Category: Jon Elsby

Saint or sinner? The Sins of G. K. Chesterton by Richard Ingrams

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Review by Jon Elsby

Some years ago, a slim, paperback volume entitled The Holiness of G. K. Chesterton appeared. It was a collection of essays by various Roman Catholic academics who shared the (still somewhat eccentric) view that Chesterton should be canonized. Now, we have a book by Richard Ingrams – best known as the former editor of Private Eye and the founder of another magazine, The Oldie – which is apparently intended as a comprehensive rebuttal of the claims advanced in the earlier work. Ingrams is a convert to Catholicism, and his co-religionists might wonder whether his time would not have been better spent in pondering the sins of Richard Ingrams than in exposing what he alleges are the sins of G. K. Chesterton.1 However, the passion for the sensational journalistic exposé has clearly not left him, and his book is in the best Private Eye tradition of moralistic indignation and merciless iconoclasm. Curiously, in spite of his own conversion, Ingrams appears to have retained a good deal of residual anti-Catholicism, or at least anti-clericalism. As early as the Introduction, we find him writing this—

[The] saintly picture of Chesterton painted by the Catholic biographers involved isolating, as far as possible, three people who exerted a powerful if not damaging influence on the course of his career – his brother, Cecil, Cecil’s wife Ada (always known as Keith) and, in particular, the friend and mentor of both brothers, Hilaire Belloc.

The names of Belloc and Chesterton have always been coupled together and so became in the eyes of many Catholics a kind of Peter-and-Paul diumvirate defending the faith in the pages of their countless pamphlets and books. No-one has suggested canonization for Hilaire Belloc, but his reputation, too, has been zealously protected by Catholic commentators who saw him as the champion of Catholicism, a man who had spent a lifetime in defence of the Church – belligerent, admittedly, but admirable and sincere. Only A. N. Wilson’s masterly 1984 biography has challenged that perception, though even Wilson is generally sympathetic to Belloc.

Leading the field in the campaign to preserve the good name of both men were their respective official biographers – Maisie Ward (Chesterton) and Robert Speaight (Belloc). Ward, who wrote two books, G. K. Chesterton (1943) and Return to Chesterton (1952) was the wife of Catholic publisher Wilfred Sheed and a close friend of Chesterton’s wife Frances. Her biography contains a valuable store of information but, as Graham Greene wrote in a review, ‘It is too long for its material, too cumbered with affectionate trivialities … Mrs Ward has amiably supposed her readers to be all friends of her subject … One wishes too that she had remembered more frequently her non-Catholic audience.’

The same criticism could well be levelled at other writers, including Chesterton’s most recent biographer, Ian Ker, whose 747-page book, published in 2011, gives precedence, as Ward does, to Chesterton’s Catholicism and his religious writings – not surprising perhaps in view of the fact that the author is a Roman Catholic priest.

It seems that Catholic biographers cannot be trusted to tell – or even to recognize – the truth about their Catholic subjects. They will be biased. They will not be objective. They will ignore or gloss over inconvenient facts (that is, anything that does not redound to the credit of their heroes) and unduly emphasize and exaggerate their subjects’ virtues. Fr Ker’s views may be discounted on the grounds that, although he is a scholar who teaches at Oxford, he is also a Roman Catholic priest. In Fr Ker’s defence, however, we may point out that at least his scholarship prevented him from committing gross blunders, such as asserting that Maisie Ward was ‘the wife of … Wilfred Sheed’, when, in fact, she was the wife of F. J. (Frank) Sheed, a well-known lay theologian and Catholic apologist, and Wilfrid (not Wilfred) Sheed, the English-born American novelist, was their son.

When a writer is caught out in such an elementary mistake in the Introduction to his book, the reader may, not unreasonably, wonder how far he is to be trusted on anything else. For example, we find Ingrams doing what no previous writer on Chesterton has done – treating Ada Chesterton’s book, The Chestertons (1941), as a reliable source of information.2 As Ingrams himself quotes from Graham Greene’s review of Maisie Ward’s biography of Chesterton, we need not apologize for quoting, from the same review, what Greene has to say about Ada Chesterton’s memoirs. According to Greene, The Chestertons is ‘vulgar’, ‘inaccurate’, ‘badly written’, ‘expansive’, ‘discretionless’, ‘tasteless’, and ‘spiteful’. It seems, then, that there may be sound reasons for treating Ada Chesterton’s memoirs as a fundamentally unreliable record and ignoring them.

As we read Ingrams’ narrative, it quickly becomes clear that there are two villains of the piece: Hilaire Belloc and Cecil Chesterton. Belloc is depicted as narcissistic, egoistical, given to prevarication, cavalier with regard to facts in both speech and writing, violently anti-Semitic, obsessive, self-pitying, domineering, and manipulative. He is allowed no virtue whatsoever, nor any likeable qualities – facts which should make one suspicious, as Belloc had many friends and admirers, and no one who was as repulsive as the person depicted here would have had any.

But if Ingrams’ portrait of Belloc is harsh, one-sided, and unsympathetic, his depiction of Cecil Chesterton is even more so. Cecil, we learn, although highly intelligent, was ‘physically very unattractive’. He was ‘dwarfish’, ‘ugly’, ‘ill-favoured’, and ‘unprepossessing’. His voice and laughter were ‘harsh’ and ‘discordant’. He had an unpleasant habit of obtruding himself where he was not wanted. He was contrarian, argumentative, combative in temperament, pugnacious in manner, and indomitable in controversy. He stuttered and spluttered when he spoke. As a schoolboy, he was friendless and unpopular with other boys.

The effect of this torrent of opprobrium is to make one feel a certain sympathy for the unfortunate Cecil. After all, he could not help his appearance, or his temperament, or the harsh sound of his voice. Ingrams does not mention certain facts about Cecil recorded in his Wikipedia entry – for example, that he was wounded three times while fighting in France, or that, in spite of being sick, he refused to leave his post until the Armistice. Aged thirty-nine, Cecil died in a French hospital of nephritis. Clearly, he did not lack physical courage. And it is worth mentioning that Ada Chesterton evidently did not find him as repulsive as nearly everyone else (bar Gilbert) seems to have done.3 That Gilbert was able to love even the apparently unlovable Cecil surely strengthens his claim to sainthood rather than weakening it.

The worst flaw in Ingrams’ book, however, is not the violence of its animus against persons, but its insistence on judging late Victorian people by twenty-first-century standards instead of taking account of the very different regnant standards of the late Victorian period. However offensive we may find them today, racially derogatory epithets like ‘yid’ and ‘nigger’ were commonly used in those years, and for many years afterwards. And racism was not universally condemned, as it is today, but, on the contrary, universally practised. An Englishman of the Victorian age would have taken for granted the inferiority of other races and nations to the English; similarly, a Frenchman would have maintained, as a matter of course, the superiority of the French to every other race or nation on earth. Such views in monocultural societies, where the only contacts with people of other races were likely to have been mediated by the profoundly asymmetrical experience of imperial conquest and colonial rule, were not unusual: they were what ‘all right-thinking people’ thought. A tiny minority of wealthy, cultured, and well-travelled people might have acquired an immunity to these prejudices, but the great majority of the population had not.

