What a dog’s dinner the clerics of St Paul’s have made of it.
The way they have been going about things shows at best naivety, at worst self-indulgence on an issue they could not have handled more pathetically.
First let’s be clear: the British coalition government might be pretty awful in many respects but it is not some South American military junta nor some Middle Eastern dictator, nor is the Met police some repressive, torturing out-of-control secret security force, and nor for that matter are the guys camping outside St Paul’s subversive in any shape or form.
And yet to look at how Graeme Knowles and Giles Fraser have acted over this whole affair would suggest they think this presents the Church with the biggest crisis of conscience since Thomas More took on King Henry V111 (sorry wrong Church?) and they are about to be hung drawn and quartered.
Let’s get things in proportion. There have been clerics like Archbishop Romero in El Salvador who faced real situations where conscience required taking a stand against an oppressive state, and died as a result.
I doubt very much that the situation in St Paul’s will involve martyrdom . What it does require is the Church taking a clear stand on the right to peaceful protest and the evils of capitalism, and on both issues both the dean and canon chancellor have been somewhat ambiguous. The one coherent stand they could have taken but didn’t was offer the protestors sanctuary. Call this true witness? I don’t.
