All Are Welcome - REALLY!?

It is 2nd June 2007 and the big day at St James Reading: the first ordination in the church for over 25 years. The weather is wonderful, the church is full and a long procession of priests and altar servers heads up the aisle as the intensively rehearsed choir leads the opening hymn "All are welcome". Marty Haugen's hymn summaries the open inclusive church's attitude to members and non-members alike. Our new priest, Father P.J. Smith, had free rein to choose just about any music he wanted for his ordination and this hymn obviously proclaimed his approach.

Who could possibly disagree with such sentiments? Scripture and the sayings of Jesus are full of words of invitation, any number of which are selectively meshed into modern hymns. I have yet to see "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire..." versified and set to a catchy tune. So why do I feel uneasy at some of the people who are welcomed in?

A recent "Reading Post" headline bizarrely highlighted some of the problems. You see some very strange things in the British press, but this really caught my eye. "A new Hell's Angel in Heaven." A 42 year motor cyclist had been killed in a crash and his funeral was held at Christ the King Church, 4 miles south of St James - the very church where Father P.J. had been ordained deacon in 2006. The main reason for the front page coverage in our local rag was the 400 motorcyclists from all over Britain, other parts of Europe and even California who turned up at the funeral. They then formed part of the huge procession bisecting the town en route to the crematorium on the north side of town. Thank God I wasn't driving round town at that time.

Needless to say, the Hell's Angels fraternity were very prominent in this band. The photographs reminded me of P. J. O'Rourke's observation on the saddest sight he had seen recently - a hippy with a walking frame and a hearing aid. All these Hell's Angels, with their graying hair and beards and pot bellies, should have grown out of this 30 years ago, but will doubtless carry on riding until Alzheimer carries them off. The priest who conducted the funeral referred to the deceased's devotion to the motor bike fraternity, but did not comment on how a proclaimed Hell's Angel might have any problems getting through the Pearly Gates.

Another smaller report in the Post summarized the life of a local elderly business man whose funeral was held at St John Bosco on the east side of town. Prominent among his interests was his enthusiastic support for the local Freemasons, but this is obviously no barrier to a Catholic funeral any more. His own son described him as a "proud Freemason" who had recruited him into the Craft.

Much of the gruesome mawkishness and sentimentality evident at Princess Diana's funeral permeates modern funerals. The salvation (and sometimes the canonization) of the deceased is taken as a given. Plainly any connection between conduct and sanctity is irrelevant. The luckless Anglican clergy have a particularly heavy burden to carry, as they are legally obliged to conduct the funeral of anyone who dies in their parish, regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. This was particularly obvious in the case of Diana, whose religious status was confused to say the least. As for her trumpeted saintliness....her life would have provided ammunition for a regiment of Devil's Advocates.

The young man stabbed to death in St Mary's Butts in May received a lavish send-off at the ancient St Mary's Church, only 50 yards from where he was stabbed. Call me a rancid old cynic, but this looked like a really good gangsta funeral. The unfortunate Anglican vicar who presided over the service had to tolerate the family parading with a poster which proclaimed "Fallen Soldier" on one side. This is a favorite title on Facebook and other teen-social websites when mourning the brutal death of a gangsta. It is a grotesque insult to any genuine fallen soldier, but most modern people, remote from the realities of warfare, have as little understanding of genuine heroism as they have of genuine sanctity. From the lamentations and tributes in the "Post", you would never guess that he died as a result of a squalid fight between two drugs gangs.

As the brilliant funeral director Barry Albin-Dyer noted when a crook phoned from inside prison to arrange his father's funeral in London, no expense was too much - including a horse drawn hearse. Sure enough, the funeral at St. Mary's featured a white hearse drawn by two beautiful white horses. Again, the ancient symbolism of white, signifying innocence, holiness or purity has long vanished, along with the ancient symbolism of black or purple for death and sorrow. Barry Albin-Dyer is very strong on this tradition of black and explained its significance in a recent TV documentary (with a tongue-in-cheek soundtrack playing Johnny Cash's "Man in black"). But our local funeral homes have all but abandoned their splendid black Vanden Plas and Daimler hearses and our deceased are now carried to the cemeteries in metallic silver stretch Fords or Volvos. By the time I go, they'll probably transport me in a pink or powder blue Hyundai.

I doubt that our local Catholic clergy would have been any more selective than the vicar at St Mary's if asked to do a gangsta funeral. I went to Mass at Our Lady of Peace on the east side of town recently and the newsletter contained the usual request "please pray for the following deceased whose anniversaries occur round this time....". Sure enough, one of the names listed was John Nottingham, a colleague of mine who died in 1978. I was instantly transported 30 years back to this funeral, which was conducted at Our Lady of Peace by Father "Flash" Flanagan (The nickname was a result of his high-speed Mass recitals). This funeral was a mercifully more sedate pace.

What made even religiously ignorant bystanders blink was the fact that John was an Anglican. You could hardly plead emergency or remoteness from Anglican clergy in a town with numerous Anglican churches. I vaguely assumed that a Catholic funeral was a privilege reserved for a Catholic, however flawed or lapsed.

As I noted in an earlier blog on weddings, such funerals are a clear signal to huge numbers of religiously ignorant people that formerly essential points of Catholic teaching are now minimized or ignored. Plainly priests do not want to offend potential churchgoers when congregations are dropping like cinema audiences in the 1950s. Funerals and weddings are among the few occasions when the unchurched ever see any religious activity. Funerals are an even worse quagmire than weddings for the clergy, with an opportunity to offend as many people as possible in the shortest possible time. But in their almost palpable desperation to fill the pews they are removing some of the most important reasons for anyone to come to church as active, believing worshipers.