If we consider the way Jews were depicted in Victorian literature, it is clear that anti-Semitism4 was normal in Britain at that time. Trollope’s portrayal of Jews in Nina Balatka and The Way We Live Now is certainly not unprejudiced. It took the humanity and generosity of Dickens to create the kindly Riah in Our Mutual Friend and the luminous intelligence and scrupulous sense of justice of George Eliot to create the eponymous hero of Daniel Deronda. But for the great majority of Victorian Englishmen, the stereotype of the Jew was Fagin, not Riah; and Augustus Melmotte, not Daniel Deronda. Ingrams shows no awareness of any of this, and makes no allowances for the cultural differences between that period and ours. Nor does he bear in mind that, if we indulge in the exquisite pleasure of condemning the sins of our ancestors from a lofty position of assumed moral superiority, then we shall have no reason to complain if our posterity judges us and our prejudices with equal severity.

In the case of Belloc, there is no lack of correctives to Ingrams’ biased and condemnatory verdict. Belloc’s biographers include Robert Speaight, A. N. Wilson, and Joseph Pearce. J. B. Morton has left us an affectionate memoir of his long friendship with Belloc. The late Fr James Schall, in Remembering Belloc (2014), has written a heartfelt tribute to Belloc, acknowledging the beneficial influence of his substantial literary and intellectual legacy. Cecil Chesterton is less fortunate. Although several of his books have remained in print, his literary achievements have been dwarfed by those of his brother, and he has not aroused the interest of biographers, with the exception of the English Carmelite friar, Fr Brocard Sewell. Perhaps it is just as well. If poor Cecil was really as awful as Ingrams says, then the kindest thing might be to pass him over in silence.

And what of GKC himself? The main focus of Ingrams’ book is on the unedifying details of the Marconi scandal, from which no one emerged with much credit – and certainly not the government ministers who stood accused of what today we should call ‘insider trading’. But the attention he has given to this unsavoury episode is entirely disproportionate. He treats it as though it were the fulcrum of GKC’s public life. He seems to think that GKC’s anti-Semitism, such as it was, effectively disposes of any claim to sainthood made on his behalf. But even the greatest saints were imperfect. Saint Paul was a zealous persecutor of Christians before he became the apostle to the Gentiles. Saint Augustine led a dissolute life in his youth and fathered a child out of wedlock before he became Bishop of Hippo, the scourge of heretics, and one of the greatest Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Of the brilliant and scholarly Saint Jerome, it has been said that he always preferred an opinion to a friend. The saints are fallible, both morally and intellectually. They have flaws, not all of which are trivial. Like the rest of us, they bear the inexpungible taint of Original Sin.

What distinguishes the saints from ordinary people is that their lives have shown a pattern of what the Church calls ‘heroic virtue’. The question whether GKC’s life, taken as a whole, displays such a pattern is not to be answered by partisan polemics like The Sins of G. K. Chesterton. It requires a much more careful sifting of the evidence and a dispassionate consideration of what may be said on both sides of the argument. Ingrams’ book is well written, interesting, and, in places, entertaining. But it is neither objective nor, in any sense, a serious or scholarly contribution to a debate about the sanctity of G. K. Chesterton.

Notes

1In my Reassessing the Chesterbelloc (2016), I set out my reasons for thinking that a reappraisal of the reputations of Belloc and Chesterton was long overdue. I argued that, although their novels were of relatively minor importance, their works in other fields of literary endeavour – including, notably, Christian apologetics – deserved more serious consideration.

2Previous writers on Chesterton  are numerous. His biographers alone include, in addition to Maisie Ward and Fr Ian Ker, Alzina Stone Dale, Michael Ffinch, Michael Coren, and Joseph Pearce. Authors of critical studies of various aspects of Chesterton’s protean output include Ian Boyd, Margaret Canovan, Stephen R. L. Clark, Lynette Hunter, Mark Knight, Aidan Nichols, and Ralph C. Wood. None of them has suggested that Chesterton was influenced by his brother Cecil or Belloc as radically as Ingrams claims.

3The photograph of Cecil in uniform which accompanies his Wikipedia entry does not suggest that he was as ill-favoured as the witnesses quoted by Ingrams claim. He was short and stocky, but his features are regular and, while not handsome, they are by no means ugly or repulsive. It may be that the testimony of some witnesses concerning Cecil’s physical appearance is coloured by their dislike of his loud and rather harsh voice and of his assertive and combative personality.

4The anti-Semitism of Victorian Britain was not the fanatical, genocidal anti-Semitism of the Nazis, but it did involve a contempt and dislike for Jews and a view that they were fundamentally untrustworthy owing to their allegedly divided loyalties. It is odd to find Catholics like Belloc and Chesterton holding such views for two reasons. First, Christians are spiritual descendants of Jews. Our Lord, his apostles, the New Testament writers, and all the first Christians were Jews. Had there been no Judaism, there would have been no Christianity. Secondly, for centuries Catholics were accused of having divided loyalties (to the Pope and the Crown) and distrusted and discriminated against accordingly. One would have thought that their historical experience would have made them more sympathetic to the predicament of Jews in British society.

Jon Elsby’s spiritual and intellectual journey has been from Protestantism to atheism, and finally to Catholicism, an evolution he has traced in his memoir Wrestling With the Angel: A Convert’s Tale, published in paperback by CentreHouse Press. His most recent book, also published by CentreHouse Press, is Seeing is Believing, which develops themes touched on in his memoir, but with greater focus on the relations between faith and culture.

Intrigues and Machinations: Conclave by Robert Harris

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Review by Jon Elsby

Assessing Robert Harris’s1 Conclave is not only a question of style. Also singled out are the quality of the dialogue, the architecture of the narrative, the balance between different sections, the sharpness of the characterization, the economy and precision of the descriptive writing, the ability unerringly to choose the telling concrete detail, and the sheer readability of Harris’s prose – the sense that the narrative practically reads itself without requiring any indulgence from the reader.

Conclave concerns a convocation of cardinals to elect a new pope on the death of an incumbent who clearly resembles Pope Francis.2 Historical persons – Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI – are interwoven into a narrative whose fictional characters, in the words of the now customary (and legally obligatory, even if disingenuous) disclaimer, bear no intentional resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead. The central characters are the papabili: namely, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli, an urbane papal diplomat and canon lawyer; the Secretary of State, Cardinal Aldo Bellini, an aloof, austere intellectual and liberal theologian; the Nigerian Cardinal Major Penitentiary, Joshua Adeyemi, whose robust views on homosexuality appall the liberals but delight his fellow Africans; the suavely photogenic French Canadian Cardinal Joseph Tremblay, the Camerlengo or Chamberlain; the ultra-traditionalist Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco,3 a wily ecclesiastical politician and a perpetual thorn in the side of the late Holy Father; and Cardinal Vincent Benítez, the Filipino Archbishop of Baghdad, whom the late Pope had elevated to the cardinalate in pectore.

