BY STEWART SLATER
If it was the Fisherman’s ring which got the media’s attention (the $500,000 figure quoted is, apparently, a resale estimate for an item which will never be sold), the new Pope’s cross is no less worthy of note. A gift from his Order when he was elevated to the Cardinalate, it contains fragmentary remains of Saints Augustine, Monica (a rare example of parent/child canonisation) and Thomas of Villanova.
Relics are, of course, a feature of Catholic religious practice, countless bits of countless saints available for veneration, even in the most seemingly obscure locations, generally preserved in ornate reliquaries, often out of keeping with the humility of their surroundings. A cynic might wonder how many holy bodies one might be able to produce from the stock of holy body parts the Church preserves.
On the other side of the Reformation though, Protestantism has, traditionally, had a far lower need for relics (or “relics”), a legacy of the hard pews and Calvinism which, if it has generally shrugged off, it has not entirely escaped. But neither has it escaped, in its Anglican form, perhaps humans cannot escape, a need for objects to venerate.
Thus, during the VE-Day service in Westminster Abbey, a series of objects was processed through the congregation with the solemn pomp we might expect, in the Middle Ages, to have been accorded to a holy fingerbone before being reverently received by the clergy and laid on the altar. A child’s gas mask. A book of Police rules. An air-raid warden’s helmet. The need for something tangible to revere may have been reduced, but it has not been entirely removed.
These were quotidian objects. There were about 1.5mn children in Britain in 1939 and a similar number of air raid wardens. Out of the countless which remain, one mask and one helmet were chosen. There were no special stories attached to them. They were there not for themselves, but as proxies, representing not individuals, but the group to which the owner belonged.
For one of the themes of the Commemoration was that the War had been a mass project. There were few, if any, stories of the type of heroism which wins VCs, instead, an oft-repeated claim that living through that time was heroism in itself. The Catholic church preserves and venerates the remains of those who were special, Britain chose to preserve and venerate objects which made everyone special.
If the War provides an out-sized portion of Britain’s self-understanding, it has been joined (particularly since he “took tea” with the Queen) by Paddington, the recent films turning the bear into the avatar of what Britain (or some Britons) want Britain to be. He too, as avatars do, has physical instantiations and, as with any religious icon, attacking them is treated as an act of sacrilegious desecration.
This two RAF engineers discovered when they broke the front off a statue of the beloved ursine, one of a “Paddington trail” (any resemblance to a medieval pilgrimage route may, or may not, be accidental) of 23 across the country before attempting to sell the remains, like tomb raiders fallen on hard times. Their actions were, the judge said, while sentencing them to community service and substantial fines, “the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for” which he summarised as “kindness, tolerance and…acceptance.” It was only time which rescued them from a penitential flogging. Or the stake.
Kindness, tolerance and acceptance are, in the main, good things. That is why they feature so frequently in those fraught attempts to define “British values”. But they are not distinctively British. There may be nations out there which sing hymns to their cruelty, but none immediately spring to mind except, perhaps, the French…And that says it all.
Beyond their indistinctness, however, they are also indefinable. Readers with long memories may remember the travails of my childhood swimming lessons, an act of kindness to my mother who arranged them, cruelty to myself shivering mal-coordinatedly in my budgie-smugglers (I was seven – budgies might be insulted) in the chlorinated miasma of a suburban swimming pool, and to my grandmother who had to witness the sorry spectacle. Which of us was right?
Neither of us and both of us. There is no objective standard to decide the matter. My view was just as valid as hers. (It was, of course, ignored. I was seven). The same goes for acceptance and for tolerance. I may think I am being tolerant, if you disagree, how can we resolve the matter? We cannot. If the war commemoration made everyone a hero, Paddington’s values have made everyone a judge, no higher authority than the individual and his opinions.
For we have created a flat society in which none can be raised over others. The SAS hero and the Bletchley Park secretary. The seven year-old and his mother. If all do not get prizes, they at least deserve equal prominence. Everyone is of equal worth, everyone’s achievements are of equal worth, everyone’s views are of equal worth.
Well up to a point. The Pope’s cross reminds us that while all are equal in the eyes of God, some achieve more than others, some have views which are more worthy of attention. Augustine, when he converted, certainly had a past, but he also had a future, a future which he used to shape his religion and the world. If you are a Christian, it is in no small part due to his efforts that you are neither a Donatist nor a Pelagian but regard them as heresies. That is why the Pope carries him with him. That is why, to Catholics, he is in Heaven. You might join him, I probably won’t.
For while Britain has adopted Paddington, the Church follows another cartoon, Pixar’s The Incredibles – when everyone is special, no-one is.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.