Royalty ever wrote memoirs they would be interesting (or not) in themselves, but also for their origin. Similarly, when the first Archbishop of Canterbury to do so goes into autobiography, there is special interest in knowing what happens on that cloud-wrapped height. George Carey was the 103rd Archbishop, but the first to write his memoirs. They have just appeared: Know the Truth: A Memoir by George Carey (London, Harper Collins, [pounds sterling]25. 468 pages. ISBN 0 00 712030 3).

To write and publish a substantial autobiography within eighteen months of retirement suggests both considerable energy but also a keen desire to set the record straight, and to get his own retaliation in first. The book is competently written, although there are too many hackneyed turns of phrase, and the 'genial' editors he thanks might have been stricter with advantage. Since he has a story to tell he keeps the reader turning the pages. Its main weakness is that he obviously and sensibly kept a full personal diary--he ought to have acknowledged his debt to his taperecorder--and rather too many passages are lifted straight from such a record. One has really no desire to know that the Norwegian Government provided the plane that got his entourage from Israel to Egypt, for example. A second weakness is that he thinks a Christian minister ought to see and think the best of everyone; pretty well everyone he has met during his life is able, distinguished and sincere, when it is obvious that a good many of them were stupid nonentities and full of ill-will as well.

Since a good deal of the ill-will has been directed at him personally, it's a wonder he did not run out of cheeks to turn. The world is full of organisations of which one would like to think well--until one meets the people who run them. These extend from the European Union to parish councils, and certainly include the Church of England. Perhaps envy, malice and 'all uncharitableness' show up more vividly in an organisation committed to brotherly love. But as George Carey steadily climbed the ladder of preferment by sheer hard graft one could hear the whispers: 'He comes from a council house in East London--scraped his education in places we've only just heard of--did his national service as an erk in the RAF--wasn't his wife a nurse?--can they tell the difference between dessert forks and fish forks?--no Family, no private income--what's he doing in Lambeth?' His career level, according to this, was to be a competent, bullying Archdeacon. How did he get so far?

He was fortunate in the Prime Minister who had to assent to his nomination. Margaret Thatcher too had risen by hard graft from a corner shop to No. 10 (her only piece of uncovenanted good luck was a fortunate marriage) and knew the fibre of someone who had done the same. Across a great distance, Finkin Street Chapel, Grantham, looked at Fern Street, Bow, East London, and recognised a kindred spirit (see Joan Bridgman's article in last month's Contemporary Review). Disagreement on pretty well every policy issue was secondary to a shared toughness and a realistic outlook.

There is a second characteristic, remarkable in a Church leader. His talking and writing is of remarkable clarity. It is plain speaking throughout. One is never in any doubt what he means to say. Despite the cliches, there are no fuzzy edges and no high-flown rhetoric. Partly this is the man himself; partly it is due to his years teaching would-be ordinands, well away from Oxbridge--men often of limited background, keen to serve the Church but not well-found in Thomist logic. This enables smaller minds to say that his intellect must be second-rate--because they can understand exactly what he wants to say. For my part, I found his learning quite wide enough (he has a doctorate in the immediate Post-Apostolic Fathers) and only one or two places where I thought he had not quite touched bottom. There is a contrast here with his successor, Archbishop Williams, who clearly often touches the bottom--but who doesn't bring many pearls back up. For example, when faced with human wickedness--as in Rwanda after the genocide--George Carey says plainly that very near the heart of Christianity there is 'theodicy'--explaining God's failure to act, even to save Jesus on the Cross--and that Christians have to accept that this is part of the way things are.

His years at Lambeth were not a quiet time. There was the whole field of gender and sexuality. The quarrels over this covered the questions whether women could be priests, whether homosexuals could be priests and bishops and whether the Church should give any recognition to settled partnerships between people of the same sex. George Carey answered Yes, No and I don't know. It is not clear whether he recognises that the bulk of the laity are becoming deeply bored by this field of debate, which they think is of interest only to small groups. It encourages spite and malice, and suggests that the Church of England has sex on the brain.