|
Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields,
St. Albans AL3 4JR (01727 864257)
23sep96
Elizabeth Fowler,
[VIP Quaker.]
Dear Elizabeth,
The Quaker Quagmire
Your letter dated
31july96 is invaluable because it flushes out the evidence for the key
division in the Society of Friends. First to deal with facts which, given
the philosophy demonstrated in your letter, become less important. For
this reason I shall include them within brackets.
(The library
committee of which you were not a member at the time unanimously
agreed to buy the Morgan book. You then secretly caused the chairman
of the committee to abrogate the decision of her committee, without
informing it. The Morgan book has not taken its place in the St.
Albans P.M. library. Your reason for censoring the book was that
it was too right wing. You had no proper role in the matter.)
I quote from your 31july96
letter;
I happen
to believe that the arguments advanced by various
writers like Ros Coward are worth discussing.... Friends
might well wish to refuse tactfully books which advance views
not in keeping with Friends' testimonies.
The lack of mention
of facts in your letter echoes my complaint that you and
Ken Goode sandbagged the meetings to discuss my concern about censorship
of facts in the Society of Friends by continually referring
to opinions. This was followed by a couple of years when
both you and Ken Goode refused to respond to my repeated written query
as to whether you believed that facts existed. Your letter,
for which I give you many thanks, enables me to reduce the key issue to
a short epigram. 1
The
Reconstructed Quaker;
Should the only source
of facts required by Quakers to meet the exhortation, clauses
1.02 33 and 23.1 (cf the red Quaker Bible);
"Try to
discern new growing points in social and economic life. Seek to
understand the causes of injustice, social unrest and fear."
contain obnoxious opinion,
then it should be kept from Quakers. Put more succinctly, the Reconstructed
Quaker has a contempt for the truth. (He probably believes that facts
do not exist, and that all is opinion. He is not alone in
this, being merely a creature of a widespread degenerate Philosophy of
Knowledge stemming from Brussels/Solvay 1927.) Even more succinctly, the
R.C. gives precedence to opinions over facts. 2
The
Traditional Quaker respects facts , and believes them
indispensible for Quakers. He would seek the truth from wherever it might
be found.
[Christian
Faith and Practice, 1925 issue, page 68; "…. The pursuit of knowledge
for its own sake is a noble activity of the human spirit, … ….
For all of us the pursuit of knowledge is the means of entry into
the great common heritage of mankind….better able to grasp the
new contributions to enlightenment…. The barriers of prejudice
often make us ready to reject unfamiliar forms of truth both new
and old ….." This last sentence maps exactly onto Fowler early
in this letter; "…. refuse tactfully books which advance views
not in keeping…." - added by I.C. feb99.]
The Patricia Morgan
book, "Farewell the Family?", pub. IEA jan95, is the only source of certain
facts which Quakers require to fulfil the advice in clause 23.1 et seqq.
Should you disagree with my characterisation of you as a Reconstructed
Quaker, then it appears to me that you have the following options;
1 State that
the Morgan facts have little importance for our meeting clause 23.1.
2 State that the same facts are available from another
source, and if possible advise on how we can obtain those facts
free from the obnoxious opinions, and so end the present
disability caused by Quakers' self-imposed ignorance. 3 I would rule
out the third option, towards the end of your 3sep96 letter, that
you are too busy and important to communicate on these matters. Remember
that you found the time to wreck the properly convened discussions
of my concern about suppression of facts. In fact, use
of this option would prove my point, that you do not understand the
distinction between facts and views, or
believe that facts do not exist and/or are unimportant.
The key point is not
whether the Morgan book find its way into the library by fair means or
foul. The key point is whether (a) proper and/or (b) improper procedures
are used with impunity to censor crucial facts. This goes far beyond the
narrow remit of the Morgan facts, which is cited only as an example of
how today's PC Society of Friends suffocates itself.. I believe that this
issue is much more important than the christocentric/universalist divide,
and would warrant schism. We cannot tolerate the gelding of the Society
of Friends. My suspicion that the Reconstructed Quaker heresy finds a
large majority of adherents in Friends House today does not make it orthodox,
because Fox would certainly not be among them. This is not a local problem.
On publication in jan95, I told Padfield in writing that the Morgan facts
therein would be banned from the Quaker Universe of Discourse until around
jan 2000. They remain banned from Quaker discourse today, although the
Morgan name and her facts continue to figure more and more in newspapers
and other media, and triggered the recent Olga Maitland disruption of
legislation. In particular, this 100% censorship means that the destructive
family bashing by a sexually dysfunctional Jantzen in The Friend, 3dec93,
may not be moderated by the Morgan research results.
Pedigree.
When the stranger
of my sons parked on a roundabout, I realised that the Highway Code did
not tell him not to. Similarly, a search of our Quaker heritage will not
find homily about the importance of facts. This was so obvious to Fox
and the rest that they never pointed it out. It is too central to Quaker
tradition. This means that should this be disputed, neither side can call
on pedigree, and we may be forced into schism. The Reconstructed Quaker
is merely the infiltration of twentieth century society, with its destructive
contempt for facts, into the Society of Friends. Generally, I go along
with the pre-C20 respect for facts, which matches my perception of Fox
and Jesus, both of whom would regard contempt for facts as heresy or worse.
[feb99. I
now find that the 1925 version of the Quaker's prime manual, then
called "Christian Faith and Practice", is replete with much urging
that Quakers search after facts; see p 64-77, a lengthy section
entitled "Education". As I have said in Meeting, we are all priests,
not all laity. Thus, p65; "We are dependent on our rank and file.
The standard therefore must be high throughout our whole membership."
This means that truth seekers like me do have tradition on
their side. The presently evolving priesthood in Friends House and
Quaker Journal editorial control directly opposes the guidance of
the 1925 book. The removal of most of the assertions of the primacy
of facts and of search for truth in the 1994 edition, will have
been caused by Reconstructed Quakers getting onto the book's revision
committees since 1925. They prefer to wallow in ignorant opinion,
but they do not have pedigree. Thank goodness we still have clauses
1.02-33 23.01. The Bowdlerization is not yet complete. I.C. feb99.]
Yours sincerely,
Ivor
Catt
cc Ben Pink Dandelion,
cc Beth, Ernest Morton,
cc David Blamires, The Editor, Friends Quarterly,
136 Wellington Road,
Manchester M14 6AR
cc Kenneth Goode,
cc Donald Southall,
Friends House, Euston Rd.,
London NW1 2BJ
cc Harvey Gilman,
Friends House, Euston Rd.,
London NW1 2BJ
cc Norman Marrow,
cc Editor, THE FRIEND,
Friends House, Euston Rd.,
London WD1 2BJ
cc Jonathan Dale, [Swarthmore lecture],
via Hardshaw East MM, Friends Meeting House,
6 Mount St., Manchester M2 5NS
|
