AS I HEAR... Rome And Readins

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30592, 7 November 1964, Page 17

AS I HEAR... Rome And Readins

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J.H.E.S.)

t WISH the exigencies of i newspaper space and the ' limits on the word-content of ■ cablegrams allowed me to 1 hear more of what goes on at 1 the conclave in Rome, which ' ( Anglican though I am) deep- 1 jj interests me. What I want ' most is, first, such expert commentary as 1 get in the “New Yorker’s” letters from Vatican City by Xavier Rynne. All I have, so far, is the letter in the issue of September 19, which previewed the conclave: but last year’s sittings produced several brilliantly informative reports. Their upshot was, of course, that the Church of Rome is not, as in the common and ignorant opinion, a monolith, ruled by one absolute law and interpretation of law, but full of divisions or distinctions and diverse trends. I say, “of course,” and I do so out of respect for my grandfather (a sturdy Lutheran), who well remembered the great conclave of 1870 or thereabouts, at which the doctrine of Papal infallibility was promulgated, and the argument that shook Europe. He told me about this and warned me against the notion that Rome included no variety of views, no dissidents. So it is today, no doubt, v hen the liberal views of Pope John, inherited by Pope Paul, are opposed by the conservatives of the Curia and the Seminarists. That conclave of 1870 was notable for the part played by Lord Acton, the most renowned of nineteenth centuryhistorians and one of the most eminent of Catholic laymen. He opposed the doctrine of infallibility, as did other churchmen; but he said boldly, not that it was ill-timed, as most of them did, but it was wrong. He had an unhappy time in Rome and returned to England to engage in a stern controversy with Cardinal Manning, who resigned from it at last, with a discretion characteristic of Manning, saying it must be left to the Pope. Acton expected to be excommunicated, but he was left in peace and in grace; and whether this is to be explained by the Pope’s respect for his greatest layman, or for a British peer, or for his greatest historical scholar, let those decide who may. But this is what I want to bring up. Acton argued not only with Manning but with Mandell Creighton, the verylearned Anglican Bishop of London, who about this time brought out his “History of the Papacy.” In the preface to the fourth volume Creighton said: “It seems to me neither necessary to moralise at every turn in historical writing nor becoming to adopt an attitude of lofty superiority over anyone who ever played a prominent part

in European affairs, nor charitable to lavish undiscriminating censure on any man." Acton would not have this bland tolerance. He would not have it that “the torture chamber and the stake” of the medieval papacy should be so easily passed over: The responsibility exists whether the thing permitted be good or bad. If the thing be criminal, then the authority permitting it bears the guilt • . . you say that people in authority are not to be snubbed or sneered at from our pinnacle of conscious rectitude. I really don’t know whether you exempt them because of their rank, or of their success and power, or of their date. . . . Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are nearly always bad. So you see what I have been leading up to? To give you the context of one of the most celebrated quotations of our day, and one most commonly' misquoted (“All power corrupts” instead of “tends to corrupt”); and to show you that the context was not, in fact, political but theological. But finally, admirable, admirable Acton! ¥ ¥ ¥

THE Council of the Victoria University of Wellington, here, has just adopted the recommendation of the Professorial Board and will appoint a full-time tutor to advise and help students who read slowly and with difficulty and who do not know how to study. Explaining the recommendation the vice-chancellor, Dr. Williams, said that most or all members of the faculty had students who were severely handicapped in this —way. Some could not read without tracing a line of print, from word to word, with their fore-finger. One member of the council was stubborn enough to suggest that this was not work for the University but for the schools. I have a sneaking sympathy with him; but it is the sympathy of ignorance with ignorance. For on all sides in recent years, the evidence has mounted that the ability to read is low among a great many scholars from the primary stage on. One of my academic colleagues told me recently of a young man, intellectually well endowed, who always failed to show up exercises and essays in time, because, as she found, it took him weeks instead of a few days to read, say, George Eliot’s “Middlemarch.” I can’t account for this problematic fact. If it existed when I was at Canterbury College, it existed undetected. If it existed when I was a schoolmaster, I did not observe it: and since it was one of my ugly practices to get boys to read aloud, I had the evidence to observe, if it was there to be observed. None of my colleagues reported it; and as we were much addicted to talking shop, I conclude that they did not observe it either, and ' therefore that it did not . exist. Certainly, many boys ; read badly: insensitively, un- . comprehendingly. But the process did not baffle them. [ There are books and reports on the subject. No doubt I should do a little research to ’ find out why, in these latter days, the problem has shaped r itself, or has come into full ' view.

If I were to risk a guess, I might say that successive changes in methods of teaching spelling and reading have not bettered the old one. Take the visual method. The word cat and the spelling C-A-T are to be associated with a mental image of a cat; and the association is supposed to fix, automatically, the picture, the word, and the letters. Fine. But what happens when the child comes on cattle, cater, catch and catalogue? I don’t know and speak (as it were) through a glass, darkly. But 1 doubt if the method gets beyond muddle.