MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to
attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not
wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on
the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it
is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man
can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the
neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster
or connoisseur of churches.
The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should
always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it
brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity
the Enemy desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each
church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or
faction. In the second place, the search for a "suitable" church makes the man a
critic where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil.
What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it
does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but
lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is
going. (You see how grovelling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!)
This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to
our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul.
There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us if it
is received in this temper. So pray bestir yourself and send this fool the round
of the neighbouring churches as soon as possible. Your record up to date has not
given us much satisfaction.
The two churches nearest to him, I have looked up in the office. Both have
certain claims. At the first of these the Vicar is a man who has been so long
engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for supposedly incredulous
and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with
his unbelief, not vice versa. He has undermined many a soul's Christianity. His
conduct of the services is also admirable. In order to spare the laity all
"difficulties" he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psalms and
now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his
fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are thus safe from the
danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should over
reach them through Scripture. But perhaps bur patient is not quite silly enough
for this church—or not yet?
At the other church we have Fr. Spike. The humans are often puzzled to
understand the range of his opinions—why he is one day almost a Communist and
the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism—one day a scholastic, and
the next prepared to deny human reason altogether—one day immersed in politics,
and, the day after, declaring that all states of us world are equally "under
judgment". We, of course, see the connecting link, which is Hatred. The man
cannot bring himself to teach anything which is not calculated to mock, grieve,
puzzle, or humiliate his parents and their friends. A sermon which such people
would accept would be to him as insipid as a poem which they could scan. There
is also a promising streak of dishonesty in him; we are teaching him to say "The
teaching of the Church is" when he really means "I'm almost sure I read recently
in Maritain or someone of that sort". But I must warn you that he has one fatal
defect: he really believes. And this may yet mar all.
But there is one good point which both these churches have in common—they are
both party churches. I think I warned you before that if your patient can't be
kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party
within it. I don't mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more
lukewarm he is the better. And it isn't the doctrines on which we chiefly depend
for producing malice. The real fun is working up hatred between those who say
"mass" and those who say "holy communion" when neither party could possibly
state the difference between, say, Hooker's doctrine and Thomas Aquinas', in any
form which would hold water for five minutes. And all the purely indifferent
things—candles and clothes and what not—are an admirable ground for our
activities. We have quite removed from men's minds what that pestilent fellow
Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials—namely, that the human
without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples. You would
think they could not fail to see the application. You would expect to find the
"low" churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of
his "high" brother should be moved to irreverence, and the "high" one refraining
from these exercises lest he should betray his "low" brother into idolatry. And
so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour. Without that the variety of
usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of
charity and humility,
Your affectionate uncle,
Letter SIXTEEN
SCREWTAPE