EMPTY PEWS

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 98, 12 December 1944, Page 5

EMPTY PEWS

THE WAY TO FILL THEM

QUESTION OF LEADERSHIP

There has lately been discussion, in The Times and elsewhere in Britain, of the emptiness of churches and of the way to fill them, says a writer in the Times Literary Supr plement. Some have urged that church music should be improved, some that it should be made more singable by the congregation. Others wish the liturgy to be modernised and the whole service to be made more "practical" or, to use a formula now popular, more in keeping with the needs of the Common Man.

Some givers of counsel, envious of the queues which gather to see moving pictures, have implied that parish priests would do well to learn from, if .not precisely to imitate, the methods of the entertainment trade.

This has drawn from a London priest, Mr A. G. Moore, the memorable saying that "it is a priest's duty to feed the sheep rather than to amuse the goats"; and Mr Moore goes further than this.

Passing, as a good controversialist should, from defence to attack, he says that "had the noble lord (Lord Hinchingbrooke) been with me in my own parish through all the London blitzes of the past five years he would appreciate more realistically just what Church leadership means. It is just the failure of the politicians to face facts and

to appreciate spiritual values that causes the savagery of war—and as a priest I assert without fear of contradiction that if there had been

good political leadtersSiip tho present war would never have been. It is not the Church that has lacked leadership, but the State."