From "The Screwtape Education"
XVIMY Steep WORMWOOD,You mentioned easily in your presume communication that the dogged has continued to carry out one church, and one only this minute, commencing he was certain, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why grip I no caution on the causes of his steadfastness to the borough church? Do you realise that unless it is due to lack of feeling it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the bordering best thing is to send him all another time the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taste or proficient of churches.....The reasons are ordinary. In the major place the parochial organisation want eternally be attacked, the same as, central part a unity of place and not of likings, it brings band of new-found classes and psychology together in the ideal of unity the Fighter requirements. The congregational resolution, on the other hand, makes each church in vogue a ideal of the upper crust, and sooner or later, if all goes well, in vogue a coterie or faction. In the flicker place, the dissect for a "correct" church makes the man a journalist anyplace the Fighter wishes him to be a supporter. When He wishes of the layman in church is an set about which may, conclusive, be regretful in the sympathy of rejecting what is sham or faltering, but which is wholly unsuspecting in the sympathy that it does not appraise-does not squander time in stand about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, modest susceptibility to any compost that is departure. (You see how grovelling, how nonreligious, how untreatably fantastic He is!) This set about, massively concerning sermons, creates the express (greatest adverse to our whole policy) in which platitudes can become really appreciable to a human center. Nearby is tiny any tongue, or any book, which may not be venomous to us if it is standard in this vary. So pray bestir yourself and send this butt of all the jokes the warm of the neighbouring churches as quickly as possible. Your enroll up to make out has not prone us notably satisfaction.....The two churches next to him, I grip looked up in the offshoot. Apiece grip encouraging claims. At the major of these the Reverend is a man who has been so want eventful in watering down the confide to make it easier for seemingly surprised and hard-headed gather together that it is now he who shocks his flock with his unbelief, not "vice versa. "He has destabilized innumerable a soul's Christianity. His execute of the services is equally admirable. In order to make allowances for the laity all "difficulties" he has isolated any the lectionary and the owed psalms and now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly warm the quick treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are consequently secure from the snag that any truth not otherwise go into liquidation to him and to his group want another time close to them express Scripture. But maybe bur dogged is not equally illogical adequate for this church-or not yet?....At the other church we grip Fr. Teem. The humans are steadily darned to understand the richness of his opinions-why he is one day gruffly a Communist and the bordering not far from some ideal of theocratic Fascism-one day a educational, and the bordering on the edge to disavow human absolve altogether-one day captivated in politics, and, the day once upon a time, declaring that all states of us world are "in the function of "under thoughts". We, of course, see the linking wedge, which is Antipathy. The man cannot bring himself to teach anything which is not premeditated to mock, saddened, flummox, or cut his parents and their friends. A tongue which such band would identifiable would be to him as gauzy as a poem which they might scan. Nearby is equally a reassuring fade of wickedness in him; we are teaching him to say "The teaching of the Clerical is" for example he really avenue "I'm gruffly regular I read a moment ago in Maritain or someone of that put in order". But I necessity discover you that he has one not curable defect: he really believes. And this may yet mar all.....But acquaint with is one good feature which any these churches grip in common-they are any party churches. I glance I warned you to come that if your dogged can't be kept back out of the Clerical, he indigence at token to be violently tied to some party within it. I don't mean on really doctrinal issues; about inhabitants, the top-quality kindhearted he is the fall foul of. And it isn't the doctrines on which we more than ever depend for producing ferocity. The real fun is working up dislike in the company of inhabitants who "say thwart" and inhabitants who "say holy communion" for example neither party might possibly bragging the variant in the company of, say, Hooker's thinking and Thomas Aquinas', in any form which would take care of water for five account. And all the effortlessly insensitive things-candles and clothes and what not-are an admirable auditorium for our undertakings. We grip equally puerile from men's minds what that pestilent man Paul second hand to teach about silage and other unessentials-namely, that the human without scruples want eternally bring into being in to the human with scruples. You would glance they might not undermine to see the proposition. You would desire to find the "low" churchman genuflecting and cross himself lest the modest principles of his "high" brother want be stimulated to profanity, and the "high" one abstaining from these calisthenics lest he want trick his "low" brother in vogue idolatry. And so it would grip been but for our eternal labour. Worsening that the account of managing within the Clerical of England sovereign state grip become a tap down hotbed of benevolence and reserve,
Your loving uncle SCREWTAPE
Reference: my-spiritual-path.blogspot.com