Lomeli himself has no ambition to be Pope, but one by one the other candidates fall by the wayside. Bellini shows himself to be lacking in moral courage. It transpires that Adeyemi as a young man had fathered a child out of wedlock by a girl who was probably underage at the time. Tremblay is exposed as a blackmailer whom the late Pope, in one of his last acts, had dismissed from all his offices for gross misconduct. Tedesco overplays his hand and alienates the moderates whose support he needed to secure the necessary number of votes. Lomeli’s election seems inevitable. But, in another twist, it is Benítez who is elected, to Lomeli’s mingled relief and disappointment. His election is succeeded by a final revelation which it would spoil the reader’s enjoyment of the novel to disclose.

The plot is, of course, implausible, as the somewhat contrived and convoluted plots of thrillers are apt to be. Conclave was published to mixed reviews, and several reviewers criticized the less credible aspects of the story. But they missed the point, which is not that such a concatenation of events is at all probable, but that it is (just about) possible. They also missed the skill with which Harris recreates the atmosphere of the Vatican, with its characteristic juxtaposition of splendid opulence and spartan austerity, and the distinctive tone of communications between senior clergy, which is compounded in equal parts of urbanity, indirectness, candour, self-restraint, articulacy, courtesy, precision, and intellectual clarity. It is a tone perhaps best summed up in the Greek word, parrhesia – a term derived from classical philosophy, but hardly heard outside the Church nowadays. It means to speak frankly, but to ask forgiveness for so speaking.

Harris perfectly captures the pervasive climate of secrecy and intrigue which many Vatican observers have noted. Scandal is to be avoided at all costs. In some ways, this is laudable, especially in an age of such vulgarity as ours, with its insatiable appetite for the lurid details of any salacious goings-on. But it also causes as many problems as it solves or avoids. The scandal of clerical sex abuse, which has done such serious reputational damage to the Church since it first broke in 2002, would have been far less traumatic had it not been for the misguided attempts to cover it up, shield the perpetrators, silence the victims, preserve the appearance of decorum, and protect the Church’s good name. Even today, after almost two decades of appalling revelations, there is scant evidence of the kind of rigorous self-examination and profound cultural change in the Church that are needed in order (1) to address the fallout from the scandal, and (2) to ensure that it never happens again.

Harris also conveys the sheer impossibility of the papacy’s demands – the scale of the job; the weight of responsibility; the unreasonable expectations placed upon the incumbent; the relentless scrutiny, the investigative endeavours, and (often) malicious intentions of the media; the physical and mental stamina required; the intellectual qualities; the extensive knowledge of history, theology, philosophy, canon law, politics, current affairs, and diplomacy; the personal holiness, and the other pastoral and spiritual attributes…and the list could go on. The Pope is expected to be without sin, no matter how often popes reiterate that no one is sinless. Moreover, that expectation is by no means confined to Catholics, for many non-Catholics would also condemn a pope whose sins had been uncovered. Most of the popes have been old men, some very old. None has been young. For how much longer can we expect septuagenarians and octogenarians to shoulder the insupportable burdens and impossible demands of this job?4 Surely, ordinary human decency necessitates a more collegial approach to the governance of the Church of the future – this fast-expanding, global Church with around 1.3 billion members worldwide. The burdens and responsibilities of the papal office will have to be dispersed and shared, and Church governance will have to be more transparent. The Church will also have to find meaningful roles – i.e. roles which involve the bearing of administrative responsibility and the exercise of executive power – for the laity, especially for women. It is no longer acceptable for all the power to be concentrated in the hands of the clergy, let alone in the hands of one man. The popes of the future will probably be more like prime ministers – primus inter pares – than absolute monarchs.

None of this is explicitly stated in Conclave; but, first, there is little doubt that Harris’s sympathies in the theological and ecclesiological controversies currently raging between liberal-progressives and conservative-traditionalists in the Church lie with the former; and, second, the clear implication of his account of the tortuous process of electing a new pontiff (and the extremely slender – some would say, manifestly insufficient – grounds on which some candidates are eliminated from the election), is that what is now demanded of a papabile is unrealistic, and it can only be a matter of time before a pope is elected who is subsequently found to have a skeleton in his closet.

Harris hints that at the heart of the present dysfunction in the Church is the prevailing attitude among the clergy to women. He quotes as follows from Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul:

‘As for women, and everything to do with them, never a word; never; it was as if there were no women in the world. This absolute silence, even between close friends, about everything to do with women was one of the most profound and lasting lessons of my early years in the priesthood.’

This [adds Harris] was the core of the hard mental discipline that had enabled Lomeli to remain celibate for more than sixty years. Don’t even think about them! The mere idea of going next door and talking man to man with Adeyemi about a woman was a concept that lay entirely outside the dean’s closed intellectual system.

Harris does not pose the obvious questions, but they insistently obtrude themselves nonetheless. Is this healthy? Is it normal? Is this how a priest should live – by forcing himself to ignore the existence of half the human race? Is this conducive to growth to sexual and psychological maturity? Does the discipline of celibacy result (in some cases) in a malformation of ordinary human sexuality, and, if so, does this explain why so many among the senior clergy were apparently less able to empathize with the victims of clerical sex abuse than with the perpetrators? And does it also explain why they display a certain tone-deafness to the needs of women in the Church?

Conclave shows that serious issues can still be raised in works of popular fiction. This would not have seemed an unfamiliar idea to the Victorians – or, for that matter, to the Edwardians and Georgians. If it has become strange to us, that is because of the comparatively recent emergence of new forms of popular literature – e.g. airport fiction, beach reading, ladlit, and chicklit – which combine poverty of language, triviality of subject, and vacuity of thought to a degree one hopes will be unsurpassable. It is good to be reminded that not all writers and publishers have given up even trying to produce intelligent popular fiction, and that the term is not yet an oxymoron.

Notes

1It is worth mentioning that Harris is not himself a Catholic. However, he writes with considerable insight about the Catholic Church and the clergy, and his tone is unfailingly respectful. It is sad that this is so uncommon today as to deserve special mention.

2In a prefatory note, Harris says that, ‘despite certain superficial resemblances’, the late Holy Father depicted in Conclave is not meant to be a portrait of the current pope. This should be taken with a pinch of salt. The resemblances are more than superficial, and are too numerous to be coincidental. For example, Harris’s late pope is a reformer who has alienated traditionalists in the Church and has aroused much determined opposition in the Curia and in the college of cardinals. He is dealing with scandals in the Church, but is handicapped by feeling surrounded by enemies with no one he can trust (cf. Pope Francis Among the Wolves by Marco Politi). And he lives in the simple Casa Santa Marta in preference to the luxurious papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace.

3Is his name accidental (Tedesco = German) or is this meant to be a reference to Ratzinger/Benedict? However, while the fictional Tedesco shares some of Ratzinger/Benedict’s views, he does not appear to possess the Emeritus Pope’s formidable intellectual qualities, theological expertise, or gentlemanly manners.

