First Confession

by Chris Patten

  These ideas should naturally affect the approach of a host community to immigrants and of immigrants to the country in which they want to live. An immigrant should know about the life, culture and values of the country in which he or she wishes to make his or her home. It often follows that the more immigrants know about their new home of choice, the more they find out about the culture and identity which they brought with them. This was evident in the Polish community with which I grew up in West London after the Second World War. Most of the Polish boys with whom I played rugby – Sikorskis and Komerowskis – knew the words of ‘Red Poppies on Monte Cassino’, the song about the battle in which so many Polish soldiers had been killed. They also sang ‘Jerusalem’ lustily.

  I imagine such an attitude was also true of my great-grandparents and grandparents, making a new home for their families during years when political turmoil and violence in Ireland must occasionally have made them nervous about the views that their host community might have about them. Earlier, I wondered how my grandparents would have felt during the Easter Rising of 1916. If I can do a reverse genetic test – thinking of my gentle father for example and going back another generation – I suspect that (as would have been the case with him) they would have deplored the violence. Their Catholicism was the part of their Irish identity to which my father too held fast, firmly but undemonstratively. And so, as I have written, it has been a central part of my own identity too, through thick and sometimes thin, through occasional bafflement and concern at the Catholic Church’s reactions to a changing world, through serious doubts about the way in which it has sometimes exercised the central authority it claims, through its frequent tendency to place the enforcement of a narrow doctrine above the effort to help people live their lives while holding on to spiritual beliefs. Despite all that, I am proud to be a Catholic and I love this congregation and its ways even when they sometimes bewilder me. When Cardinal Consalvi, the brilliant and reformist Vatican Secretary of State at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was warned that Napoleon wanted to destroy the Church, he replied, ‘Not even we have succeeded in doing that.’ The Catholic Church has somehow managed to survive its mistakes and its sins.

  Naturally, like many other Catholics, I have to overlook some occasional absurdity, even pernicious absurdity. When in 1928 Al Smith became the first Catholic to run for President of the United States, he was questioned about some of the hostility to democracy in papal documents. He replied that like many other Americans he had never heard of them. The great English and Catholic historian Lord Acton, whose remark about the tendency of power to corrupt its holder was penned in the context of writing about the Inquisition, was a strong critic of the ultramontane pretensions of the papacy. He did not believe that popes were always wise and right. He even questioned the decisions made by Rome over the divorce of that terrible old tyrant, Henry VIII. There is indeed a good case to be made for arguing that both Pope Clement VII and Pope Julius III handled the Tudors so badly that they contributed significantly to the schism between Rome and England and the establishment of the national Church. The Blessed John Henry Newman made himself unpopular in Rome and with some in England like Cardinal Manning with his views on the authority of the Church’s leadership. At a time when the Vatican seemed to believe that the modern world was an enemy, Newman argued that the Church and by inference the Pope as its head needed to change. ‘To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ Others were prepared to speak out about Rome’s opinions. G. K Chesterton, for example, argued forcefully that there was a difference between heresy and criticism.

  If my parents had been lapsed Catholics, if they had not been Catholics at all, I hope that luck would have led me to a faith group which would have provided me with some ordered way of expressing or discovering a sense of the spiritual. I find myself comfortable in the Church of England, whose services, music and language reflect some of the most enduring and admirable aspects of our national culture, not least its commendable tolerance. At the beginning of the service of Evensong in Westminster Abbey during the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain, which I mentioned earlier, I swelled with patriotic pride as the great procession of Anglicans – accompanied by the Pope – moved down the central aisle under the flags and banners of the national Church. They carried in the procession the illuminated Gospels of St Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory in 599 or 600, sometimes regarded as the foundation book of the Anglican Church. I also find admirable the religious practices of good evangelical churches, whose music and worship seem to touch their mixed congregations very personally and directly. ‘Happy clappy,’ people sneer. But why not be happy about what you believe? Why not clap what you reckon is very good news? Making fun of this exuberant form of worship should be put in the same category as deriding ‘do gooding’, as though ‘do badding’ must by definition be clearly preferable.

  For all that, I remain a Catholic, with a profound sense of the importance of ecumenism and the hope that one day my wife will be able to take communion in Catholic churches, because Catholicism is a definable part of who I am.

