Читать книгу Practicable Socialism, New Series - S. A. Barnett - Страница 7

The Commissioners were at the outset met by the fact that cathedral bodies are stationary institutions in a growing society. They remain as they had been formed in distant days: ships stranded high above the water-line, in which the services went on as if the passengers and cargo had not long found other means of transit. They felt that even if by the gigantic effort involved in parliamentary action the cathedrals were reformed in order to suit the changed society of the nineteenth century, the reforms would not necessarily suit the twentieth century. They saw that there must be a central authority always in touch with public opinion, which would, year by year, or generation by generation, shape uses to needs.

They at once therefore introduced the Cathedral Statutes Bill, by which a Cathedral Committee of the Privy Council was to be appointed. The Bill did not become law, but the provision was admirable. By this means, just as the Committee of Council year by year now issues an Education Code, by which changes suggested by experience or inquiry are introduced into the educational system of the country, so this new Committee of Council was, as occasion required, to issue new statutes to control or develop the use of cathedrals.

A living rule was to take the place of the dead hand. Representative men, and not the authority of an individual or of an old statute, were henceforth to control this State provision for the religious interests of the people, as a similar body, with manifest advantage, controls the State provision for the secular interests. A Committee of the Privy Council made up of the Ministers of the day, being professed Christians, together with some experts, is probably the best central authority to be devised.

But when the Commissioners further proposed that after the expiration of their commission it should remain with Deans and Chapters to submit proposals for reform in the use of their cathedrals, they at once limited the utility of that central authority. Is it to be conceived that Deans and Chapters will promote necessary reforms? Can they be said to be in touch with the people? Will they, if they make wise and far-reaching suggestions, be trusted as representatives?

The Commission aimed to create a living authority, and then proposed to bind it hand and foot; it set up a body of representative men capable of daring and of cautious action, and then limited the sphere of such action by the decisions of Chapters sometimes concerned for inaction.

The obvious criticism is a testimony to the progress of the last few years. Education and the extension of local government have made all parties recognise that the voice of the people ought to be trusted, and can be trusted. Checks and safeguards are no longer thought to be so necessary. Interests once jealously preserved by the classes are now known to be safe in the hands of the masses. The Crown, property, order, are all safe grounded on the people’s will.

It seems therefore out of place, in the eyes of the present generation, to safeguard every change in the use of the cathedral by trusting to those proposed by Dean and Chapter. The basis of government must be democratic. The people, and not any class, must have the chief voice in their control. The County Councils, by means of a committee of professed Christians, the Diocesan Council, or any body to which the people of the neighbourhood have free access, should be that empowered to bring suggestions before the central authority. In the Church of England, of which every Englishman is a member, and whose Prayer Book is an Act of Parliament, there is no new departure in making the County Councils the originating bodies to suggest uses for the cathedral.

With the growing interest to which allusion has been made, it is not hard to conceive that the call for suggestions would evoke deeper thought and remind members of secular bodies that progress without religion is very hollow. Parliament was never more dignified, or better fitted for foreign or home policy, than when it held Church government to be its most important function. County Councils, called on through their committees to submit suggestions for the better use of the cathedrals to the Committee of Privy Council, might be elevated by the call, and at the same time offer advice valuable in itself, and approved by the people as coming from their representatives.

The first essential cathedral reform is therefore a central authority as recommended by the Commission, which, on the initiative of really representative bodies, shall have power to make statutes and publish rules of procedure in the several cathedrals.