4The demands of the papacy have been enormously magnified by the relentless, unceasing scrutiny of the modern mass media – not only their focus on what the Pope says and does in the present, but also their determination to ransack his past for any indiscretions, errors, or missteps. And the worse they are, the better, as far as the media are concerned.

Jon Elsby is the author of numerous books on aspects of Roman Catholicism, and is a specialist in opera, on which subject he has written a wide-ranging survey of operatic tenors, titled Heroes and Lovers.

The Certainty of George Weigel

by Jon Elsby

1

George Weigel is a controversial figure. A Catholic intellectual and a political and cultural conservative of a distinctively American kind, he is greatly admired by those who share his convictions and severely criticized by those who do not, including some of his co-religionists. But reactions to Weigel are rarely mild. For better or worse, he tends to polarize opinion into irreconcilable camps – for and against. His admirers praise the quality of his prose, the clarity of his arguments, and the scope of his knowledge. His detractors criticize the conservative assumptions, the sometimes superficial analyses of complex phenomena, and the absolute self-confidence with which he invariably delivers his judgments, as if no other conclusion were rationally possible.

I may be in a minority of one, but it seems to me that both admirers and detractors are right. Weigel is a fine prose writer, his arguments are clearly and forcefully stated, and he does have an impressive breadth of scholarly knowledge. On the other hand, he assumes very conservative positions politically and theologically, his analyses of phenomena such as the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the causes of the First World War are too hasty and somewhat simplistic, and his tone both in speech and in writing has a dogmatic certitude and an air of finality – of having said the last possible word on the subject – which recall what William Lamb, the second Viscount Melbourne is reported to have said of Macaulay: “I wish I were as certain of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.”

Another trait of Weigel’s – related to, but not identical with, that air of certitude and finality already mentioned – no doubt delights his admirers as much as it infuriates his detractors, viz: his pugnacity in controversy. He does not pull his punches. He seldom, if ever, shows any tenderness for the feelings of people who happen to think differently from himself, dismissing their views with contemptuous or witheringly sarcastic putdowns. This may be effective polemically, but it will alienate some readers unnecessarily.

Examples of Weigel’s over-confidence in his own judgment and the lack of depth in his analyses can be found more or less wherever one cares to look in his essays. The first essay in his collection, The Fragility of Order (2018) – an essay entitled “The Great War Revisited” – affords an apt illustration of both those attributes. The essay bears the subtitle, “Why It Began, Why It Continued, and What That Means for Today”. The essay consists of fourteen-and-a-half pages. Yet the English historian, A. J. P. Taylor, devoted an entire volume – and a substantial one – of his magisterial five-volume A Century of Conflict 1848-1948 to the causes of the First World War: a subject which Weigel disposes of in a mere four pages. The causes of the Great War 1914-18 (according to Weigel) were a combination of Balkan instability, rising Serbian nationalism, the political decadence of Austria-Hungary, and the web of unwise and counter-productive alliances entered into by European powers driven by a mutual distrust amounting almost to paranoia, and a desire to protect or advance their own interests, together with a notable failure to perceive where their true interests lay. For good measure, Weigel mentions what he regards as the malign role played by certain allegedly pervasive intellectual influences, including a distorted understanding of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, Nietzschean Prometheanism, the Bergsonian notion of the élan vital, and the emerging political ideologies of Teutonic supremacy and Pan-Slavism.

Weigel does not offer much in the way of hard evidence or reasoned arguments to support his thesis. He merely states it assertorically, as if it were certainly and demonstrably true – too obvious to need proof, in fact. Now, it may be true, and I think certain parts of it would probably be accepted without demur by most historians (although they would prefer to see the evidence). The only points I would make are—

(1) that some elements of Weigel’s analysis are rationally contestable, and

(2) that, by any criteria, his analysis is inadequate because (among other reasons) it takes little or no account of the personalities of the decision-makers, the loci of power and the processes of decision-making in the various European states, or the psychology, predispositions, prejudices, perceptions, and personal motivations of the principal actors.

Weigel’s air of certitude goes with a tendency to see the world and both historical and contemporary issues in black-and-white terms. Thus (to cite one example) he thinks communism is evil, period. But he does not consider whether aspects of Marx’s diagnosis of the ills of capitalism might be correct. He does not ask whether communism in the Soviet Union and China represented improvements in any respects over the regimes that had preceded them, or whether communism could fairly claim certain achievements – e.g. universal employment, housing, education, healthcare, low crime rates, and the eradication of socially harmful levels of inequality – which have eluded some liberal democracies. He does not ask why so many people in the newly liberated states of eastern Europe now look back on the communist period with a certain wistfulness, or why, having initially welcomed the promises of liberal democracy and capitalist economics, they seem so disenchanted with the realities. Nor does he seem willing to consider seriously the possibility that free and unregulated markets might become dysfunctional and require urgent government intervention if they are to be prevented from being socially destructive. He champions Republican policies to the extent of claiming justification for the Iraq wars, while excoriating Democrat policies on healthcare, welfare programmes, foreign affairs, the economy, and just about everything else. He describes President Obama as having “a mind awash in the intellectual exhaust fumes of postmodernism”. It need hardly be said that such abusive language and naked partisanship are not calculated to win him any friends on the left – or, it might be added, anywhere on the political spectrum in Europe, where the majority view, even on the right, is (1) that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were calamitous and costly mistakes, and (2) that President Obama, whatever his flaws, had a far better record on the economy, foreign policy, the environment, and social justice than the Republican presidents who preceded and followed him.

Weigel has been severely critical of the western European powers, and especially of the European Union, which he sees, not entirely inaccurately, as an instrument of social and philosophical liberalism opposed in principle to the American neo-conservative political positions that he has consistently advocated throughout his career. His views on Europe are set out most comprehensively in The Cube and the Cathedral (2005), in which he claimed that below-replacement birthrates in most European countries meant that Europe was “committing demographic suicide” and undermining its own culture by increasing its dependence on (mainly Muslim) immigration. Weigel and other right-wing American Catholic intellectuals (of whom William Kilpatrick is an example) view a resurgent Islam and the liberal commitment to an unsustainable multiculturalism as threats both to Christianity and to the survival of the western culture which grew out of the Christian religion. He does not consider the possibility that closer contact with (and direct experience of) both Christianity and secular liberalism might, in the medium to long term, affect Muslims and Islam in ways that cannot yet be foreseen.

When we turn to the scandal of clerical sex abuse, Weigel follows Pope Benedict XVI in ascribing such cases to a lack of faith – more specifically, to the crisis of faith that occurred after 1968, as the Church struggled to absorb the full implications of the changes wrought by the Second Vatican Council and the sexual revolution. No doubt, all of these played their part. But the incidence of clerical sex abuse and the attempts to cover up the scandal instead of dealing with it, cannot be satisfactorily explained by a monocausal account. Other factors were at work, including an instinct on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to avoid adverse publicity whatever the cost, and an ingrained culture of clericalism and deference by the laity towards ecclesial authority. If the Church is to deal effectively with this crisis and prevent its recurrence, her investigations must be conducted thoroughly, fearlessly, honestly, and transparently.