Many years ago, the wickedly funny Malcolm Muggeridge observed that no-one, from the Pope to Mao-tse-Tung, could say that he was NOT an Anglican. The boundaries of Anglicanism had become so wide that they had practically dissolved. A cruel cartoon in "Private Eye" summed up the Anglican situation at the recent Lambeth Conference, with the Archbishop of Canterbury declaring: "We are divided on whether to have a schism or not". "Schism" implied some sort of clear dividing line which cannot be fudged by endless smooth diplomacy and soft words. Some are included, some are excluded and all are definitely NOT equally welcome in a given place. As the Anglicans are being forced into formally recognizing the undeniable de facto schisms they have endured for decades, sooner or later Catholic clergy are going to be forced to draw boundaries and exclude those who have excluded themselves by their publicly scandalous lifestyles.

"The Loose Canon"

Further to my package last week, which included Damian Thompson's book "The Loose Canon", I thought you might like to check out Damian's brilliant religious blog "Holy Smoke" which chronicles religious follies in Britain.

His latest postings include the implications of the vote on women bishops in the Anglican Communion.

[And today's posting, Bill, reads this headline: "Church of England Bishop Will Lead Anglicans to Rome" -- SW]

He declares that the Anglican Church is now plainly, nakedly, indisputably Protestant and there is no room for the likes of the late (super-Catholic) Brian Brindley anywhere in it. Also any hopes of corporate reunion with the Catholics or Orthodox are as dead as Brian, so ARCIC is now RIP. But no doubt it will carry on twitching for many years to come, as the theologians involved don't want to look utter fools and they might otherwise be up to even worse mischief.

Damian is highly unpopular with the British bishops as he is an independent voice on a secular newspaper which they cannot control. So when he explains that Anglican clergy, concerned about the latest change and exploring conversion to Rome, very wisely bypassed the English bishops and went straight to the Vatican, it will make him even less welcome at Westminster Cathedral.

I can't remember if Damian's book makes its title clear, but in the Royal Navy a "loose cannon", in the days of wooden sailing warships, was a cannon which was not properly tied down to the deck. So in bad weather, or if it was fired, it might roll all over the place and cause all manner of havoc and destruction. Much as Brian loved to do........

Guilty Unless Proven Innocent

(From Stan) Bill sent me a huge package of news clippings, magazines, and travel memorabilia from his recent trips. We had to rent a fork lift to get it out of the mail box. Included in Bill's package was a recent edition of PRIVATE EYE (the British satire rag), with a picture of Pres. Bush shaking hands during his "Farewell Tour" with the new British PM Brown. They share a text bubble, "I hear your leaving office soon." I asked Bill if PRIVATE EYE was related to PUNCH, a favorite rag of mine from my meanderings in libraries during high school and college.


Dear Stan,

Glad that you received the package OK. I posted it at Reading's central post office on Saturday 28th June, so if it arrived in Michigan on Thursday 3rd July that's pretty good going by both mail services.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali is an Anglican bishop and, hailing from Pakistan, has a rather more realistic view of Islam than many British clergy.

Punch was a completely separate publication from "Private Eye" which came on the scene only around 1960. Punch dated from the 19th century. I use the past tense because Punch went out of business a few years ago, despite expensive attempts to revive it. "Private Eye" is showing some of the symptoms of advancing years and respectability. It used to be mercilessly funny in its early years, but has lost much of its edge.

Part of the problem is our British libel laws. As numerous commentators have noted, every crook on the planet prefers to sue for libel in British courts because of the legal bias against newspapers and magazines. The onus in a British libel case is on the publication to prove the truth of its allegations - not on the crook to prove the falsity of the allegations. So you get perverse judgments against publications which would be laughed out of court anywhere else in the civilised world.

Also distributers of a publication, as well as the publishers, can be hit for damages. So I understand that W H Smith, the biggest distributer of magazines in Britain, have their lawyers check out every issue of Private Eye before it hits their shops. This must have a restraining effect on revelations. If you want British humour for nothing, I suggest "The Daily Mash" on line, which was launched as a British equivalent of the US "Onion". I particularly loved their recent article declaring "Cannabis worse than the Nazis", where they explained that cannabis had become far more powerful and dangerous since the present generation of British politicians gave up using it.

As a footnote to the booklet on the Italian Chapel in Orkney, the local Orkney paper had an article recalling a second Italian POW chapel at another camp on Orkney which was similarly built inside a Nissen hut and beautifully decorated. It was dismantled after the end of WW2, though possibly some of the artwork might survive. The writer suggested that the reason the present chapel has been lovingly conserved by local Orcadians over 60 years in a harsh climate is because it was unique. If both Italian chapels had survived the war, maybe both would have been abandoned to decay.

Reunion All Around

The above title is stolen from a satirical essay written in 1914 by the late great Monsignor Ronald Knox.

REUNION ALL ROUND

OR JAEL'S HAMMER LAID ASIDE, AND THE MILK
OF HUMAN KINDNESS BEATEN UP INTO BUTTER
AND SERVED IN A LORDLY DISH

Being a Plea for the Inclusion within the Church of England of all Mahometans, Jews, Buddhists, Brahmins, Papists and Atheists, submitted to the consideration of the British Public

It is now generally conceded, that those differences, which were once held to divide the Christian sects from one another, (as whether or not Confirmation were a necessary ordinance of the Church), can no longer be thought to place any obstacle against unity and charity between Christians; rather, the more of them we find to exist, the more laudable a thing it is that Christian men should stomach, now and again, these uneasy scruples, and worship together for all the world as if they had never existed. There is no progress in Humanity, without the surmounting of obstacles; thus, we are all now agreed that Satan, far from meaning any harm to our Race when he brought sin into the world, was most excellently disposed towards us, and desired nothing better than that we, having some good stout sins to overcome, should attain an eventful and exciting sort of virtue, instead of languishing for ever in that state of respectable innocence, which is so little creditable to the angels, who alone practice it.

