Taking Stock: Confessions of a City Priest [Hardcover]

 

 

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Thank God for a diarist who combines witty and perceptive observations of people and current social attitudes with a good pinch of humility. Read this book for the laughs it will bring and for the perception behind the comments.

I would have given this book three stars, but for the bits and pieces of flashes of genuine holy religiosity which are displayed here and there by what seems to be a very unusual (?) Anglican priest. Despite being very involved in the "real world", Stock does seem to take seriously such as the Real Presence of Christ and the astral or soul atmospheres of various places. And he is a cat-lover, though I hope I am not unduly influenced by that fact (after all, two or three of the politicians or religious leaders I least like, Lenin, Churchill and Mohammed, also liked cats).

Stock seems firmly within the middle ranges of the C of E, perhaps too posh (?) to go for either boring Low Churchism or "Beers and Queers" High Church quasi-Catholicism. He calls his position "Affirming Catholicism", reminding us impliedly that the C of E is not totally alien to the RC Church, but "merely" in schism.

I can see that Stock dislikes hard-core Roman Catholicism, but tends to despise the more mediocre sort of Low Churchism, not to mention "Happy Clappy" religiosity. Very much part of a sector or two of the so-called "real world", he is nonetheless, I think, a genuine religious. There are flashes of even holiness here and there in this book. He is very honest too, both in what he likes and in what (and whom) he dislikes, sometimes both, as in the case of Mervyn Stockwood, the egregious bishop, who penned his own book of memoirs, perhaps less honestly: see Stockwood, Chanctonbury Ring. I also liked his pen-portrait of Princess Margaret..."the Royal Personage...old and spoilt...".

I was struck by the portraits of a couple of the less salubrious Conservative politicians, the hypocritical Portillo (Port-ee-o) and the patently dishonest Archer. Stock does not conceal his glee when Archer was at least partly cast down from his pedestal. Yet Stock does have Conservative friends as well as Labour and Liberal ones. He says he voted Lib-Dem in 1992 but met Blair once at least and wished him well. surprisingly, he seems not to have noticed (as Goethe put it, in Faust) "the evil one sitting on his shoulder".

I take his political views as slightly naive. He goes easier than I thought on expressing Mandela-worship, but seems to have hated Enoch Powell and the National Front. He probably might find it hard to believe that a "neo-Nazi" could be as good a man as his heroes, or he himself.

He seems obsessed with the question of whether the Church of England should have priestesses or not and is much in favour of it for some reason unexplained. That seems eccentric to me but he seems to be in the majority in the C of E, as far as one can tell from outside (me baptized but not confirmed and last went to church for a funeral a decade ago).

He often criticizes the behaviour of others, yet is refused permission to enter St. Peter's, Rome, because he is wearing shorts! And I note that, at London and on various travels around the world, he is often to be found eating caviar, teal, grouse etc...

What redeems this priest is his interest in the individual soul and spirit of people of all types and classes and nations whom he meets.

I was amused to read that he like me, was a member (in my case, non-political) of the National Liberal Club and that he swam, circa 1988, at the Oasis, as I did. You never know who is in the swimming pool with you!

Victor Stock shows the true face of the city, it's callousness and kindness while dismissing a few myths about politicians and parsons. I found it unputdownable....and i'm very secular

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