  Some right-wing Catholics – I have not called them fundamentalists – are unashamed in their embrace of double standards. They regard anything said by a pope with whom they agree as beyond criticism. But they get left high and dry when a pope is elected who tries to change a rigid line of teaching. When Pope John XXIII launched the Second Vatican Council and wrote his encyclicals, particularly Pacem in Terris, addressed to the world and advocating freedom of conscience, many opponents in the Church were horrified. Could it really be true that salvation, as was now asserted, could be found outside the Catholic Church? When this saintly old man died, the Vatican’s theological enforcer, the head of the doctrinal praetorian guard in the Holy Office, Cardinal Ottaviani, said that he could now die a Catholic. But for many of us Pope John and the Vatican Council were what the Catholic Church should be; for me, John XXIII was a reason for being a Catholic. He and the Council gave us the sort of hope and inspiration as Catholics that kept us actively in the Church. They helped us to live as Catholics. Today, some of those who attacked Catholics who were critical from time to time of two of Pope John’s successors – Pope St John Paul II and Pope Benedict – themselves denounce Pope Francis for his attempts to return the Church to a more sympathetic and forgiving pastoral approach than was evident in their leadership of the Church.

  So I have not been pushed into abjuring my Catholicism when I have occasionally disagreed with Rome’s behaviour during my lifetime, but am easily enthused whenever what Rome is saying sounds like the New Testament. Nor, on the other side, have I been particularly troubled by the secular fundamentalists. Why should I stop believing in God because of Darwin, for example, whose own faith was not demolished by natural selection (though it was certainly affected by the death of his daughter Annie and his doubts about eternal damnation)? The attempt to use science to discredit religion often assumes that science itself is infallible. After the work of Einstein, I tend like others to agree with Karl Popper’s view, ‘We don’t know anything.’ Religion and science are separate domains, or magisteria as churchmen would argue. Science deals with empirical issues. What is this made of and why does it work? How can we improve some physical object or functioning? Religion embraces values and morality and deals with issues of meaning; it stands in the middle of the circle of final questions where believers seek inadequately and incoherently to act on God’s presence. These domains of religion and science are not in conflict. Max Planck, one of the great scientists of the twentieth century, was one of those who argued that the two were quite compatible. Science doesn’t only depend on reason. Intuition matters, and faith as well. This is one reason why science, like religion, uses aesthetics and metaphor. If something is a mystery how should I describe it? How do I express my sentiment on listening to Strauss’s Four Last Songs? How can I, no poet, best put in words my reaction to the delicately coloured bloom of a white hibiscus in my
garden or the aeronautical wonder of the butterfly which alights on it? How do I explain exactly why I believe in a soul and an afterlife? I use metaphors, just as cosmologists do with their talk of dark energy, dark matter and black holes.

  So, with only a moderate sense of embarrassment, caused by the inadequacy of my life as a Christian, and with no intellectual shame at all, I declare my Christian beliefs, my Catholicism, as a fundamental part of who I am. They do not crowd everything else out. They do not exclude all the other things I have written about in this book – British patriotism, liberal Toryism, internationalism, the knowledge that I am a European, sport-loving, dog-loving, book-reading, Francophile (a proud Commandeur in the Légion d’Honneur), cautious, lucky, hard-working and besotted by my family. All those things are what make up ‘me’. They make me different from, not necessarily better or worse than, you or anyone else. And it is the Christian and family parts of my identity which I hope will be with me right down to the wire.

  But that is years away, isn’t it? After all, I have read Somerset Maugham and have absolutely no intention of going anywhere near Samarra. I hope I continue to be as lucky as I have been now for over seventy years. I have led, to seize the nearest available cliché, what you might call a charmed life. As I have written here, I had a happy home, loving parents, a good education and a set of religious beliefs which have helped me to find my way through life’s maze. What Machiavelli called fortuna – by which he meant more than luck – led me into politics. Then one thing followed another, never really planned. I tumbled from job to job and was never bored. Some things that I did turned out well, others didn’t; I think I left a mark. Maybe some bits of the world through which I passed were better off because of what I helped to do there. But that is a judgement better made by others, and perhaps one day will be.

  What is success and what is failure? Philip Roth, who writes so often about identity, suggests in one of his novels that men and women leave ‘a stain … a trail … our imprint’ and that this has nothing to do ‘with grace or redemption or salvation’. Maybe success is leaving a mark or imprint which encourages people to cheer up, to cope with life a bit more happily and successfully. Maybe your mark should give others hope, make them smile, and give them the confidence and understanding to know that in ways large or small they can make their world and our own a slightly better place. Did I transform anything – leave in a blaze of glory? Certainly not. All you can really do – to sound like a headmaster’s speech at a prize-giving – is your best, not hurting people, muddling along through and around life’s predicaments and hoping to emerge relatively unscathed at the other side, where naturally there is another thicket of predicaments awaiting you. In democratic politics, where I spent most of my time, you have to learn patience and remember that life is not always fair, that you will not always win even when you are sure you are right. The only great regret I have at this stage of my life is the result of the EU referendum and what it tells us about the populist perils that ambush liberal international values here, elsewhere in Europe and alas in America too. I worry about what all this portends for the future of my country, whose Prime Minister today seems to doubt whether you can be both a British citizen and a citizen of the world. I hope for the best for Britain, Europe and America.