Monsignor Knox had endless fun with further suggestions, including the proposal for Universal Bigamy. Of course as I noted in an earlier post, the appalling problem which satirists face is the fact that so-called "real life" instantly outstrips their most preposterous suggestions. Not even Father Knox imagined abominations such as gay marriage, much less that in 2008 one Anglican clergyman would be presiding over the "marriage" of two other clergymen in one of the oldest and most respected churches in London. As for the inclusion of "all Mahometans" in the Church of England, Father Knox could surely never have imagined the Archbishop of Canterbury seriously discussing the inclusion of Sharia Law alongside normal British secular law. And the British Government has taken major steps towards Universal Bigamy, with social security payments towards multiple wives and sponsorship of serial polygamy and polyandry.

The fact that Father Knox could write such a satire shows that compromising forces within the Anglican Communion were powerful even a hundred years ago. People were distressed by the visible divisions among Christians, both at home and in the mission field and were tempted by the prospect of reunion at almost any price. And this was at a time when religious feelings ran very high. In 1909, a Corpus Christi procession through the streets was planned by the parish priest of St James in Reading. The uproar this caused rumbled on for weeks, with a local clergyman blasting against the "idolatry" of the Real Presence. The procession eventually went ahead, after the intervention by the Catholic bishop who wrote to the local police pointing out that such processions had been permitted elsewhere in England.

Journalism is the First Draft of History

It is now difficult to judge how truly widespread this anti-Catholic feeling was; the loudmouths always capture public attention and media headlines. It is often said that journalism is the first draft of history - a truly horrifying thought when you look at the British press. But there is plenty of other anecdotal and written evidence of how sharp the religious divide could be for much of the 20th century. In the 1940s one English Catholic bishop wrote the "The Times" explaining courteously how Catholics and Protestants could not honestly even say the Lord's Prayer together. "Thy Kingdom come" was the Catholic invocation for the universal spread of the Catholic faith, which no sincere Protestant could accept.

Father Knox's essay was brought to mind by the recent obituaries of the Very Reverend Professor Henry Chadwick, eminent Biblical scholar and long time leading light of the ARCIC (Anglican- Roman Catholic International Commission), who died on 17th June 2008. The following excerpts from his obituary in the "Daily Telegraph" confirms yet again my opinion that the DT, despite its countless other shortcomings, produces the best obituaries on the planet. It is especially outstanding with military heroes (whether the deceased be a ex-general or an ex-corporal, he is guaranteed a generous tribute) and the clergy of any denomination, as you can judge from the following passages:

Nothing in this early ministry indicated that Chadwick was to become one of the most incorporative figures in the Church of England, a man sympathetic to, and very well acquainted with, the Roman Catholic Church; a traditionalist who appeared to adhere to no particular group within Anglicanism; and an advocate of ecumenism whose actual sympathies lay tantalisingly beyond sight. For a person so generous in advising those who sought out his wisdom, Chadwick's internal conclusions about the everlasting balancing act which is the essence of Anglicanism always remained uncharacteristically unarticulated. Like his brother Owen, he never seems to have sought, and certainly never accepted, ecclesiastical preferment – except in the ambiguous sense that the Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, was, essentially, in his day (1969-79), an academic post.

There has always been, about the Church of England, a certain imprecision when it comes to doctrinal formulation, and those most successful as Anglican churchmen are those who know how best to devise forms of words and constructs or accommodations which allow people of otherwise plainly incompatible beliefs to inhabit the same dwelling-place.

Chadwick was a master of the art. Unlike lesser men who attempted these skills, however, his labours were inspired by honesty of purpose and an apparently genuine conviction that the Anglican Communion had an unassailable integrity.
The limits to his methods, on the other hand, became apparent at meetings of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, [ARCIC] in its sessions between 1969 and 1981, and again from 1983 to 1990, when the Anglican penchant for resolving differences by devising accommodations based upon ambiguous verbal formulations had limited effect on the professionals of the Vatican.

Early successes at agreement were over simpler differences; when it came to ecclesiology, to the nature of religious authority, the Anglican methods proved sterile. Chadwick was personally disappointed: an important aspect of what he had correctly seen as a life's work had driven itself into the sands. He always treasured a vestment which the Pope had given him.

Our late local eccentric Father Brian Brindley, of Holy Trinity Church on Oxford Road, combined moany of the Anglican contradictions in one person. Although nominally Anglican, Holy Trinity was the only place in Reading where you could hear Latin Benediction and his tunic sported thirty-nine buttons "one for each of the Thirty-Nine Articles I don't believe in."

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s ARCIC was being savaged on a regular basis by various Catholic publications as the artfully composed "Agreed Statements" on numerous key topics were examined in the light of Catholic Tradition and found seriously deficient. If ARCIC could not come up with clear definitions of doctrine on "Authority in the Church" or Ministry (i.e. the priesthood) or the Eucharist, what was the point of its existence and why was anyone investing any more time, money or hope in it? As I indicated in an earlier post, who were we (the Catholics) really talking to? If we agreed that a given "Agreed Statement" was fully satisfactory and in full accord with Catholic Tradition, who on the Anglican side was going to accept it? Just the fragment of the Anglican Communion which happened to personally accept it, without any serious central requirement to accept it? The culture clash between the Anglican attitude of artfully balanced compromise and the Catholic tradition of centrally accepted dogma was never more clear, especially when Ratzinger and Co at the Vatican commented on one agreed statement. A horrified ARCIC member exclaimed that "We have been wasting our time for the last 20 years". Well of course you have; as an outsider to the process, it seemed clear that 90% of the blame lay with the Catholic representatives who plainly went too far along with the Anglican tradition of blurring the sharp edges of unavoidable disagreements.

