Letter to Friends and Benefactors
The Death of Malcolm Muggeridge
December 1990
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
So Malcolm Muggeridge has died, at the venerable age of 87. He was a famous journalist and broadcaster in the English--speaking world, but especially in his own country, England, and in his later years he converted to Catholicism. Countless souls seeking God owe him a great deal. I was one of them. Dear Malcolm! – "God rest him all road ever he offended."
When I returned to England in 1965 after two years in Africa, and, schoolmastering in London, found the school-boys, like their country, ravaged by, notably, four unworthy mopheads known as the Beatles, I looked around for a voice of sanity, or representive of worth, and standing out in his articulate, amusing but relentless condemnation of our worthless twentieth century, leaving it no chance of appeal, was Malcolm Muggeridge.
With crafted clauses and crafty glee, his articles that I would read went for the tin gods of Liberalism, and without mercy or malice tore them to pieces. Poor Liberals accused Malcolm of being "negative", of being "destructive" – you know the whole silly line! – but for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear there was more to him than that. Firstly, someone who has nothing to say does not usually bother with style or craftsmanship to say it, but Malcolm always had style and he was a craftsman with the English language.
And then secondly, behind all the impish mockery and iconoclasm there ran a coherent sense of there being some real values by which all the posturing poltroons who betrayed them stood condemned. Accordingly, although he was not a Catholic at the time, nor even, as I recall, professed himself to be a Christian, he attracted a large number of implicit and explicit believers who had nobody else to defend their minds and souls against the great lie of Liberalism with which their official leaders were, to a man, more or less going along.
So one day I got on a bicycle and rode over to his cottage in Robertsbridge, Sussex, to see him. I cannot remember whether I had announced my (completely unimportant) visit beforehand or not. In any case he and his wife Kitty received me very kindly, sat me down to lunch, and we talked, and he listened, and he essentially understood everything that "my dear boy" had to say about the woes of teaching abandoned youth in mid-20th century London.
I have fond memories of maybe half a dozen such visits to Malcolm and Kitty over the next few years. I am in no way boasting that I was a special friend of theirs, only that Malcolm was a good friend to me, a friend in need as I have no doubt he was to hundreds, maybe thousands, of spiritual derelicts of the 20th century who made as I did the pilgrimage to the Sage of Park Cottage.
How good God is! I think had Malcolm been a fully-fledged Roman Catholic at the time, I might not have gone near him. As it was, with his sharp and independent mind which had gone right into left-wingery and come out the other side, with his total refusal to buy into 20th century illusions, and with his wisdom and goodness of heart manifested in his ready ear and warm hospitality, he greatly helped me towards the time when I left London and went ahead of him into the Catholic Church.
"Ah, my dear boy, so now you are a full card-carrying member", was his greeting to me as I next visited him in the South of France, as though I had done something like joining the Communist Party! But I can remember how I went with them to a local Mass, something he told me that he and Kitty did every day, and how they sat at the back ... Malcolm said the mere idea of receiving Communion was something still alien to him ... yet the reverence with which he attended the Mass, how describe it? This white-haired man withdrawn to the rear of the dark church, with his life's companion beside him and with years of life and of life's battles behind him, several decades of striving and questioning, all dropped into silent homage before the great Mystery in which he sensed, but could not yet discern, the Answer... And we would emerge into the daylight, and the 20th century would pick up again with coffee and breakfast and banter.
So it was no surprise when maybe some ten years later he and Kitty entered the Church. Deo gratias. However, Catholic readers of his several autobiographical books might be surprised for instance by his unCatholic choice of heroes, with exceptions like of course of the great St. Augustine whom he loved. Alas, I never met Malcolm again after he became a Catholic, so I cannot be sure of how he evolved, but I suspect that he came into the Church by his heart, drawn especially by the example of, and contact with, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, while a certain part of his head remained outside, with the existentialists and their progenitors. But let such readers be re-assured that a large part of Malcolm's head was Catholic – how many Catholic rectors of a prestigious university would step down, as he did, years before he became a Catholic, in protest at contraceptives being made available on the campus? He believed with complete sincerity in so much of what many "Catholics" had quite simply abandoned. In any case, he was a beacon in the darkness to many of the spiritual waifs of our time like myself. Dear Malcolm, thank you, and good bye!
