Catholic vs Anglican, Leave vs Remain

Halfway through the second part of Bevis Hillier's magisterial biography of Sir John Betjeman, there's a fascinating chapter that resonated strongly with me; it concerns the poet's long (from 1946 to 1949) and acrimonious correspondence with author Evelyn Waugh about religion.

Waugh - author of Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and Scoop, had been at Oxford with Betjeman, though two years ahead, and like Betjeman was also an 'aesthete' with literary ambitions. Both men were conservative traditionalists drawn to religion. Both like ritual - vestments, incense, bells. However, Waugh converted to Roman Catholicism in 1930, while Betjeman, who'd dabbled with non-conformism (he'd been a Quaker for a while) had by the end of WW2 considered himself a High Anglican - or Anglo-Catholic.

Betjeman liked his services in English, rather than Latin, he loved (since childhood) country churches, sleepy parishes, evensong; in familiarity he found comfort, but he also questioned. Waugh liked Rome, the Mass in Latin, the theological certainty. By nature a self-confessed bully, and possessed of the ideological zeal of a convert, Waugh passionately sought to bring others back into the fold. He believed that the rejection of universal Roman Catholicism for a heretical, national, faith would end in Hell's fires.

In the end, it was Betjeman's wife, Penelope, who converted to Catholicism in 1948, though more probably as a result of her own trip to Rome than because of Waugh's persuasive powers. Betjeman remained an Anglican until his death, though always questioning his beliefs. He was deeply affected by Penelope's conversion to Catholicism; it prompted the very personal poem The Empty Pew (1948).

The letters between Betjeman and Waugh have been preserved; both men - rightly - believed their correspondence to be intrinsically worthy of keeping for posterity. Reading them today is much like reading the online arguments between Remainers and Leavers in the battle for Brexit.

But who was the Leaver and who the Remainer?

Betjeman didn't like 'abroad'. He felt uncomfortable there, the natives didn't speak English and the food tasted funny. Waugh was far more cosmopolitan, enjoyed foreign travel and promoted a supranational church. He was concerned about the fate of Roman Catholics abandoned, as he saw it, to Stalin at the end of WW2. Betjeman was more practical, concerned with the fate of his parishioners in Uffington should he and his wife renounce Anglicanism. The church there, wrote Betjeman to Waugh, was the village's "only bulwark against complete paganism". Betjeman bridled at Waugh's suggestion that he chose Anglicanism for aesthetic reasons, saying that his relationship with religion was "a stern struggle".

I rather suspect that had they been alive today, both men, born in Edwardian England, would have been mildly in favour of Brexit. But then perhaps Waugh might have been tempted to stay in the EU with Roman Catholic countries like France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Portugal. And Ireland.

Reading the correspondence and the story in Hillier's telling - how insignificant it all seems today... Why was Waugh so adamant that Betjeman (and indeed his wife), return to the One True Church, the one that Henry VIII had rejected four centuries earlier? Why did Betjeman so vehemently argue with Waugh rather than just ignore his letters? It is difficult for us, seven decades on, to understand how matters of personal faith could once have be taken so seriously.

To quote from Blackadder: "Sir Thomas Moore, burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism, must have been kicking himself as the flames licked higher, that it never occurred to him to say, 'I recant my Catholicism'." Written in 1987, 32 years ago (!) this line suggests that religion had lost much of its popular power over the 40 years since Waugh tried to convince Betjeman as to the superiority of Roman Catholicism over Anglicanism.

Future generations may look upon the Brexit Years and shrug their shoulders in a similar way to that with which the Waugh-Betjeman debate might by looked upon today. "Whatever."

This time two years ago:
Lent's almost over and what have I learnt?

This time five years ago:
Another attack on the car industry - from Forbes.

This six years ago:
Bicycle shakedown day

This time seven years ago:
40 years on - Roxy Music's first two albums

This time nine years ago:
Twenty years, ten months, six days
[Duration of Poland's 2nd Republic/time between restoration of democracy and Smolensk catastrophe]

This time 11 years ago:
Swans still in Jeziorki