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Friday, 31st July: On this very day and date in 1992, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire suffered a heart attack and quietly passed from this life. That he was a great man needs no introduction: the Indian President Jawaharal Nehru once described him as the greatest man that he had met since Gandi. What interests us here is that Cheshire was also a good man. And how did he become so? By receiving Christ's life through the sacraments of the Catholic Church.
Hearing his name today, many Britons would, perhaps, think of the 'Leonard Cheshire Disability' charity, which provides ongoing support to people throughout the world. A lesser number might recall that he was married to that other great philanthropist, Baroness Sue Ryder. Older folks and history buffs could probably tell you that Cheshire, a highly decorated RAF pilot in Bomber Command, had led the celebrated 617 Dambusters Squadron during World War II;Â and that he was present aboard one of the American B-29s over Nagasaki, as the official observer for Great Britain.
Less people are aware that both Cheshire and Ryder became converts to the Catholic Faith.
Although something that Leonard Cheshire said in his final days sounds worryingly Teilhardian - and, amongst the works of St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and St. Ignatius of Loyola, there was a copy of Teilhard's book found in Cheshire's private library  - we should like today to draw from two important and totally orthodox things that he said regarding his own conversion to the Catholic Faith.
Both of these things relate to hugely important matters in our own times.
1). The first relates to the disciplines and the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
During his days in Bomber Command, Cheshire emerged as a courageous leader and pilot. He eventually flew the light-weight De Havilland Mosquito as part of a select Pathfinder team, chosen to mark targets at low-level with bright coloured flares, in order to guide in the waves of RAF bombers and increase their accuracy over a target. During the war, Cheshire took part in 101 operations and was awarded the VC, DSO and Two Bars, plus the DFC.
The De Havilland Mosquito: Constructed from wood to be super fast, manoeuverable and versatile.
After the war, when Cheshire was first contemplating converting to the Catholic Faith, he went to see his vicar for advice. The vicar suggested to him that, if he joined the Catholic Church, he would never be able to think for himself again. This initially frightened the independent and strong-minded Leonard.Â
However, he began to think: ''I am a pilot. I spent my life training to be a pilot. I love freedom - flying anywhere about the sky. But I thought: suppose I decided to forget all the rules about flying and decided to think entirely for myself? I would soon find myself on the ground... Now God has made rules to help us to travel through life: He has also given us a Church. We should expect our liberty to be curtailed in some way by God's rules; but within the limits of God's Law and Revelation there is still plenty of room for liberty of thought, just as there is room for the exercise of freedom whilst still observing the rules of flying... To say that the Catholic Church does not allow her members to think for themselves is, then, one of those objections which, on examination, are seen to carry no weight at all.''
2). The second relates to the issue of the knowledge and love of God.
Regular readers will recall that, in a recent article, entitled 'Having the Strawberries and the Cream', we critiqued a tweet by Fr. Marc Lyden-Smith, which had suggested that love rather than doctrine was important in relation to Jesus. What he said was: ''The faith that Jesus expects is not an acceptance of religious doctrines. It is rather an act of total trust and surrender.''
At the time, we demonstrated that both were necessary: The more one knows of God, the more one has the opportunity to love Him; and the more one loves Him, the more one desires to know Him. And so on. Knowledge and love are not opposed; both are necessary.
A couple of days ago, we discovered a written source relating to the time when Cheshire was about to join the Catholic Church, at Christmas 1948. Some Anglican friends, thinking that Catholicism's high view of the Church was spiritually dangerous, tried to suggest to Leonard that loving God and neighbour was all that mattered. How much they sound like the post-Modernists who are trying to play pastoral practice against doctrine within the Church today!
Cheshire's answer to his friends is as valid now as it was back then. He wrote: ''True enough, love is all that matters. But one cannot love what one does not know... To argue that it does not much matter what one believes about God , as long as one loves Him, is not love at all, it is to destroy the very foundation upon which love can exist. No love without knowledge; no knowledge without certainty of truth; no certainty of truth without infallibility; no infallibility unless the Church be Divinely founded and Divinely maintained.''
These two quotes remind us of the profound unity between the doctrine of the Church and Her pastoral practice. Other writings of Cheshire from that time demonstrate that the truth, authority and unity of the Church were all key aspects that helped to convert him. Through his faithful reception of the sacraments throughout the rest of his life, grace built upon Cheshire's nature and enabled him to accomplish so much towards the work of peace, reconciliation and support for those living with disabilities.
During a memorial Mass, offered in Westminster Cathedral on 25th September 1992, the late Cardinal Basil Hume listed Cheshire's qualities during the homily. He then added: ''But there was something else. It was simply this. He had allowed God into his life and this transformed him. He had said ''Yes'' to God, not half-heartedly, not with reluctance but, characteristically, in a manner which was total and even radical.''
On this anniversary of Group Captain Leonard Cheshire's death, we pray for the repose of his soul and ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to say a total and radical ''Yes'' to God in our own lives.Â