Earth, press not hard upon these bones
Of Malcolm, humbug-hater –
To rise, they are too weary now
And nothing will stop them later.
Readers, say a prayer for Malcolm's soul and for Kitty whom he has left behind him.
Meanwhile our beloved 20th century is dragging one more year to its close. 1990 has seen the putting in place of a major Third World War trigger in the Middle East – will 1991 see the pulling of the trigger? God knows, and He knows what He is doing – He has better things to do than to make the world safe for swimming-pools!
Back here at the Seminary you friends and benefactors have looked after us well through the year, and we thank you warmly for all your generosity. We do not have that many seminarians, their number is back below fifty, but if they are faithful to the graces Our Lord is giving them here, they have all that is needed to give back light, warmth, hope and youth to a dark, cold, desperate and aging world. Thank you for relieving them of material worries.
Enclosed is another copy of the latest "Crisis in Faith" tapes flyer, in case you failed to order the first time or need to order more. Modesty forbids me to recommend these tapes, but they may be a winner in the race for Christmas presents which risks otherwise ending in a tie.
I shall be in Latin America for all of December, so if you are thinking of sending me a Christmas card, do not hesitate not to do so! I will take it for granted that you wish all of us at the Seminary a Happy Christmas and New Year – your generosity is proof of that – and to all of yourselves I wish all the blessings of the Advent and Christmas Season. Fear not. Does not the defenseless Baby remind us with what humanly insignificant means God overturns all the schemings of the mighty? 1991 can hold for us nothing that is stronger than the Love of God.
Most sincerely yours in Christ,
December 1990
Dear Friends and Benefactors,
So Malcolm Muggeridge has died, at the venerable age of 87. He was a famous journalist and broadcaster in the English--speaking world, but especially in his own country, England, and in his later years he converted to Catholicism. Countless souls seeking God owe him a great deal. I was one of them. Dear Malcolm! – "God rest him all road ever he offended."
When I returned to England in 1965 after two years in Africa, and, schoolmastering in London, found the school-boys, like their country, ravaged by, notably, four unworthy mopheads known as the Beatles, I looked around for a voice of sanity, or representive of worth, and standing out in his articulate, amusing but relentless condemnation of our worthless twentieth century, leaving it no chance of appeal, was Malcolm Muggeridge.
With crafted clauses and crafty glee, his articles that I would read went for the tin gods of Liberalism, and without mercy or malice tore them to pieces. Poor Liberals accused Malcolm of being "negative", of being "destructive" – you know the whole silly line! – but for anyone with eyes to see or ears to hear there was more to him than that. Firstly, someone who has nothing to say does not usually bother with style or craftsmanship to say it, but Malcolm always had style and he was a craftsman with the English language.
And then secondly, behind all the impish mockery and iconoclasm there ran a coherent sense of there being some real values by which all the posturing poltroons who betrayed them stood condemned. Accordingly, although he was not a Catholic at the time, nor even, as I recall, professed himself to be a Christian, he attracted a large number of implicit and explicit believers who had nobody else to defend their minds and souls against the great lie of Liberalism with which their official leaders were, to a man, more or less going along.
So one day I got on a bicycle and rode over to his cottage in Robertsbridge, Sussex, to see him. I cannot remember whether I had announced my (completely unimportant) visit beforehand or not. In any case he and his wife Kitty received me very kindly, sat me down to lunch, and we talked, and he listened, and he essentially understood everything that "my dear boy" had to say about the woes of teaching abandoned youth in mid-20th century London.
