Charles Moore
Already a subscriber? Log in
By what was probably a coincidence, a news page of the Times this week ran, side by side, stories about how schools need more men to teach in them and how the Conservative party needs more women candidates. Is a swap the answer?
As a convert to Roman Catholicism, I find myself surprisingly distressed by the decision of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales to declare Ascension Day, Corpus Christi and the Epiphany to be no longer Holydays of Obligation. The faithful will now not have to attend Mass on those days, but only on the nearest Sunday (which is always obligatory anyway). ‘Obligation’ is a strong word and, except for two occasions when I forgot, I have always fulfilled it on Holydays. This attendance has taught me more about the particular feasts, and about the Mass, than I would otherwise have learnt. It is true that I could (and should) go to Mass without it being an obligation, but I know that, for the most part, I won’t. It is particularly unhappy to shift the days of celebration because Epiphany and Ascension Day mark precise spaces of time (the 12 days of Christmas and the 40 days after Easter mirroring the 40 days of Lent). Faith needs these props.
When one reads some of the pathetic cases of the men shot for cowardice in the first world war, one sympathises strongly with the families who have at last succeeded in winning them pardons. But there seems to me something pharisaical in the suggestion that we, nowadays, understand these things better than our forebears. We are not as men of the past, we say, forgetting what it must have been like for a nation to endure total war for the first time and to try to win it. A particularly self-righteous BBC ‘Thought for the Day’ by Elaine Storkey on the subject suggested that the whole idea of punishment for desertion or cowardice was wrong and that the only people guilty of anything in war are the leaders. If she is right, it follows that the rewards handed out by the leaders are as flawed — motivated by politics or propaganda, based on poor evidence, imposed by the officer class — as the punishments. The logic of the Pharisees is that all those VCs, MCs and DSOs were as invalid as the shootings at dawn and should be publicly cancelled.
As we sat round the other day noticing how smelly our dog was, someone pointed out that human smell — ‘B.O.’ — has almost vanished from modern life. When I was a teenager in the 1970s, at any public gathering you smelt stale sweat. People wore more, and washed less. At about this time, underarm deodorants — especially one called Brut — became popular and there was a battle at my school between those who used them and those who considered them unmanly (‘poof juice’). The poofs won, I am glad to say. Later we were told that the spray from the aerosols was destroying the ozone layer. This may be so, but I feel that the destruction of the planet is a small price to pay for less armpit. It is an interesting conundrum for Greens that the attempt to make things clean so often causes pollution.
Another problem for environmentalists is nature’s own wastefulness. It is particularly noticeable at this time of year. Our plum trees, apple trees and bramble bushes cast their fruit upon the ground with astonishing prodigality. Even if you allow for the need to overproduce in order to reproduce, the superabundance is gigantic. The Green creed urges human beings never to waste anything. But why should this rule apply to us since it applies to no other living organism?
Trending
Also in Society
Also by Charles Moore
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in