The two churches nearest to him, I have looked up in the office.
Both have certain claims.
At the first of these the Vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa.
He has undermined many a soul's Christianity.
His conduct of the services is also admirable.
In order to spare the laity all "difficulties" he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psalms and now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons.
We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should over reach them through Scripture. But perhaps bur patient is not quite silly enough for this church--or not yet?
At the other church we have Fr. Spike.
The humans are often puzzled to understand the range of his opinions--why he is one day almost a Communist and the next not far from some kind of theocratic Fascism--one day a scholastic, and the next prepared to deny human reason altogether--one day immersed in politics, and, the day after, declaring that all states of us world are equally "under judgment".
We, of course, see the connecting link, which is Hatred.
The man cannot bring himself to teach anything which is not calculated to mock, grieve, puzzle, or humiliate his parents and their friends.
A sermon which such people would accept would be to him as insipid as a poem which they could scan.
There is also a promising streak of dishonesty in him; we are teaching him to say "The teaching of the Church is" when he really means
"I'm almost sure I read recently in Maritain or someone of that sort".
But I must warn you that he has one fatal defect: he really believes.
And this may yet mar all.
But there is one good point which both these churches have in common--they are both party churches.
I think I warned you before that if your patient can't be kept out of the Church, he ought at least to be violently attached to some party within it.
I don't mean on really doctrinal issues; about those, the more lukewarm he is the better.
And it isn't the doctrines on which we chiefly depend for producing malice.
The real fun is working up hatred between those who say "mass" and those who say "holy communion" when neither party could possibly state the difference between, say, Hooker's doctrine and Thomas Aquinas', in any form which would hold water for five minutes.
And all the purely indifferent things--candles and clothes and what not--are an admirable ground for our activities.
We have quite removed from men's minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials--namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples.
You would think they could not fail to see the application.
You would expect to find the "low" churchman genuflecting and crossing himself lest the weak conscience of his "high" brother should be moved to irreverence, and the "high" one refraining from these exercises lest he should betray his "low" brother into idolatry.
And so it would have been but for our ceaseless labour.
Without that the variety of usage within the Church of England might have become a positive hotbed of charity and humility,
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE XVII
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance.
One of the great, achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.
This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess.
Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example.
She would be astonished--one day, I hope, will be--to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.
But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern?
Glubose has this old woman well in hand.
She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants.
She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sign and a smile
"Oh please, please... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast".
You see?
Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.
At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance.
In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says,
"Oh, that's far, far too much!
Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it".
If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.
The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life.
The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state of mind.
All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted.