Letters to the editor

The Government has stated clearly that schools will be in charge of teaching sex education

From Miss Oona Stannard, chief executive and director of the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales

SIR_- Misleading reports have recently appeared in The Catholic Herald regarding Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Education, including Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in Catholic schools (Eric Hester, "How we lost control of sex education", January 29). Such ill-informed comments undermine the good work being done in our schools and cause unnecessary anxiety to parents and the Catholic community at large.

The Catholic Education Service for England and Wales is fully committed to the promotion of the sanctity of life, in accordance with the teachings of the Church, and we expect that all our schools promote this message to their pupils. We have every confidence that Catholic schools do this and promote the protection of life from conception through, for example:

• determining what external parties operating on school premises can and cannot do, so that any information given is placed within the context of the Church's teaching;
• ensuring that SRE is taught in a manner appropriate to the Catholic ethos of the school;
• promoting behaviour that is in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

During our extensive negotiations with Government over the plans to make PSHE part of the national curriculum, we have been clear that the right of schools with a religious character to teach SRE in accordance with the ethos of their school must be retained and we have been assured that this will be the case. The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Ed Balls, gave this assurance in the House of Commons on January 11 2010:

"The decision to make sex and relationship education statutory is, I think, supported by all political parties, but it is essential that it is taught in line with the ethos, including the faith, of the school. That is clear in the legislation: it is clear that parents as well as school governors will have a say in how the subject is taught, while there is also a parental opt-out, which will apply to pupils until they are 15. I can thus give the hon Gentleman the complete assurance that the school will be in charge of how to teach SRE, but the fact of teaching it will be in law and guaranteed to all children."

We have every confidence that, if the Children, Schools and Families Bill is passed, making PSHE part of the national curriculum, Catholic schools will be entitled to continue to teach this subject in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church, and that the teaching of SRE in Catholic schools will always uphold the importance of the sanctity of life.

In a recent press briefing with The Catholic Herald all these points were clarified and explained. Yours faithfully,
Oona Stannard
London SW1

From Daphne McLeod, chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice

SIR_-_It was good to read Eric Hester's article. This is the information every Catholic parent needs if they are to protect their children from the damaging classroom lessons about sex, given even at a very young age, that the Government is committed to.

Sadly, as he points out, we cannot rely on the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales (CESEW), which should be protecting them, nor the bishops who have delegated their responsibility to the CESEW. This means parents must act themselves and exercise their right to withdraw their children from these lessons. They can explain that as Catholics they cannot in conscience agree to lessons which contravene the guidelines from the Vatican so seriously.

Furthermore, as Bishop Malcolm McMahon OP, who is in overall charge of Catholic education, has stated publicly that he sees no reason why teachers in Catholic schools should be living good Catholic lives in obedience to Church teaching (Report, January 22) these lessons could well be given by teachers who are not faithful to Catholic teaching, even teachers who are known to be living in same-sex civil partnerships, who will be unable to impart proper Catholic standards with any credibility.

One hopes that some Catholic schools will take advantage of the sex education programme recently compiled by Lancaster diocese called This Is My Body. This, by contrast, is fully in line with Vatican guidelines as it helps parents teach their child at home using material provided by the school. It is used throughout Lancaster diocese and also by other primary schools and can be obtained from Philos Educational Publishing, tel 020 8485 0543, or through enquiries@thisismybody.co.uk. Yours faithfully,
Daphne McLeod
Great Bookham, Surrey

Visible evidence

From Audrey and Paul Edwards

SIR - Fortunately the Equality Bill has been passed by the House of Lords in the amended manner supported by Archbishop Peter Smith (Report, January 25). This decision will not be welcomed by the Government and it is certain that there will be members of the next Parliament who will wish to reverse it.

It is no less certain that secularist attacks on Christian principles and institutions will continue, so surely it would be wise to prepare for them now rather than wait to react. What better time to start preparing than in the lead-up to a general election when candidates will be much readier to give assurances of support to which they can be held when future secularist challenges arise. We hope, therefore, that Archbishop Smith, as head of the bishops' department for Christian responsibility and citizenship, will issue advice to all parishes on the threat from secularism, which includes suggestions on the assurances which parishes as local communities and parishioners as individuals should seek from candidates.

If there had been such visible evidence of a strong Christian interest on the occasion of the last election would the Government have been so keen to support secularist initiatives in the present Parliament?

Yours faithfully,
Audrey and Paul Edwards
Cambridge

Ends and means

From Mr Allen Murphy

SIR_- Regarding the issue of assisted suicide, I believe it is important to remain focused on the objective moral act itself. There seems to a blurring of the act or confusion of the act, depending on the motivation of the person who assisted in the suicide.

If the person has nefarious motives, there is societal condemnation. If the person has kindly thoughts then the person is more likely to be met with approval. Clearly the moral guilt of the person may increase or diminish depending on motivation, psychological freedom etc but the objective moral act must be looked at. To take the life of another, to directly act to end a person's life, is never morally acceptable, regardless of the motivation of the individual. The end cannot be justified by immoral means. Of course palliative care, including the lessening of pain and suffering, is allowed.

Yours faithfully,
Allen Murphy
Westminster, Colorado, United States

Equality for all?

From Mr Anthony David Jones

I could take the Government's claim that the Equality Bill is a measure of its belief in equality if I saw as much effort put into repealing the anti-Catholic Act of Settlement as I see being spent on said Bill.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony David Jones
Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire

Atheists struggle with the problem of evil

From Mr John Beaumont

SIR_-_I read with interest Mark Dowd's article, "Where was God when the earthquake flattened Haiti?" (Comment January 22), and the responses to it.

The "creation defence" that he put forward (that this suffering is due primarily to the ordinary working of natural causes, and that positives and negatives in a material world are impossible to separate) is a very powerful one. Inevitably, Mr Dowd was unable to go into detail in a short article. Readers can get a fuller analysis by watching, at the very least, the last 20 minutes of his 2004 Channel 4 documentary (the whole programme is available on the internet) in which the Castel Gandolfo conference is featured. In addition, the published work of Dr Nancey Murphy, one of the participants at the Vatican conference, is very important.

Just as important, however, is for religious believers to do more than merely defend their position. They need to get on to the front foot against the militant atheists. In this context, it is very helpful to examine two articles by the philosopher, Dr James Franklin (International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2002, and Think, autumn 2003) in which he brings out the illogicality of the atheist case. He summarises this as follows:

"The problem of evil has a kick in its tail for the atheist... Consider, for example, the materialist world-picture which most atheists believe in. Is there really evil in the materialist world? Of course, there are animals in pain and distress, but one who takes an absolute perspective can well ask, why does that matter? Ordinarily one thinks that the suffering of a human is a tragedy but the explosion of a dead galaxy is just a firework. Materialism, though, denies the distinction between the two, since it takes humans to be the same kind of things as galaxies, namely, moderately complicated heaps of matter. If the fate of a galaxy cannot give rise to a problem of evil, because its fate cannot in any absolute sense matter, then neither can the fate of a brain. In posing the problem of evil, the materialist who does not really believe in positive worth is cynically trading on our sense of the importance of those who suffer, knowing he will undermine it later." What this means, then, is that standard materialism fails to make sense of the problem of evil, by implying that evil does not matter, absolutely speaking. Franklin goes on to draw the necessary conclusion:

"The very existence of evil as a matter of absolute seriousness is a substantial reason to believe that the materialist world picture is false. Since the leading alternative theory involves a good and powerful God, that is a reason to believe there must be some solution to the problem of evil."

Yours faithfully,
John Beaumont
Apperely Bridge, West Yorkshire,

From Mr Mark Dowd

SIR - Francis Reilly (Letters, January 29)_claims to solve the problem of belief in God and the suffering in Haiti in one fell swoop by invoking the Fall: it is all down to "the sin of Adam". It is an attractive option but one which fails to convince.

Any cursory scrutiny of the evolution of our species on this planet makes it perfectly clear that the processes of death and suffering were integral parts of the evolution story long before the advent of homo sapiens. Were it not indeed for these processes embedded in the very cycle of creation and destruction, modern humanity would not even have emerged.

Mr Reilly's attempt at explanation, of course, only becomes a problem as long as one adheres to the evolutionary model of the natural world. He may be a Creationist and think we got here in six days, but I prefer the narrative laid out by Darwin - a narrative which both Pope John Paul II and his successor have reminded us is totally compatible with a mature and informed Catholic faith. I do not deny the doctrine of Original Sin; I simply assert that its insights and power may lie in other spheres rather than a neat riposte to the theodicy conundrum.

Yours faithfully,
Mark Dowd
By email

Two evils that spread in the 1950s Church From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR_- Fr Aidan Nichols (Feature, January 29) might help Moira Doorly more by explaining how the Church teachings she quotes differ from the Modernist errors - right and wrong answers to the same questions. Their common context? The Church's conceptual language had communicated precisely with well-instructed clergy in 16th-century Christendom. To equip her with means to address and evangelise pluralised societies, godless yet highly educated, was a new problem. The first to identify a problem, Newman reminds us, will often get the solution wrong.

Dangerously, Fr Aidan's convergence theory of pre-Conciliar optimism conflates two distinct evils that burgeoned in the 1950s Church. Triumphalism uncritically idealised anything "Catholic". Some lay intellectuals, secularly learned, thought Latin, birettas and such were of doctrine; proof that Church teaching was out of date and must yield to progress. From these two the Devil later forged two weapons: neo-conservatism, to fight the Church's changes; neo-modernism, to interpret aggiornamento - ie arming the Church's servants to bring the Gospel to today's world - as blanket endorsement of that world's values.

Does Fr Aidan not make the same mistake? He accuses the Church of "cultural modernism"; giving no quotations in support, he treats her documents as schizophrenic, unconscious modernism with lucid moments. But in fact they prudently qualify each reference to shared values. More helpful, one would think, to urge Moyra to read Church documents with an open mind.

Doesn't "naïve optimism" better match Fr Aidan's hopes for useful dialogue with Lefebvrism? As Trent found, schisms still "in denial" cannot question their premises: ecumenism's gestation is 400 years. Lefebvrism can only read concessions and constant courtship as growing acknowledgement that Lefebvrism is right.

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

Consistent teaching

From Mr Donal Anthony Foley

SIR - Regarding Philip Butler's response (January 29) to my letter (January 8) on the value of Confession, he criticises my "questionable way of reading Scripture and the intentions of Christ," following my quotation of Christ's post-Resurrection words: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained" (John 20:19-23).

But this passage clearly indicates that auricular confession is sacramentally required for the forgiveness of sin, and thus there is nothing questionable about my interpretation of what Christ said. The meaning of the text is plain, as is the intention of Christ in instituting the sacrament, that is, it is the normal way sins are to be forgiven in the Church.

Regardless of how long it took for auricular confession to become widespread, the fact is that the sacrament, as we have it today, was instituted right after the Resurrection.

General absolution is only to be used when there is a situation of grave necessity, such as during wartime, and even then, there is an obligation to go to individual confession as soon as this is practicable. Without this intention there is no absolution of sins in general absolution.

That is the consistent teaching of the Church, as found most recently in the Catechism and it is totally unrealistic to expect that it is going to change.

If Catholics don't frequent the sacrament as they ought to, then that is a failure of catechesis and preaching which needs to be put right - and it is also a consequence of the upheaval following Vatican II, when so many praiseworthy traditions and practices were abandoned. The answer to the current crisis in the use of the sacrament is to teach Catholics about its importance rather than look for illusory alternatives.

Yours faithfully,
Donal Anthony Foley
Chilwell, Nottingham

Defending traditions

From Mr Kenn Winter

SIR_-_Mary O'Regan's party political attack on " distorted human rights laws" in the European Union (Comment, January 29) was somewhat ill made, and blurred the distinction between the EU's European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, serving 27 member states, and the non-EU European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, serving all 50 European countries.

Another Catholic paper, The Universe, reported on the same day the latter's recent ruling that Romania's Orthodox Church must return 5,000 churches and schools to the local Greek Catholic Church outlawed after World War II - and which has lost nearly one million members in the meantime.

Miss O' Regan's recalling the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone's counsel that the EU threatened her native Ireland's identity and traditions is in sharp contrast to the wider European Court of Human Rights' defence of Catholic identity and traditions in Romania.

Yours faithfully,
Kenn Winter
Huddersfield

29 January 2010

Anglo-Catholicism:a 19th-century invention or the full flowering of the Catholic spirit?

From the Rev Anthony Reader-Moore SSC

SIR- I am sorry that Robert Ian Williams has responded to my recent article, "Anglo-Catholics do have a real patrimony" (December 11), in such a negative and indeed unhelpful way (Feature, January 15).

It is clear that he feels the Anglo-Catholics are an illegitimate development within the historical life of the Church of England and their self-understanding is founded on a myth. Apart from the fact that this designation can be understood in more ways than seeing something as false and that myths often contain much that is true, my purpose was not to suggest that Anglo-Catholicism is the only genuine tradition within Anglicanism, which is patently not so, but that it represented a full flowering of that Catholic spirit which even the thoroughness of the Protestant Reformation could not entirely extinguish.

Like a thread, perhaps very fragile and slender at times, it has always been present within the Church of England, even at the lowest points of her history. If that were not so, why did Rome offer Archbishop William Laud a cardinal's hat on the very day of his appointment to Canterbury in 1633? Also, as Fr Michael Rear has recently pointed out, at the Restoration of the Monarchy 27 years later, a further approach was made by the Holy See proposing the setting up of what amounted to a uniate church.

Does this not suggest at the very least an implicit recognition of a certain residual Catholicism within the life and structure of the national church? It is tragic that this got no further and divisions became even more entrenched, but does it not also suggest a greater flexibility on Rome's part at the time in her understanding of the exact nature of the Church of England than was true later on, say in the 19th century?

It is interesting that Mr Williams mentions neither of these episodes in his rather slanted account of Anglican history since the reign of Henry VIII. He has every right, of course, to present his own version of things and even to suggest, as he does, that mine is entirely wrong, but he should not imply that things are so "black and white" as he clearly does. History is rarely like that, as every truly open-minded student knows, and the need is that we should learn from it so that we can build a better future rather than be tied to a narrow and restricted interpretation of the past which does little or nothing to dispel ancient prejudices.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Reader-Moore
Northampton

From Mr Robert Ian Williams

SIR - I must take exception to Dr Richard Lawes's comments (Letter, January 22), claiming that I am "lambasting the Pope's initiative" as regards the proposed Anglican ordinariate. I have never expressed such an opinion, but simply pointed out that Anglo-Catholicism is not the mainstream of the Anglican patrimony, and is largely an invention of the 19th century, with much of its liturgical ornaments actually appropriated from Catholicism.

If Dr Lawes read my pamphlet on the subject of the Anglican Use liturgy, he would also see that I do not question the orthodoxy of the Anglican Use Mass, as its integrity is preserved by its use of the Roman Canon instead of Cranmer's eucharistic prayers. But I do raise legitimate questions about other Cranmerian phrases and prayers which are retained within the Use. For instance, the use of the phrase "In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto everlasting life" is totally inappropriate in the context of a Requiem. Likewise, I point out how the Use uses Cranmer's further Protestantised version of the prayer of humble access and not his 1549 original.

I have been informed that the Holy See is working on a revision of the Anglican Use's Book of Divine Worship and it is quite legitimate for Catholics to critique it. The Anglican Use attracted less than a 10th of one per cent of American Anglicans, and is today mainly attended by cradle Catholics.

Although I may be wrong, I think that the response from Anglicans here will be equally restrained. How any well-informed Catholic can be so enamoured of prayers written by a man who died despising the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Pope and the Catholic Faith is a mystery to me.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Ian Williams
Bangor is y Coed, Wrexham

Why Haiti suffers

From Mr John Lovett

SIR - The ever-recurring problem of suffering comes into focus when tragic events like the Haiti earthquake and tsunamis occur; this time receiving some new and interesting answers from Mark Dowd (Comment, January 22).

One possibility that was not mentioned or explored and may help our understanding is the activity of Satan. We do not usually think of him as actually doing anything on a physical level or see him as causing any material problems or damage in the natural order.

Instead, he has been relegated to the role of tempter and is little more than a malign spiritual influence, while the biblical view of Satan is massively different to this.

In the book of Job he is revealed as destroying Job's sons and daughters and cattle with different disasters: fire and wind are seen as being at his control. And on the sea of Galilee Jesus needed to rebuke the natural forces of wind and waves and order them to "be muzzled" (the literal translation) which some see as being linked to what was about to happen in Gadara in the form of the exorcism of Legion. In that case, Satan knew his kingdom was about to be assaulted and attempted to drown Jesus in the sea.

Some may see this answer of Satanic activity as too simplistic and naïve a response to the problem of natural disasters - and, in any case, why does God allow Satan to wreak havoc on the world as he has?

Even Job didn't get these questions answered. There are some questions that will only become clear in the light of eternity: suffering is one of them.

Yours faithfully,
John Lovett
Bedale, North Yorkshire

From Mr Francis Reilly

SIR - Having read Mark Dowd's article, "Where was God when the earthquake flattened Haiti?", and afterwards watched The Big Questions on BBC television on Sunday where the same subject had a 20-minute airing, I am astonished that no one has mentioned the Christian explanation for the fact of sin and suffering entering the world, ie the sin of Adam, our progenitor.

When such an important element in the Christian story is left out of discussion on this subject confusion and illogicality come in to fill the vacuum. This same omission also makes nonsense of some Catholic beliefs surrounding the Virgin Mary and the Redemption.

Yours faithfully,
FRANCIS REILLY
Orpington, Kent
Cleaning Newman

From Mr Edward Evans

SIR - The Fathers of the London Oratory's intention to dedicate a chapel to Cardinal Newman (Report, January 22) is interesting and welcome, but every time I go there, I look at his statue by the entrance and hope that before September it will be given a clean.

Yours faithfully,
Edward Evans
Oxford

Cameron's reforms: just more of the same

From Mr Matthew Huntbach

SIR - Nick Thomas (Comment, January 22) seems unaware that the state school system we have now is not as he describes, but the result of reforms initiated by Sir Keith Joseph as Secretary of State for Education in Margaret Thatcher's government to try and correct those problems.

The National Curriculum was imposed to tell teachers what to teach and how to teach it, with an emphasis on "back to basics". Their progress would be measured by Statutory Assessment Tests for primary and early secondary school pupils. The results of these and the public examinations for older pupils would be published in "league tables", which would create a competitive atmosphere and "drive up quality".

When the Labour Party came into government, in the hope of showing it was not the bad old Labour Party Nick Thomas still thinks it is, and because it rather liked this sort of state-centred approach to problems, it enthusiastically adopted Sir Keith's ideas and made them its own.

As ever, such an over-prescriptive approach resulted in an emphasis on meeting the letter of the law while missing the spirit. Boring teaching emphasising memorisation and other tricks to get through the tests replaced imagination and enthusiasm for real knowledge and skills. As ever, league tables resulted not in driving up real quality but in doing whatever would artificially score more points, such as pushing pupils into "easy" public examination subjects.

David Cameron's proposed reforms are just more state prescription; anyone who had real experience with school teaching would know such rigid requirements would not measure real teaching skills. I am sure Nick Thomas himself would have said the same had these been proposed by the Labour Party.

Yours faithfully,
Matthew Huntbach
London SE9

Taking a little wine

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - So Bob Gillies, the Anglican Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney, has criticised the Benedictine Monks at Buckfast Abbey for producing a fortified wine which the bishop thinks St Benedict would not approved of (Report, January 22). Did St Paul not say that one should take a little wine for the stomach?

The abuse of the wine is not the fault of the abbey. If it were not available, I am sure other products would be abused. The fault lies more with fractured societal values, where society has let the family unit down. It is significant that in Italy and France children are introduced to wine at a relatively early age in the family.

I understand that under-age drinking as well as incidents of sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies are significantly lower in these countries then in the United Kingdom.

Perhaps we should restore the value of family before we ban Buckfast wine.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

Changing Confession From Mr Philip J Butler

SIR - Donal Anthony Foley's response (January 8) to my letter on the practice of Confession (December 11) quite fails to address the issues I raised. Apart from his questionable way of reading Scripture and the intentions of Christ, he seems to assume, as people usually do, that the way we are used to doing things must be the right way and the only way and that it can never be changed. This completely ignores historical development and the fact that auricular confession is a latecomer on the scene.

If the Church has the authority to pronounce God's forgiveness of our sins it could decide to exercise that authority in any number of ways, eg through general absolution. Since most Catholics will no longer practise Confession in the way popes want them to, would it not be sensible to offer them another way that will really answer their needs? The sabbath is made for man, after all, not man for the sabbath - so too the sacraments.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Butler
London N10

Small is beautiful

From Mr Maurice Billingsley
SIR - There is much to be said in favour of setting up small Catholic schools, but they must not be founded haphazardly (Report, January 15). Francis Davis suggests that movements within the Church might "find legs" by educating children in their own way. Bishops must ensure that any such "free" schools do not tend to divide the parish or diocese, but contribute to their local communities in all humility.

Having worked for some 10 years as a teacher in a very small school - six pupils at the most - I was disappointed that Bishop McMahon did not mention the mission such schools could have to some of our nation's most deprived and disturbed young people: children who could not cope in a mainstream school, who have suffered neglect, abuse or mental illness.

The Church has done excellent work in this field, but schools such as Port Regis in Broadstairs appear to have closed without our providing new places for the children who benefited from them. Small Catholic schools could play a part. The work is difficult and challenging for adults and pupils, but can be very fruitful. Such schools work closely with parents, social workers, psychiatrists and other experts. Such schools are much important than cosy comfort zones for parents who shun the state system.

Yours faithfully,
Maurice Billingsley
Canterbury, Kent

St Peter's precedent

From Mr Arthur van der Straeten

SIR - In her excellent commentary on Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Rome's Great Synagogue (Feature, January 22), Anna Arco says: "Such a papal visit would have been inconceivable in the pre-conciliar Church."

Are we to assume then that St Peter was never in the company of the other Apostles when they entered the synagogues after Our Lord's Ascension?

Perhaps the main difference between the current Holy Father's visit and those pre-Vatican II visits of 2,000 years ago is that the Apostles caused consternation in the synagogues by openly proclaiming Christ Crucified and Risen.

Yours faithfully,
Arthur van der Straeten
Rochecorbon, France

We want St GKC

From G Richards

SIR - I was most interested to read the interview with Aidan Mackey (January 8) as I was lucky enough to meet him once myself. His view of the world is most refreshing. I would, however, have liked Jack Carrigan to have asked him when he thinks G K Chesterton's beatification will be.

I do think that the case for his holiness was clearly established at the meeting held at the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy last summer. We no doubt need to move on now to a miracle or two. To that end please see www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk for printable prayer cards and other information.

Yours faithfully,
G Richards
By email

22 January 2010

Bishop Malcolm McMahon's support for 'free schools': a promising or a worrying sign?

From the Very Rev Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB

SIR - I look back on deep if narrow experience in Catholic independent education, but also with appreciation of the Catholic voluntary-aided schools and some experience of their administration and government.

Bishop Malcolm McMahon (Report, January 15) is interested in the Conservative espousal of the Swedish free school system, which allows parents a school and style of education of their choice in what they judge the best interest of their children. Schools may expand or contract (or close) according to need. New schools may be set up outside the municipal system to meet parental demand. Contrast this with our arthritic centrally planned system, with its ballots for entry to popular schools and, for Catholics in the south east, an acute shortage of places.

His refreshing and evidently deliberate remarks could be the most hopeful initiative in Catholic education for a long time. He sees an opportunity to strengthen the vital triangle of home, school and parish. So do I. Oona Stannard's reported cool reaction (The Universe, January 17) brings to mind Sir Humphrey's horror when, in the lovely series Yes, Prime Minister, Jim Hacker and his adviser Dorothy presented the revolutionary idea that the Department of Education would be abolished and the money from the Treasury would go directly to parents who should actually be allowed to choose schools for their children. In other words, ordinary folk should be able to do for their children what the better-off can do.

Catholic education depends entirely on the parents' right to choose, and any extension of it must be welcome. The national and local government bureaucracies that operate the present centralised system are instinctively opposed to any such development. As a number of initiatives of the present Government suggest, they are not the friends of the Church. The Catholic Education Service (CES) nationally and in some dioceses has been rather too close to the culture of local authority administration. I do hope it will now be open to the possibilities the bishop envisages and that diocesan authorities will give him support.

An immediate prospect for positive development is the Academies Programme initiated under Labour. Academies with a fully Catholic ethos could flourish, especially if shorn of the centralising controls imposed under the present Prime Minister.

The essential point is that money should follow students. It may be that there are here the seeds of a bipartisan approach to education which would be of national benefit at the same time as respecting the religious concerns and rights of Catholics who pay their taxes like anyone else.

Yours faithfully,
Leo Chamberlain
St John's Priory,
Easingwold, York


From Mr Edmund Adamus, director of the Department for Pastoral Affairs of the Diocese of Westminster

SIR - With respect, Mary Kenny (January 15) ought not be so quick to advocate uncritical support for Michael Gove MP as (potentially) the next Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

In an interview with Ed West in the Herald on November 21 2008 he commented on the Sexual Orientation Regulations: "I think it is prejudiced to say you won't place children with people in effect because of their sexual orientation. The Church is wrong on questions of sexual orientation... I know there are some people who say it's against natural law, but that's my judgment."

As that is his "judgment" - a belief that what one says is objectively true - then I do not imagine that, if he does become the next Secretary of State responsible for education, he will differ greatly from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) report on Sexual Orientation Regulations about schools which stated in February 2007: "In our view there is an important difference between this factual information [about sexual morality] being imparted in a descriptive way as part of a wide-ranging syllabus about different religions, and a curriculum which teaches a particular religion's doctrinal beliefs as if they were objectively true. The latter is likely to lead to unjustifiable discrimination."

I find it very hard to believe that Mr Gove will simply not challenge the mandate of Pope John Paul II to the English and Welsh bishops at their ad limina on October 23 2003: "Of particular concern is the need to uphold the uniqueness of marriage as a life-long union between a man and a woman in which as husband and wife they share in God's loving work of creation. Equating marriage with other forms of cohabitation obscures the sacredness of marriage and violates its precious value in God's plan for humanity."

Immediately after this, the Venerable John Paul II commended the bishops for the work of Catholic schools, presumably because he hoped they would continue to adhere to his preceding statement.

Yours faithfully,
Edmund Adamus
London SW1

A living patrimony

From Dr Richard Lawes, Lecturer in English, Regent's Park College, Oxford

SIR - Robert Ian Williams's article (January 15), which sets out to lambast the Holy Father's initiative in establishing a home for the Anglican patrimony within the Catholic Church, contains much which is historically accurate about the convolutions of Anglican history, yet curiously misses what seems most important.

Anyone who has been privileged to attend an Anglican Use liturgy in one of the American parishes of the Anglican Use, as I have, will have a deep impression of its sheer beauty and magnificence. They will be left in no doubt that there is, indeed, a living Anglican patrimony already within the Catholic Church, and that the Holy Father is right to think it precious and worth preserving.

They will also realise how vibrant these communities are, how firm in their faith. Their Book of Divine Worship, authentically Anglican yet also wholly Catholic, is a wonderful achievement. The theological failings of Cranmer and Coverdale cannot obliterate the beauty of their language, embodied in the Book of Common Prayer, the language of worship for most of the population of this country for several centuries.

The Anglo-Catholic tradition within Anglicanism produced not only beautiful liturgy but many other fruits, for instance the often heroic service by saintly priests in some of the worst slum areas of our cities.

I am informed of at least one group in America of Anglican evangelicals who are planning to form a congregation of the Anglican Use. So it is likely that the Ordinariates, when established, will reflect all that is spiritually most fruitful in the Anglican heritage, and will not be confined to any narrow version of Anglo-Catholicism.

Yours faithfully,
Richard Lawes
Oxford

Propagating folklore

From Fr Gordon Beattie OSB

SIR - Your leading article on "Time for crucial reform" (January 15) was incomprehensible.

A crucifix in the centre of the altar if the Priest is facing west makes it symbolic that he is facing east? Considering that many priests are only at the altar from the Offertory until Communion that means that a piece of wood or metal is more worthy to be viewed than the sacred Body and Blood of Jesus which is in front of him on the altar for the majority of that time.

As for the "direction from which Christ will return" - where are the words of Jesus himself, in the Gospels, confirming any direction? Prophecies about the East and Revelation 7:2 are not the words of Jesus. What about Psalm 75:6?

Your leading article is propagating religious folklore which will lead us in to the "facing Mecca" syndrome.

Yours faithfully,
Gordon Beattie
The Priory,
Parbold, Lancashire

Why William Shakespeare was one of us

From Mr Antony Charles Ryan, editor of Kent Recusant History

SIR - Milo Yiannopoulos's article (Comment, January 15) requires a response. The evidence that Shakespeare was Catholic has been building up since the editor of The Rambler wrote on the matter in 1858. Even the Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics lists Shakespeare in 1885. He conformed to the classic profile of a Church papist, of whom there were many. There is evidence that both his parents, several of his patrons, and some of his masters at Stratford grammar school were Catholic and his daughter, Susannah, was cited as a Catholic recusant.

In 1757 his father's will was discovered in the family house rafters when the house was occupied by a descendant of Shakespeare's Catholic sister, Joan Hart. This document ended up with Shakespeare's biographer Malone, who published it as genuine in 1790. Some thought it a forgery, but this was no longer considered when an almost identical document was discovered in 1923 in the British Museum.

Archdeacon Davies, who wrote that Shakespeare "dyed a Papist", was chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The statement is held in the college library among the Fulman manuscripts.

As for Clare Asquith's book Shadowplay, Mr Yiannopoulos's description of the authoress as an "amateur" scholar is extraordinary.

He omits to mention Piers Paul Read's review of her book as "dramatic and important" and "painstaking scholarship" with which I absolutely concur.

One piece of evidence in The Winter's Tale pointed out by Hugh Ross Williamson should be noted. After the death of his mother in 1608, Shakespeare published the play in 1610. In the play Hermione's court defence opens with the exact words used by St Edmund Campion in his defence before his martyrdom.

The recent evidence from Rome neatly covers the missing years between 1585, when he left Stratford, and 1592, when he began his career as a playwright in London. I set out much of the available evidence in a published article in 2002, but more evidence has become available since then. I propose to add to it. The considerable evidence must be considered as a whole. Finally, I should say that I am writing as a recusant/Church papist historian and retired lawyer.

Yours faithfully,
Antony Charles Ryan
Canterbury, Kent


From Mr Alan Frost

SIR - I write in response to Milo Yiannopoulos's attempt to deny the compelling evidence of Shakespeare's Catholicism and am rather surprised this piece got a prime space. But it does keep this critical issue in the spotlight and, not the author's intent I'm sure, does in effect serve as a Devil's advocate argument for our greatest writer being a Catholic.

In point of fact, the news that signatures on Tudor parchment on display at the Venerable English College in Rome may be those of William Shakespeare during his "missing years" adds further to the recent revelations about the Bard's Catholicism. Very notable are the contributions from Peter Milward SJ, in several texts, Joseph Pearce in Quest for Shakespeare, and Claire Asquith's Shadowplay, showing us the codes he used in his plays and sonnets to fight for the recovery of the traditional Catholic faith. Let us hope that teachers, lecturers and theatre directors are taking this on board (and on boards?).

Pearce's important Quest for Shakespeare is not even mentioned in the article (though a writer from the Guardian is quoted). Nor are the supportive conclusions of other leading writers and historians, Anthony Wood for example. On a personal note, I readily admit that ever since my days as a mediocre 16-year-old A-level student of English Literature over 40 years ago, I've felt in my bones that Hamlet was written by a man with a Catholic mind and soul.

Finally, this view is now being justified, none the least by the recent words of the eminent German Prof Hammerschmidt-Hummel: "I have come to the conclusion that Shakespeare was a Catholic and that his religion is the key to understanding his life and work."

Yours faithfully,
Alan Frost
Sandbach, Ches

Selection difficulties

From Dr Peter Doherty

SIR - As a former chairman of a flourishing Catholic primary school, with an increasingly high number of applicants, I am aware of the difficulties of selection (Report, January 8, Letters, January 15).

The overriding aim is preserve the Catholic ethos of the school. Practising Catholics are defined by the archdiocese by their Mass attendance on Sundays and Holy Days but unfortunately only the parish priest is able to substantiate it. The Vaughan is so heavily oversubscribed that only one in five children will be given a place.

It would seem therefore in such a dire situation, which is increasing as more parents want their children to be educated at Catholic schools for many reasons, stricter admission procedures are necessary. Only then will the devout conforming parents be protected.

A points system as operated seems to be an excellent solution. Perhaps the "regular unpaid commitments" to participate in parish activities for parents and children could be an aspiration rather than a priority.

Yours faithfully,
Peter Doherty
London SW13

Laws laid down

From Mr J T van der Linden

SIR - The school should not lay down requirements higher than that of the Church itself (Report, January 8). Priests should be obedient to their bishop.

Of course. Church law lays down that people should go to Confession at least once per year. One does not hear that mentioned in sermons these days. Nor is one told that Vatican II referred to the teaching of Casti Connubii. That teaching has been stated and re-stated many times over the centuries. It is not always easy. For that reason the Church has always recommended frequent Confession. For that reason also there is the practice of First Saturdays.

Many people do not realise this, and may well go to Communion without Confession, ignoring Church teaching about contraception.

I am afraid that, after death, some may well find themselves where they do not want to be.

Yours faithfully,
Tom van der Linden
West Ewell, Surrey

Bad management

From Mr David Leigh

SIR - I was so pleased to read Quentin de la Bédoyère's article (Science and Faith,_January 15) where he mentions that believers have no right or duty to give advice to the hierarchy. As a convert, I have never been able to understand how comments about a priest's absenteeism, financial mismanagement and neglect of the fabric of a church were ignored. This lack of good management has caused so much harm to the Church that surely a rethink is necessary.

Yours faithfully,
David Leigh
Birmingham

The Jewish Chronicle backed Pope Pius XII

From Mrs Ann Farmer

SIR - One hopes the beatification process of Pope Pius XII (Report, December 25, Letters, January 15) will explore whether he could have done more to save Jews from the Holocaust, but in fact this was not the Jewish emphasis during the War and for many years afterwards.

The Jewish Chronicle, in reporting his death in 1958, was more interested in his failure to recognise the State of Israel - especially in view of his role as chief counsellor and intermediary" in obtaining a meeting between Nahum Sokolow and Pope Benedict XV in negotiations preparing the way for the Balfour Declaration - but recognised as a a redeeming factor that under "the Nazi occupation of Rome large numbers of Jews found refuge within the Vatican City".

On Pius XII's election as pope in 1939 he was seen by the Chronicle as following in the footsteps of Pius XI as regards anti-Nazism; at the same time the Nazis reacted with dismay.

For many years after the War the emphasis was on Jewish escape from total annihilation, and during the War the Chronicle reported that the Vichy government in 1942 intensified its round-up of Jews in spite of the Pope's protest.

In 1942 the Chronicle also referred to "the Pope's unequivocal pronouncements upon the curse which is anti-Semitism"; in 1943 he was reported as condemning the "vile and godless doctrine of race and blood and race".

Such pronouncements were seen by both Jews and anti-Semites as they were intended to be seen, as condemnations of Nazism - even before his election as pope, Cardinal Pacelli had been caricatured as a "Jew" in Nazi publications for his stance on race.

Yours faithfully,
Ann Farmer
Woodford Green, Essex

15 January 2010

The ruling against Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School is troubling

From Dr Mary Howard, chair of governors of St Philomena's Catholic High School

SIR - If the Cardinal Vaughan School (Report, January 8) is guilty of discrimination, it is only in the sense of favouring those who have recourse to the sacraments due to their love of the Faith over those who take up the practice of the Faith in order to secure a place at an academically successful school.

If heavily oversubscribed schools are forced to apply only minimal requirements of faith practice, distance may become the deciding factor in offering places.

This would reduce the ethnic and social diversity of the intake and reduce parental choice for those who cannot afford to live in the vicinity of the school.

The adjudication against the Cardinal Vaughan School and the Supreme Court decision against the Jewish Free School are examples of how far secular authority is usurping the determination of religious criteria for admissions to faith schools.

Yours faithfully,
Mary Howard
Carshalton, Surrey



From Mr Jerry Hawthorne

SIR - The Cardinal Vaughan School is one of the best Catholic comprehensive schools in London so the anxiety of the bishops to ensure that as many poorer families as possible benefit and that the school's excellence does not predominately benefit white middle classes is understandable.

But if the diocese believes that its school's head and governors are not paying sufficient heed to "the option for the poor" it should surely have used Catholic mediators or even Catholic lawyers to try to resolve the issues internally rather than go off to the secular authorities. After all, if the Church internal mediation attempts failed, the bishops could then have not re-appointed the recalcitrant governors and instead appointed as governors men and women whose viewpoints were more in line with its own - governors' appointments are generally for fixed terms of three years. The head could then, if he was really acting against the interests of the Church, have been subjected to disciplinary procedures by such governors and either brought into the bishops' line or disciplined, depending on the circumstances.

This action of the Catholic Church reporting a Catholic school to the state authorities, if accurately reported, risks undermining the previous very creditable actions of the Church in seeking to dissuade the secular state from interfering in matters religious as the state's Equality Bill threatens to do, and I feel is a sad and retrograde step. The laudable ends do not justify such unhappy means.

Yours faithfully,
Jerry Hawthorne
London SW1

Striking a balance

From Mr Michael Foster MP, Minister for Equality

SIR - I was disappointed to read your article on the Equality Bill (Report, December 18) following my meeting with Simon Caldwell and other journalists from religious publications.

At no stage did I predict a "torrent of hostile legal actions against the Church" when discussing the Equality Bill. My comment on potential legal action reflected that legislation, of course, can be challenged and if the Government could find a way to avoid such challenges - outside of being an authoritarian state - we certainly would.

We believe the Bill strikes the right balance between protecting people's right to hold and manifest religious belief and the rights of others not to be discriminated against because of sexual orientation.

I would also like to clarify a situation raised in your article regarding non-Christian workers who attempt to sue a church for harassment because they take offence to crucifixes on its walls. Let me be very clear about this: a worker should expect to see a crucifix in a church-run institution and any suggestion of this constituting harassment is incorrect. The Equality Bill would absolutely not require a church to remove a crucifix from a wall.

People feel very strongly about the Equality Bill and that is something I wouldn't want to change. I would, however, like to see greater understanding of the Bill, which will help our society become a fairer and more equal place to live and which I genuinely believe is the place where most Christians would want to be.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Foster
By email

A bitter complaint

From Mr Bernard Ellis

SIR - It is very interesting to read that Bishop Ratko Peric of Mostar laments the visit of Cardinal Schönborn to Medjugorje and complains bitterly that his permission for the visit was not requested (Report, January 8).

When Pope John Paul II asked for Medjugorje to be included in the places he would like to visit on his state visit to Croatia the bishop did not give an invitation and Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, the papal preacher, was also refused permission by the Bishop of Mostar to give a retreat in Medjugorje attended by 600 priests.

If Cardinal Schönborn had asked Bishop Peric for permission to visit Medjugorje it would hardly have been given so Bishop Peric has little to complain about.

Yours faithfully,
Bernard Ellis
Bletchingley, Surrey

Help with a PET

From Mr John Cook

SIR - Our Parish Advisory Council is eager to harness the energy released by the news of Pope Benedict's visit to Britain to undertake some new initiatives and hope your readers may be of help.

We wish to set up a Parish Evangelical Team and know that there has been some discussion of them in your correspondence, and seek feedback or advice from parishes that have experience of the establishing of PETs, their running and the response to them. Practical and spiritual help are both welcome.

Having the bit between our teeth, we are thinking also about the possibility of a parish/school mission and wonder if anyone could recommend a mission team to us.

Yours faithfully,
John Cook
cook.john9@googlemail.com

Marce? Who cares?

From Mr Alan Franks

SIR_- I feel that I must, as a student and teacher of English for many years, comment on the correspondence about the use of "Marce" and "Mass" (Letters, January 8).

I became a convert to the Catholic faith as a university student almost 50 years ago, and the lovely priest who instructed and received me came from an old English Catholic family and always referred to the "Holy Marce". Everyone else said "Mass", but does it really matter?

In the north of England we say "grass" but Southerners say "grarce" - it just depends on the milieu in which we are raised. Why make a problem of it?

Yours faithfully,
Alan Franks
By email

Pius XII and politics

From Mr David Lindsay

SIR - Further to Will Heaven (Notebook, January 8), who are these "Jewish leaders" and "Jewish groups" who always seem to appear whenever Pius XII is mentioned? For whom do they speak? And since they know perfectly well that the plain facts of history are against them, what is their real agenda?

Pius the Righteous Gentile, praised by Moshe Sharett, had far warmer relations with Israel than have of necessity prevailed between that state and the Vatican since, several years after his death, the invasion and occupation of the West Bank, as well as regular attacks on Lebanon. I feel that we are starting to see the point, aren't we? None of this is really about Pius at all. It cannot be - just look at the facts. Rather, it is about the West Bank, Lebanon, Israel's actions towards them, and the Holy See's pastorally inescapable attitude to those actions.

The beatification and canonisation of Pius XII would send exactly the right signal in that particular direction (by no means the only one or the most important): if you care about Israel, and if you therefore want her to have warmer relations with the Vatican, then consider that she did have them in the reign of this great pope, and ask yourselves why. If you want good relations with the papacy, then imposing military law on the West Bank and bombarding Lebanon are not the best ways of going about it.

There are those who say that "Jordan is Palestine". Quite so: Jordan as created at the end of the British Mandate - which is to say, including the West Bank. There has never been a state with its border at the Jordan, and the populations on either Bank are one people. The answer to the question of why anyone ever designed a country so short of water as Jordan is, is that no one ever did. The creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank would be the end of the Hashemite Kingdom: the pressure for incorporation into that state would be irresistible. That, rather than the destruction of Israel, would be the great national aspiration. And then, following its rapid and its largely (if not entirely) bloodless achievement, that would be the great national triumph.

Yours faithfully,
David Lindsay
Lanchester, Co Durham

For equity's sake

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - Philip Butler (Letters, January 8) rightly praises your coverage of the Murphy Report. Given that the report's full title is Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, it strikes me that, while it is right and proper for the Church to reflect and take action to address previous abuse and to prevent it in the future, the report also highlighted failings by the civil authorities, the health boards and the Garda. I trust that the same ire will be heaped on the failings of the Garda and health boards to protect innocent victims.

Will the Garda and health boards provide compensation for their failures? Will senior Garda officers and health board officials be required to stand down? For the sake of equity those who failed victims in the Church should stand down and those likewise in the civil authorities should also.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

The case for Shakespeare's Catholicism

From Mr Russell Sparkes

SIR - Your report (January 8) about Shakespeare possibly visiting Rome is intriguing although uncertain.

But the evidence is overwhelming that he not only grew up in a devoutly Catholic family but remained so all his life. This has been demonstrated in a number of books by the distinguished Shakesperian scholar Peter Milward SJ, most recently in Shakespeare the Papist.

Shakespeare was writing at a time when it was extremely dangerous to proclaim Catholic sympathies publicly. Clare Asquith lived for a number of years in the Communist Bloc where it was equally dangerous to criticise the regime, and she used insights gained from this experience in her book Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, which came to similar conclusions to Milward.

Bearing in mind this background, Shakespeare's Catholic beliefs are obviously, though subtly, scattered through his works, as I noted in my poetry anthology Sound of Heaven. Take, for example, Shakespeare's positive depiction of the friars in Romeo and Juliet or in Measure for Measure at a time when friars were generally portrayed as sexually licentious rogues. The doctrine of Purgatory and prayers for the dead were traditional Catholic practices most fiercely attacked by the Protestant Reformers, and yet the Ghost in Hamlet proclaims a staunchly Catholic view. The Ghost's tortured account of his death ends: "unhousled, unannealed" (no Last Rites, no Blessed Sacrament) "O horror! O horror! O horror!"