Weigel is an intelligent, stimulating, and thought-provoking interlocutor. But he is an unreliable guide. The Catholic Faith does not encourage such certainty as his: on the contrary, it teaches us how to live without it. We strive to do the best we can, and for the rest we place our trust in God, acknowledging our own limitations, which include the fact that we are not omniscient. We should not overestimate the deliverances of our reasoning, or our own powers of understanding and foresight. Nor should we assume that, simply because not everything in the world is as we should like it to be, it is going to hell in a handcart. The world is not under a duty to comport itself according to our desires, prescriptions, and preferences; and, if it fails to do so, it does not follow that an apocalypse is imminent. Catholics believe in a doctrine of divine providence. This includes, in the words of the Dominican theologian, Père Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “God’s loving care for man and the need for confidence in Almighty God.” It is not the least of Weigel’s flaws that he persistently seems to place greater trust in his own reasoning than in God.

2

In several respects, Weigel resembles an English philosopher, the late Roger Scruton. Like Scruton, he is politically conservative and a polemical defender of conservative positions. Like Scruton, he is a clear thinker – although both sometimes display a greater degree of certitude in matters of opinion than their arguments appear to warrant – and an outstanding writer. And, again like Scruton, Weigel is a Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank based in Washington DC. And, of course, Weigel and Scruton share an allegiance to Christianity.

They also share, or so it seems to me, a tendency to see the world in black-and-white terms, and to attack more nuanced thinking as “woolly” and “liberal”. The title of Scruton’s final broadside against left-wing intellectuals – Fools, Frauds and Firebrands – reveals perhaps more than he intended about his attitudes. It would surely have been more polite – and more becoming in a philosopher – to have conceded at least the abstract possibility that there might be some merit in the arguments of his opponents. Instead, Scruton employs the rhetorical weapons of scorn, ridicule, and invective, as well as the logical weapons of reasoned philosophical arguments. Similarly, Weigel, in his essays, although he sometimes quotes approvingly from other conservative thinkers, including Jews and Protestants, invariably lambastes and lampoons liberals and left-wing radicals, even among his co-religionists. His depictions of communists are almost cartoonish, like pantomime villains. The ideas that nations with histories, tribal ethnicities, and cultures like Russia’s or China’s might be unsuited to liberal democracy as it has developed in the West, or that the rulers of such nations might have valid points of view of their own, or that there might exist such things as “Asian values” with which the West is imperfectly acquainted but which Asian countries wish to uphold and defend as an intrinsic part of their culture, are never entertained for a moment. He would probably dismiss all such talk as cultural relativism.

Well, is it? And, if it is, is it necessarily to be dismissed on that account? A people’s history and culture are surely relevant to deciding what system of government might work best for them. And it is surely unlikely that a form of government developed elsewhere, and in very different circumstances, could simply be imposed on a nation which lacks the political and governmental infrastructure, the cultural traditions, the popular customs, the social institutions, and the philosophical beliefs to support it. Like Scruton, Weigel has a dogmatic approach to ethical and political questions which effectively precludes any possibility of a rapprochement with people who do not share his basic philosophical assumptions and political orientation. This coming from a member of the Catholic Church, which invented the term “inculturation,” and which includes, in its incomparably rich and varied pastoral tradition, the Ignatian ideas of “discernment,” “accompaniment,” and “meeting people where they are,” is, to say the least, a little puzzling.[1]

It is possible to defend a point of view without implying that anyone who thinks differently is a knave or a fool. It is possible to grant that an opponent’s arguments have some merit without capitulating in argument or abjuring one’s own opinions. It is possible to argue eloquently and passionately, but with civility and respect for one’s adversaries. It is possible to advance truth-claims for one’s faith without claiming for oneself a monopoly on truth or wisdom or rationality. It is possible for equally intelligent, rational, and well-informed people to hold different beliefs and, even when confronted with the same evidence, to reach different conclusions. It is possible for people to agree to differ without harbouring feelings of contempt, animosity, anger, or resentment. It is possible for people of different cultures and religions to live side by side as neighbours on terms of mutual amity and respect. Acceptance of these propositions is, I would argue, necessary if we are to live amicably and peaceably with others in the pluralistic, multicultural, yet law-governed society of a modern liberal democracy. It is necessary if we are to share the same public square without causing violence or disorder. I would also argue that the truth of all these propositions has been empirically and emphatically demonstrated at many times and in many places.

Polemical writing is often entertaining, especially when the writer is not only partisan, but witty. But readers who care more for balance and fairness in argument, or who see the world in more nuanced terms, or who believe that people of different convictions may sometimes coöperate in the service of the common good, or who just prefer courtesy to confrontation in discourse, might want something a bit different from what either of these gifted, but combative, thinkers has to offer.

A final point: Weigel is primarily a Christian theologian, and his work as a social, cultural, and political commentator is an off-shoot of his theological concerns. But it is a curious and striking fact that, in his extensive output, there is very little mention of Our Lord. There is a great deal about God, the Church, the Pope, the Catholic Faith, doctrine and dogma, and modern evils, but not much about the Founder of the Church. One cannot help but wonder why. Is it, perhaps, because Our Lord was not enough of a neo-con to be recruited to Weigel’s cause?

Notes

[1]It is not, however, surprising to find that George Weigel is no admirer of Pope Francis, or that he has volubly expressed his negative views of the current pope in several articles. Ironically, the title of an earlier book of Weigel’s, concerning Pope Benedict XVI, was God’s Choice. Was God otherwise occupied, then, when Pope Francis was elected?

Jon Elsby’s spiritual and intellectual journey has been from Protestantism to atheism, and finally to Catholicism, an evolution he has traced in his memoir Wrestling With the Angel: A Convert’s Tale, published in paperback by CentreHouse Press. His most recent book, also published by CentreHouse Press, is Seeing is Believing, which develops themes touched on in his memoir, but with greater focus on the relations between faith and culture, an issue addressed by several American apologists, though very few on the UK side of the Atlantic have taken it up. Seeing is Believing is available on Amazon Kindle.

The philosophy of Iris Murdoch

by Jon Elsby

During her lifetime, Iris Murdoch was probably better known – and more highly esteemed – as a novelist than as a philosopher. Privately, Isaiah Berlin once called her ‘a lady not noted for the clarity of her ideas’.’ Yet she taught philosophy at St Anne’s College, Oxford for several years, and, since her death, her reputation as a moral philosopher has steadily grown while her standing as a novelist has (unfairly, in my view) somewhat declined.

Some twenty years ago, I read, with great enjoyment and no little excitement, most of Iris Murdoch’s novels and, with more muted feelings, the better part of her published writings on philosophy. Having done so, I concluded that I had learned everything I could from her and, rather reluctantly (for one never parts readily from old friends), sold my copies of all her works to a second-hand bookseller.