The problems about getting theoretical agreement on abstruse points of ecclesiology were dwarfed by the real life divisions within the Anglican communion which have become more dramatically visible with every passing year. Some of the obvious highlights have been the uproars over the reality of the Resurrection (courtesy of our own Archbishop of Durham), the ordination of women in 1994 and the permissibilty of gay relationships and even gay "marriages". How on earth could we get into bed with such a totally confused and heretical shambles of an alleged church?

I wondered what had happened to ARCIC as I had heard nothing significant about it for years. I vaguely assumed that ARCIC had quietly gone into permanent cold storage, though, to save face, no one on either side would publicly admit that the process was futile. But no, it ploughed on regardless. As is often said about the British newspapers: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story". But Catholic unease about the ARCIC process was evidently shared by some on the Evangelical wing of the Anglican church, (www.churchsociety.org) who came out guns blazing over the more recent (2005) ARCIC document on the Blessed Virgin.

Things Vainly Invented

I read the new ARCIC report with an increasing sense of incredulity. I had expected the claims made by the press, that Anglicans and Roman-Catholics have come to agreement on the doctrines of Mary, to be somewhat exaggerated, yet this is clearly what the members of ARCIC believe. The report covers four areas; Scripture, Christian Tradition, theological and practical.


The following are some of the conclusions reached:

• ‘The Scriptures lead us together to praise and bless Mary as the handmaid of the Lord…’(Para. 50)
• ‘Our two communions are both heirs to a rich tradition which recognizes Mary as ever virgin, and sees her as the new Eve and as a type of the Church.’ (Para. 50)
• 'We .. are agreed that Mary and the saints pray for the whole Church.’ (Para. 50)
• ‘the teaching about Mary in the two definitions of 1854 and 1950 … understood within the biblical pattern of the economy of grace and hope outlined here, can be said to be consonant with the teaching of the Scriptures and the ancient common traditions’. (Para. 60) (1854=immaculate conception & sinlessness of Mary, 1950=bodily assumption)
• Asking our brothers and sisters in heaven to pray for us is acceptable (Para. 68).
• ‘Authentic popular devotion to Mary, which by its nature displays a wide individual, regional and cultural diversity, is to be respected.’ (Para. 73).


Given the teaching of the Church of England and the rest of the Communion on these matters, how on earth could a body, which includes supposedly Anglican Bishops and scholars, come to make such statements?

This "Anglican" group obviously shared all the traditional Protestant misgivings about the Catholic devotion to Mary and were not going to shift their position one inch in response to any alleged paper agreement. So I think we can include them out of any combined church.

A more moderate comment from an Australian Anglican source (www.sydneyanglicans.net) noted the glorious ambiguity and confusion even within Anglican participants in ARCIC:

At the US release in Seattle of the statement, Archbishop Peter Carnley, Anglican co-chairman of ARCIC is reported to have said “for Anglicans, that old complaint that these dogmas were not provable by Scripture will disappear.”
Dr. Charles Sherlock from Melbourne, an ARCIC member, explained to the ABC’s Religion Report, “the document doesn’t say the dogmas [e.g. Immaculate Conception] are consonant with Scripture. What we’ve [ARCIC] done is reformulated what we understand to be the intention of those dogmas, and then our understanding we’re saying is consonant with Scripture.

One Christianity Today article, titled "Anglicans ‘Fudge’ on Mary", says that "if the [ARCIC] dialogue had been a baseball game, the Vatican would have won in a shutout. What we urgently require is an evangelical scriptural work on Mary. This ARCIC document doesn’t appear to be what’s needed."

So it doesn't look as if our friends Down Under are buying it either. If ARCIC was a business peddling its goods on the open market, it would have gone bankrupt decades ago.

Sadly Reunion All Round is going to be achieved the old hard way - one convinced soul at a time.

On the Edge of Britain

The Orkney Islands are such an isolated community that they have facilities which you not normally find provided for such a small population. Only 21,000 people live on all the islands combined. Kirkwall, the capital, has only 8,000 residents. Yet it has a hospital, a cinema, a theatre, a BBC radio station, an airport, a cathedral, other fine churches, two supermarkets, a good selection of interesting shops, a beautiful large modern library, several sporting facilities, including a golf course, and a fair number of restaurants and museums. Though playing any outdoor ball games such as golf, tennis or soccer in the Orkney wind would be a challenging exercise to say the least.

A modern travel centre in Kirkwall is the hub for bus services around the “mainland”, the largest single island in the group. But the information sheets in this attractive terminus make it all too obvious how isolated you are. The bus services are far less frequent than in a large town or city, so unless you have a car you are seriously handicapped in moving around. The climate is a disincentive to walking or cycling. And if you want to get to another island or the Scottish mainland you are restricted by the limited services and heavily out of pocket for the boat or air fare. It is great having your own local hospital, but of course in a real medical emergency, where the local hospital could not cope, the next better hospital is a long way to the south and on the Scottish mainland – either in Inverness or Aberdeen. So you are talking helicopter transfer (weather permitting) if you want to save the patient.