I have fond memories of maybe half a dozen such visits to Malcolm and Kitty over the next few years. I am in no way boasting that I was a special friend of theirs, only that Malcolm was a good friend to me, a friend in need as I have no doubt he was to hundreds, maybe thousands, of spiritual derelicts of the 20th century who made as I did the pilgrimage to the Sage of Park Cottage.
How good God is! I think had Malcolm been a fully-fledged Roman Catholic at the time, I might not have gone near him. As it was, with his sharp and independent mind which had gone right into left-wingery and come out the other side, with his total refusal to buy into 20th century illusions, and with his wisdom and goodness of heart manifested in his ready ear and warm hospitality, he greatly helped me towards the time when I left London and went ahead of him into the Catholic Church.
"Ah, my dear boy, so now you are a full card-carrying member", was his greeting to me as I next visited him in the South of France, as though I had done something like joining the Communist Party! But I can remember how I went with them to a local Mass, something he told me that he and Kitty did every day, and how they sat at the back ... Malcolm said the mere idea of receiving Communion was something still alien to him ... yet the reverence with which he attended the Mass, how describe it? This white-haired man withdrawn to the rear of the dark church, with his life's companion beside him and with years of life and of life's battles behind him, several decades of striving and questioning, all dropped into silent homage before the great Mystery in which he sensed, but could not yet discern, the Answer... And we would emerge into the daylight, and the 20th century would pick up again with coffee and breakfast and banter.
So it was no surprise when maybe some ten years later he and Kitty entered the Church. Deo gratias. However, Catholic readers of his several autobiographical books might be surprised for instance by his unCatholic choice of heroes, with exceptions like of course of the great St. Augustine whom he loved. Alas, I never met Malcolm again after he became a Catholic, so I cannot be sure of how he evolved, but I suspect that he came into the Church by his heart, drawn especially by the example of, and contact with, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, while a certain part of his head remained outside, with the existentialists and their progenitors. But let such readers be re-assured that a large part of Malcolm's head was Catholic – how many Catholic rectors of a prestigious university would step down, as he did, years before he became a Catholic, in protest at contraceptives being made available on the campus? He believed with complete sincerity in so much of what many "Catholics" had quite simply abandoned. In any case, he was a beacon in the darkness to many of the spiritual waifs of our time like myself. Dear Malcolm, thank you, and good bye!
Earth, press not hard upon these bones
Of Malcolm, humbug-hater –
To rise, they are too weary now
And nothing will stop them later.
Readers, say a prayer for Malcolm's soul and for Kitty whom he has left behind him.
Meanwhile our beloved 20th century is dragging one more year to its close. 1990 has seen the putting in place of a major Third World War trigger in the Middle East – will 1991 see the pulling of the trigger? God knows, and He knows what He is doing – He has better things to do than to make the world safe for swimming-pools!
Back here at the Seminary you friends and benefactors have looked after us well through the year, and we thank you warmly for all your generosity. We do not have that many seminarians, their number is back below fifty, but if they are faithful to the graces Our Lord is giving them here, they have all that is needed to give back light, warmth, hope and youth to a dark, cold, desperate and aging world. Thank you for relieving them of material worries.
Enclosed is another copy of the latest "Crisis in Faith" tapes flyer, in case you failed to order the first time or need to order more. Modesty forbids me to recommend these tapes, but they may be a winner in the race for Christmas presents which risks otherwise ending in a tie.
I shall be in Latin America for all of December, so if you are thinking of sending me a Christmas card, do not hesitate not to do so! I will take it for granted that you wish all of us at the Seminary a Happy Christmas and New Year – your generosity is proof of that – and to all of yourselves I wish all the blessings of the Advent and Christmas Season. Fear not. Does not the defenseless Baby remind us with what humanly insignificant means God overturns all the schemings of the mighty? 1991 can hold for us nothing that is stronger than the Love of God.
Most sincerely yours in Christ,