Murdoch shared the belief of most of her philosophical contemporaries (1) that the idea of a personal God is no longer tenable, and (2) that God is irrelevant to morality. Both of these beliefs are treated by many modern philosophers as self-evident: so much so that, in most contemporary philosophical discourse, they are simply assumed without any discussion, argument, evidence, or proof. This seems rather high-handed, given that there are approximately 2.4 billion Christians and 1.8 billion Muslims in the world (which adds up to some fifty-seven per cent of the global population), for whom a personal God is not only a tenable idea but a reality; and all monotheists would concur that their deepest moral insights and convictions are derived from their conception of God. It would seem, therefore, that modern trends in analytical philosophy run counter to the common sense of rather more than half the human race. This does not seem in any way to inhibit the confidence with which most analytic philosophers hold and propound their beliefs. What that shows, it seems to me, is that, even where highly intelligent people are concerned, communities of the like-minded tend to reinforce existing prejudices and discourage the expression of any contrary views. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on the facts of the case. If the prejudices are benign and the contrary views malignant, then to reinforce the former and discourage the latter may be justified. If, however, the prejudices are dangerous errors, and the contrary views are necessary to their correction, then the opposite is the case.

It seems to me that Murdoch’s views on religion are deeply confused – and somewhat confusing. She expresses approval of the way religion ‘is detaching itself from supernatural dogma’, but fails to ask what remains of religion when this process of detachment is complete. She wishes to defend ‘the sovereignty of good’ and the reality of a transcendent dimension, but denies the existence of any transcendent source of goodness. It is not at all clear what ‘the Good’ means, or why, in the absence of God, it should be accorded a transcendent status. She claims that ‘as moral beings we are immersed in a reality that transcends us and that moral progress consists in awareness of this reality and submission to its purposes’, but she does not explain how a non-personal transcendent reality can have ‘purposes’ of any kind, let alone purposes to which we are morally obliged to submit.

It is surely not unreasonable to ask where Murdoch’s philosophy leaves God. The answers she offers are incoherent. She wishes to affirm the transcendent reality of the Good while detaching it from the idea of God – i.e. from a, or rather the, transcendent source of goodness. She wants morals without any foundation in metaphysics. She wishes to endow ‘the Good’ – the central concept of her moral philosophy – with ‘all of the characteristics traditionally associated with God’, but without positing any Divine Being: the divine attributes are left, as it were, suspended in mid-air, unattached to anything that might conceivably have such properties. In articulating her moral philosophy, she uses words such as ‘good’ and ‘virtuous’’as if their meaning were patently clear, which, in the absence of any religious framework, it certainly is not. She wishes to defend ‘an adult religion’, but a defence which consists in robbing the concept of religion of some of its defining characteristics – in fact, of all that distinguishes it from moral philosophy – is no defence at all.

Murdoch has been called a ‘Godless theologian’ but the term is a self-contradiction. Atheology is not some dynamic new form of theology, but its negation. Theology means literally ‘talk about God’. If the concept of God is evacuated of all meaning, if it is no more than a name without a referent, then there is nothing to talk about. And, in the absence of God, theology is meaningless – it becomes, quite literally, nonsense.

If, as Murdoch herself acknowledged, religion and morality are inextricably tied, then we should do well to desist from attempts to sunder those ties. The twentieth century graphically showed what becomes of such attempts. The totalitarian politics of the Nazis and the communists, the absurdist experiments of the Dadaists, the liberal humanism of the Bloomsbury Group, Sartrean existentialism, nihilistic hedonism, and the counter-culture of the 1960s, were all, in their different ways, responses to the Nietzschean proclamation that God is dead.1 They were endeavours to fashion a purely human world – a Godless world, in which absolutely free and autonomous human beings would create their own moral reality through their consciously willed choices. Iris Murdoch (who, as a student at Oxford, had briefly joined the Communist Party) was a part of that period; and her atheistic moral philosophy, notwithstanding its fundamental incoherence, is one of the more admirable and humane responses to the exigencies of the time. She deserves our gratitude for maintaining, however incoherently, against the prevailing trends of her time, the continuing vitality, relevance, and necessity of metaphysics to the enterprise of philosophy.

If philosophers wish to move beyond the ethical dilemmas arising from a moral philosophy which tries (unsuccessfully) to have things both ways – to affirm the reality of a transcendent dimension without acknowledging the logically necessary Being who alone can be the source of such transcendence – they should resume the ancient dialogue with theology. Here, some analytic philosophers will demur, saying that philosophy is concerned with the natural realm, not the supernatural, and therefore it cannot admit the claims of revelation, which are essential to religion. But to argue thus is to beg the question, not to answer it. The proper subject of philosophy is the whole of reality. If reality includes supernatural beings, then such beings must form part of the subject matter of a true philosophy. The only sense in which supernatural beings are excluded from philosophy and made the proper subjects of revealed religion, is that philosophy concerns itself only with the aspects of supernatural beings that can be known through the exercise of natural reason. Anything beyond what natural reason can discover belongs to revealed religion, which is the subject of theology.

Finally, moral philosophers should remember the words of George Washington in his farewell address of September 1796—

‘Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of a peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.’

The history of the last hundred and twenty years is one long demonstration of the wisdom of those words. They deserve to be carefully pondered. The post-Nietzschean – and, more particularly, the post-war – generation of philosophers assumed too readily that the concept of God had been wholly discredited. It should have occurred to them that a concept which has formed the cornerstone of every great human civilization, and which has given rise to so many of the world’s religious and philosophical systems, its artistic masterpieces, its concept of law, its sense of the necessity of order, and its theories of government, would not be likely to disappear merely because, in certain parts of the world, it had temporarily ceased to be fashionable.

Notes

1The word ‘proclamation’ is here used advisedly. The death of God was not a proposition for which Nietzsche adduced any rational arguments. It was merely an assertion, violently made and vigorously insisted upon – but one for which no evidence was offered.

Jon Elsby’s spiritual and intellectual journey has been from Protestantism to atheism, and finally to Catholicism, an evolution he has traced in his memoir Wrestling With the Angel: A Convert’s Tale, published in paperback by CentreHouse Press. His most recent book, also published by CentreHouse Press, is Seeing is Believing, which develops themes touched on in his memoir, but with greater focus on the relations between faith and culture, an issue addressed by several American apologists, though very few on the UK side of the Atlantic have taken it up. Seeing is Believing is available on Amazon Kindle.

A Retrospect on The Three Tenors

by Jon Elsby

Just about everyone old enough to remember the football World Cups of the 1990s and early 2000s will remember the Three Tenors. The open air concerts they gave, cleverly timed to coincide with those World Cups, converted Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras from operatic superstars into household names, and briefly catapulted Pavarotti’s rendition of ‘Nessun dorma’ into the pop charts. Never mind that he held the climactic top B for much longer than the score stipulates. Who cares when the tenor can make a sound like that – a sound that gives goosebumps to just about anyone with an ear for music?

Of course, the Three Tenors, although they were undoubtedly the biggest names and the most prolific classical recording artists of their day, were not the only great tenors who were then active. But they impinged on the consciousness of the general public in a way that their competitors didn’t. For better or worse, they defined the expectations of the tenor voice for at least two generations of listeners, many of whom would never have dreamt of setting foot inside an opera house.