The isolation and dreadful weather might drive you to drink. There are at least two distilleries on the “mainland” and I checked out the Highland Park distillery on the south edge of Kirkwall. It is a surprisingly large industrial sprawl for such a small town, but most of the buildings are the storehouses where the whisky matures over many years. They boast that they make the finest single malt whisky in the world. As the prices range from £27 to £185 ($54 to $370) for a 0.7 litre bottle, the customers obviously believe it. The $370 is for the 30 year old malt. And if you think that is pricey, they are about to launch a 40 year malt, at £899 ($1,800) for 0.7 litre.

The best guided tours I have had in my life have all been around breweries – the Carlsberg one in Copenhagen, Heineken in Amsterdam and Courage in Reading. This tour lived up to the high standards set by those much bigger establishments. The charming and enthusiastic young lady who guided our group explained all the steps in the process, from the soaking and germination of the barley to the long term maturation in storage (in special oak casks, already flavoured by sherry storage, imported from Spain) and the final bottling. The barley is not grown locally – it would be destroyed by the wind. But at least it is Scottish, shipped in from Aberdeenshire. She claimed that part of the secret of Highland Park’s special flavour is the peat used – Orkney peat is different from Scottish or Irish peat because there are no trees contributing to the compacted vegetable matter.

At the end of the tour we had samples of the product, though I must confess any fine distinctions of sweetness, maltiness or peatiness are lost on me. Definitely a case of casting pearls before swine.

The tiny Wireless Museum in Kirkwall is enthralling and is easily the smallest museum I have ever visited – we are talking one room, about 18 by twelve feet, crammed on all sides with home entertainment gear, including old gramophones. It is just the sort of place I seek out eagerly, obviously run as a labour of love by a husband and wife team. It reminded me of the Michigan Military Museum in Frankenmuth, or the tiny Telephone Museum in Budapest. It has one of the oldest working radio sets in the world, dating from 1912. The progress of radio development from 1920 to the 1980s is charted in a wonderful collection of mostly British equipment, with a few American and European examples also on display. It is mostly domestic gear, but some military examples are on display also.

The museum also houses car entertainment products from the 1930s onwards, including the old 8 track cassettes from the early 1970s. The very first British car radios in 1932 cost around £32 or $160 at the rate of exchange at that time. This was around 12 weeks pay for the average working Joe –that is assuming that he had a job in the middle of the great depression. But then he could not have afforded a car to put the radio in anyway. Even more recent and more mundane radios were startlingly expensive, bearing in mind people’s purchasing power. A very ordinary domestic radio from the 1960s cost most of a week’s average pay at that time. A splendid late 1940s set, clad in polished wood like a cocktail cabinet and taking up almost as much space, would have cost many weeks labour; more than a modern 40 inch flat screen TV.

There is scope for adding more to their collection. In Cologne City Museum they have two samples of the cheap radios mass produced in the Hitler era so the population could have easy access to Nazi propaganda broadcasts. In the superb Technology Museum in Berlin they have two very sophisticated 1930s radios with maps of Europe on the front. As you tuned into a particular station (Paris, Brussels, Hamburg or whatever) that city lit up on the map. The 1938 model showed Austria as a separate country; the 1939 model merged Austria into the Reich.

There are other fascinating features all over Orkney. Ancient stone remains older than the Pyramids show that people have long found ways of surviving here. On the north-west corner, at Brough Head, an isolated lighthouse on a tiny island stands sentinel looking out across the Atlantic. The wind feels extra raw and violent here. The unmanned lighthouse is powered by a combination of solar panels, batteries and wind turbines. I wondered why the designers bothered with the solar panels and batteries, but maybe even here the wind drops occasionally.

But there are examples of carbon free power generation all over this area. I saw two large wind farms just across the water on the northern Scottish mainland and the huge nuclear power station at Dounreay – obviously remote from any large city, in case anything went Chernobyl-shaped. This particular station has had its share of bad publicity on leaks and the lid blowing off the cover of one pit containing a very nasty brew of radioactive gunge when the festering pressure got too high. The windfarms were extraordinary sights in the bleak scenery, especially towards sunset as their spinning blades chopped the sunlight coming through my windscreen. Much of the nuclear power is transmitted south, so you have a huge parade of pylons and cables marching across the empty countryside.

As you go west from Scrabster, the tiny port where the ferry returns you to the Scottish mainland, you pass into some of the most glorious and varied scenery in Europe. You pass under an avenue of trees (the first that I’ve seen in days!!!!) and head along the A836 road.

“A” roads in Britain are traditionally the main arteries, or at least they were before the building of the “M” roads, the motorways. The lower the number, the more important the road. So the A1 runs north from London to Scotland, the A2 runs south-east from London to Dover (and thus France), the A3 runs south-west towards the major Atlantic port of Southampton and so on. So you can correctly guess that the A836 and the succeeding A838 road are way down the pecking order of British highways. But, even so, you imagine that they will be moderately good.

In fact they are the first “A” roads I have seen with cattle grids and passing places. You need the passing places, because for much of their length they are single track and you have to pull over to let the car coming the other way pass you without a head-on collision. This obviously encourages a high level of alertness, courtesy, cooperation, consideration and anticipation in most drivers. But some people, like the Land Rover driver who narrowly missed me, know that if they hit anything smaller than a bus the other guy will come off second best. And there just aren’t any buses up here. You could not safely operate big vehicles along these roads, which must add to the complexities of life in such communities as hang on here on the edge of Britain.

The tension of driving on these roads is magnified by the inconsistency of their standard. For quite a long way west of Scrabster, the A836 is a beautiful “A” road – wide enough to drive quickly and safely, with enough curves to keep you on your toes and avoid the tedium of so many straight American and Canadian roads. Then you plunge into a long stretch of single track, then a section of two-lane highway, usually going through a village, then back to single track. The pressure is amplified by steep gradients, sharp bends and the possibility of sheep wandering across the road whenever the spirit moves them. Many wander unfenced by the road, but most have enough wit to graze quietly off the tarmac.

