People who are struggling to find work and struggling to find a secure future are, I think, driven further into a downwards spiral of uncertainty, even despair, when the pressure is on in that way. It can make people who start feeling vulnerable feel more vulnerable. People are often in this starting place not because they are wicked or stupid or lazy but because circumstances have been against them. To drive that spiral deeper does seem a great problem.
Hmm - requiring those who say they are looking for a job to take one when it's offered does not seem to me to be about anything other than acquiring or maintaining the habit of working and not being a burden on others. Seems to me only the wicked or stupid or lazy could object.
Which would seem to encompass the desired political effect, the moral depth and the amount of thought in the above statement by the Primate of the Church of England, who is not English but that's OK because the organization he primates over long ago ceased to be recognizably a church.
Archbishop Wishy-Washy has presided over the schism of the world-wide church over homosexual priests, yet one assumes the homs will be following the lead of the five bishops opposed to the ordination of (ugh) women bishops who have jumped ship to join the Vatican-sponsored half-way house.
Time for that old institution just to go away. After all, the break with Rome was a political act, and England long ago surrendered its independence. Might as well go the whole hog. Or is that offensive to Jewish and Muslim readers? Oh dear . . . I didn't mean to be exclusive.
P.S. It seems Williams' utterance makes sense to at least one believer. In a rather long-winded but internally coherent post Archbishop Cranmer writes:
By talking of ‘spirals of despair’ in which the unemployed might find themselves, he concerns himself with the pastoral dimensions of wholeness and healing. Archbishop Rowan is persuaded that the mission of the Church accords with people’s quest for meaning and an assurance of identity which cannot be found without community, without fellowship. It is this which the Archbishop was addressing: he was not advocating unlimited benefits for the indolent and workshy.
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Don't choke on your bile, Hugh! I assume Rowan was talking about people who want work. I come from a family of folks who emigrated from England to find their lives elsewhere. We were brought up to know that when there is no work, you drive cab, wait table, mind the house.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Rowan exudes sympathy far more than leadership. Otherwise, he is a much more
intellectually prominent teacher and poet than he is an archbishop. But living up to your
standards of walking on water is difficult even for Obama!
The Church of England is far more than a political compromise but nowadays it seems much less due partly to the public press and to the usual unpromising statistics. Identity politics seems to conquer all. However, we have survived many prophecies of doom and yours will not be our last! Cheers from the perennial survivors to the usual carping sidestanders, JW
Spent five years of compulsory C of E attendance three times every weekend. Soured me for life. And he may be a great intellectual and a poet, but his job description reads "Archbishop". And he has been completely euchred by Old Red Socks!
ReplyDeleteSome day the penny will drop that Rowan Williams is really only a fucking Druid and nothing to do with the Church of England at all. It is not as though he has gone to great trouble to disguise the fact, is it ?
ReplyDelete