John
Halliburton
1935-2004
John’s
death at the all too early age of 69 deprives his family and the Church at large
of a loving pastor and theologian. His extensive scholarship and gift of
languages, together with his ecumenical concerns, his liturgical and aesthetic
sensibilities and his love of life
John’s
life was marked by hardship and loss — a son in infancy, a beloved daughter
more recently — and yet, far from diminishing his stature as a priest, the
negative events of his life seemed to bring out the depth of his love and
priestly commitment to his family and the Church; and in his life, as in his
teaching, these two mysteries were as one.
He
arrived at Chichester as Principal at a critical time for the theological
college. The staff he inherited, including indeed the one he later appointed as
Vice-Principal, had been persuaded that the College had no independent future
and that it should merge with the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield. John
would have none of this and he set about putting the College on the sound
academic and liturgical footing which enabled it to flourish for another
nineteen years (until the latest Suppression of the Colleges in 1994).
The
cost to John personally was considerable. He was not a natural administrator,
manager or ecclesiastical politician. He did not find it easy to delegate, while
he himself must have been under tremendous outside pressure. The result was an
attack of meningitis, which put him in hospital in the summer of 1977 and
affected him on and off for a while. It was, however, another five years before
he could lay down the burden and rejoice in the life of a parish priest at St
Margaret’s-on-Thames.
When
the Halliburtons arrived at Chichester in 1975, they brought with them, besides
their children, a couple of dalmatian dogs, of which they were registered
breeders. The theological significance of the dogs was rather lost on some of
the ordinands, who were reminded in one of the Principal’s addresses that any
expansion of our heart or extension of our relationships, with a wife or
children, with a friend — or with an animal — is an extension of love and
therefore of openness to pain and loss. And so the seemingly unpriestly activity
of breeding dogs (even black and white dogs) was to be not only compatible with
priestly life but an occasion for reflexion on its true meaning.
Another
address which revealed his pastoral heart, and gave his colleagues in particular
food for thought, spoke of the need for patience in pastoral work, especially
with
His
time as a residentiary canon of St Paul’s might have been a relaxed fulfilment
His
appearance in the notorious TV documentary, A Year in the Life of St
Paul’s, has been described as a ‘caricature’ and a ‘set-up’.
Certainly those who knew and loved him felt deeply for the agony of his
position.
At
the same time they will have been grateful both for his firm stand and for his
admirably Jesuitical way (he was a lover of St Ignatius) of seeking to ease the
consciences of the laity, who do not have the same freedom as the clergy in
avoiding all occasions of doubt in relation to the sacraments.
His
book, The Authority of a Bishop (SPCK 1987), is far from being a
polemical treatise, but it demonstrates, in relation both to the events of the
1990s and to the current debate about women in the episcopate, the absolute need
for the ecumenical authority of which its title speaks. John was no doubt deeply
engaged with that debate, in thought and prayer, in pastoral guidance and
ecumenical encounter, in the last year of his life in Paul, where he was
priest-in-charge of the Anglican church.
It
is sad to think that he had so little time to savour the delights of that
region’s history, religion — and wine — but sadder still that he has gone
from us. His love and witness and wisdom, however, live on in the Spirit of the
risen Christ. May he rest in peace, and come to rejoice for ever in the vision
of the mysteries of which he was so faithful a minister here on earth.
Martin
Williams was Vice Principal of
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