But all the work is worth it for the magnificent landscapes. Mountains, lakes, seaviews, extraordinary variation in vegetation delight the eye round every bend. You could write a very fat book on the microclimates along these roads wrapping round the north-west corner of Scotland, where the Gulf Stream also wraps around the coast and warms the northern air enough to produce some very unexpected results.. On the high bleak ground you get sub-arctic flora (you can say that again). In little pockets like the hamlet of Tongue (clumsily Anglicised from the Gaelic Tonga) you have a picture postcard Mediterranean enclave of impossibly blue sea, white sand and lush green vegetation and trees. At least it looks Mediterranean until you get out of the car and feel the chill on your skin. Go over a high crest, dive down a bowel-loosening hill with a sharp bend at the bottom and you come to a sheltered spot with another little cluster of dense greenery which would not survive at the top of the hill.

You see Gaelic names all over the Highlands on signposts and town nameboards, duplicated below the English version. They are a reminder of the continuing survival of this ancient language which is still taught in many Scottish schools.

The problems of driving on the A836/A838 pale when you try going round the equally magnificent Isle of Skye. It is one of the few major Scottish islands linked by a bridge to the mainland. You would not believe the endless rows down the years over this splendid arched bridge; the financing, the building, the charging of tolls. I must have missed the most recent episodes in the row, because I was able to drive across it in both directions without paying anything. What an incredibly beautiful corner of the planet, deserving all the songs and poems written about it. The roads are good until you pass the ferry port of Uig (pronounced Weeg, I think), from where ships go to the Hebrides Islands well to the west of the mainland.

But then the good road, the A87, ends just after Uig and you have the A855 curling round the north end of the island. Yes, the bigger number denotes an even narrower and scarier road than the A838, with sheer drops into the Atlantic, tinier passing places and bigger vehicles coming the other way. Like the Mercedes mini-coach with the luggage trailer in tow. You Cannot Be Serious, Man, to quote John McEnroe. Or the motor caravans with their fibreglass flanks bulging beyond the normal width of a Ford delivery van. Are you totally insane taking such a vehicle along this road? Or the swarms of motorcyclists. No question, you are insane. In fact, both the A836/838 and the A855 attract more motor cyclists than I’ve seen anywhere in years, all eager to give their Hondas and Suzukis a good thrash along these, er, challenging roads and all looking old enough to know better. It must be a shock to the European drivers, like the Belgian-registered Peugeot pulled over in one passing place, who are used to decent roads back home.

Back on the mainland, the roads generally get better and the scenery less spectacular as you head south. But wherever you go you are reminded of the cultural and economic changes of globalization. It may be extra obvious to a visitor because you are using the restaurants and hotels so much. The second and third persons I spoke to in Scotland, at the Starfish restaurant in Lockerbie, were both Polish. The waitress who served my breakfast at the hotel in Grantown-on Spey was from Hungary. The young lady at the Pomona café, a long established favourite eating spot in Kirkwall, was from Warsaw. At the Aros arts centre (www.aros.co.uk) on the Isle of Skye, they were advertising a play set on the island. – with a Polish lady directing and producing it. The Aros program also advertised the recent Patrick Dempsey/Michelle Monaghan movie “Made of Honor”, which was partially filmed in that part of Scotland using 250 local people as extras. Given the population density of that part of the world, there was a good chance that the locals would see someone they knew if they turned up for the film. It was a reminder that even on the edge of Britain you are inevitably at the heart of the world.

Life on Board

I spent less than two days on the Orkney Islands. I had seen most of what I wanted to see, the weather was abysmal (either raining or about to rain, cold and windy), the landscape was unrelentingly bleak and treeless and I was getting twitchy at the perception of confinement. I could not drive more than twenty miles in any direction and to go further you just have to fork out for a ferry ride. It cost me £40 to cross to the island and £57.50 to go back to the Scottish mainland by a longer route. £97.50 or nearly $200 for two short trips. Holy cow. This was more than my return flight to Milan in March.

Worse than the money was the dependence on the limited ferry timetable and limited space on the boats. I turned up at the ferry terminal at 1025 for the 1100am sailing. I had not made a reservation. The efficient and charming young lady checked her PC and said that I was first in the "stand-by" queue. As it was Saturday, there were no trucks booked on the ferry, so there was a good chance that my little car could be accommodated - but no guarantee either. She asked for my "islander number" which gives a discount to island residents, but being a foreigner I had to pay the full £57.50. I also had to produce photo ID, even though I was traveling on a British vessel between two British ports. This extra security check was introduced a few weeks ago. It is plainly another moronically useless "security" process which makes us no safer. As the French commander remarks acidly in the superb "Battle of Algiers", the people who are going to have all their papers in perfect order are the terrorists.

I joined the end of the queue of cars and was finally waved on board. I rarely travel on ships. One of our best journalists commented over 40 years ago that the only vessel with the barest rudiments of comfort or safety was the 80,000 ton "Queen Mary" - in dry dock. I am firmly of that school of thought, partly because of the horrible journeys I endured as a child on the ferries to and from Ireland. They were inevitably hot, uncomfortable and desperately overcrowded with minimal facilities. And I was inevitably seasick. Mercifully this vessel heading back to Scotland was new, smooth, spacious and comfortable, with TV lounge, shop and restaurants. The TV showed the Queen at the annual ceremony of Trooping the Colour in London - enjoying glorious sunshine. To port you could enjoy the sight of the thousand foot high cliffs on the island of Hoy and the huge rock pillar "The Old Man of Hoy" beloved of especially insane mountaineers.