They weren’t the only great tenors whose fame spread far beyond the rarefied world of opera. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Enrico Caruso and John McCormack achieved comparable fame. The extent of Caruso’s renown may be judged from a story about a boxer (of all things). Jack Doyle was a colourful Irish heavyweight and a promising tenor – when he could be kept off the booze. On more than one occasion, however, he entered the ring too drunk to stand, let alone fight. Despite a few fiascos of this kind, he claimed that he could ‘fight like Dempsey and sing like Caruso’: a boast which prompted a veteran boxing reporter to remark that the only thing Dempsey, Caruso, and Jack Doyle had in common was that all three could knock out Jack Doyle.

After Caruso, few tenors, even the greatest, became well known to the general public. In Brian De Palma’s 1987 film, The Untouchables, there is a scene where Al Capone (played by Robert De Niro) is attending a performance of Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci and is moved to tears by the tenor’s singing of ‘Vesti la giubba’. Although we are not told so, it is pretty clear that the tenor is meant to be Caruso. But not many viewers identified the owner of the voice on the soundtrack as Mario del Monaco, one of the greatest tenors of the 1950s.

The relationship between operatic tenors and the movie industry is an interesting subject in its own right. Several tenors appeared in movies, including Beniamino Gigli, Richard Tauber, and Lauritz Melchior, which shows that, even in the days before Arnold Schwarzenegger, acting ability was not a sine qua non of a film career. Most tenors are indifferent actors on stage, and have absolutely no idea how to act for the cameras. They weren’t interested in learning either. As far as they were concerned, they were hired for their voices, and, as long as they sang well, nothing else mattered. Or, if it did, it was somebody else’s problem.

Part of the appeal of the Three Tenors phenomenon was the sense of friendly rivalry it generated. For a time, the question who was the greatest tenor was discussed with the animation normally reserved for debates about the relative merits of centre forwards or fast bowlers. Even dedicated opera buffs, who are apt to be scornful of that sort of thing, found themselves drawn into discussions about what a Three Tenors line-up of the past might have looked like. What about a 1930 version comprising any three of Giovanni Martinelli, Aureliano Pertile, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, and Gigli, for example? Or a 1950 line-up of Jussi Björling, Giuseppe di Stefano, and del Monaco? Or a 1960 trio of Richard Tucker, Carlo Bergonzi, and Franco Corelli? The possibilities are endless.

The Three Tenors concerts also served as a reminder that tenors are not only classical artists: they are also performers, and the first duty of a performer is to connect with his or her audience. Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras proved themselves consummate communicators. The hype which preceded the concerts would have counted for nothing if the tenors hadn’t delivered what the audience wanted – and what it expected. In fact, hype can be a problem if it generates expectations which are then not fulfilled. Connoisseurs of singing may have disliked the concept of an open air concert in a huge venue with artificial amplification, and may have objected that the tenors all gave full-on performances with very little interpretative subtlety or nuance, but they missed the point. On these occasions, the tenors were not performing for their normal audience of opera lovers. They were performing for the general public. If opera lovers objected, they didn’t have to watch – or listen, for that matter: a point Domingo forcefully made in several interviews. For most people, the sight of a beaming Frank Sinatra standing and applauding the tenors’ joint rendition of ‘My Way’ probably summed up how they felt. This was not so much a classical concert as a musical party to which all were invited. There was something in it for everyone, except those too precious and priggish to shed their inhibitions, loosen their ties, and enjoy the performance.

The Three Tenors were criticized by some for the substantial sums of money they made from these concerts. It is hard to see any reason other than envy for this. In the first place, other performers, like elite sportspeople and rock stars, make far more money without exciting any comment. Secondly, Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras, individually and jointly, have raised and given staggering sums to charity in their careers. Why should they not be properly recompensed for their work?

The criticism also overlooks the sheer precariousness of the singer’s career. It depends entirely upon a physical part of him – namely, his voice. An illness, an accident, an injury, or a surgical operation, may deprive him of his voice at any time. He has no way of knowing how long his career will last. It might span four decades, or it might be over in less than one. Tenors are not salaried, nor do they get an occupational pension. They rely wholly on the fees they can negotiate with tough, hard-nosed record company executives, opera house administrators, and impresarios for their appearances. A tenor who is not equally tough and astute in his business dealings is liable to leave the negotiating room in his underpants.

There are many cautionary tales of tenors who fell on hard times after their careers ended. One of the most poignant is that of Tom Burke (1890–1969), who was known as ‘the Lancashire Caruso’. Well, he wasn’t quite that, but he was a fine tenor and he should have enjoyed a long and successful career. Unfortunately, his gifts were accompanied by serious flaws. The son of poor, working class parents, he harboured a towering contempt for well-heeled opera audiences. He drank too hard and too often, and he was an inveterate philanderer whose womanizing got him into trouble with Jack Dempsey, then the former world heavyweight boxing champion, and (as if that were not bad enough) the Mafia. The tenor who had favourably impressed Caruso and Gigli, and sung to audiences at La Scala, the New York Met, and Covent Garden, ended his days in penury and obscurity, living in a single, rented room and working as a barman in a golf club.

So, three cheers for the Three Tenors. The concerts they gave together belong to the history of show business rather than opera. But, between 1990 and 2002, for a few hours every four years, untold millions of viewers and listeners were held spellbound as three of the greatest opera singers of their generation worked their inimitable magic. That, surely, deserves a celebration.

Jon Elsby is a specialist in opera, on which subject he has written a wide-ranging survey of operatic tenors, Heroes and Lovers, published by CentreHouse Press in paperback in 2019, and now available at Amazon Kindle and on most other ebook platforms.

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey

Review by Jon Elsby

Reviewers have been divided about the purpose of this book. Supporters of Donald Trump see it as an exercise in score-settling. Other Comey critics, not necessarily Republicans, are inclined to see it as an ego-trip – the former Director of the FBI seizing a final chance to take centre stage before he slips into historical oblivion. Fair-minded, non-partisan readers will probably disagree; they will regard the book as, first, an attempt to set the record straight, after the avalanche of lies from Trump and innumerable misleading statements in the media, by telling the truth about James Comey’s tenure of office as the head of the FBI; and, second, a sustained meditation on the virtues and values of leadership by a man who has had extensive experience of leading (and being led) at multiple levels, including the highest.

In fact, the book is more than any of these. It is probably as close to an autobiography as Comey will ever get. It tells us something about his upbringing, his schooling, his experience of being bullied, the traumatic and terrifying experience as an adolescent of confronting the Ramsey Rapist, and his early experiences of leadership in the workplace. (Comey, then aged sixteen, and his brother, who was a year younger, were at home alone when a gunman broke into their house and threatened them. The boys eventually managed to escape by climbing out of a bathroom window, and the gunman had to flee to avoid capture. Only later did they find out that the armed intruder was, in fact, the so-called Ramsey Rapist, who had been terrorizing the area for months.)

