For atheist, agnostic, and believer alike, the study of the clergy's failure of leadership is an education in itself; for whether or not a god exists, religion is concerned with the physical and spiritual health, or normality, or adulthood of man. So religious ideas are very useful in considering the consciousness and attitude to life of normal man, and the clergy's failure has lessons for us all quite apart from the condition of the Church today.

At first sight it might seem surprising that they claimed to stand between God and his people, because Christ taught men to call God, “Father”, and presumably encouraged men to seek access to God direct, through prayer. Nor was he alone. Augustine's view of the incarnation was that “God became man in a manger, in order that men might become God”. And this idea that God wanted mankind, or at least a few particular men, to share his nature is as old as religion itself. Abraham was called the friend of God; in the Wisdom of Solomon every righteous man is called the son of god; and the writers of the New Testament have the confidence to repeat this bold assertion in almost every chapter. The opening verses of John's Gospel boldly proclaim that it is the…