It is striking how the politically correct media and academe ignores this fact; were evidence uncovered showing Shakespeare was gay or of "ethnic" extraction, one suspects that it would be front-page news.

Yours faithfully,
Russell Sparkes
London SW14

A door slightly ajar

From Fr Brian Storey

SIR - Your report (January 8) about Shakespeare possibly visiting Rome is intriguing although uncertain.

SIR - Brendan Kennedy's reflections on religion and neuroscience (Comment, January 8), can be helped by a philosophical description of spirituality; the description has of course to be negative, namely the "absence of the material". Sensations are frequently wrongly described as spiritual. While such can be the result of spiritual pursuit, they are often false and illusory.

There is much help in the thought that we know more of what God is not than we know of what He is. Moreover, it is in the very search for God in an increasingly lost situation, that we find Him. Less than that is still focusing much into the personal psyche.

While science is especially stimulating, its findings necessarily always remain in the realm of what is material. That's why I believe Richard Dawkins wisely leaves the door slightly ajar. God, spirituality and grace are permanently supernatural, invisible and intangible.

Yours faithfully,
Bryan Storey
St Paul the Apostle,
Tintagel, Cornwall

A lonely journey

From G M Gibbens

SIR - For most past converts to the Catholic Church, their conversion has been an individual process entailing a slow journey impelled by grace, leading the soul, perhaps unwillingly, to forsake old certainties and to embark upon a lonely journey to the Catholic truth.

As Newman wrote on May 3 1876 to an unknown correspondent: "I_don't see that you are at liberty to join the Catholic Church merely because you cannot subscribe to the Anglican formularies. In order to be at liberty to do so, you must believe the Catholic Church to be the oracle of God in matters of faith and morals, the Ark of Salvation and the Bride of Christ. But if, after careful thought and earnest prayer and patient waiting for God's grace, you do so believe, only one path is open to you, yet God can make up to you all suffering a hundred fold and give you abundant strength."

The sudden and mass conversion of parties of present Anglicans should surely be contemplated with caution.

Yours faithfully,
G M gibbens
London SW20

The new translation is worse than the old

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - If Fr Leo Chamberlain (Letter, January 9) re-reads what I wrote he will see that I do not disagree with his points, but simply - as a "real Latinist" - make distinctions.

"Better translations should help us all." True. But the proposed replacement is worse, not better.

"Few have Latin at their command; all the more do they need a translation which comes closer to the authoritative Latin text." True. But to use actual Latin syntax, idiom and rhetoric distances both text and faithful from the sense of the Latin.

"To include some conjunctions and subordinate phrases is necessary." True. But Mgr Bruce Harbert, former executive secretary for the International Commission on the English Liturgy (ICEL), includes them all.

"Extremes of paraphrase and omission in ... the Collects." True. First ICEL pruned three things in Collects: complex theological arguments (for more immediate understanding); confusing wordplay; and alien elements of fourth-century inculturation. The bishops came to think the first cuts wrong. Bishop Maurice Taylor's ICEL carefully repaired them. But the Curia wanted to keep the painful concomitants of early Latinisation as well - the servile pagan-style entreaties, the very polylogia that Our Lord condemned. It jettisoned 13 years' delicate work.

Fr Leo hopes that Mgr Harbert will explain the changes. But he stated his whole case at length in journals like the American neo-conservative Adoremus. Indeed, in your own columns, Sir, he urged the superiority of Latin syntax. Elsewhere he condemned our Canons for addressing God with imperatives, constantly addressing him as Father and making no allusion to our servile status: all the flaws that our Canons share with the Our Father.

Would Fr Leo not agree with me that in the Canon at least, where in Christ we realise fully our status as God's adopted children, we should employ the affectionate directness of Our Lord's own prayer?

Yours faithfully,
TOM McINTYRE
Frome, Somerset

8 January 2010

We should rejoice at the progress in the Causes of these great popes

From Mr Paul Kokoski

SIR - I commend the Vatican for moving Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII a step closer to canonisation (Report, December 25).

Pope John Paul II, a man of deep faith, will one day be canonised a saint by the Catholic Church. The Holy Father was an inspiration and a model witness to the life of Christ, a Shepherd of Truth immersed in profound humility and immense love for both God and man.

His many writings and tireless, worldwide pilgrimages of faith were a source of strength, encouragement, confidence, optimism and enlightenment not only to Catholics but to all men of good will.

A champion of the poor and ardent exponent of Christian unity, the Polish Pontiff was in many and such capacities as teaching, governing and sanctifying both a beacon of light and salt of the earth.

Alongside his historic role in the fall of Communism, John Paul II was the world's most influential and uncompromising defender of the dignity of human life. His tenacious pleas for the development of a "culture of life" and parallel denunciations of the "culture of death" have been instrumental in rallying opposition to war, terrorism, abortion, euthanasia, contraception and embryonic tissue research.

I pray for his well-deserved heavenly reward that is promised by the Giver of every gift to his good and faithful servants.

Pope Pius XII also possessed "heroic virtue". Despite efforts to cast a dark shadow over Pope Pius XII's good character it is an irrefutable fact that Pius II and the Catholic Church saved more Jews in Europe during the Second World War than any other party, with the only exception being the Allied liberating armies themselves.

He often acted secretly and silently because, in the light of the practical situations of that complex period of history, he foresaw that only in this way could he avoid the worst and save the greatest possible number of Jews.

In 1946 Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, wrote a letter to Pius XII thanking him for helping Jews during the Holocaust and for "sheltering thousands of children, who were hidden in Catholic institutions".

It is estimated by Gary Krupp, of the Pave the Way Foundation, that Pius XII and the Catholic Church saved the lives of 850,000 Jews and other Nazi persecutees during the Second World War.

Pope Pius XII promoted intense charitable work on behalf of the persecuted, without distinction of religion, race, nationality or political affiliation. Relatives and other witnesses have attested to the fact that he voluntarily deprived himself of food, heating, clothes and comforts in order to share the condition of the people, so harshly tried by the bombing and the consequences of war.

Yours faithfully,
Paul Kokoski
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Parishes, rise up!

From Mr Ray Knight

SIR - We are in the middle of celebrating the Year for Priests called for by our Pope Benedict XVI. In fact our priests are doing all that their bishops ask of them, but is that enough in view of the continuing decline?

Since evangelisation is the main purpose for which Jesus Christ founded the Church, reflecting the main purpose of his ministry on earth, parish leadership should surely be dominated by the "making of disciples and healing their sick"?

While never mentioning "healing their sick", popes and bishops tell us laity to do the evangelising. If seminaries and bishops do not see this leadership as the main task of the parish priest, they should train lay men and women as parish leaders in this work.

We still address our bishops as Lords and our popes as Holiness. There was a period in Church history when the pattern of authority in the spiritual became too linked with authority in temporal affairs. Now there is a natural reluctance in our higher echelons to see the laity with power not specifically under the bishop's authority.

Yet Jesus insisted: "Anyone who believes in me will do the works that I do, and even greater." The miracles that we read about in the Gospels and in Acts were supporting witnesses to the authority of the evangelising, by Jesus, his first disciples and the early Church. Rise up, parishes! Divide into prayer groups with a common, dynamic purpose of your prayer, study and discussion to become centres of "making disciples and healing their sick".

From your ranks will eventually come leaders working alongside parish priests everywhere.

Bishops will be surprised and delighted see their parishes transforming the pattern of tragic decline into thousands coming to Christ, reminiscent of the early Church working to do the will of God. Furthermore, sooner or later, those bishops will recognise that such initiative on the part of the laity is encouraged and urged by the Church's Canon Law (216, 204, 211, 225).

Yours faithfully,
Ray Knight
Baldock, Herts

A new text will help

From the Very Rev Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB
SIR - Tom McIntyre (Letters, December 18) and I may only be able to agree that translation is difficult. We remain in disagreement about most of the points he has now raised. In doing so, I rely on the views of real Latinists and not on my own deficient command of Latin. But at least we both know more than the first woman Governor of Texas, the famous Ma Ferguson, who was said to have remarked in 1924 that if the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it was good enough for her.

I do not think Ronald Knox would want to justify the extremes of paraphrase and omission in the present translation of the Mass, including that of the Collects. Few have Latin at their command; all the more do they need a translation which comes closer to the authoritative Latin text. Some heightening of language is desirable in a liturgical text.

To include some conjunctions and subordinate phrases is necessary. My fundamental contention in this correspondence is not one of Latinising sentiment for the past. It has been that the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite has much more to offer the Church than its critics allow, and that better translations should help us all.

Yours faithfully,
Leo Chamberlain
St John's Priory,
Easingwold, York

It's Mass, not Marce

From Rosemary Walters

SIR - In response to your article (Charterhouse, December 18) on the pronunciation of Mass as "Marce", I thought I would tell you of my experience.

I was at convent boarding school in the 1950s. My educated parents both said "Mass", while the Irish nuns said "Marce" in a very drooling and pious way which we did not like.

The normal way to say it was "Mass" then, except by mushy people and the Irish who also used to gabble the rosary in a way which did not allow for devotion. I wonder if anyone else has told you of their experience of this.

Yours faithfully,
Rosemary Walters
By email

A long tradition of Anglicans using 'Father'

From Mr James Maurice

SIR - I hesitate to prolong the debate on forms of clerical address (ie "Father") but I must challenge the letter (December 18) from the chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice as, with respect, I think she has misunderstood my letter of November 30.

I was not suggesting that Roman Catholic priests did not historically originate the style of address but simply that, given the unfortunate residual anti-Catholic hostility still prevailing in the mid 19th century, while not official policy it was deemed inadvisable for everyday use in public in certain areas, though an influx of Irish immigrants who brought their customs with them made it difficult to effect.

On the other hand, a number of Anglican priests, although inciting some controversy, chose to use it and in a few cases were prosecuted.

Concerning the chairman's anecdotal comments, my late mother, a lifelong devout Roman Catholic who was educated prior to 1914 at a convent in East London, once told me with some amusement that the Sisters instructed their pupils that when addressing a priest in public they were not to use the style Father and when priests came to the convent to celebrate Mass they usually arrived dressed in mufti devoid even of a clerical collar.

Similarly, the recorded Anglican usage of the title Father can be verified by a perusal of the transcripts of proceedings of cases brought under the Public Worship Act of 1874 where a number of Anglican priests were prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged "Roman" practices, including, inter alia, styling themselves as Father. Many references to contemporary reports on the proceedings can be found on the internet.

My purpose was to dispute Mr Williams's suggestions that usage of this style was eclectic and did not have a widespread or lengthy tradition.

Finally, I do not think the content of my letter claimed that Anglo-Catholics were the mainstream of the Church of England but they do, of course, represent a very significant grouping within it and many of those who cross the Tiber come from that faction. As to the current proportion, I suggest that the chairman consults the Forward in Faith movement.

Yours faithfully,
James Maurice
By email

We need to confess

From Mr Donal Anthony Foley

SIR - Regarding Philip Butler's criticism (Letters, December 11) of Fr Edwin Gordon's positive letter (November 27)_about the value of frequent Confession, while acknowledging his point that clearly many Catholics are not taking advantage of the opportunity to go to Confession for a number of reasons, that doesn't mean there has to be any change in its essential nature.

Quite apart from what recent popes have said about confession, it is a fact that the very first thing that Christ did on seeing the disciples together as a group after his Resurrection - that very evening - was to give them the power to forgive sins. He told them that he was sending them and breathed on them, saying: "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained." (John 20:19-23).

The only way they could know other people's sins in order to forgive them is if they were told them - this means auricular confession. And it is a settled Catholic belief that this power to forgive sins was passed on to the successors of the Apostles and thus to today's priests and bishops, and will continue on into the future.

Mr Butler's friend may feel that her sins have been forgiven, but she can never have the certainty that they have been forgiven which comes with sacramental absolution. If Christ instituted the sacrament of Confession it was for a good reason, namely that we are all sinners who need it, whether our sins are mortal or venial, and thus it is foolish to reject or downplay this wonderful sacrament of God's love and forgiveness.

Yours faithfully,
Donal Anthony Foley
Chilwell, Notts

From Mr Philip Butler

Sir-I agree so much with your leading article of December 4 that the Murphy report shows the need for deep spiritual renewal of the Catholic Church, but how is this to come about?

The usual suspects are now blaming Vatican II for paedophiliac abuse in the Church or downplaying the scandal by saying that there are always rotten apples in any barrel. Most of our priests are, of course, good, kind, hard-working dedicated -_that hardly needs sayings - but what surely must be addressed is why in a body whose whole purpose is to show God's love for mankind there could be any priests who betray their vocation in such appalling ways.

Issuing apologies, paying compensation and working out safeguards for the future are all important and necessary but the scale and nature of the scandal (by no means confined to Ireland) demand something more. The title of Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's book expresses what is needed: Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.

We should make a fundamental re-appraisal of the nature of authority in the Church and how power is exercised in its institutional structures at every level "abandoning the cultural history of treating authority as a hierarchy of power", as you suggest, and recovering an authentically Christlike "hierarchy of loving service".

Yours faithfully,
Philip Butler
London NW10

Classroom sex education is a terrible failure

From Dr Helen Davies

SIR - In your report on the Catholic Education Service (CES) and its attitude to the Government's latest drive on school sex education (Report, December 25) we need to remember that the policy of classroom sex education has been a disastrous failure.

Why would it not be when it fails to form children in chastity by breaking down natural barriers and exposing children, in a captive classroom setting, to details which by their very nature should be private and intimate? These same children will then be able to talk freely after class about what they have just been told. They have effectively been desensitised and sexualised. Where is the encouragement to modesty or privacy?

The Church has always emphasised that children should be educated at home about "the truth and meaning of human sexuality".

This should be done when parents judge the time is right, not by an outside agency. If they are manifestly unable to do this then they may delegate their responsibility to a suitable guardian or teacher, but the information would need to be imparted on an individual basis, not in a classroom setting.

How many parents know this? Does the CES not realise that parents badly need support to keep their children chaste not misguided interference from Government agencies?

Yours faithfully
Helen Davies
By email

25 December 2009

We cannot compromise as Parliament abrogates our human rights

From Mr Philip Audley-Charles

SIR - Most Catholics will understand that the proposed Equality Bill (Report, December 11) will merely be another of the many Acts passed by Parliament in the last 12 years in an ideological conflict with the beliefs of the Catholic Church regarding sexual ethics and the nature of marriage. Some Acts are also opposed to other Catholic teaching and abrogate our human rights.

In 1997 it was hoped that a new Government would show more concern for the "common good" but the last 12 years have turned out to be for the "common bad" of the Catholic Church in Britain. Recent data issued by the Office of National Statistics reveals that an unfortunate additional misfortune, or "common bad", in this period has fallen on the poor in Britain, because it seems, even during the years of plenty, their number increased.

Maybe we Catholics need to keep in mind that we do not seek to force anything on anyone; however, these Acts of Parliament are intended to coerce everyone to conform to their alien philosophy.

All we would ask is to be permitted our human right to practise our religion; it threatens no one and participation is voluntary.

Unfortunately, the history of the Church makes it all too clear that mealy-mouthed compromise in the face of such outright opposition to God's truth always results in worse to follow. Although the threat is not (yet?) so severe, perhaps we should recall that St John Fisher was the only bishop who had the courage to defend the Church and the Gospel against King Henry VIII, while his fellow bishops and archbishops compromised their beliefs. We all know that what followed was 300 years of misery and martyrdom for England's Catholics.

Will we sing forever of your love, O Lord, and
Through all ages will our mouth proclaim your truth?

Yours faithfully,
Philip Audley-Charles
London N7

A sick minority

From Mr Kevin Greenan

SIR - My late mother was a day pupil in a convent school in Co Monaghan in the 1920s. Only years later did she finally realise why the girls boarding in the school were so sullen - the strict regime for boarders was terrifying. The real scandal in the sad and shameful report of the treatment of young people in Ireland over decades by a small, sick minority of priests and religious is that so many of the hierarchy put the Church's reputation above Christian values (Report, December 4).

The words and condemnation of Pope Benedict are not only welcome they are, through no fault of his, long overdue. Now is the time for a cleansing of Ireland's hierarchy of any bishops or above, who knew and either did not act or did act but only in the interests of the Church's reputation, to be dismissed. The many innocent young people abused will have paid much.

We can only offer our prayers and compensation - we cannot restore their innocence. The other great "crime" of a corrupt Irish hierarchy is that the majority of decent Irish priests and religious will be smeared with the shame of a minority.

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Greenan
London SW1

Ecumenical effects

From Mr Michael Hodges

SIR - I was rather annoyed by Fr Paul Browne OSB's letter (December 11) in which he stated the translation of the response et cum spiritu tuo as "and with your spirit" "isn't English". This would certainly have come as news to Cramner and indeed to most of his current Anglican descendants who, as far as I recall, still use "and with your spirit".

One could in fact argue that this change will have a beneficial ecumenical effect.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Hodges
London SW7

Death of conscience

From Dr Christopher Shell

SIR - Christian registrar Lilian Ladele, unwilling to conduct civil unions, lost her appeal this week, trumped by "modern liberal democracy". The Court of Appeal makes a plain logical error here. For if "modern" is good (rather than neutral), despoiled rainforests, bombings of civilians, and fiddled expenses are good; and additionally, from now on, the death of conscience is good.

In fact, a conscientious employee is a good employee. This is discrimination, in the name of anti-discrimination, against (of all people) those with high moral standards. How can we stand by?

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Shell
Hounslow, Middlesex

The Pope's green passion warms the heart

From Mr Kenn Winter

SIR - Pope Benedict's call for "concrete action" to combat global warming, from his study window in the Vatican to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St Peter's Square on December 6, warmed my heart. It contrasted starkly with your lukewarm leading article on December 11, alongside the letter from a "climate-change denier" from Surrey.

The Holy See has participated in the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen with a delegation led by its UN representative Archbishop Migliore, alongside Caritas Internationalis, representing 150 Catholic charities, including bishops from 25 countries, who support scientists' demands for a 40 per cent cut in global CO2 emissions in the next decade.

The Archbishop of Westminster could respond to the Pope's call and get the English bishops and dioceses to switch to CO2-free "green electricity" for their 5,000-plus Catholic churches, schools, clergy property (other ethical organisations like Oxford University, and even RBS bank, have done so) and "offset" all Catholic flights and pilgrimages' CO2 with payments for environmental initiatives, especially in Third World countries. These are easily arranged by responsible travel agents such as the Co-op Group.

It is hypocrisy for English bishops to tell people to "live simply" while they pollute God's Creation with fossil fuel emissions from Catholic property and flights to Rome.

It would also be a simple matter for all Catholic households to switch to a "green tariff" for their domestic electricity, at no extra cost, via their existing energy suppliers - in response to the Pope's heart-felt plea for "concrete action" to combat global warming. If Mary and Joseph were alive today I like to think they would be on a "green tariff".

Yours faithfully,
Kenn Winter
Huddersfield, Yorkshire

A happy medium

From Mr David Lindsay

SIR - I attended St Chad's College Durham's Advent procession by kind invitation of the College Officers and Fellows.

The old place is on very good form. But the word on the Anglo-Catholic street is that the Ordinariate proposal is ridiculous. Just as the worst liturgical abuses on our own side of the Tiber are mostly in London or its orbit and are dying out even there, so the most exotic aspects of Forward in Faith are mostly in London or its orbit and are dying out even there. There is a more than a happy medium to be struck by clergy who come over having used the modern Roman Rite tastefully, reverently and sensibly for decades, in many cases all their lives.

Parishes the length and breadth of the land are crying out for such priests. Should the men who could meet that need revert to, or adopt for the first time, the full English Missal flora and fauna of 1950s Anglo-papalism? That is as absurd to them as it is to me. The provision for the Latin Rite ordination of married convert clergy goes all the way back to Pius XII.

As for being aimed at the Traditional Anglican Communion, again the views of the Anglo-Catholic mainstream are in line with those of many of the rest of us. If that body really is active in 66 countries, then in which 66 countries, exactly? If it really does have hundreds of thousands of faithful, then who are they, and where are they? This whole thing may be playing well in London, at Oxford and on the south coast. But in all parts North (and, no doubt, west), it is being dismissed as an irrelevance and an absurdity.

All in all, that evening was heartening stuff. "If I were going to become a Roman Catholic, then I would just get on and do it", and, even better: "If you are going to do it, then you should do it properly, and become part of a normal Roman diocese and parish." Quite.

Yours faithfully,
David Lindsay
Lanchester, Co Durham

Priests should heed the Papal Preacher

From Mr Edmund P Adamus, director of the department for pastoral affairs of the Diocese of Westminster

SIR - In view of the threat posed by the Equality Bill (Report, December 11) on the employment status of the priesthood to the effect that at least 51 per cent of a priest's ministry must be devoted to preaching doctrine and or to public worship; perhaps the advice from Fr Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Papal Household might be timely:

"A threat that... affects the clergy of the whole Church [is] called frenetic activism. Priests, more than anyone else, are exposed to the danger of sacrificing what is important for the urgent. Prayer, the preparation of the homily or for Mass, study and formation, are all important things, but not always considered urgent; if they are postponed, apparently, the world does not collapse, while there are so many little things - a meeting, a phone call, a material task - which are [imagined as] urgent. Thus one ends up by postponing systematically the important things to a 'later' that never arrives."

There is the equally sage and timely advice from Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev, President of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations who in the introduction to the 2009 book Europe, Spiritual Homeland (presented to the Pope on December 2) states: "The Christian is called to profess his faith boldly, out of love of God and of his truth, and for the salvation of his soul, for eternal life. He must denounce by legal means the clear violation committed by society or by the state against the laws and commandments of God. And if this action should prove impossible or ineffective, then he must move on to civil disobedience."

Yours faithfully,
Edmund Adamus
London SW1

18 December 2009

Darwin should not be blamed for deep-rooted racism in America

From Mr Richard Heron

SIR - Your shock-horror headline "Darwin's idea has cost lives" is followed by the even more emotive "the naturalist is a secular saint yet he has left a legacy of mass sterilisation and murder" (Features, December 4).