I was checking out Her Majesty's former floating home a few days later in Leith, the port of Edinburgh. All I knew about Leith was its use in the old police test for sobriety in the days before modern alcohol measurement devices could be used on drunken drivers. Allegedly the police would ask a suspect drunk driver to walk along a straight line while reciting the sentence: "The Leith police dismisseth us". I can think of plenty of people who couldn't do this if they were stone cold sober. Leith, like many ports, had a reputation for poverty and crime. It has been given a major facelift recently. Along the waterfront there is an enormous shopping mall with loads of designer shops, restaurants and coffee shops. From the third floor, you can pay £9.25 ($18.50) and gain admission to the retired Royal Yacht, Britannia. After serving as the Queen's floating palace from 1954 to 1997, it is now a museum run by a charitable trust.

It is one enthralling tour, made all the more enjoyable if you have done some background reading on the Royal Family. I can recommend Kitty Kelley's riotously funny compilation of Royal gossip, "The Royals". Probably the best quote (out of hundreds of unforgettable examples) is the occasion when the Queen's sister Princess Margaret was asked: "How is the Queen?" "Which one do you mean - my mother, my sister or my husband?" (Her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones notoriously swung on both sides of the bed). Margaret was plainly an exceptionally unpleasant person, but I was prepared to forgive her a lot for that.

Kitty Kelley's book is banned from normal sale in this so-called free country, probably because of the insinuation that Her Majesty might not be the genetic child of her putative father King George 6th. If all the insinuations in the book were tested by an independent DNA check, I feel sure that the history books and the official family trees would need drastic revision. Sure enough, the whole menage of adulterers, philanderers, skinflints, bastards, sodomites, bulemics and general nutcases which comprise our beloved Royals are generously represented throughout this superbly preserved ship. Nearly all of them have enjoyed its luxury features at one time or another and their smiling faces are preserved on the numerous photographs around the walls.

It is especially fascinating as the place where Naval tradition and Royal protocol overlapped in bizarre ways. Royal Navy vessels have always been very stratified societies, and Britannia is no exception, with separate living quarters for the Admiral, officers, petty officers and other ranks. This relatively small ship had an Admiral as its commanding officer in charge of around 220 men who supported every facility: engines, air conditioning, cleaning, catering, mailroom, laundry, navigation, communication and much more. The Admiral was the only officer with tolerable living quarters. He had his own bedroom, bathroom and study/living room/dining room. The deputy commander had one small cabin and everyone else shared sleeping quarters in various levels of overcrowding. Petty officer bunks were two high and the junior guys had triple level berths.

The Royal quarters were on another planet. Her Majesty naturally had sheets with the Royal emblems embroidered on them. Above her bed the silk decoration on the wall cost £450 (around $1,300) in 1954, i.e. an average joe's annual pay. The telephone switchboards (with switches labelled "Captain", First Lady in Waiting", etc) were the same as those in Buckingham Palace. The dining room seated 54 people. Menus, printed in French, were handed to each guest and could be taken away as a prized souvenir. Special pantries accommodated the priceless china, silverware and other essentials. Around the walls there are numerous gifts given to the Royal family on their travels, such as a ceremonial pig killing knife from the New Hebrides - you don't see many of those.....

Storerooms and coldrooms contained masses of food and drink, included the best wines. A garage on the upper deck could protect the Rolls-Royce, though in later years a local limousine was used in each port of call and the garage was used for other storage. Various small boats hung from davits. A 40 foot long launch, with its own air conditioned cabin, was used to transport the Royals ashore if Britannia was anchored away from a quayside.


The Queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, had separate bedrooms, bathrooms and offices. This was especially convenient as, shortly after Britannia entered Royal Service, the Queen found that her husband was bedding her first cousin Princess Alexander. So their marriage ended in the Biblical sense in 1955 and they could lead their separate lives.

The senior to junior Royal staff members had varying degrees of accommodation on board, according to their stations in life. So many of her staff - her personal secretary, her ladies in waiting, wardrobe mistress, chefs and personal doctor - all came along for the ride and had to be housed. Royal mail was flown out each day for Her Majesty's attention. 5 tons of luggage came on board for Royal use.

One especially irritating piece of baloney fed to the British public for decades was the line that Britannia could be adapted for use as a hospital ship if needed. Of course this was never done, even at times such as the Falklands war when every available vessel, such as the liner QE2, was scraped up for military service. Given that Britannia has a two bed sick bay and a tiny operating room, it is plain that this was just another feeble official lie.

Abandoned Churches

I have seen plenty of churches in my travels around Scotland. That is hardly surprising in a country of such ancient and deeply rooted Christian tradition. But they are not always what they seem.

The first church I visited in Scotland was two miles west of Lockerbie, the site of the Pam Am 103 disaster in 1988. There is no shortage of stories and conspiracy theories about that catastrophe. But this tiny and beautiful chapel embodies a dark story even more enthralling than the sabotage of the 747. It is signposted "Ukrainian Chapel" as a recognized tourist attraction. I had never heard of it and lost no time in checking it out. In a most unappealing semi-industrial yard, used mostly by a local bus company, there is a small WW2 type temporary hut which has survived long beyond its expected lifespan. It houses a beautiful Catholic chapel with lavish decoration and fittings in Ukrainian style. It was created by Ukrainian prisoners of war in the late 1940s and at first I assumed that it was a southern Scottish equivalent of the beautiful Italian chapel created by Italian POWs in the Orkney Islands. But these Ukrainians were hardly ordinary POWs. They served with the SS division "Galicia" on the Eastern front. This was composed of volunteers who, very understandably, wanted to resist Stalin's reconquest of their homeland. Unfortunately, they made a deal with the devil and fought under Nazi command, with a mixture of German and Dutch officers in control of the division.