  Not the smallest part of my good fortune has been to live with a loving family through what must have been one of the most peaceful, prosperous and increasingly tolerant periods in our island’s history. If our luck holds as a country, we will somehow avoid becoming poorer and meaner as a result of Brexit. If my own luck holds (fingers crossed and count to nine) there will be a few years yet knowing who I am – more walks with Lavender and our dog in the Parks at Oxford, more Saturday morning visits to the farmers’ market in Barnes, more evenings sitting in my vegetable garden in the Tarn in France while the tomatoes ripen, watching the sun go down in a blaze of pink, orange and yellow glory over the wooded hills to the west, a glass of wine in one hand and a good book in the other. Perhaps my children and grandchildren will be somewhere nearby, the grandchildren scouring the strawberry beds and raspberry canes for something to pop into their mouths. Not a bad life for them; not a bad life for me.

  Illustrations

  1. My handsome parents on their honeymoon in 1938.

  2. 1930s style: Dad (third from the right in the back row), the drummer in the smartly dressed Phil Richardson Band.

  3. My sister Angela, with her younger brother and the brick inglenook fireplace, symbol of Greenford’s aspiring middle class.

  4. The holidays of an English childhood: on a Devon beach with my parents.

  5. Greenford Broadway in the 1950s – we turned right at the Red Lion pub for church and school.

  6. Gazing lovingly at my cricket bat, which scored many imaginary centuries.

  7. Plastered in Brylcream, I lead the May procession at Our Lady of the Visitation, Greenford.

  8. The keen young rugby player at the right hand of the ball-carrying skipper.

  9. The school prefects of St Benedict’s, Ealing. I am on the left at the back, sporting a new Brillo-style crew-cut. Father Brown, left of centre, memorably described Thomas a Becket as bowling Henry II a googly.

  10. Matriculating in 1962. Balliol College, political nursery.

  11. L’étonnant Richard Cobb, who almost always took his fluids.

  12. The chivalrous Maurice Keen. ‘I b-b-beg your pardon?’

  13. The young MP and family (from the left, Lavender, Laura, Kate and Alice). Vote for us!

  14. The ‘Blue Chip’ dining club of MPs – a happy mix of toffs and scholarship boys. Clockwise from the left: Robert Cranborne, Richard Needham, Jocelyn Cadbury, Chris Patten, John Patten, William Waldegrave, Alex Pollock, Nicholas Lyell, Peter Fraser, Robert Atkins, Tristan Garel-Jones and Michael Ancram.

  15. Ted Heath in 1975 – despite the sticker, forty-one years later we didn’t. His passion for Europe was the best of him.

  16. Rab Butler, the Mount Fuji of the Tory Party. I carried a photograph of him from office to office.

  17. Peter Carrington, the best natural leader I ever worked for.

  18. Waving from a window in Conservative Central Office with John and Norma Major on the night of 9 April 1992. We had just won the election and I had just lost my seat.

  19. With the Prime Minister and well-wishers in Downing Street the next day. The Conservatives had won more votes than any other party in British political history.

  20. The Governor shares a joke with the senior service at the Tamar naval base, Hong Kong.

  21. Trying to keep an eye on the dragon on a visit to Kwun Tong.

  22. Stepping out with Margaret Thatcher in Hong Kong. She strongly supported our efforts to preserve its unique way of life.

  23. Signing Chinese New Year Lai See packets for enthusiastic residents of Sham Sui Po, 1997.

  24. With Lavender in Hong Kong. Partners for life, not just on the dance floor.

  25. Time to say goodbye: my ADC has just presented me with the Hong Kong flag.

  26. Not a dry eye on Britannia. Lavender, Kate, Laura, Alice and the Prince of Wales.

  27. ‘The Prince of Wales and Mr Patten’ (as the protocol instructions called us) wave farewell to the colony. Until midnight Patten took precedence as representative of the sovereign.

  28. I hope that the answer to Time’s question was ‘yes’. © TIME Inc. Photograph for Time by John Stanmeyer - SABA

  29. At Buckingham Palace after being made a Companion of Honour. All smiles now.

  30. Listening hard to evidence from the DUP in 1998 about policing in Northern Ireland. The report is being read by a police officer.

  31. Arriving in Macedonia with Javier Solana, the European High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, in September 2001.

  32. Bombed churches are just one of the consequences of the extremes of identity politics.

  33. With Yasser Arafat, Romano Prodi and Arafat’s advisor Nabil Shaath in May 2001 –
a handshake which helped keep the Palestinian Authority alive.

  34. Meeting a very Holy Father in St Peter’s, 2014.

  35. It’s off to work we go – the Encaenia procession passes in front of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, June 2015.

  36. Hope for the future: left to right from the top, Elodie, Isabella, Samuel, Max, Willow, Francesca, Noah and William, on the steps of our home in France, with Phoebe the springer spaniel.