Dennis Sewell gives two clearly historically flawed instances of Darwin's pernicious influence before he goes for the jugular with your readers on eugenics and the Abortion Act. To blame Darwin's theories for chronic American racism and the racial outrages of Nazi Germany is palpable nonsense. America's founding fathers did not need to be overtaken by Darwinian science to deny the self-evident truth that all men are created equal - their own hypocritical acceptance of slavery from the beginning was the basis for deep-rooted racism.

Nor did this just apply to black people - from 1898 until 1902 the US fought a vicious war in the Philippines shot through with racism from start to end. In the 1904 St Louis Exposition the most popular pavilion in the Philippine sector was that of half-dressed hill tribes, armed with bow and arrows. Ordinary Filipinos, as civilised as the citizens of Kansas, found this as offensive as anyone found Sewell's pygmy in the Bronx Zoo monkey-house.

Sadly, such racism was not new. Spanish friales - Augustinians, Franciscans and others - who had oppressed the Filipinos for centuries regarded their flock as "relatives of monkeys" and expressed amazement when the likes of José Rizal became an author of international repute. The good Fathers' opinions seem unlikely to have been inspired by Darwin.

For the Holocaust, Sewell graciously allows that "the part played by Christian anti-Semitism should certainly not be ignored". The Protocols of Zion was hardly a Darwinian forgery and his claim that Darwin's racial theory was a necessary condition seems to have overlooked the works of Nietzsche and other Germans of his ilk.

When it comes to the question of the murky world of eugenics he seems not to know, or prefers to ignore, that in the US one of the most prominent families supporting the movement was the Herberts, Walkers and Bushes - today so very "pro-life".

On the other hand, there has never been any evidence that David Steel's motivation in sponsoring the 1967 Abortion Act had any basis in the eugenics movement. It is this smear that seems to spark Sewell's fear of being labelled a conspiracy theorist. A brief visit to Google shows that Sewell is getting heavy cover for his controversialism - judging by this article his true talent is that of the spin doctor. Abortion is dreadful but distortion does no cause any good.

Yours faithfully,
Richard Heron
By email

Our good priests

From Kathleen Hamilton

SIR - Responding to the persistent media coverage of the ongoing investigation into the horrifying history of scandalous child abuse by sick-minded clergy over the years, and the ensuing cover-up by those in authority - bishops and archbishops - I would like to recommend that we look at the "other side of the coin" and consider the untiring, self-sacrificing, generous, compassionate, caring dedication of the vast majority of priests in sacred ministry.

Now in my old age, I can only speak most highly of the priests I have encountered along the way - especially in recent years. They have inspired me by word and example to come to know more about the love and merciful forgiveness of the God I used to fear because of my sinfulness. They have helped me understand the unconditional love of God for each one of us - as we are, not as we would wish to be. They have helped me to see that we do not have to earn God's love. He has redeemed us by his Precious Blood, dying on the Cross to save us, and preparing a place in heaven for us.

Therefore, these priests have helped me in turn to try and reach out to others, especially those with whom I myself need to reconciled and to share this wonderful Good News by my words and actions. The priests I know have helped me to prepare to meet my God without fear in my twilight years, as I near the closing of my days.

I thank God for the influence they have had on my life.

I also pray that those who are now influenced adversely by the bad publicity because of the heinous crimes of offenders will get the grace to think straight, see things in perspective and value our good priests who are suffering so much because they are indiscriminately tarred with the same brush; although they are as shocked as the rest of us at the terrible revelations. Let us pray for our priests.

Since bad news usually makes the headlines, this counterbalance may not be deemed worthy of note but it's worth a try and it comes from my heart.

Yours faithfully,
Kathleen Hamilton
Liverpool

The rights of capital

From Professor Philip Booth, editorial and programme director of the Institute of Economic Affairs

SIR - Bishop Kenney (Features, December 4) invites us to think about what it means to say that "capital has no rights". It would, indeed, be interesting to know what Bishop Kenney does mean.

It would be absurd to suggest that capital itself has no rights. Capital is inanimate and could not have rights.

Did he mean that the owners of capital have no rights? This, in turn, would mean that we would have no property rights as owners of our homes or as owners of the savings that we hold to provide income in retirement or when hit by unemployment and sickness.

The Church has always strongly defended such rights - albeit sometimes in a qualified way and sometimes in a way that makes such rights subservient to the rights of labour. She did so at the time of Rerum Novarum, which was influenced by Cardinal Manning; she still does so today, including in the particular context of the abject poverty, in many countries around the world, where the rights to hold property and other capital are often non-existent or not enforceable.

Pope Leo XIII thought about this deeply. He concluded from natural law that man had a right to hold property, though a duty to give from his excess to the poor. This duty was not to be enforced by human law, he continued, except in extreme cases. The right to property was very clear indeed; and, as Pope Leo would have predicted, those whose do not have that right live in the poorest communities in the world and suffer greatly as a result.

I believe that Cardinal Manning actually said: "Capital has no rights, but the capitalist has." This is clear, even if the first half of the sentence hardly needs saying. But what exactly did Bishop Kenney mean?

Yours faithfully,
Philip Booth
London SW1

Jump on the bus

From Mr Patrick Reyntiens

SIR - We are encouraged to jump on the coetibus and drive down the via media to Rome.

Yours faithfully,
Patrick Reyntiens
Ilminster, Somerset

Ronald Knox's clear-headed conversion

From Mr John Jolliffe SIR - Jonathan Wright's review (December 11) of Ronald Knox and English Catholicism by Fr Terry Tastard made some strangely misleading comments, including the following: "Conversion is often a muddled business." It is hard to think of a more clear-headed conversion than that of Knox.

Knox "embraced reception into the Church with ease". On the contrary, it was a huge rift. (See Evelyn Waugh's biography, Ronald Knox: "His view of the Church of England was that she was a true branch of the Latin Church of the West, which through an accident of history had been partly severed from the trunk. She was feloniously held in bondage by the State ... It was her manifest destiny in God's good time to return rejoicing to her proper obedience." Is not the Pope's recent invitation just for this?) Secondly, Knox's father, the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, was appalled by his son's step, which he called not a conversion but a perversion, and even cut him out of his will. Unlike the impression given by your reviewer, it was emphatically a momentous decision, which gave great pain to a father whom he loved deeply.

"He served as an 'estimable chaplain' at Oxford." What is this supposed to mean? The Oxford to which Knox returned in 1926 was totally different from the one he had loved before 1914. In her fascinating book The Knox Brothers his niece Penelope Fitzgerald, stated that "the main interests of undergraduates in the 1930s were sex, travel, and European politics", rather than dropping in at the Old Palace between the stated hours of 4 and 6 pm.

Knox "needed to be needed", and he felt he wasn't, not least because he refused to have a telephone in the house. "Estimable"? At any rate, he regarded himself as the shepherd of his quite small flock. He had no interest in making converts, and advised those concerned to go and talk to the Jesuits in Farm Street.

One could say more, but this letter is long enough.

Yours faithfully,
John Jolliffe
By email

Canonising Latin

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - Fr Leo Chamberlain (Letters, December 4) thinks he was "mistaken" to value our plain English Mass. Hardly. Plainness in prayer is a divine command. The current issue is actually between plain and plain - the Mass in pure English for our time, against a medieval sermo simplex literally translated. Grammar affects both. Plain Latin, for instance, needs many conjunctions. Good English, Ronald Knox pointed out, uses few.

Fr Leo pleads old age. That gives him some feel and attachment for this revived Latinising Missal language. The feel and attachment of the millions, though, is for the Mass that they know and can follow. And unlike Fr Leo, they have no Latin to tell them what the literal version means.

"One can hardly dispute St Jerome's fundamental principle, to translate the sense." Mgr Harbert does. He argues that there is no underlying sense, justifying literalism by the Marxists' long-discarded mort de l'auteur theory. Fr Leo, too, in condemning paraphrase, disputes St Jerome's principle. If translation is not literal, Ronald Knox again reminds us, it is paraphrase.

Fr Leo's irritation at "from east to west" is strange. On its own a solis ortu, etc, might be temporal ("from the rising even to the setting of the sun" ie, all day long). But the Mass reference is to Malachi 1:11. The New Jerusalem Bible translates "from farthest east to farthest west", ie universally. Trent held that this prophesied the universal sacrifice of the messianic age.

Far too few Fathers, Doctors of the Church or popes are available in plain modern English. Canonising Latin idiom makes things worse.

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

Staying in bed

From Mr Nicolas J Bellord

SIR - Regarding Hugh David's discussion (School Board, November 20) of allowing school children to get up later perhaps we should remember René Descartes ("I think therefore I am").

When at the College de La Fleche his Jesuit teachers allowed him to stay in bed as long as liked and it is there that he formed the habit of staying in bed to have a good think. This was about the same time as the Church's hitch over Galileo but surely the enlightened Jesuits amply compensated for that.

As for myself, I just remember the Benedictines beating me for day-dreaming. What might I have been!

Yours faithfully,
Nicolas Bellord
Horsted Keynes, West Sussex

A totalitarian state

From Mr M J Smith

SIR - I wonder whether those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of their country in the two world wars, which we commemorate each November, would have been so willing to make that sacrifice had they known what a totalitarian state this country is fast becoming, thanks to Harriet Harman and the present Government (Report, December 11).

Yours faithfully,
Michael Smith
By email

Facts and fiction

From Dr Christopher Shell

SIR - Ed Balls says that an emphasis on marriage is "old-fashioned". Logically, there are three possibilities. Either he is more concerned to be "with-it" than to do what's best for children; or he believes that the definition of "fashionable" is the same as the definition of "beneficial"; or he thinks that those things that are fashionable are in fact always beneficial. I expect that a good proportion of the children for whom he's responsible could alert him to the obvious falsity of all three positions.

Less fundamentalism and more attention to real-world facts and statistics on the intrinsic average durabilities of marriage and cohabitation, please.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Shell
Hounslow, Middx

Cherie's guidance

From Dr Helen Davies

SIR - Cherie Blair is entitled to her own views on what she calls "the natural form of contraception" (Report, December 11).

What she is not entitled to do is to use her position and access to the media to take every opportunity to spread misinformation on something so important to women of all ages as natural fertility awareness.

The Church supports natural planning because it works when couples take the trouble to learn it well, and it follows God's plan for our sexuality. I, for one, would prefer my daughters to follow the Church's guidance rather than Cherie Blair's.

Yours faithfully,
Helen Davies
By email

Common language

From Mr Tony Foley

SIR - I was puzzled by Fr Paul Browne's statement (Letters, December 11) that "With your Spirit" is not English as quite recently I was in St Paul's for Evensong (which is something special) and what did I hear after: "The Lord be with you" but "And with thy Spirit". Further, the closing words of St Paul's letter (NRSV translation) to the Galatians is "may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit".

If what he is saying is that no one in ordinary English culture would ever say to another: "With your spirit." Well, so what? I have never said "And also with you" outside of church. All the pity that the beauty of the Word has not penetrated into the common language of the people.

In the native language (Gaelic) of my country, the hello greeting is Dia dhuit ("God be with you") and the response is Dia is Mhuire Dhuit ("God and Mary be with you").

No doubt Fr Browne's translation would be "How are you?" followed by "I am fine. How are you?", on the basis that God has never entered into the greetings of the people of this land. But that would not be a translation but a manifestation of a cultural imperialism.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Foley
Billericay, Essex

The first Fathers

From the chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice

SIR - I am surprised to see James Maurice's claim (Letters, December 11) that Catholics copied Anglicans in calling their clergy "Father" when it was so clearly the other way around. Catholic priests from religious orders have always been addressed as Father though secular priests were addressed as Sir at the time of the Reformation.

Catholic priests in this country have been called "Father" from the time the Hierarchy was restored in 1850 to keep in line with Catholic priests the world over, though at that time no Anglican ministers were known as Father.

I well remember my grandmother talking about priests she knew as a child (the 1860s and 1870s) as Father. Now all Catholic priests are Father, Padre, etc. but only some Anglicans use that title and low-church Anglicans dislike it.

Is Mr Maurice just as mistaken when he claims that Anglo-Catholicism represents the mainstream of the Anglican tradition? He certainly fails to present any evidence for that position and Robert Williams (Letters, November 27) makes a good case for the opposite view.

Yours faithfully,
Daphne McLeod
Great Bookham, Surrey

Catholics are confused about how they should fight the drift towards euthanasia

From Mr A J H Miller

SIR – I found myself very much in agreement with the sentiments expressed in John Randall’s letter (November 27).

I do not consider that the lack of response referred to is because people are not concerned by the issues raised, but rather that they simply do not know how they can fight this enemy within of a secular Government and health service which appear to value human life purely in monetary terms and nothing more.

Most of us do not have the expertise to credibly question the actions taken by the medical profession in “caring” for our elderly relatives, even if we have suspicions as to the true motivation of certain actions or inactions, and the chance of finding a qualified person to give a contrary opinion to that of the primary doctor is remote, particularly as starvation and dehydration in the form of the Liverpool Care Pathway appears to be a perfectly legal form of back-door euthanasia.

Even if the considerable obstacle of a second opinion can be overcome then there are the emotional barriers of “it won’t bring him / her back” as well as considering the sensitivities of other relatives who may wish to avoid the pain, trauma and distress of autopsies, coroners, courts etc. One also tries to put oneself in the shoes of the deceased and ask whether they would have wanted to live a life incapacitated, dependent and inevitably lacking dignity at times when they had been fully fit and independent previously.

One is essentially put in the position with these emotional dilemmas of asking whether one is acting for the benefit of the deceased, other relatives or oneself. All that can be done is to pray and then act in good faith considering the best interests of both the deceased and bereaved relatives.

In my opinion, there are evil people in Government and the health service who cynically play on these factors knowing that in reality there is little that can or will be done by most ordinary people.

I do not know how we can overcome this. I hope and pray that somebody out there does.

Yours faithfully,
A J H Miller
By email


From Professor Robin Whatley

SIR – John Randall is right to be astonished at the lack of response to Tim Fawcett’s important earlier letter (November 6). I cannot be alone in agreeing with everything they write.

Earlier this year I spent eight months in an NHS hospital where I first learned of the Liverpool Care Pathway. This was presented as something elderly patients (I am 73) should be grateful for, although some of the more “hands on” nurses disliked it intensely.

The “petty brutes and braggarts” are not confined to government quangos and local authorities; they are well represented in Parliament, especially the Lower House, and throughout the civil service at all levels. Corruption is indeed “rife in high places” but by no means confined there. County councils are awash with it and rank incompetence has become its stable fellow.

We should not be concerned solely with the legalised murder of the unborn and the aged but also with the evident intent of the state to morally corrupt our children. To render sex education for 15-year-olds obligatory is pure fascism, and that is what my father and others of my family fought against in World War Two.

Yours faithfully,
Robin Whatley
Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire

Enough is enough

From Dr Joseph Seferta

SIR – Why all the fuss about the ban on building minarets in Switzerland (Report, December 4)? Muslims are still allowed to build mosques and worship in them, as indeed they are throughout the West. It is the Christians (in both East and West) who should be outraged at the shameful treatment of Christian minorities in Muslim-majority countries, where it is impossible to build new churches and where persecution is a daily fact of life, with no one coming to their help.

There is not a single church in Saudi Arabia to serve the spiritual needs of two million Christians working there, and this follows the pleas by popes Paul VI and John Paul II. Meanwhile, Muslims in Europe are allowed to build hundreds of mosques and enjoy full human and democratic rights. No reciprocity and no fairness!

Christianity is waning fast in Europe, with Muslim radicals clearly sensing that. They are using all means to spread Islam so that eventually Europe will become Islamised, meaning that Christians here would have the same bleak future that Christians already have in Islamic countries under the sharia. I think the Swiss were the first nation to sense that and had the courage to state publicly: “Enough is enough.”

Yours faithfully,
Joseph Seferta
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

Invisible to our eyes

From Mr Philip Goddard

SIR – Whether the celebrant at Mass faces versus orientem or versus populum, the congregation cannot, pace your correspondent Elizabeth Price (Letters, November 27), “see the point at which Christ is present”, since this is an event invisible to mortal eyes.

Whatever the supposed merits of the versus populum position, this is assuredly not one of them.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Goddard
London SE19

This isn’t English

From Fr Paul Browne OSB

SIR – In your report on the new English Missal (November 27) you claim that the response “And with your spirit” is “closer to the Latin et cum spiritu tuo”. “Closer to”? – it’s a literal, word-for-word translation. But it isn’t English. Unlike “And also with you”, which we’ve been saying now for nearly 40 years.

Yours faithfully,
Paul Browne
Leyland, Lancashire

A source of regret

From Fr David Bingham MHM

SIR – I now very much regret my letter (December 4) expressing my personal feelings about the Tridentine Mass. Whatever one’s personal feelings, it is not the business of a priest to hurt the feelings of good and devout Catholics who feel passionately and are devoted to the Tridentine Mass.

Yours faithfully,
David Bingham
Durham

A saint for the plinth

From Mr Raymond Benedict De Souza

SIR – There has been a great deal of publicity recently regardng the use of the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

I cannot believe that no one has suggested that it is the right place for a statue of Sir Thomas More, perhaps our greatest Lord Chancellor.

As is well known, Thomas More was not only a brilliant lawyer but also an honest politician. He is recognised worldwide, not only by us Catholics but also by Anglicans, and people of other faiths, and no faith, for his remarkable qualities. He has, in my opinion, the best claim to be commemorated by a statue on the vacant plinth.

A Londoner, he was educated at St Anthony’s School, Threadneedle Street, Canterbury Hall at Oxford and at New Inn, London. This Londoner is buried, headless, in the Chapel of St Peter-ad-Vincula, Tower of London, in an unknown location.

In 2000 Pope John Paul II declared More as “the heavenly patron of statesmen and politics”.

Yours faithfully,
Raymond Benedict De Souza
London N8

A trait of sympathy

From Mr John Kearney

SIR – I found the article by Dennis Sewell (Feature, December 4) compelling reading but I would like to point out that Darwin himself was a very caring man. His family was very much anti-slavery. If he had known how his writings would be used he would have been horrified.

Yet take the following quotation from The Descent of Man. He compared how savages kill off the sick and weak yet we build asylums for them:

“No one who has attended to the propagation of domestic animals will doubt that this will be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

Darwin did say, however, that the human race had developed a “trait of sympathy”. Darwin may have believed this but many of his disciples certainly did not. As Mr Sewell has shown his writings led to disaster for blacks and Jews.

Yours faithfully,
John Kearney
Basingstoke, Hampshire

Why Anglo-Catholic clergy are called Father

From Mr James Maurice

SIR – With great respect, I must take issue with Robert Ian Williams (Letters, November 27), who displays a rather parochial and, I suspect, possibly partisan view of liturgical practices in the Church of England (and the Church in Wales).

While reading his letter I could immediately recollect by patronal name at least 30 Anglican churches where most of the “Roman” rituals to which he clearly objects are regularly and openly practised, including in some cases the (Latin) Tridentine Mass and veneration of the reserved or exposed sacrament.

While my precise knowledge is restricted to Greater London, the English south coast towns, Cornwall and South Wales, as well as the Walsingham shrine (initially restored by the local vicar Fr Hope Patten), many have purpose-built private confessionals, and in my working / holiday travels throughout Britain a passing glance at church notice boards reveals that the availability of the penitential sacrament is not unusual. In any event, the Book of Common Prayer 1662 expressly provides for private confession and absolution.

Also, on a point of detail the now widespread custom of addressing the local vicar or rector as “Father” pre-dates Roman Catholic public usage in Britain and began with Fr Lowder at St Peter’s, Limehouse, in 1860 while he ministered to Portuguese and other foreign seamen during a cholera outbreak and the practice spread throughout the East End of London and was soon adopted by more fashionable churches elsewhere. Prior to the Great War Roman Catholic priests were for reasons of discretion addressed in public as “Mr”.

There are many other liturgical ceremonies alleged to be exclusively “Roman” but overtly celebrated in the Church of England and the Church in Wales which are too numerous to list here.

Yours faithfully,
James Maurice
Aberaeron, Ceredigion

Tea and St Benedict

From Brother John Barry OCSD

SIR – In his Notebook (November 20) Charlie Hegarty gives us an insight into The Book of Tea written by Kakuzo Okakura, first published in 1906. It gives us an account of Japanese culture, especially that of the tea ceremony, “Teaism”, which flows from Zen Buddhism. The tea vessels would be treated with great reverence because “they are almost part of a cult of saints with relics”.

St Benedict, in his Rule for monks around 540 AD, with reference to the cellarer says: “He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar.”

Interesting to note the link that exists betweens the world’s great religions, religious movements and cultures.

Having said all this, I intend to “hold on in there” within the Catholic fold. Besides, I am a coffee man myself, thank you very much.

Yours faithfully,
John Barry
Abbaye Notre Dame de Scourmont,
Forges, Belgium

It is wrong to equate the Ordinary Form of the Mass with Cranmer's compositions

From the Very Rev Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB

SIR - I have read with interest the comments (November 20) on my previous letter (November 6).

There is good justification for the modifications made to the Mass in producing what is now the Ordinary Form but it is not possible to take up all Fr Gary Dickson's points regarding the old form of the Roman Rite in comparison with the Ordinary Form. Still, it really won't do to line up the ordinary form with Cranmer's compositions.

Fr Gary seems rightly to refer to article 46 of the Constitution on the Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, which itself recalls St Thomas Aquinas's moving summary of the meaning of the Mass. Sacrifice and meal, or better, banquet, are bound together.

At Mass, taking the bread and wine, we carry out the Lord's command in his memory, and the priest acts in the person of Christ to consecrate; thus we are made present to the one sacrifice which priest and laity offer together. Communion completes the sacrifice. There is no distinction here between the old and the Ordinary Form of the Mass.

Cranmer's intention was the opposite, to exclude the language of sacrifice altogether, on the grounds that the Mass was a blasphemous attempt to repeat the unique sacrifice of Christ. He did so most completely in the Book of Common Prayer of 1552. The famous Black Rubric denied the Real Presence; the prayer of offering in the Eucharistic Prayer was omitted. The Council of Trent took pains to combat the error.

As many Anglicans celebrate the Eucharist today, they use a much more Catholic text, produced by their own liturgical scholars. Even if they do not, the ecumenical truth which matters to us all is that they are trying to fulfil Christ's command to remember him.