We read about his admiration for the proprietor of the grocery store where he got his first job – an honest man who knew how to be firm but fair, and how to temper toughness with kindness: something Comey adverts to again and again throughout the book. It is clearly his view that such knowledge is absolutely indispensable to wise and morally good leadership.

In his career in law enforcement, Comey was at great pains to ensure that everyone was treated alike, irrespective of rank, status, fame, or wealth. In order to be genuinely impartial, justice had to be blind to social distinctions. Comey’s education, his early moral and intellectual formation, peculiarly suited him to the career he chose. He was brought up in a family strongly imbued with the religious values of Christian orthodoxy. He very quickly acquired a hatred of bullying, partly from being on the receiving end of it at school and partly from the shame of meting out similar treatment to another boy later on. This gave him an instinctive sympathy with victims of crime or anti-social behaviour. He noted that good leaders inspired loyalty not by threatening or terrorizing others, but by having clear moral values, by treating others fairly, by being just but also merciful, by combining confidence with humility, by being good listeners, and, above all, by being anchored in the truth.

That last quality became especially relevant when Comey, as a federal prosecutor, first had to deal with members of the Mafia. The Mafia – La Cosa Nostra, “this thing of ours” – had a warped ethical code which enabled them, despite their brutal and immoral conduct, to maintain the fiction that they were “men of honour”. Comey lists the rules a “made man” supposedly committed to and abided by—

“… [T]he rules of American Cosa Nostra: no killing with explosives; no killing law enforcement; no killing other made men without official permission; no sleeping with another made man’s wife; and no dealing in narcotics. As a general rule, the Mafia did a good job following the first two rules. The American government would crush anyone who harmed innocents with explosions or killed law enforcement. But the promises not to kill made guys, bed their wives, or deal dope were lies […] Mafia members routinely did all three. […]

“The closely related Sicilian Mafia had a different rule, one that highlighted the centrality of dishonesty to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic. Newly inducted members were told that they were forbidden to lie to another ‘made member’ – called a ‘man of honour’ in Sicily – unless […] it was necessary to lure him to his death.”

This meant, as a Mafioso once explained to Comey, without a trace of irony, that “men of honour may only lie about the most important things”. Anyone with a normally functioning conscience will see the contradiction. The moral orientation of the Mafia was the diametric opposite of being anchored in the truth. They were embedded in the lie.

The experience of having dealt with sundry members of the Mafia as a prosecutor stood Comey in good stead when, many years later, he came to deal with the forty-fifth President of the United States. He recognized Donald Trump’s type, and he describes it well (more accurately, he came to recognize it. Initially, he was nonplussed, as anyone would be whose past experience of dealing with presidents had not prepared him in any way for an encounter with a serial liar and, in the words of Lord Patten, a “vulgar, abusive, ignorant man”. Only when Comey made the connexion between Trump and the gangsters he had met in the course of his career in law enforcement was he able finally to take the President’s measure)—

“[T]his president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego-driven, and about personal loyalty.”

The indictment may seem extreme, but it is borne out by the facts. At an early meeting with Trump, the President told him, “I need loyalty.” It rang a bell with Comey, both in the sense of sounding an alarm and in the sense of stirring a memory. He writes—

“The ‘leader of the free world’, the self-described great business tycoon, didn’t understand leadership. Ethical leaders never ask for loyalty. Those leading through fear – like a Cosa Nostra boss – require personal loyalty. Ethical leaders care deeply about those they lead, and offer them honesty and decency, commitment and their own sacrifice. They have a confidence that breeds humility. Ethical leaders know their own talent but fear their own limitations – to understand and reason, to see the world as it is and not as they wish it to be. They speak the truth and know that making wise decisions requires people to tell them the truth. And to get that truth, they create an environment of high standards and deep consideration – ‘love’ is not too strong a word – that builds lasting bonds and makes extraordinary achievement possible. It would never occur to an ethical leader to ask for loyalty.”

Of course, what is at issue here is the fundamental opposition between two different conceptions of leadership. The opposition between them is logically necessary and ineradicable because it is rooted not in mere opinions, but in convictions – in their antecedent ethical beliefs and assumptions. On the one hand, we have Comey’s concept of ethical leadership, deeply rooted in the moral teachings of the Christian tradition. On the other, we have Donald Trump’s concept of leadership (if he were capable of conceptualizing or articulating it), which, did he but know it, is rooted in the ruthless pragmatism of Machiavelli’s The Prince. The former, at its best, produces outstanding leaders who earn (but do not always get) the loyalty of their subordinates without ever asking for it. The latter, at its best, produces Cesare Borgia (Cesare Borgia, 1475–1507, though hardly a model of Christian virtue, was probably no worse than many other Italian noblemen of his day. He was prepared to do whatever was necessary in order to win and secure political power for himself. That included committing or authorizing assassinations, perpetrating various acts of treason and treachery, embarking on aggressive wars of conquest, and imprisoning political rivals and adversaries without charge. Throughout history, dictators, from Caligula to Kim Jong-un, have displayed similar qualities. Donald Trump seems to have most of the instincts of dictators, but to be restrained from their worst excesses by the checks and balances provided in the American politico-legal system).

Given the unbridgeable gulf that separates their respective worldviews, it is unsurprising that Trump and Comey did not get along. Comey struggled to understand Trump: a basically decent, rational man will always struggle to understand someone who is neither decent nor rational. He lacks the concepts and criteria by which to take his measure – although, ironically, in a different context, Comey would have understood Trump perfectly. If he, as a federal prosecutor, had been interviewing Trump with a view to charging him with, say, racketeering, he would have appraised him swiftly and accurately. But his expectations of a gangster, and of the President of the United States, were, not unnaturally, quite different. Comey had already had dealings with two US presidents, both of whom, despite significant differences in policy and personality, were steeped in Christian moral values. Trump, as he well knew, was not; but even so, he was not prepared for the reality. He was shocked by what he found: a man whose moral compass was not so much broken or defective as non-existent.

All this is vividly described in the book. The prose is not literary – and, arguably, literary prose would have been inappropriate to Comey’s purpose here – but it is clear, concise, and readable. It does the job it has to do. It enables Comey to get his points across economically and forcefully.

There is a danger, of which Comey is sensitively aware, that anyone writing a book with a high moral purpose will come across as sanctimonious. In his prefatory Author’s Note, Comey admits to being “stubborn, prideful, overconfident, and driven by ego”, adding that “I’ve struggled with those [faults] my whole life.” What saves him from sanctimony is self-awareness. He is disarmingly honest about his own failings, and tells many stories against himself. A sanctimonious man would not. An egoist would not. And a narcissist most definitely would not. James Comey has been accused by his detractors of being all three. In my view, these accusations are unjust. The person we encounter in these pages, it seems to me, is honest, morally serious, well grounded, intelligent, objective, rational, and humane. And those are seven more reasons why his views on leadership should be attended to with respect, and pondered long after we have finished reading the book.

Jon Elsby is the author of numerous books on aspects of Roman Catholicism, and is a specialist in opera, on which subject he has written a wide-ranging survey of operatic tenors, titled Heroes and Lovers.

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