'Tad' Mears - in memoriam

An email arrived today from Archbishop Barry  announcing the death of Bishop Cledan Mears in his nineties. When I was at St Michael's College training for ministry forty five years ago, he taught Christian doctrine and New Testament, and was one of the native Welsh speakers on the staff supporting other first language Welsh speakers through their training, in the days before encouragement to learn the language of heaven became an active part of implementing the bi-lingual policy of the Church in Wales. He went on to become Vicar of Eglyws Dewi Sant in Cardiff, a church that has seen several of its incumbents elected as Welsh Bishops, and eventually was elected Bishop of Bangor.

Whilst during the war, Canon Geoffrey Rees, St Mike's principal in my time, had been an army chaplain decorated with the Military Cross, Cledan out of his strong evangelical conviction was a conscientious objector serving as a stretcher bearer. Exemplary courage was required of both. Students were vaguely aware of this, but war and peace didn't get much discussion time compared with the liberalisation of attitudes to sexuality and sexual behaviour in those days. I wonder if both ever wondered if this new wave of freedom was really what they had been courageous to struggle for? 

What I recall with gratitude was the way Cledan relished working with the Greek New Testament texts which were still a requirement of the syllabus in those days. His fire of enthusiasm for the Gospels rubbed off on me, and his sense of the authenticity and credibility of scripture for both the learned and unlettered was crucial. His evangelical convictions were deeply rooted in Welsh language spiritual tradition, his dissent expressed on the military rather than the religious front.  

He was regarded as suspect by the liberals and anglo-catholics who made the majority in College at that time because of his un-typical Welsh churchmanship. I was profoundly influenced by anglo-catholic, Orthodox and Vatican II Roman Catholic spirituality at this time when all churches were re-awakening to the challenge of interpreting and applying scripture to their mid-twentieth century post holocaust, nuclear age setting. But for me it was Cledan who made the study of scripture exciting, an adventure, and that sense of thrill engaging with scripture is still with me, driving me to continue preaching and ministering as a pastor wherever and whenever I can.

This generation of the church has lost an elder brother whose kind regard for us as students was reassuring and gentle. He was someone who'd rather look you in the eye, than be looked up to, and for a religious institution often obsessed with status and achievements, this was a truly evangelical witness to faith in Christ.