I have much sympathy with Mr McIntyre over the question of language. I remember old Professor Harrison, a member of the original team of translators, passionate for plainness. At the time, I agreed. Now I think we were all mistaken. I hope Mgr Harbert and other expert translators may themselves write further at some point about the issue. One can hardly dispute St Jerome's fundamental principle, to translate the sense. Actually, classicists tell me that he certainly did not always get it right.

The trouble with the present translations is that they are paraphrases and do not sufficiently reflect the sermo simplex of the Latin. The criticism is that they lose too much of the meaning of the Latin - which is, after all, the authoritative text. The Gloria simply omits phrases. Perhaps the Collects are the worst, but repeatedly the translation loses the echo of meaning in the Latin often by its flat attempt to abandon metaphor -not what Newman had in mind. An example which always irritates me is that a sole ortu ad occasum, that is, "from the rising even to the setting of the sun", in the Third Eucharistic Prayer is translated "from east to west".

The flow of language does matter. So do feminist linguistic sensitivities today. But that is a whole vast further subject. Perhaps I should be more patient, but I am getting old. Still, I hope we may all move together quite soon.

I am aware of how much damage has been done by priests and others ignoring another paragraph from the Constitution, para 22.3. Not even a priest may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

Yours faithfully,

Leo Chamberlain
St John's Priory,
Easingwold, York

The next battle

From Paul and Audrey Edwards

SIR - We may rejoice over success with the free speech clause in the Criminal Justice Act (Report, November 20). But we cannot relax as the next battle has already begun with the introduction of the Equality Bill.

Under the proposed Schedule 9 of this Bill church organisations would not be able to turn someone down for a job on the basis of their sexual lifestyle unless the job was wholly or mainly concerned with leading liturgy or explaining doctrine.

Few positions within Church organisations would meet this restrictive criterion but surely it is reasonable for Christian organisations to be able to recruit only people who subscribe to the teaching and cultural ethos of that organisation. It is only in this way that an integrated approach based on a unity of belief can pervade all its work.

We are sure Christians would readily accept that gay rights organisations should be entitled to recruit only people who subscribe to their value systems and thus exclude Christians who do not.

Pushing through this legislation will increase division and conflict within society for many Christians - and Muslims? - would feel alienated from a society which would be perceived as imposing on them rules which are alien to their fundamental beliefs.

We hope the Catholic bishops will make clear to Government their strong opposition to this proposal.

Yours faithfully,
Paul and Audrey Edwards
Cambridge

American splits

From Fr Anthony Symondson SJ

SIR - May I clarify a quotation attributed to me in Simon Caldwell's report (November 27) on the episcopal commission set up by the Bishops' Conference to make plans for implementing the recent Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.

He quotes me as saying:_"A lot of divorced and remarried Catholics go to [Anglo-Catholic] churches because they are effectively excommunicated from the Catholic Church and the last thing they want is to be under the jurisdiction of Rome again because it will put them back in the situation they have tried to escape." This statement is not necessarily true because divorced Catholics may continue to receive Holy Communion if they remain unmarried and it arose as a quotation from another source.

During my conversation with him I referred to a statement on these lines made by a bishop from one of the American splits from ECUSA at the last conference of Forward in Faith in October. The bishop also went further by saying that he came from a long Anglican line, and wanted to die an Anglican, not a Roman Catholic. The speech can be downloaded online from the Forward in Faith website. I raise this distinction because I do not want to imply that what prevails in the United States prevails as fully in the United Kingdom.

There is, indeed, a relaxation in some British Anglo-Catholic parishes of matrimonial discipline and some Anglican clergymen are themselves divorced but I do not believe that the problem is as characteristic of this country as it is in the United States, nor do I want to suggest that it is otherwise.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Symondson
London W1

As a priest, I feel the Pope's liturgical initiative is very questionable

From Fr David Bingham mhm

SIR - May I make a cri de coeur? On the Feast of Christ the King, I had my first experience of the Tridentine Latin Mass - except it was not a celebration of Christ the King. Apparently the Tridentines celebrate that in October.

I had not expected the total feeling of dismay that I experienced. A small scattering of elderly people - total silence - there was no sense of connection with the activity of the distant priest, no sense that anything religious was going on.

I have felt a sense of similar dismay sometimes at the too "creative" handling by trendy priests of the present post-Vatican Council rites, but this, if I may say, seemingly antiquarian rival of the Tridentine Mass seemed, equally disturbing. Nothing of the present is allowed; no concelebration, no altar girls, no lay Eucharistic ministers.

This recreation of the past seems totally artificial.

A prominent member of the Latin Mass Society said to me: "Well, we are on a different bus - but going along in the same direction." I have heard non-Catholics - and even non-Christians - say that sort of thing to me, but it is the first time I have heard a fellow Catholic say that. We do not even share the same liturgical year!

I, though no Latinist, am all for Masses in Latin, when appropriate, using the present rites. Singing the Latin Credo feels rather like singing "Land of Hope and Glory" for a patriotic Briton of the old school. I was brought up on the Tridentine Mass, and I, by the grace of God, have always found the Mass to be a mainstay in my life, and one reason for becoming a priest.

I have attended cosmopolitan courses in which we were enriched by Indonesian, Japanese, Chinese and Burmese cultural Masses, but always there was the strong sense of the basic unity in belief and practice which is one of the marks of the Catholic Church. But on the Feast of Christ the King I had a dismaying sense of disunity. I was the outsider. I know that the Tridentine Latin Mass movement is promoted by the highest authority in the Church, whom I greatly respect.

I feel totally secure in the divine guarantee regarding the teaching of faith and morals, but I feel that this liturgical initiative - at least on a major scale - is very questionable. Maybe in the Brompton Oratory, with a large congregation, the old-time Solemn High Mass is a moving spiritual experience; but let it be restricted to a few centres, for the Tridentine aficionados.

I am certain this letter, if published, will elicit a flurry of responses; and I apologise in advance for certainly hurting some people's feelings. I merely bear my own feelings, which may or may not have a sound intellectual basis. I do know that they are shared by a good number of Catholic clergy and laity.

Yours faithfully,
David Bingham
Durham

We should take the advice of this truly inspirational priest

From Mr Alan Frost

SIR - It was a delightful surprise to read a letter (November 28) from Fr Edwin Gordon whom I recently met for the first time in Fatima.

I hope he will not mind my saying so, but he is a truly inspirational priest and his advice to Catholics to receive the sacrament of Confession regularly is more than mere pastoral guidance.

I know from talking to him at length that it comes from the heart, especially since he spends many hours a week in the confessional at Fatima with pilgrims. Of course, as Fr Gordon would surely endorse, one is more disposed and encouraged to seek sacramental penance on a pilgrimage than when surrounded by the menacingly secular distractions and timetables of everyday life back home.

He also celebrates Mass daily when in Fatima, despite the handicap of going blind early in his years as parish priest in the Cotswolds village of Nympsfield. His love of the Faith and his devotion to the rosary are captured in his book Upon This Rock (Gracewing 2005) which includes a helpful reflection on the Luminous Mysteries, interestingly linked with Pope Benedict in another letter in the same issue.

Yours faithfully,
Alan Frost
By email

Why the Church needs Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist


From Sue Lee

SIR - Does Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, November 20) not realise that in this country there is a shortage of priests and many priests are now looking after more than one parish on their own?

This often means the priest has to celebrate four Masses at a weekend in different areas. Without the help of Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist they would not be able to spend a few minutes after Mass with their parishioners before they have to rush off to celebrate another Mass several miles away.

I wonder if Stuart Reid was housebound, sick or in hospital, would he still refuse to receive Holy Communion from an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist because "their hands are not anointed"?

Perhaps instead of criticising the Church he should encourage readers to pray for our priests and for more vocations to the priesthood.

Yours faithfully,
Sue Lee
By email

The Church must make a concerted effort to explain the Anglican provisions to the laity

From Mr Paul Parfitt

SIR - I recently overheard a conversation between members of my parish about the Holy Father's welcome to Anglicans. The worrying thing about the conversation was the total lack of information that the parishioners had on the subject. One man said: "Why are these people allowed to just become Catholic and keep their own beliefs?" while a lady said: "Does that mean York Minster will be a Catholic church again?"

What many Roman Catholics don't understand is that these "Catholic Anglicans", if they accept the invitation, will have to accept the authority of the Pope and follow the Church's teachings - the only way they will differ is in their liturgy. In certain ways much like the Ukrainians, the Anglicans will be able to celebrate the Holy Mass in an Anglican way. If more Roman Catholic people were told exactly what was going on instead of hearing half a story on the news then I'm sure Catholics on both sides would be more open to the prospect.

Yours faithfully,
Paul Parfitt
By email


From Mr Robert Ian Williams

SIR - The Anglican patrimony, which Rome states it is allowing, is in fact a heavily edited and reconstructed version.

The liturgical texts which are permitted in the Anglican Use are stripped of Cranmer's Protestantism. So his eucharistic prayers (even his 1549) are swept away and replaced by the Roman Canon of the Mass. Furthermore, everything which Cranmer threw out, such as general absolution, prayers for the dead and to the saints, are restored, along with the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei. This is the English Reformation in reverse.

Indeed, there is nothing authentically Anglican about the ritual. Vestments and liturgical practices of the Anglican Use are in fact Roman Catholic and result from the 19th century appropriation by the ritualists of our practices.

All these were illegallly reintroduced into the Church of England by the ritualists and the Church Association (since 1950, Church Society) fought them every inch of the way, even prosecuting ritualists and having them jailed.

Indeed, many of the ritualists, who eventually called themselves Anglo-Catholics, eventually rejected the Prayer Book in favour of the Roman Missal or an edited English version. So the Anglicanism that is on offer from Rome in no way represents the mainstream of the Anglican tradition, which never took on board most of the Anglo-Catholic practices. The average communicant member of the Church of England never prays to Mary or for the dead, has no sense of the communion service as being the sacrifice of the Mass and would not call the vicar Father, let alone go to him for confession.

Therefore I just cannot accept that Anglicanism shorn of the Protestantism of Cranmer is the authentic patrimony of Anglicanism. It is missing its soul in much the way that Methodism excised of the theology of the Wesley brothers would be.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Ian Williams
Bangor is y Coed, Wrexham

Let's get organised to win public debates

From Elizabeth C Sweeney

SIR - Quentin de la Bédoyère (Science and Faith, November 13), asserts that he would not have attended the debate, "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world", even had he known that it was taking place. This is regrettable and especially since he then goes on to admit that one can "leave even a prejudiced audience with some splinters of doubt in their minds" if certain rhetorical skills are employed.

By his own admission, therefore, defending the Church in debate (no matter how loud or prejudiced the audience and speakers), is not an impossible task, and consequently, not a waste of time. We need to understand our audience and their reactions, to pre-empt the accusations that will be fired our way so as to disable these attacks before our opponents have a chance even to utter them; we need to discern which tactic to use and when, and, yes, we must be thoroughly prepared and above all pray.

The strategies mentioned above are already possessed by some Catholics if only they cared to make use of them. As for those of us who are less able to present a good argument and defend it vigorously, there is no reason why we cannot be seated in the audience supporting our speakers by asking pertinent questions when invited to do so, and/or by applauding boldly. Since there is strength in numbers, perhaps we might consider organising ourselves into groups.

Quentin de la Bédoyère mentions the training in this area offered by the Catholic Evidence Guild in the late 1950s; this is precisely what is needed today (and in particular in our schools). This type of training has not, in my opinion, passed its "sell-by date". Now is neither the time to be defeatest nor to feel jaded.

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Sweeney
Hillingdon, Middlesex


Time for Confession

From Fr Edwin Gordon SIR - In view of the fact that Advent is approaching, and this is a time when people should be encouraged to go to Confession, I would just like to quote from what some recent popes have said on the importance of Confession generally, and frequent Confession in particular.

Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis Christi said: "Let those among the younger clergy who make light of or lessen esteem for frequent Confession realise that what they are doing is alien to the Spirit of Christ and disastrous for the mystical body of our Saviour."

Pope John XXIII said that ever since the age of 11 he had gone to weekly Confession and that even at the age of 80, and as pope, he continued that practice. In Sacerdoti Nostri Primordia, he stated: "We condemn the theory that frequent Confession of venial sins is not a practice greatly to be valued. On the contrary, for a rapid advancement in virtue, we highly recommend the pious practice of frequent Confession, introduced into the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit."

Pope Paul VI agreed with this, saying: "Frequent and reverent recourse to this sacrament, even when only venial sins are in question, is of great value," while John Paul II, in an address to the Canadian bishops, spoke of the "great supernatural effectiveness of a persevering ministry exercised through auricular confession, let us assure our people of the great benefits derived from frequent Confession."

On March 7 2006 Pope Benedict XVI, in an address to participants in a course on matters of conscience, said: "If, moreover, even when one is motivated by the desire to follow Jesus one does not go regularly to Confession, one risks gradually slowing his or her spiritual pace to the point of increasingly weakening and ultimately perhaps even exhausting it."

And if the popes could speak thus of frequent Confession, this obviously applies even more so to those who receive the sacrament only infrequently.

Yours faithfully,
Edwin Gordon
Fatima, Portugal


Ending a privilege

From Mrs Elizabeth Price

SIR - Further to my letter of November 13 and in answer to Fr Gary Dickson (Letters, November 20), I spent almost every day of my convent childhood years gazing at the back of the priest at Mass wondering what he was doing, and what days of my adult life that I can get to Mass, rejoicing that I could now see that point where Christ is present. So I am appalled that there is a move, even in the Novus Ordo, to remove that privilege once again.

Fr Dickson quotes the fact "that the reform desired by the Vatican directs the priest to face the altar from the offertory onwards". That is precisely what he is doing - but without blocking the congregation's view of it. Earlier on in his letter he talks about "facing a deity to whom one is offering sacrifice". Instead, when facing them (to use Fr Dickson's own words) "he is hosting the sacrifice for everyone" rather than keeping it to himself alone with the congregation screened away from it.

I beg the ad orientem pressure group to think again about what they would be taking away from the congregation if they win the day. The stilted, obscure and grammatically questionable English I understand we shall soon have to endure in the name of adding "dignity" to the vernacular is bad enough without this as well. The words "penitential rite" spring to mind. I suppose I must accept that this is at the heart of sacrifice.

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Price
Linton, Kent

A tragic outcome

From Mr Anthony Bond

SIR - You rightly decry that "The CES [Catholic Education Service] has let us down" (Leading article, November 13) by accepting Government plans for obligatory sex education for 15-year-olds, including information on contraception and other practices contrary to Catholic teaching - but you pull your punches: the CES acts for the bishops' conference, which is where responsibility lies.

This tragic outcome was foreseen in an open letter in January from the National Association of Catholic Families to the CES warning against the direction in which it was moving in obeisance to Government wishes on Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in Catholic schools, schools already compromised by involvement with Government provision of abortion and contraception information. But Archbishop Vincent Nichols, as chairman of the CES for England and Wales, expressed his "full support" for it in a February 27 letter to The Catholic Herald.

The CES seems about to repeat its SRE misjudgment by again making ingratiating noises towards Government proposals to curb parents' homeschooling rights: will Archbishop Nichols therefore reconsider his earlier support for this agency and replace it with one which will earn the confidence of Catholic parents by insisting on Catholic teaching in Catholic schools and on parents' rights as primary educators of their children? If not, why are such schools - from which more than 90 per cent of leavers, understandably, emerge having lost the Faith - still considered Catholic and are being financially supported by Catholics when that money might be better spent in the private school sector, which is less affected by Government interference?

The spiritual formation of Catholic children, the hoped-for future evangelisers of the nation, is too important a matter to be left in the hands of an agency which appears to have allowed itself to be perceived as a pushover by the present anti-Catholic Government.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Bond
Kesgrave, Suffolk


Hidden author

From Mr Robert Tickle

SIR - Having read Pope Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth, I am confirmed in my opinion that he, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was the author of the Mysteries of Light addition to the rosary. He certainly advised Pope John Paul on liturgical matters.

The book begins with the Baptism, which is the first of the Luminous Mysteries. There is much on the Kingdom and the Transfiguration is examined in detail, emphasising that the Messiah has come.

Pope John Paul promulgated the Mysteries of Light. But I think we have Pope Benedict to thank for this addition to the rosary which reflects his theology of the centrality of Christ.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Tickle
Harrold, Beds


The English Rite

From Mr R J Urquhart

SIR - Is this the time to restore the Sarum Use to English Catholics as an Extraordinary Form of the English Rite?

Yours faithfully,
R J Urquhart
Oakham, Rutland


We have betrayed the ideals we fought for

From Mr John Randall

SIR - On September 18 your paper carried a well-written article by Felicity Smart describing how hospitals throughout this country are terminating the lives of sick elderly people through what is known as the Liverpool Care Pathway - a polite term for death by deliberate starvation and dehydration. I had expected subsequent editions of the paper to carry a stream of angry letters from concerned readers, but until today (November 6) nothing of any significance has appeared. Now T M H Fawcett again draws our attention to the widespread infliction of euthanasia on what he calls "another defenceless sector of the population". I find myself wondering why Catholics, together with other branches of the Christian community, seem to care so little about this vital issue.

I was in junior school when the Second World War was raging and almost every week we were made to stand up and sing a rousing song, the words of which were written by A P Herbert and the music by Sir Edward Elgar:

All men must be free,
March for Liberty with me,
Brutes and braggarts may have their little day,
We shall never bow the knee...

We were told that our fathers were fighting against an evil regime which sought to destroy all respect for human life and treat people as merely disposable objects. To prevent this from happening we had to be prepared to accept hardships and possibly even injury and death; the song exhorted us to "make the world a better place, when the world is free".

Now looking back, I wonder what went wrong. Many petty "brutes and braggarts" sit in government quangos and local authorities monitoring everything we do while corruption is rife in high places. As for respect for human life, it is almost non-existent. Thousands of perfectly viable lives are routinely terminated for purely social reasons and medical men seemingly mindless of the Hippocratic Oath are taking upon themselves to decide which lives are worth preserving and which not.

It seems to me that we have betrayed the ideals for which our parents fought so strongly and the voices of the churches are almost silent. I hope that Mr Fawcett's letter receives a stronger response than did the article by Felicity Smart; we need to wake up before it is too late.

Yours faithfully,
John Randall
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire


Catholics should avoid confessional parties

From Mr Michael Elmer

SIR - Owing to the final illness and death of my father, may he rest in peace, I am late in responding to David Campanale's article (Comment, November 6) suggesting that the time is ripe for a Christian Democratic political party.

I, too, believe that there is a place here for a Christian Democratic party, which is precisely why I am actively involved with the Christian Democrats. Where I differ from Mr Campanale is that I do not believe that the Christian Peoples Alliance (CPA) is a Christian Democrat Party and therefore consider it incapable of providing voters with a Christian Democrat electoral option. Moreover, I do not, for a variety of reasons, regard the CPA or its richer confessionalist bedfellow, the Christian Party, as worthy of Catholic support.

A hallmark of Christian Democracy as a political doctrine is that it is Christian-inspired but open to all. Thus, the late Professor Jerzy Einhorn, a practising Jew, was a valued senior member and sometime candidate for the Swedish Christian Democrat Party, the KD. Confessional parties like the CPA either restrict membership to Christians or exclude non-Christians from candidateship or senior positions. The Catholic Church rightly disapproves of such parties and no doubt many readers will have been surprised to see a quarter-page advertisement recently in this paper, placed by CPA's richer election partner, the Christian Party.

When in 2007 the CPA chose to become a confessional party virtually all its existing Catholic membership resigned and many have remained active with the Christian Democrats, leaving CPA with an overwhelmingly Protestant Evangelical membership of which Mr Campanale, despite his Italian surname, is an example. He, I am sure, does not hold anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic views and attitudes, but there are those in CPA who most certainly do, some of them at senior levels.

Standards matter, truth matters. The Christian Democrats offer a pro-life moderate political option. Catholics need not look elsewhere.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Elmer
By email

It’s as if we no longer believe the young are capable of virtue

From Fr John Cahill

SIR – Regarding the opinion expressed in your leading article (November 13), it does indeed appear that the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales has let us down, at least in so far as its representatives have failed to oppose more forcefully the ceding parental rights to civil government. These rights are embedded in the natural law and constantly defended by the Church. The right of parents to oversee and moderate their children’s education, especially in the sensitive area of sexuality, has been reaffirmed in recent years both by the Vatican Congregation for Education and the Pontifical Council for the Family.

The reality is that we have long since lost our way on many of the moral issues surrounding sex education. The approval of curricular material such as Marriage Care’s Foundations for a Good Life reveals the chasm that now exists between elements of our secularised educational establishment and the authentic mind of the Church. Much of this curricular material would surely fall under the censure of what Pope John Paul II wrote in Familiaris Consortio: “The Church is formally opposed to an often widespread form of imparting sex education disassociated from moral principles” (FC 37).

Where in any of the curricular material for Catholic secondary schools do we find a coherent and substantive defense of the natural moral law regarding contraception or homosexuality? Where is the pervasive ethos of chastity, that natural sensitivity and modesty so necessary when dealing with matters of sexuality, especially given the nature of (dare I mention it) Original Sin. It is, to say least, problematic to suppose that information about sex can ever be imparted in a manner which is merely neutral and objective.

It is not a knowledge of the mechanics of contraception that will enable young people to make appropriate decisions about sex; common sense and experience would suggest quite the opposite. All too often this approach is a powerful contributory factor in conditioning the minds of young people towards the acceptance of promiscuous lifestyles. No, the duty of Catholic educators is to reconnect young people’s understanding of sex to the mysteries of life and love.

Is a deep sense of reverence before the mystery of life beyond the youth of today? Are they incapable of aspiring to sexual relationships which express the total self-gift of the human person in full responsibility and freedom? Have we become so cynical as to believe that young people are no longer capable of virtue, or is it that we have unwittingly become adapted to a morality no longer rooted in reason and Faith but revised according to the political mood of the moment ?