The number of Dutch, Belgian and French units in the SS makes for a very interesting story and one not told much by historians or movie makers eager to glorify the well known heroism of those countries' anti-Nazi Resistance movements - most recently in Paul Verhoeven's ludicrous "Black Book". Most grimly hilarious of all is the story of Leon Degrelle and his Belgian SS unit which fought with incredible courage on the Estonian border early in 1944. In June 1944 they were welcomed home by cheering crowds in Brussels. Less than three months later the Brussels streets were swarming with exuberant citizens welcoming the British liberators. No wonder Degrelle is still a taboo topic in Belgium, years after his death in exile in Spain. But the Ukrainian collaborators have been visibly demonised to a much greater extent, even though proportionately fewer Ukrainians served under Nazi colours than those from Western Europe. After all, according to Nazi ideology, the Ukrainians, along with the Russians, Poles and Czechs, were sub-humans, fit only to be the slaves of the Master Race.

The explanatory notices inside the chapel inevitably had a flavor of embarrassed evasion on the motives and actions of the Galicia personnel. Apparently they did not wear the black German SS uniform, but a special grey uniform with the Ukrainian eagle. Well, thanks for the tailoring tip. Also the notice insisted that the Galicia division did not intend to fight against the allies. Er, excuse me, the Soviet Union WAS an ally of Britain and the USA, like it or not. And I did not see any mention of the Polish village of Huta Peniacka where part of the division slaughtered between 500 and 1,000 civilians in February 1944. How did this bunch of Nazi collaborators end up being welcomed to Britain and Canada in the late 1940s? It's a long story but by 1947 the Soviet Union had transmuted from brave eternal ally into sinister Communist tyranny. And any enemies of Communism were suddenly viewed in a much more favourable light; the British authorities were much less willing to send them back to almost certain death in the USSR.

I was the only visitor to the unlocked and unmanned Ukrainian chapel; it is just off the main road from England to Glasgow, so it is far more accessible than the Italian chapel on the Orkney islands. But it is hardly publicized for very obvious reasons and attracts far fewer visitors than its Italian contemporary.

In the small town of Thurso, on the inhospitable north coast, I looked for bed and breakfast after a long drive north. Almost next door to one B and B house, there was a very handsome church. On closer inspection it proved to be an ex-church; it is now the home for an undertaker firm. In the much bigger east coast city of Aberdeen I saw an even more splendid church in excellent condition. Again, as I approached the high gleaming newly glazed entrance, I discovered that it is now the offices for an accountancy firm. No wonder it had been so expensively restored. Accountants have done mighty well out of the economic changes of the last 25 years and Aberdeen has done even better out of 30 years of developing North Sea oil wells. Jesus would not be able to drive the moneychangers out of this beautiful temple; they legally own it.

I headed downtown to the Aberdeen Maritime Museum. Part of the Museum is now inside the former Trinity church, which had seats for a thousand worshipers in its glory days. It is almost the perfect symbol for the new gods of Britain. Much of the Maritime Museum is devoted to one activity - oil exploration. Passing mention is given to Aberdeen's centuries as a port for fishermen and cargo of all kinds. There are models of familiar trawlers and cargo and passenger vessels. But the biggest model I have ever seen dominates the central staircase cavity. A 1:33 scale model of an oil rig takes up most of the height of the museum. The original must be over 700 feet high, much taller than any cathedral, and this superbly engineered and detailed model is easily 25-30 feet high.

Some churches continue to serve the shrinking number of worshippers. The Cathedral of St Magnus in Kirkwall is an obvious community centre, not least because it is the largest auditorium in these isolated islands. In the little town of Dunblane, north of Glasgow. I visited one of Scotland's finest cathedrals. Like St Magnus, it is completely out of proportion to the small town around it. The last time I saw Dunblane Cathedral was on TV in 1996. It was the focus for community grief when a gunman entered the local elementary school and murdered 16 little children and their teacher. The children and their teacher, who died trying to shield them from the bullets, are buried in a common plot with a large memorial in the local cemetery. The sign outside the Cathedral shows that the minister is still the Reverend Colin McIntosh, who was there in 1996. Dealing with unbelievable world wide media exposure, he was the public face of Dunblane for many terrible months and he did his job with exemplary fortitude, dignity and compassion. He is one of the few clergy who can sympathetically counsel people in agony while upholding Christian teaching on the goodness of God and His providence, even in the presence of such horrible pain and mass bereavement.

The Rev Colin's example of Christian ministry and steadfastness was in sharp contrast to another story which was reported on radio as I drove around Scotland. Two male Anglican clergy had been "married" by a third member of the clergy. It brought to mind "Private Eye"'s merciless spoof of a Government AIDS campaign many years ago: "When you sleep with a vicar, you sleep with all his old boyfriends". A desperate Anglican bishop deplored this latest development, insisting, in true Anglican evasion mode, that people knew what the Anglican Church's teaching on sexuality is. Well, unfortunately, people do know what Anglican teaching on sexuality is (if they are the tiny minority who bother to inform themselves on religious matters). It is totally incoherent and chaotic. Having sold the pass on contraception over 70 years ago, the Anglicans have got no position where they can draw a line in the sand and consistently defend any unpopular teaching on sexual morality. And just about any teaching putting restraints on human sexuality is going to be unpopular with one pressure group or another and will give rise to hostile media pressure. So we have met another crisis which will undoubtedly lead to fewer worshippers and more churches abandoned, demolished or adapted for secular users.