This book is flagged as the “first Bloomsbury Lent Book”. The author Ann Widdecombe is well remembered as a forthright and strong minded member of the British parliament. As a writer and columnist, she continues to be just as forthright and strong minded, even if her appearance on Strictly Come Dancing went a very long way to turning her into that peculiar thing: ‘a British national treasure’. However in this context what needs to be noted is her conversion to Catholicism in 1993, a more believable action than that of Tony Blair on the benches opposite her.
Those who are dismayed by the recent book by John Cornwell, reviewed last week, will find in her pages a very different exposition of the purpose and need for penance.
She has her quirks of course. In giving up drink for Lent, her idea of penance is to drink bottled Highland Spring water.
The bottled water business is an example of a modern commercial ramp of the first order. Tap water ought to do. We have to save creation as well as our souls. But then Miss Widdicombe does not believe in climate change. “Look out the window,” she once remarked, “climate change does not exist.” Hard to think that these days.
But such things aside this book is full of good things, and of observations that certainly give one furiously to think, even if some of the fury might be directed at the author.
She believes in both punishment, and its effectiveness – she was once a Minister for Prisons – and her discussion of these certainly strikes the right note – at times.
Given our human weakness for error, an outcome of original sin, there is no case a Christian can truly make to support the death penalty as she does. One cannot oppose abortion and support the death penalty. There have been too many judicial errors in the past to countenance the hanging of even one innocent person.
But in her book the main argument is against the culture of instant gratification with little thought for others. Penance she sees as a necessary humanising process, and she even gets around to discussing albeit briefly the question of Purgatory and Hell.
But if the focus on saving one’s own soul might seem also matter of self-centredness, throughout the book she also emphasises the need for good works in the widest sense, that is the need to live for others rather than merely for ourselves.
As a book to read for Lent this would be an excellent choice. One does not have to agree with it all, but by disagreeing one has the opportunity think out what is one really believes. And focussing on what one really believes, or ought to believe, is an important part of the whole purpose of Lent.