Yours faithfully,

John Cahill
Holy Souls,
Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire





Liturgical anomalies

From Fr Gary Dickson

SIR – While accepting the orthodoxy and validity of the 1970 Rite, and declaring that both contain the same sacrifice and are worthy of attendance if celebrated according to the mind of the Church, I must disagree with Fr Leo Chamberlain (letters, November 6)) when he says differences between the 1962 and 1970 liturgies are not substantial, for the very prayers removed by Cranmer to form his Protestant Missal were removed in forming the 1970 Catholic Missal. Neither Cranmer’s Missal nor the 1970 Missal contain heresy, but both excise some specifically Catholic prayers.

Fr Aidan Nichols and Moyra Doorly both support a better expression of sacrifice in the Preparation of the Gifts. I agree, for at present we have a Jewish grace before meals which gives lie to the teaching that what we are preparing is pre-eminently a sacrifice. Indeed, Our Lord left us the Eucharist “in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross through the ages”, not to perpetuate the meal at which that Sacrifice was instituted.

Closely linked to this is the orientation of the priest: one does not host a meal facing away from one’s guests or address an assembly facing away from the participants, whereas one does turn to face the deity to whom one is offering sacrifice. Thus the orientation of the priest is of major import.

In point of fact, the 1970 Missal (authorised by Pope Paul to specifically to enact the reform desired by Vatican II) actually directs the priest to face the altar from the offertory onwards. That noted, the restructuring of churches does not equate with facing the people, but brings the altar closer to the people – something I fully support, along with more (and vernacular) readings.

Reduction in the number of genuflections is another notable loss since liturgical rites should clearly express our belief, in this case belief in the Real Presence. The reduction from 14 (each time the priest touches the Sacred Species) to three is at least a liturgical anomaly. Finally, no one denies abuses occurred in the celebration of the 1962 Missal, but since the current General Instruction and Celebrating the Mass are inconsistent in a number of places (ie CTM does not mention the required use of the Communion plate and instructs extraordinary ministers to come to the altar before the “Lamb of God” rather than after the priest’s Communion), one may ask if abuses have not become so common that they are unrecognised, even institutionalised.

Yours faithfully,

GARY DICKSON
The Sacred Heart and English Martyrs,
Thornley, Co Durham



A pressing problem

From director of education and development of the Archdiocese of Riga

SIR – Last week’s article (Catholic Life, November 13) has brought a need to clarify a couple of points. First, Dace Mozeiko is my personal assistant, and she is Latvian. Secondly, as in many countries and institutions, money has to be carefully used. That is why any funds received are processed via the Brian Faul Foundation for transparency and effective use. The banks in Latvia are also in a precarious situation and thankfully British banks are beginning to clean up their act.

The article failed to reflect the serious problem facing the school – a £30,000 gas bill that needs to be paid off by the end of November, otherwise the gas will be cut and sadly the school will close. Yes, there are other problems, but this is the most pressing.

Yours faithfully,

Seán O’Donnell
education@rkgimnazila.lv



Freemasons are not hostile to the Church

From the grand secretary of the United Grand Lodge of England

SIR – The United Grand Lodge of England was saddened to learn of the article by Fr Ashley Beck (Features, October 30). It perpetuates a number of untruths and misconceptions about Freemasonry.

Regular Freemasonry, which is recognised by Grand Lodge, is not a “naturalistic religion” or indeed any kind of religion at all. It offers no sacraments and does not teach a “way of salvation”. The ceremonies practised in Lodge meetings are best described as “morality plays” derived from narratives in what Christians call the “Old Testament”. They are designed to present lessons in morality or virtuous living and nothing more than that.

The Holy Bible is open throughout Lodge meetings and occupies a prominent place. The Scriptures are referred to as Freemasonry’s “great light” and their importance to a Freemason is made explicit at a number of points in different ceremonies.

The obligations taken during the degree ceremonies ask the candidate only to keep secret certain traditional modes of recognition, derived from the days of medieval trade guilds.

Freemasons are urged never to let their membership of their Lodge come before their duty to their family. The are urged – through the exercise of charity – to have a concern for the poor and needy; there is no suggestion whatsoever that such charity will earn them eternal salvation. The immense generosity of Freemasons to a large number of causes at home and abroad is a matter of public record. Immoral behaviour of any kind is certainly not encouraged or treated lightly – though Freemasons, like all men, can fall short of the high standards of behaviour which they set themselves.

Freemasonry counts among its membership many thousands of active and committed Christians of every denomination, whose Christian witness is very far from “weak”. The United Grand Lodge of England is glad that the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church no longer makes the assumption that Freemasons “plot against the Church”. It regrets that Roman Catholic teaching continues to cast doubt on the compatibility of Masonic ritual with Catholic doctrine. Grand Lodge bears no animosity whatsoever to the Catholic Church; all Freemasons are strongly encouraged to be diligent in the practice of their religious faith.

Yours faithfully,

C N R Brown
London WC2



The bishop must defend homeschooling

From Mrs Michelle Scott

SIR – We have been a home-educating family for getting on for five years now. The philosophical basis of our education here is Charlotte Mason’s gentle art of learning with Catholic home-educating material.

The Government has had a couple of reviews of home education in the recent past and found nothing wrong. It was a shock therefore to see the Badman review (Report, November 13) begin with allegations in the press from Baroness Morgan, the NSPCC and others that home educators were likely to be abusing our children, using them as domestic servants and even forcing them into marriages.

The Badman review was published and immediately accepted by Ed Balls despite the huge number of flaws in the review, the lack of evidence for either abuse or poor educational outcomes and the selective use of quotes in the review itself. Essentially Badman wants to see home-educating parents licensed to parent and offers powers to the local authority to take children alone for interview, because parents are guilty until they can prove otherwise. Parents who refuse to have their rights removed and their children made property of the state will be criminalised.

The Catholic Education Service (CES) wrote a report backing the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ view that the state owns our children. The person who wrote this report on behalf of Oona Stannard had absolutely no knowledge or understanding of home education, and yet felt able to rip away the right and duty of parents to the education of their children. There was strong implication that the CES should be allowed to interfere with family life as well. The piece was finished with the CES view that there was no such thing as Catholic home education curriculum.

Apart from the great number of set curriculums out there (mainly American) many of us use a variety of great Catholic resources (mainly American again) to ensure our children actually know their Faith.

While I understand that many people are ignorant of what home education is and how it works, it behoves those who intend to write on the matter, especially to the Government, to ensure they are well prepared. It is very worrying that the mainstream media see the CES as speaking on behalf of our bishops. I am sure our bishops do not want to see the rights of parents and children trampled in this way.

I do not accept that the CES has any remit over family life and the rights of parents to educate their children at home. Yours faithfully,

MICHELLE SCOTT
Birmingham, W Midlands



Don’t attack the church you are leaving

From Mr Jack Pigden

SIR – The news that children’s author G P Taylor is in the process of leaving the Anglican Church to become a Roman Catholic (Report, November 13) will no doubt please many who have already made this move, or are in the process of doing so. What a pity, though, that he would find it necessary to justify this with an attack upon the Church of England. I must confess that I find this difficult to understand. If Christians cannot treat other Christians – including their different beliefs and practices – with respect and generosity, what hope is there for the rest of the world?

As someone who made the same move in the opposite direction many years ago I have never found it necessary to attack the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, I have frequently come to the Church’s defence when others have done so.

Mr Taylor is entitled to his opinion that Anglican bishops spend too much of their time talking about issues like climate change, but I feel certain that he is in a minority on this one. I would have to say that my Roman Catholic daughters and their children are more concerned about climate change than they are about whether women should be allowed to become priests, or even bishops.

Yours faithfully,

Jack Pigden
By email



Fighting depression

From Mrs Julie Maurice

SIR – James Le Fanu’s article (October 11) concerning anti-depressant pills is astute and to the point and of particular relevance to our Christian community.

It is sad that doctors do not have the time to listen in depth to the woes of their patients and offer life-changing advice and coping strategies as an alternative. Many GPs are at liberty to refer patients to psychologists and cognitive behaviour therapists for exploration of life circumstances, habits and events contributing to depression, but the suggestion possibly constitutes many patients’ worst fears that they will be considered “nuts” – a misconception that probably prevents them from seeking help in the early stages of depression and contributes to the more accurately described despair that most feel at the point of ultimately seeking medical help.

In an ideal world we would live a godly life in extended family situations but unfortunately this does not appear on the list of resources that a GP can draw upon... yet? I fear that until it does anti-depressants will have their day.

Yours faithfully,

JULIE MAURICE
Aberaeron, Ceredigion



A touchy pagan deity

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR – Fr Leo Chamberlain’s wise, pacific letter (Letters, November 6) on the liturgy ends strangely: “I am getting impatient for the availability of better translations... of the Ordinary.” Has he read what they propose? Remember St Jerome.

What we have now, like Challoner’s original Garden of the Soul and Newman’s Meditations and Devotions, is in good contemporary English. It has literary flair (a parishioner tells me what won him from Anglicanism was our liturgy’s “flow”). It removed the fourth-century Roman inculturation that wordily addressed God Our Father like a touchy pagan deity. And it translated the meaning, not the words. Liturgiam Authenticam and Mgr Harbert condemned the last good practice.

St Jerome’s translation suffered the same criticism: anything not word for word was counted “a mistake”. Less biddable than our bishops, he replied: “They want to convict someone else of incompetence. They only expose their own. Apart from Scripture [ie the Vulgate] where even word order is revealed mystery... I am happy to own that in translation from Greek I translate the sense, not the words.” He cites Cicero’s practice and Horace’s principle: “To translate faithfully, you don’t try to render word for word.” Even more to the point, he cites St Hilary of Poitiers.

Although they did not see wholly eye to eye, St Hilary favouring a more literary style, St Jerome the sermo simplex of the Latin liturgy, both rendered in vernacular Latin, not a Grecising pidgin. True, it was a “Christian” Latin. Latin vocabulary was scanty and words had to take on new meanings.

Its failures in euphony apart, the version Fr Leo is impatient for is literal and Latinising – back to what Newman noted: “RCs can’t write English... It is not English, it is Latin or French.”

Yours faithfully,

TOM McINTYRE
Frome, Somerset



Aisle spirituality

From Mr Francis Reilly

SIR – I found it moving in a large Sainsbury’s store last Sunday at 11am to be among so many people respectfullly observing a complete silence and cessation of activity in a Remembrance Day gesture. However, this also got me thinking about the meaning of “respect”, in that situation, for those brave soldiers’ sacrifice.

Respect, in this matter, must have a spiritual aspect – a belief that those who’ve made this sacrifice must truly still be alive in spirit – for otherwise it would surely be quite meaningless to stand there in silence in respect of nothing. Unless, of course, it is all for some palliative self-satisfaction.

I sometimes feel that many people who profess not to believe in God unwittingly betray themselves at times as spiritual in their words and actions. To my mind, the true atheist at the Cenotaph is a contradictory figure.

Personally, and probably in common with most Catholics on such occasions, I say a prayer of thanks, and for the repose of the souls. In Sainsbury’s I decided for the first time also to bless myself before and after this prayer.

Yours faithfully,

FRANCIS REILLY
Orpington, Kent

Belittling the reforms that shaped the post-Vatican II Church

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - Fr Aidan Nichols's reply (Feature, October 30) to "a confused Catholic" is troubling. True, he silkily demolishes all her Lefebvrist canards. But he patronises - like undergraduate essays - the form and indeed the content of the Church's decrees, and the devotion of her faithful ("Even for 'post-Conciliar' Catholics the Mass as a sacrifice of supplication is not so difficult an idea.")

The most able English academics of the 1960s failed the Church by neo-modernism. (Jacques Maritain, explaining the evangelical thrust of the decrees, saw that neo-modernism as inevitable reaction to the 19th- and 20th-century Church's Manichaeistic neglect of its duty to love and engage with the world.) Yet those misguided academics had something that their successors do not share: whole-heartedness. Fr Nichols is not the worst. He would not imagine that Vatican II was deafeningly silent about evangelism, or that language should be obscure to remind the faithful they are far from God, or hint that Louis Bouyer's ringing acclaim for the rosary was tongue in cheek, or that the altar should not be close to the faithful if it spoils the look of the place.

But his selective endorsement of the General Council's practical decrees is the same: reasons perfunctorily dismissed - Fr Nichols does not explain that there actually are arguments for a versus populum Canon; implications not worked out; in the end a crippled catechesis. In July, for instance, Fr Nichols told Moyra Doorly that the Liturgy must strike people as "something that happens". Yet he belittles as a "blank cheque" the very decree that after bleak centuries makes natural growth a possibility again. Liturgical growth, though, and the theological understanding it affords, can never be more than stunted until our best minds forswear this Laodicean attitude to the Church's guidelines for our time.

Yours faithfully
Tom McIntyre Frome,
Somerset

From Mrs Elizabeth Price

SIR - In Letter from a Confused Catholic Moyra Doorly talks of "propitiation and supplication" and goes on to stress the need to see the Mass as a continued re-enactment of Calvary. Sacrifice and petition (to a God presumed angry with the sinful human race) led by a cultic priesthood are main features both of early Judaism and many pagan religions. Constantine and the early Greek converts brought this idea into Christianity, which hitherto had obeyed Christ's request to repeat the Last Supper in memory of Him in table gatherings in their own homes with the householder (male or female) as the celebrant.

The Vatican II liturgy conforms far more to the Last Supper than the exquisite Tridentine ritual of High Mass. What both Moyra and Fr Aidan forget is that text in Scripture where God states he does not want bloody sacrifices and burnt offerings but a contrite and loving heart. Here, surely, is the sacrifice. Gathered round the altar with Christ at the centre in the elements of bread and wine (not blocked off from view by the priest imposing himself between altar and congregation) the whole People of God as priests offer their intended change of heart as sacrifice; as kings they receive their heavenly food in the Eucharist, which is an infusion of Christ into each soul strengthening them with His Royal Blood to imitate Himself their King. Then as prophets they go out into the world (or should) preaching the Gospel by the life Christ leads in and through each of them. This is that change of heart God asked for as the sacrifice He most desires.

Nor can I understand the longing for a return to the ad orientem stance. Is God really more present in the roof space of the most eastern point of the church than in the Second Person on the altar, visible to all in the New Rite, where Christ is the central point at the heart of the congregation gathered around Him - a congregation inspired and instructed by reading and hearing the Word in their own language?

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Price
By email

Feeding the laity

From Bernadette Wall

SIR - It was interesting reading the feature by Will Heaven (Notebook, October 16) about the Abbey at Lagrasse. My husband and I went to Mass there in August 2007 when staying at the campsite just outside the town.

We spoke with several of the monks, both priests and brothers,who supplied us with Missals in French and were all most hospitable; we also were delighted to see how many of them were very young.

Several days before we had also visited an old Abbey de Bellaigue, to the north-west of Clermont-Ferrand. This too had been left to ruin by the Revolution and had been fairly recently occupied by Benedictine priests and brothers who were renovating it.

We talked to a young American brother who has taken his final vows in September this year; he was very helpful with translated Missals and Office and, on the Sunday morning, we talked after Mass to a number of the monks. We had remarked how many young men were there and were told that there had been and was, an upsurge in a desire for this form of life.

But it did remind us of one Sunday at a town just west of Perpignan where, after a great deal of searching, asking and driving around, starting at noon on Saturday, we found a priest saying Mass, to a small congregation. We spoke to him after Mass and he told us that he was the only priest to care for the town and nine surrounding villages.

So it would be nice to think that the "apostolic work" of thriving communities like Lagrasse and Bellaigue would include celebrating Mass in their local areas, to help out the few priests and feed the laity.

Yours faithfully,
Bernadette Wall
By email
The first sheriff

From the Revd John Whooley

SIR - My interest was taken by the question of Catholic sheriffs featured in your article in Catholic Life (October 16) and by the subsequent letter of the Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley (October 23).

As far as I understand, the first Catholic Sheriff of London after the Reformation was an Armenian, Alexander Raphael, originally from Madras, India, where his family was involved in banking.

Later, in 1847, he was elected Tory member for St Albans, remaining so until his death in 1850, aged 75. He was responsible for the construction of St Raphael's, which is now the parish church of Surbiton, Surrey, completed in 1848, and built on what was then his estate by the River Thames. In the background of one of the stained-glass windows may be found what appears to be a depiction of Mount Ararat.

Yours faithfully,
John Whooley
Holy Ghost and St Stephen,
London W12

The consequences of state sex education

From Dr Christopher Shell

SIR - When government-sponsored state sex education began in earnest in the early 1970s, it joined much of the media and social services in their new (unsolicited and still ongoing) departure of normalising teen and extramarital sex as socially acceptable "choices".

So it's no surprise that in that period British births out of wedlock, teen abortions and instances of first intercourse for girls under 16 have all quintupled. Under-16 girls attending birth control clinics increased tenfold before the advent of the morning-after pill made statistics imprecise. First intercourse under 16 has been shown to lead to a sixfold chance of having two or more sexual partners in a given year. STDs, especially among teens, doubled in the 1990s alone.

The point of all education is the causal connection between imparted theory and practice. To deny this connection is to deny that education is effective or necessary; to affirm it is to affirm that disastrous practice points to disastrous theory.

Secular humanism, so un-multicultural as to go directly against the tenets of practically all the large international cultures, shows here an intellectual bankruptcy matched only by its lack of care for children's welfare.

It's logically undeniable that we should not rest till the perpetrators are replaced in power by those who retain the worldview that produced five times better statistics.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Shell
Hounslow, Middlesex

Protestant England?

From Mr James Maurice

SIR - Although at present still technically an Anglo-Catholic who has recently felt compelled to seek admission to the Catholic Church, pre-empting the recent papal declaration, I must take issue with James Sinclair's letter (October 30).

Quite apart from the decidedly un-Christian tone of the letter, Mr Sinclair seems a little short on history. Given that the "winners" almost always write history, what is often overlooked is that King Henry VIII, although excommunicated was not expelled and died a catholic. His heir, the ineffectual, ailing adolescent Edward VI, nominally presided over the biggest property seizure since 1066 under the guise of inflicting European Protestantism on England. In any event, articles 28 and 29 of the 39 Articles are at best ambivalent.

By the end of the 17th century the English monarchy was captive to Parliament which enacted ecclesiastical legislation for political and strategic reasons. The inclusion in the coronation oath of the denial of transubstantiation dates from the Act of Settlement 1688, nearly a century and a half after the Reformation. This inclusion was to accommodate the accession to the throne of William III, a Dutch Protestant.

It was not until the Act of Union of 1706 that a positive exclusion clause to maintain the Protestant religion was included in the coronation oath, this time to accommodate the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and even the text of this has been altered from time to time.

Yours faithfully,
James Maurice
Aberaeron, Ceredigion

Halting a silly gallop

From Mr Joseph Foyle

SIR - I suggest that Stuart Reid is falling into the usual trap when he lists (October 30) people who might have done a better job in the debate with Secularists (they deserve the capital letter as much as Christians etc, as they adhere to the Secularism creed as much as others do to other creeds) Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry.

I have found that the trap is set in favour of the latter when such debates don't focus from the start on the Secularist tenet that there isn't a hereafter that rewards and penalises earth doings. Hitchens and Fry would gleefully assert that belief in such a hereafter is poppycock. That glee lets them confuse in cavalier under-graduate debating style. It means that to win they can be untruthful in their assertions, and even be immoral and choose suicide to avoid painful consequences, in the belief that there isn't such a hereafter.

But when they are stopped in their tracks they must admit that they cannot prove that such a hereafter is impossible and, therefore, they must admit that it is possible. That changes the debate exchanges radically. We Catholics could, for example, say that we could choose to be as cavalier as they are, if we didn't believe in the possibility of that hereafter. But we have chosen to so believe, just as they have chosen the opposite belief.

It is true that that might produce a stalemate that would more or less end debate. But it would put a stop to their silly gallop. In this respect it is significant that, when the late Ludovic Kennedy was asked why he declined to believe in such a hereafter, he admitted with great honesty: "If I so believed I would have to believe in judgment and accountability. I don't want to go down that road."

Yours faithfully,
Joseph Foyle
Dublin

From Mrs Felicity Smart

SIR - Elizabeth Sweeney asks whether the absence of Catholics at the recent debate held in the Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, was due to the fact that many of us were unaware that it was taking place (Letters, October 30). The answer is yes.

Had I known that the "high priests" of atheism and anti-Catholicism, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens, were opposing the motion that "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world" I would have been there to support the redoubtable Ann Widdecombe MP, for whom I have the greatest admiration and respect, and Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria, who spoke for it.

We need more information at national and parish level if we are to defend our faith.

Yours faithfully,
Felicity Smart
Twickenham, Middlesex

Halloween may become a national holiday

From Susan Hegedus

SIR - Will Heaven's article "The antidote to Halloween is a stiff drink" (Notebook, November 6) skims over what is worrying about Halloween. The point is, 15 years ago Halloween was a non-event. Now, a huge proportion of the population will don a scary mask and generally make a nuisance of themselves. In Britain approximately £120 million is spent on the festival annually and it is our third most lucrative festival after Christmas and Easter.

I'm sure few people would have a problem with children "wandering next door to ask neighbours for sweets and chocolate". But that is quite different from the anti-social behaviour of trick-or-treat that many find disturbing. If you turn off your lights and pretend you're not at home you may well risk getting your car egged and floured by feral teenagers. It could be argued that the festival diverts children from television and parents have fun with their children, teaching them something about death and the excitement of ritual. It's creative, dramatic and fun. But it is also unregulated, anarchic and boundaries are blurred. Worst of all, participation is virtually compulsory.

In some secular schools they are removing the religious significance of Christmas, calling it a "winter holiday". If Halloween starts to get fireworks of its own, there's no doubt that it will swallow up Bonfire Night as the two celebrations are so close. Then all that is left is for Halloween to become a national holiday - and that would really would be sad.

Yours faithfully,
Susan Hegedus
Billericay, Essex

From Janet Peterson

SIR - American-style Halloween is here to stay, if only because small children love dressing up and face-painting - we will have to get used to it.
Yours faithfully,
Janet Peterson
By email

Cardinal Hume, Anglicans and 'Conversion'

From Mr John Wilkins

SIR - In his article about the new Roman Catholic approaches to Anglicans (Comment, October 30), William Oddie quotes from Cardinal Hume's interview with me in February 1993. At that time - just as now - an influx of Anglican newcomers, both clergy and laity, into the Catholic Church in England and Wales was anticipated.

This could be "the conversion of England for which we have prayed all these years", the Cardinal said. The quotation by William Oddie is quite correct.

On the other hand, one should remember that Cardinal Hume very soon felt he had gone too far in expressing his expectations, and issued a public clarification. The conversion of England to the Christian faith, he explained in a statement released in March, could not be brought about unless all Christians were united. "The way to achieve that unity is by conversion of life, prayer and dialogue. It is a mandate that applies to all Christians of all denominations. In particular, it applies to the search of the Catholic Church for full unity with our Anglican brothers and sisters. That search, and all it implies, goes on."

He reaffirmed that the one Church of Jesus Christ "subsists within the Roman Catholic Church". But he recognised, he said, that the word "conversion" could be taken by some Anglicans as denying the authenticity of their witness. "I did not, of course, mean to imply this." He was explicit. "'Conversion' was a word which would have been better not used by me."

The approaches today from the Roman side are different, for now they are worldwide to an Anglican Communion that has become an acknowledged federation. But Cardinal Hume's later, more cautious, formulation surely retains its force.

Yours faithfully,
John Wilkins
London SW1

Losing the debate could inspire Catholics to be a force for good

From Mr Christopher Koe

SIR - "Is the Church a force for good?" (Report, October 23). This was precisely the motion debated at the university in Paris in the early 1830s, which was also defeated.

Among those present was one Frédéric Ozanam, a law student. He thought he ought to do something about it. But he was unsuccessful until he met a Daughter of Charity of St Vincent de Paul who invited Frédéric to join her at her soup kitchen. The result was the founding of the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP). The SVP's motto is that "no work of charity shall be foreign to the society".

Vincentians, as we are known, are simply men and women who are trying to be Christians, (ie a "force for good"); to be a Christian you have to do your very best to follow Christ; that means "love one another as I have loved you", even if it costs you your life. Maybe the Church that Mr Fry knows is not a force for good; perhaps he has never met the SVP, although all the brother and sister Vincentians that I have met would readily admit that we are failures - we fail to love "as Christ has loved us".

Is there not a Catholic among Mr Fry's or Mr Hitchens's circle who could invite them to come and see the good works that are being done in every parish and all over the world?

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Koe
Peterborough


From Dr A N Moran

SIR - Reading your report and Stuart Reid's comments (Charterhouse, October 23) on the debate at Cadogan Hall in which Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens bested Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop Onaiyekan, caused me to ponder the extent to which we all have a duty politely to correct caricatures and misrepresentations of Catholic views.

Perhaps we should send a message to Mr Fry to point out that his being homosexual causes us neither to hate him (indeed we are encouraged to love him) nor to regard him as evil, despite the fact but that we might very well see great wrong in some of the things he may do. (We could add that we don't have a problem with Darwin either, and we don't pray to the bones of dead saints.)

Caricatures are easy to mock. That, after all, is why they are created - but we must not allow them to be mistaken for the real thing.

Yours faithfully,
A N Moran
By email

Small is beautiful

From Priscilla Noble-Mathews

SIR - It was interesting to note Ray Knight's idea (Letters, October 23) of what to do about evangelisation in our own parishes.

I have just started two groups (six in each group) to discuss any matter relating to the Church or the Faith. We meet about once a month informally, in one of the group's houses, and have about an hour's discussion on any subject one of the group wants to raise. Sometimes this can be continued the following week or a different subject introduced.

I facilitate both groups to have some cohesion between them but we felt 12 is too many for one group. So far it has been a good experience. (There is already a separate prayer group.) Our parish priest knows about this but did not want to be personally involved. But we know we could refer to him if we run into any sticky problems.

Yours faithfully,
Priscilla Noble-Mathews
By email

A place in history

From Helena Muller

SIR - The article headed "Catholic makes History" (Catholic Life, October 16) appears to have given rise to some confusion. In the first paragraph the post of High Sheriff refers to South Yorkshire and not to the whole of the country. I therefore am the first Catholic female High Sheriff in South Yorkshire as stated.

I hope this clarifies the confusion for Lady Monckton (Letters, October 23).

Yours faithfully,
Helena Muller
Slade Hooton Hall,
Rotherham, South Yorkshire

Awkward questions

From Dr Anthony Cole

SIR - "1,100 babies with Down`s Syndrome are aborted every year", the Telegraph reported on October 6. As the medical director of the Lejeune Clinic for Down's Children with over 300 children on register, may I pose a few questions.

Do those who advise pregnant women how many Down's children are happy, loved and loving persons (the vast majority)?
Did the medical or nursing staff who counselled the women have any direct experience of a child with Down's Syndrome (hardly ever)?
Did they every think of putting the women in touch with a family with such a child (almost never)?
Do they know the life expectancy of a Down's person (60 plus years)?
Do they know how many will attend a normal primary schools (80 per cent)?
Do they know how many are likely to be in conflict with the law at any time in their lives (after 12 years on the bench I have never known a case)?
How many can be predicted before birth as suffering from "a serious disability", in the terms of the Abortion Act 1967 (virtually none)?
When was the last time the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had a joint meeting with a group of paediatricians to update themselves on the modern outlook for Down's persons (never)?
Are we really serving the mothers-to-be and their children well, or at all?

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Cole
By email

Special favours

From Mr John Tabor

SIR - Focusing on the immense amount of interest concerning the importation into this country via the Channel Tunnel of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux, commonly known as the Little Flower, I would like to draw the attention of your readers to her parents, Louis and Zélie Martin, who have been beatified and are now awaiting canonisation.

By profession, Louis was a clockmaker and jeweller and Zélie, whenever her household duties allowed, was a maker of lace. I was instructed and converted to the faith by Fr Gerald Flood, at that time serving in the parish of St George, Southwark. Being in need of a special favour I contacted the authorities at Lisieux who stated that they would place it on the coffins of the parents. I am exhorting all my friends and contacts, secular and lay, to pray for their canonisation.

Yours faithfully,
John Tabor
By email

Echoes of Nazism

From T M H Fawcett

SIR - Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, October 23) gets queasy whenever the Nazis are used to emphasise a point about abortion or attacks on Catholicism, apparently on the basis that the Jewish people were persecuted because of their race rather than for any other reason. But the Nazis did not confine the use of their death factories to Jewish people. Countless Catholics, Slavs, gypsies and disabled people were exterminated in them too. These victims must not be forgotten.

The term "genocide" was coined in 1944 to describe the Nazis' attempt to destroy a race. In our country today we do not kill people on the ground of race but on the ground of age. We could perhaps call this "chronocide", the licensed murder of people simply because they happen to belong to a certain age group. We started with the unborn, anyone under the age of six months gestation has been classified as sub-human and therefore expendable. Stuart Reid makes the point that a Jew cannot change his race, but can an unborn child condemned to death in the womb change his age?

Now that abortion is widely accepted those in favour of clinical killing are setting their sights on the other end of the spectrum and the elderly are being placed in the firing line - another defenceless sector of the population. Why stop there?

Why should criteria other than age not be introduced? The state has arrogated to itself the right to determine which age groups can legally be dispensed with and finances all the machinery to facilitate it. Most ingeniously of all it has passed the commission of this mass murder to supposedly autonomous individuals under the pretence of increasing freedom. The killing is carried out not in ostentatious concentration camps but in hospitals and clinics in the modest and agreeable suburbs of provincial English towns. Some 6.75 million souls since 1967. And the silencing of those who refuse to cooperate in this profound evil is well under way.

This has such strong echoes of the progress of Nazism that it seems to me Stuart Reid is wrong to censure use of the parallel. Rather the reverse: it should be declaimed loudly from the housetops.

Yours faithfully,
T M H Fawcett
Churchstoke, Montgomery


From Lesley Lee

SIR - Perhaps liberal Roman Catholics should ask for a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to consider a way of accommodating in the Church of England Catholics, like me, who would welcome women priests and a more compassionate approach to our homosexual brethren.

Yours faithfully,
Lesley Lee
Bristol, Somerset

Anglican journey

From Mr Peter Comyns

SIR - In the genial atmosphere created by the Holy Father towards the Anglican Church, would it not be appropriate to ask Her Majesty the Queen to consider the return of Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and York Minster to us? And of course we would welcome the archbishops, particularly the saintly and radiant Archbishop of York.

Yours faithfully,
Peter Comyns
By email

We must learn to think with the Church

From the Very Rev Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB

SIR - Fr Aidan Nichols has engaged at length with Moyra Doorly about the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite of the Mass (Features, October 6). In accepting her neologism, to "re-sacrificialise", he enters doubtful territory. Pope Benedict's Summorum Pontificum and the accompanying letter to the bishops make it clear that both forms of the Mass are entirely legitimate. The differences suggested by Moyra Doorly are not substantial.

In using two separate treatises to discuss the sacrifice of the Mass and the sacrament of the Eucharist, the Council of Trent set the scene for the several hundred years of theological effort that obtain to this day to bring together the two aspects of Eucharistic faith in a single expressive statement. The Second Vatican Council has been a boon. The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a full and sufficient statement of the whole Mass as a fundamental unity (para 1346) and of the Mass as at the same time and inseparably the sacrificial memorial and the sacred banquet (1382). The entire chapter is worth the attention of any Christian seeking deeper understanding.

We all need to concentrate, in either form, on its worthy celebration. There have been abuses of the Ordinary Form, we know; only those old enough to remember know what abuse was possible in the Extraordinary, or old, Form. The reforms initiated at the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy made sense, and make sense now. Which is not to say that development is not desirable - a point that the Pope makes, ignored by many, about some aspects of the old form.

To take one point, it does seem to me that whichever way we face at the altar, we face, as Fr Aidan says, towards the Father, provided in the Ordinary Form a priest and congregation devote their attention to the altar and the Sacred Body and Blood which are offered, rather than to any attempt at constant eye contact and engagement. Equally, in the old form a fussily precise following of the rubrics can distract now as could the opposite, the hasty celebrations of the 1950s.

There is a deeper question not addressed in the charitable discussion you have printed. The SSPX will not be reconciled to the Church by any amount of liturgical change. Pope Benedict wrote in his letter that "the reasons for the break... were at a deeper level".

Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers blamed the Vatican Council for the ills of the present. The archbishop, by all accounts not notable in his own toleration of dissent, then went outside the bounds of the discipline of the Church when he ordained bishops. Those faithful to the Council hold, on the contrary, that it came at a providential moment, just as profound changes in social and religious attitudes were becoming evident. Newman foresaw what he called the "anti-dogmatic principle", theological liberalism. This has become an all encompassing and paradoxically totalitarian liberalism which brooks no alternative to its secular vision for the public square. To meet it we need a profound theology which people like Fr Aidan are working to give us, and a renewal of the sacramental and devotional life of the Church.

Part of this, not the whole, but yet an important part, must be a renewal of liturgical understanding. I am getting impatient for the availability of better translations, both of the Ordinary and of the Scriptures to be read at Mass. But right now, a study of the General Instruction on the Roman Missal and our own bishops' document, Celebrating the Mass, is a fair start. These documents are not just about rules: they have spiritual import. We must all take pains to think with the Church.

Yours faithfully,
Leo Chamberlain
St John's Priory,
Easingwold, York

Don't blame Darwin for his followers

From Dr John Nichols

SIR - Blaming Charles Darwin for the excesses of his so-called "followers", the Nazis and other Social Darwinists (Mary Kenny, October 23) is like blaming Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition.

Darwin was very careful to keep to the facts. The inconvenient fact that imperialist colonists wiped out whole populations of tribal peoples was something that had to be reported and explained. While on the Beagle voyage, he and Captain Fitzroy wrote an article for The South African Christian Recorder denouncing these colonial policies and praising the activities of liberal-minded missionaries who protected indigenous tribal peoples.

Darwin and his family were major supporters of the anti-slavery movement and on his Beagle voyage he recorded his thoughts on the tendency of colonists to treat slaves as animals: "Has not the white Man, who has debased his Nature & violates every best instinctive feeling by making slave of his fellow black, often wished to treat him as other animals." His experiences on that voyage hardened his resolve to see an end to slavery. Although most accounts of 1859 emphasise the role of Alfred Russel Wallace in prompting Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species there was another reason for urgency. In America, Louis Agazziz, professor of zoology at Harvard, was winning the scientific argument for categorising black people as a separately created and inferior species, only fit for slavery. The anti-slavery movement was being made to look old fashioned and unscientific. With the publication of On the Origin of Species and the subsequent realisation that all races of people are one human species, Agazziz and his pro-slavery movement were totally demolished almost overnight.

Does this Charles Darwin sound like a man who would want his followers to persecute the poor and downtrodden?

I think not. Yours faithfully,
John Nichols
Guildford, Surrey

Don't blame Darwin for his followers

From Dr John Nichols

SIR - Blaming Charles Darwin for the excesses of his so-called "followers", the Nazis and other Social Darwinists (Mary Kenny, October 23) is like blaming Jesus for the Spanish Inquisition.

Darwin was very careful to keep to the facts. The inconvenient fact that imperialist colonists wiped out whole populations of tribal peoples was something that had to be reported and explained. While on the Beagle voyage, he and Captain Fitzroy wrote an article for The South African Christian Recorder denouncing these colonial policies and praising the activities of liberal-minded missionaries who protected indigenous tribal peoples.

Darwin and his family were major supporters of the anti-slavery movement and on his Beagle voyage he recorded his thoughts on the tendency of colonists to treat slaves as animals: "Has not the white Man, who has debased his Nature & violates every best instinctive feeling by making slave of his fellow black, often wished to treat him as other animals." His experiences on that voyage hardened his resolve to see an end to slavery. Although most accounts of 1859 emphasise the role of Alfred Russel Wallace in prompting Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species there was another reason for urgency. In America, Louis Agazziz, professor of zoology at Harvard, was winning the scientific argument for categorising black people as a separately created and inferior species, only fit for slavery. The anti-slavery movement was being made to look old fashioned and unscientific. With the publication of On the Origin of Species and the subsequent realisation that all races of people are one human species, Agazziz and his pro-slavery movement were totally demolished almost overnight.

Does this Charles Darwin sound like a man who would want his followers to persecute the poor and downtrodden?

I think not. Yours faithfully,
John Nichols
Guildford, Surrey

Orthodox writer to speak at the Cathedral

From Eileen McDade

SIR - I thought the article by Fr Robin Burgess (Features, October 23) was excellent. I'd like to point that there is a slight error in the "further information" section. The Silence in the City talk by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on Tuesday, November 24 at 7pm in Westminster Cathedral Hall is called "Word and Silence in Prayer". More details can be found at www.silenceinthecity.org.uk.

Also, WCCM, Contemplative Outreach UK and the Julian groups support the Silence in the City series of talks rather than sponsor them.

Yours faithfully,
Eileen McDade
By email

Should Pope Benedict have consulted widely before announcing the Anglican provision?

From Lord Hylton

SIR - A key question for the reuniting of all baptised believers is how will "the primacy" of the Bishop of Rome in practice be exercised? This has so far been too little discussed. Many are hoping that it will be exercised in a collegial manner, as Vatican II laid down when counter-balancing the Vatican I definition of papal infallibility.

One is therefore bound to ask what consulting Pope Benedict did before making proposals to the Lefebvrists, and before his recent invitation to Anglicans who wish to enter visible unity with the Roman Catholic communion.

Did he consult the head of department in the Vatican or the College of Cardinals? As far as I know neither matter was ever discussed by the Synod of Bishops.

If these important steps were taken on the Pope's initiative alone, what does that say about his understanding of collegiality? There is evidence for saying that the Catholic Church is already over-centralised. Can this be for its own good? Surely we need more subsidiarity.

Given that a very large measure of doctrinal and theological agreement has already been reached, especially with Anglicans, Lutherans and in effect with most Orthodox, the manner in which moves towards visible unity are taken become very important. One hopes and prays that the manner will not only be generous, but also be attractive and appealing.

Perhaps we should also consider which is the more important, visible unity or spiritual unity. Does orthopraxis (right conduct) have to precede worldwide orthodoxy (right belief)? Unity is something we all have to work for. It cannot be left solely to Church leaders. Disunity has certainly been a cause for scandal, but I think we should also understand that every tradition and denomination will bring its own gift to the great Church of the future.

Yours faithfully,
Hylton
House of Lords,
London SW1


From Mr Eric Hester

SIR - All English Catholics should welcome the wise provision that the Holy Father has made for Anglicans who become Catholics. Pope John Paul II said previously: "Be generous to these men." But that did not always happen, though some, like Cardinal Hume, made Anglicans most welcome.

Let us not see the Anglicans as a problem, rather as solving some of our existing problems. For instance, it is said that Anglican priests will need more money from parishes. But many of them would make superb teachers, helping to solve the huge problem of finding good RE teachers. An extra priest in a parish would be literally a God-send, and he could support his family by teaching full- or part-time.

There is a desperate shortage of chaplains in our schools so that some are actually breaking Church law by having lay "chaplains". A school could pay a priest to be chaplain and teacher. It would be much easier for independent schools, since their teachers need not have formal teaching qualifications, though they are often required to have better degrees.

But in maintained Catholic schools a teacher can be employed and paid while qualifying for a teaching certificate. Then there is the problem of the perceived need to close parishes and to initiate clusters. All this should be put on hold: reinforcements are coming. Catholics have, too, been timid in standing up to the Government over such matters as its plans for compulsory politicised sex education laid down for all schools, institutionalised abuse. We will now have staunch allies.

Let us be generous and humble, recalling what Cardinal Wiseman said of the converts of the 19th century: "I honestly believe that, except for having the fullness of the faith, they are better men than we are in every way."

Yours faithfully,
Eric Hester
Bolton


From Mr Barry Oakley

SIR - While Anglicans will be welcome to the Church, as a Catholic I have to say that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, does have good reason to be distressed about the manner by which the Vatican has gone about opening the door of membership to members of the C of E and other Anglican groups.

The Church has acted in a cavalier fashion in spite of the embarrassing press conference held by Archbishop Nichols with Dr Rowan Williams. Everything was clearly done in haste with little consideration, courtesy and sensitivity by the Vatican towards the leader of the Church of England.

In recent times the Church has handled other matters in a clumsy, insensitive and inconsiderate way. The Holy Father should have extended a special invitation (perhaps a summons) to Dr Williams to inform him specifically of the Church's intentions.

I think it important that the Church (the Vatican) gives serious thought as to how it can improve its public relations so as not to ride roughshod over other churches in spite of their differences.

Yours faithfully,
Barry Oakley
Stone, Staffs


From Mr James Sinclair

SIR - I hope the Anglo-Catholics finally do what they should have done over 150 years ago and that is leave the Church of England and move en bloc to Rome.

This over-indulged minority have, since their foundation, sought to undermine the Reformation and turn back the clock to medieval superstition in the Church of England. It's high time (forgive the pun) they put up or shut up.

Of course the Roman Church will not be so indulgent of their indiscipline as the Church of England has been over the past century and a half during which they have tried to subvert the Protestant nature of this reformed church.

In case you don't think the Church of England is Protestant, I would refer you to the coronation oath of its supreme governor, who swore to uphold and defend the Reformed, Protestant religion.

You are welcome to them.

Yours faithfully,
James Sinclair
Jersey

Renewing Canada

From Anne Côté-Harriss

SIR - I so enjoyed reading Michael Coren's article (Feature, October 16). I am a French Canadian who married an Englishman, and so have lived in Britain since 1971, and revisited Canada from time to time. How very accurate is Mr Coren's description of the Canadian post-Conciliar Church - though perhaps, after all, the picture he painted is not quite bleak enough!

But last year in Quebec City, where I was born, the 49th International Eucharistic Congress was celebrated after long preparations that brought together Catholics from all over this vast country. It was quite unforgettable, and such a reason to hope. The Canadian Church seemed at last to have recovered its vision, rediscovered the witness of its wonderful founders and martyrs, and set out joyfully and unapologetically towards a new future of faith. The Primate of Canada, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, stated that this week-long celebration of the gift of the Eucharist "was a veritable Pentecost", which left a profound impression on those who attended, and will be a turning point for the Church in Canada. I am full of hope.

Looking ahead to 2012, may the 50th International Eucharistic Congress, which will be celebrated in Dublin, bring to Ireland the many blessings and renewal that it has brought to Canada.

Yours faithfully,
Anne Côté-Harriss
By email

Civil war anecdotes

From Estelle Cooch

SIR - I am a history student at the London School of Economics currently doing my dissertation on the attitude of working-class Catholics involved in the Labour movement to the Spanish Civil War.

I am addressing the theme of divided loyalties and the impact of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on working-class Catholics involved in trade unions and the Labour movement. This can include issues such as involvement in the International Brigades or controversies over money being sent to the Spanish Republic (as purely two examples).

Much of my primary research has come from archives of the Manchester Catholic Herald, but I was wondering if your readers had any information, anecdotes, stories, contacts or suggestions on this theme (or similar) would be much appreciated. Could anyone with any information please contact me on s.e.cooch@lse.ac.uk. I am particularly keen to get individual stories or oral histories.

Yours faithfully,
Estelle Cooch
By email

The Fry-Hitchens debacle should be a wake-up call for Catholics

From Elizabeth C Sweeney

SIR - Having attended the debate (Report, October 23) last week, at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, where the motion "The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world" was put forward for scrutiny, I feel I had to write to express my disappointment at the lack of a clearly audible (and visible) Catholic presence in the audience. Indeed, Zeinab Badawi, who chaired the debate, was compelled to inquire (in the interests of fairness, as she stated) whether there really were any Catholics present, for each time she invited a question from the floor it was almost invariably one from the opposition, often accompanied by cynical and sneering comment.

What a pity that some of our erudite and spirited priests and lay people, possessing thorough knowledge of Church history, skilled in apologetics, (most likely) accustomed to debates and quick thinking to boot were not there to be heard. Could it be that they thought a popular debate arranged by an organisation calling itself Intelligence Squared would be a far from intelligent affair and therefore not worth their time and trouble? As it turned out, the debate (almost inevitably) did come to resemble pub discussion, rather than serious, open-minded exchange, but nonetheless it is still going to be broadcast to around 80 million people (in Africa and America) on the November 6 or 7 by the BBC World Service. But though she might have guessed that the debate would be just another opportunity for "Catholic Church bashing", this certainly did not deter the indefatigable Ann Widdecombe from taking part and from putting forward a calm, dignified, reasoned and totally convincing set of arguments in defence of the Church, once again. Perhaps the absence of Catholics in the audience was due to the fact that many of them, living within travelling distance of the venue, were unaware that the debate was taking place. If this is the case, then surely our Catholic press and our parish priests should have alerted (and should be alerting) their readers and parishioners.

The Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, Nigeria, John Onaiyekan, understood only too late how vehemently opposed to the Church were the many participants who had arrived in their hundreds to hear two of their idols, Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens, scoff and spit venom at the Church while, it must be said, raising one or two issues worthy of serious consideration and valid response. Could he not have been briefed beforehand? As a consequence, his opening speech was lame (almost to the point of indifference), all too brief and completely wasted. Only later did he make some most pertinent comments silencing the opposition, when, for example, he stated that when it comes to discussing Aids in Africa we are talking about his nephews and nieces.

Arguments from the opposition included the following: the claim that anti-Semitism was preached as official doctrine until 1964; that a cardinal of Massachusetts sanctioned the "rape and torture" of children; that the doctrine of Limbo had caused untold suffering; that Thomas More had persecuted people for owning an English Bible, that the Islamic and Catholic religions were equally opposed to women's freedom; that the Church is obsessed with sex; that our priests and nuns are sexually dysfunctional; the practice of indulgences; the Crusades; Catholic charities; Purgatory (not in the Bible); paedophilia (most definitely in the Church, though no mention was made of homosexuality in the Church); and that Stephen Fry feels himself a perennial victim of a judgmental Church which continuously points its accusing finger at him for being in a state of mortal sin. (Why this should unnerve him is anyone's guess, since he does not care a fig for the Church's teachings in the first place; neither - one must presume - does he know what three conditions need to be met before one is in a state of mortal sin according to Church teaching, or he might realise that he is most probably not in that state.)

It was only later that evening, thinking about and discussing the issues that we had heard, that my sister and I were able to think of a few poignant questions that we might have put to Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens, had we been, like a few of the other Catholics present, more sure of our ground. It is, of course, up to us to ensure we are better informed, but there is also a most urgent need at parish level to actively and untiringly encourage every parishioner to attend courses in apologetics and for us all to take a confident and clearly audible stand at each and every debate where reference is made to the Church. We require for this powerful and magnetic leaders. Fr John Corapi (on EWTN) comes to mind as one example.

At the close of the debate, the number of voters in support of the motion plummeted to 206, to the great hilarity of the audience who greeted the result with resounding guffaws. In some respects, this result stings a little, but it also leaves us doubting the Catholic credentials of those who voted for the motion at the outset only then to change their minds after listening to accounts from the opposition which were continuously emotive, acrimonious and deeply prejudiced.

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Sweeney
By email


From Mr Philip Diaz-Lewis

SIR - I am repeatedly disillusioned by Hitchens, Dawkins and the like in their choice of debate opponents. I would like nothing better than to see them take on such Catholic heavyweights as Scott Hahn, Benjamin Wiker, Peter Kreeft or Dave Armstrong.

I always thought that if I were a professional atheist, and I was utterly convinced of my own atheism, then I would track down the greatest mind in Christendom and debate them, instead of worrying with archbishops and MPs who are neither philosophers nor theologians. I find that these men can be likened to a playground bully, who deliberately avoids the strong kids who might beat him and instead attacks the small and weak, against which he has his victory assured.

Time and time again have such claims been refuted, leaving one baffled completely as to why they keep being put forward. The greatest weapon in the modern secularist's arsenal is not fallacy or slander (both of which are habitually employed) but rather the art of "selective ignorance" in which he views all the arguments against him, and engages only those that are childish or put forward by obvious fanatics. Those that are well-informed and intelligent he simply pours ridicule on and then ignores.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Diaz-Lewis
By email

Mother Angelica deserves more recognition for her amazing work

From Mike and Julie Stewart

SIR - Your item (Report, October 16) on the papal award of the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice to Mother Mary Angelica, foundress of The Eternal Word Television Network, was disappointing in its brevity.

Since Mother Angelica started it in 1981 with just $200 and an empty garage, EWTN has grown into the largest multimedia religious network in the world, reaching 160 million households in over 140 countries. Such phenomenal growth, supported solely by viewers' voluntary contributions, can only have been the Will of God working through Mother's unfailing obedience and complete trust in His Divine Providence.

Such a contribution to the Church has been, and still is, incalculable, providing both stability and evangelisation during a turbulent period. While it is known that EWTN has transformed and saved an enormous number of lives, the true total is know only to God.

Surely Mother Angelica's great service is deserving of more column inches and recognition than you gave her.

It must also be mentioned that the chairman of EWTN, Deacon William Steltemeier, who has devoted many years to the administration of the network, has also been awarded the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for his untiring work and support.

Yours faithfully,
Mike and Julie Stewart
By email

St Thérèse's relics brought peace to the people of England

From Mr Kevin Greenan

SIR - As a parishioner and a steward of Westminster Cathedral I, like many, wondered what effect the visit of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux would have on the Cathedral. Whatever I imagined was a million miles away from the reality. Unlike so many grand events in cathedrals and other important venues across the land there were no VIP reserved places; everyone was a VIP: they all queued, some for many hours, to pay their respects to this saint who died so young yet has left a massive impression on millions.

What struck me most was the sincere emotion that was clearly visible in so many. The most moving was seeing a young man in his early 20s. It was just after 5am in the morning and there was a very brief break in the endless queues we stewards had been witnessing. The young man kept his distance. I asked him whether he would like to pray at the relics. "No," was the reply. When I asked him why not he told me he had not been to Confession in two years. He was clearly upset and considered himself unworthy to approach the relics. He asked if there were Confessions going on. I told the priest on duty of the young man who so wanted to confess. "Bring him to me," he said. "I'll hear his Confession."

Just before 7am, as I was about to off duty, I saw the young man now standing by the relics. I can only say the look on his face was total peace; it was certainly different from the much troubled soul I had seen earlier.

As Fr Michael Dunne, the organiser of this great event, and the Cathedral authorities analyse the great cost and hundreds of hours of effort of bringing the relics of St Thérèse to Westminster, I hope they will recognise the grace and peace that the saint brought to so many. No papal visit or grand affair will ever mean more to me than the hours I had the honour to be close to the relics of this great and most holy saint.

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Greenan
London SW1


From Anita De Lacey

SIR - St Thérèse's relics were on display at Aylesford Priory in Kent last Saturday, on a bright and sunny October day. I was among the 7,000 to 8,000 pilgrims queueing to view the relics. I was struck by the atmosphere of friendship, love and warmth displayed by my fellow pilgrims. St Thérèse said in her life that she wanted to travel round the world and with her message broadcast on the internet she has just done that so well.

Yours faithfully,
Anita de Lacey
Burgess Hill, West Sussex

Facing the elephant

From Mr Stratford Caldecott

SIR - Clive Copus claims that in my analysis of the challenge of evangelisation (Comment, October 2), I ignored the "elephant in the room", namely the Darwinian world view which lies at the root of modern atheism.

But in an online article called "Theories of Evolution" I suggest that Darwin does leave room for religious belief. We do not have to take Richard Dawkins at face value, nor should we ignore respected theistic evolutionists such as Simon Conway-Morris (Cambridge). Darwin himself seems to have lost his faith for other reasons than the theory of natural selection. Atheistic evolutionism is a result of the split in our culture that I was writing about - the three-way split between science, art and faith.

Unfortunately the debate on evolution too often gets bogged down in the discussion of atheism versus creationism or Intelligent Design. It needs to be broadened out, with reference also to psychology, neurophysiology, the nature of the soul and the human person. Religious believers have nothing to fear from facts discovered by modern science, although we must be wary of interpretations that may be placed upon them.

Yours faithfully,
Stratford Caldecott
St Benet's Hall, Oxford

A lukewarm body

From Mr Ray Knight

SIR - We are urged to work at evangelising but surely it would be reasonable to first plug the gaps responsible for so many thousands leaving the Church.

We have tended to blame those who left; it has been suggested that many will eventually return, and "numbers aren't everything" (Letters, October 9).

Maybe those who left were acting honestly and even bravely; if so, we should want to know what they found wrong with the Church. The purpose of the Church is to make followers for Jesus Christ, so if the "lapsed" were not led into a working relationship with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, they were left with the routine Mass and sacraments which, without Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life, would be dry and boring, even meaningless.

Of course, we still have many holy members whom the Church has led into full and happy lives with Jesus Christ. But for too many who remain the Church is a lukewarm organisation not readily seen as the Body of Christ on earth. With different approaches, the last four popes have urged us to wake up. Our Pope Benedict wants the parish to become "a beacon, radiating the light of faith".

That is great target for us, but we have to face the fact that our light of faith did not radiate brightly enough to stem that outflow of those closer to us.

So what can we do? Well, eventually our parishes must become evangelising communities, so we could see a faith-building phase as an essential preparation for that evangelising, and divide our parishes into groups of up to about 12 for weekly prayer, Bible study and discussion. One of the groups could be a lead group to offer course programmes and help.

Obviously, the Gospels and Acts would present the best resources and example for growing in faith as they improve our working relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Yours faithfully,
Ray Knight
Baldock, Herts

A glorious future?

From Geraldine Roberts

SIR - I was interested to read Michael Coren's account (Features, October 16) of the revival of the Canadian Church. But I wonder if the situation there is not a little more complicated.

While undoubtedly the hierarchy has made great strides in the direct and clear proclamation of Catholic truths, there is still much room for reform.

In the same issue, for example, you report that a Canadian bishop has been arrested for allegedly possessing child pornography on his computer. If he turns out to be guilty this would have deeply disturbing implications. It might be brushed off as simply the sinful act of an individual. But the question would be: How could such a person be ordained not only to the priesthood, but also to the episcopate?

We must of course reserve judgment on this case. But it does suggest that the Canadian Church is not marching in lockstep towards a glorious future of orthodoxy and evangelical purity.

Yours faithfully,
Geraldine Roberts
By email

A musical idea to celebrate the papal visit

From Mr Anthony Buckley

SIR - One can find interesting stuff in The Catholic Herald. For example, a few weeks ago, I read not only that the Pope was coming to Britain but also that the Church needs to engage with the culture of the world around it; and almost every week someone writes a piece saying that Catholics need to make a real commitment to music in worship.

I think I have found a way to bring these disparate themes together. What I propose is the creation of a new musical work to be called "A Decade of the Rosary". It would not be an interpretation of any particular joyful or sorrowful mystery but a musical setting of the Our Father and the Glory Be with, in between, 10 different settings of the Hail Mary.

It could be performed for the Pope, who is a famous music-lover, and would be a permanent gift from the Catholic community to the people of Britain, an enrichment of British culture. Some people may object that choral singing is not exactly at the heart of modern culture, but I would give a threefold reply: choral singing has been around a long time, it is not going to go away and, judging from what one sees on television, it is undergoing a renaissance in this country.

That is the core of the idea. Now for some musical practicalities. Here are my suggestions. I envisage a setting for choir and two or three soloists plus small orchestra. Since some of the words are going to be repeated quite a lot, variety will be essential - variety of forces involved, keys etc. Maybe there should be variety of language, with some of the settings in English and others in Latin.

Modern composers are fond of composing sacred works in which they cut and paste the liturgical text and introduce other texts. We don't want any of that. Sticking to the straight text would make this work a specifically Catholic contribution to British culture.

I would allow one departure from the normal text: I would allow the composer to leave out the name "Jesus". Now, this may seem crazy and to negate the idea of a specifically Catholic work, but I think that - in English, at least - there are peculiar musical difficulties in including the holy name. If it is not emphasised, it might sound like an afterthought. On the other hand, if it gets a lot of musical emphasis, there is the possibility that it will suck the life out of the preceding poetic metaphor "the fruit of thy womb". In any case, I seem to remember reading somewhere that the name of Jesus was not added to the Hail Mary until the 16th century, so leaving it out is not necessarily impious.

One other musical practicality: each setting of the Hail Mary should be detachable and capable of being sung as a stand-alone piece, which could be sung in worship or in the concert hall. This would make the overall work not merely a gift to Britain but a useful gift.

As to the composer, I have no suggestion. Could it be written by a team? (This was the original plan for the work we now call Verdi's Requiem; but the precedent is not a happy one, because the other composers fell down on the job and Verdi had to write the whole thing himself.) I leave this decision to the people who are going to commission and pay for the work.

It is going to cost a bit. A recent article on the subject of commissioning music mentioned a figure of £1,000 a minute. (This sounds like the fee for consulting a London lawyer, but it refers to a minute in the completed work, not a minute of the composer's time.) A website I have looked at suggests the more modest figure of £780 a minute.

Who is going to pay? Maybe we could find 12 dioceses each willing to commission a movement or section. If Welsh or Scottish dioceses were willing to chip in, they could reasonably ask for "their" Hail Mary to be in Welsh or Gaelic. If the dioceses are unable, maybe we could find 20,000 or so Catholics each willing to subscribe a pound.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Buckley
Coventry, West Midlands

Astonishing fruits

From Fr James Mulligan

SIR - In his letter (October 16) Christopher Keeffe states that I have "reiterated the myth that Bishop Peric has been stripped of jurisdiction". I have done no such thing - or indeed have I ever heard anyone claim that the Bishop Peric has been stripped of his jurisdiction.

I wrote that the responsibility for the Church investigation into Medjugorje had been removed in 1986 from the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno and given to a commission established by the bishops' conference of the old Yugoslavia. This work continues under the bishops' conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bishop of Mostar's views will be taken into consideration but will not have any definitive status. This is obviously something the current Bishop of Mostar, Bishop Peric, finds difficult. (And incidently it's just as well that this is the position since Bishop Peric has stated before witnesses that he does not accept the authenticity of either Lourdes or Fatima so his objectivity on the subject of Medjugorje is hardly likely.)

Mr Keeffe also criticises me for holding to the 1991 Declaration of Zadar, which places Medjugorje under further investigation by the Church. Let me remind Mr Keeffe and Medjugorje opponents that this is the official position of the Church on the subject and perhaps they should be humble enough to accept it.

Finally, on the subject of pilgrimages to Medjugorje: yes, millions do go there in the belief that something supernatural may be happening. And they have very good reason to think that this might be so considering the astonishing manifestation of good fruits, good works, revival in prayer and changed lives that have emanated from there. In the 13 years between the ending of the apparitions at Fatima and the authentication by the Church thousands upon thousands made their way to Fatima on pilgrimage. Were they wrong to do so? Of course not.

This is exactly the same with Medjugorje, and until (and if) the Church comes out with a declaration that Medjugorje is not of a supernatural character then all are free, and within obedience to the Church, to go there on pilgrimage.

Yours faithfully,
James Mulligan
London NW1

Making history

From Marianna, Viscountess Monckton of Brenchley

SIR - With reference to the article (Catholic Life, October 16) about the appointment of Helena Muller as the first Catholic High Sherrif. I, born and bred a Catholic, had the honour to be High Sherrif of Kent 1981/2.

Yours faithfully,
Marianna Monckton
Maidstone, Kent

A positive decision

From Mrs June Walters

SIR - It's heartening that Tom Cruise has allowed his daughter, Suri, to attend a Catholic preschool (Report, October 16). Let's hope and pray that he will one day return to the Catholic faith of his youth.

Yours faithfully,
June Walters
By email

The Vatican's Nobel comment was unhelpful

From the director of the department for pastoral affairs of the Diocese of Westminster

SIR - One cannot help feeling bewilderment at some elements inside the Vatican applauding the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. (Report, October 16). We're told that he "deserved it for his promotion of peace", so that this presumably chimes with the Vatican Secretariat of State's general diplomacy à propos nuclear disarmament. And yet doctrinally of course we are under no illusions as to President Obama's rather aggressive (as far as the Church's teaching is concerned) anti-marriage, anti-family agenda.

Both Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and Archbishop Robert Sarah, secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, have denounced the so called "gender theory" at the recent Synod as "lethal" in its menace to the family. Yet this ideology is given high priority by the Obama administration.

In March this year, in his personal letter to the world's bishops, the Holy Father spoke of how the Holy See must utilise the internet so as to have precision in both its appreciation of and commentary on current affairs. A five-minute search of its own website would have equipped the people inside the Vatican responsible for commenting on the news of the Obama Peace Prize with the Pope's own words from the 2008 message for World Day of Peace, in which he states: "Consequently, whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community, national and international, since he weakens what is in effect the primary agency of peace."

This puts rather a different hue on the decision of the Nobel Peace Prize committee and should certainly have caused elements inside the Vatican to have pressed the pause button before issuing any rash statement of approval. Once again, in my humble opinion, following the Williamson affair and the Recife abortion case, it's 3-0 for incorrect worldwide media perception of Catholic truth against actual truth.

Yours faithfully,
Edmund Adamus
London SW1


From Mr John Sullivan

SIR - President Obama's differences with Catholic teaching are well known, and so it's not surprising that some were shocked when the Vatican congratulated him on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But it's important not to read too much into the Vatican's statement, which was an expression of diplomatic politeness rather than an endorsement of the President's policies.

It is the Vatican's time-honoured custom to congratulate the winner of the Peace Prize - whoever they may be.

Yours faithfully,
John Sullivan
By email

The only safe stance on the events at Medjugorje is 'wait and see'

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - Fr James Mulligan (Letters, October 9) makes the case that a) people can go on pilgrimage to Medjugorje, b) the local bishop has been stripped of jurisdiction, c) by way of quoting a Fr Svetover Kralijevi that Rome will decide the matter, and d) somehow the fact that bishops and sometimes up to 200 priests concelebrate Mass at the site and that many people have found their faith there verifies the claim.

As readers may know, Fr Mulligan wrote a pro-Medjugorje book, Medjugorje: What's Happening. Fr Mulligan must be aware that during an assembly of the French Episcopate that Bishop Henri Brincard of Le Puy-en-Velay in 2001 said: "How, in fact, [can one] organise a private pilgrimage without it being motivated by the conviction that the events of Medjugorje are of a supernatural origin?" Basically, why go to a hill in the Balkans unless you believe that something happened there? If it is motivated for that reason then the pilgrimage is contrary to the dictates of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, which said that pilgrimages which tend to promote the notion that something supernatural happened are to be avoided.

Fr Mulligan reiterates the myth that Bishop Peric has been stripped of jurisdiction. Yet, as a member of the bishops' conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as Cardinal Bertone confirmed in a letter in 1998, any further consideration of the issue falls to the conference to decide. In the same letter the cardinal confirmed that the Holy See was not taking a view on the subject, leaving it to the local Church.

Like all devotees of Medjugorje Fr Mulligan holds on to the 1991 Zadar Declaration like a lifeboat. But if we actually read what it says it provides cold comfort. The alleged apparitions started in June 1981. In 1991, after a decade, all the Church could say was: "On the basis of the investigations so far it cannot be affirmed that one is dealing with supernatural apparitions and revelations." This means that, after 10 years of virtually daily messages, Our Lady left no sign that her Son's Church could discern came from her. The only safe position with Medjugorje is to wait and see - and if one must follow an apparition then follow Lourdes, Fatima, Beauring or Banneaux.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex


From Jane Campbell

SIR - Has any approved apparition site created as much disunity within the Church as Medjugorje?

Yours faithfully,
Jane Campbell
Ballina, Co Mayo

Voting for Cameron

From Julia Nutwood

SIR - I was interested to read Will Heaven's questions for David Cameron in his Notebook (Comment. October 9).

I have really wanted to vote for David Cameron but feel I can't vote for someone who will further attack family values by defending homosexual marriage. I was horrified to learn that he had even been considering walking on the Gay Pride march in July.

He obviously feels that he would prefer the homosexual lobby on his side rather than the Catholic lobby (anyone who truly calls themselves Catholic should defend the teaching that homosexual "marriage" is totally unacceptable). He has made his choice and so I have made mine and will make sure that any Catholic I speak to knows about his views. It is a great pity.

Yours faithfully,
Julia Nutwood
By email

A DIY vaccine

From Sister Gillian Price FC

SIR - This week we celebrate Global Handwashing Day to encourage us to wash our hands with soap as well as water. At a time when many parishes are not giving a physical sign of peace, it is timely to reflect on research by the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine which found that in Britain more that one in four people at railway stations had faecal matter on their hands. Dr Val Curtis, director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, describes handwashing with soap as a "do it yourself vaccine" against infection.

Every year a total of 3.5 million children in the developing world die from pneumonia or diarrhoea. Handwashing with soap is one of the most effective interventions in the world to tackle this tragedy; in fact it is estimated that universal handwashing with soap could save a million lives every year.

In spite of this, the share of British aid to sanitation is tiny: 1.5 per cent of the budget goes to water and sanitation combined, which means even less to sanitation on its own. It is time that Department for International Development (DFID) should increase its investment in hygiene promotion, including handwashing with soap to prevent the needless loss of so many lives. It is also time that we in Britain should clean up our handwashing act.

Yours faithfully,
Gillian Price
St Elizabeth's Centre,
Much Hadham, Hertfordshire

Rights and wrongs

From Mr Mike Appleton

SIR - Vivienne Nathanson (Report, October 9) is quoted as saying that the mentally competent "must retain the legal right to refuse medical intervention".

But in the case of Kerrie Wooltorton this was not the situation. By her voluntary call for help she was not "refusing". Rather, was she actively seeking such intervention.

In addition, is there not an element of both circumstance and time specificity - that is, not once and for ever - in the judgment of "mental capacity"?

Yours faithfully,
Mike Appleton
Worthing, West Sussex

Depression is too complex for a single cure

SIR - As a sufferer from depression who has been helped by being prescribed anti-depressants, I found James Le Fanu's piece about pills both thought-provoking and troubling.

While I am inclined to agree with the notion that the "biomedical model of medical illness" has "bolstered the materialist view: where our thoughts, beliefs and emotions are 'nothing but' the consequence of the interaction of the chemical neurotransmitters in the brain", I worry that for many the situation is more complex.

On one hand it is too easy to say that depression is merely an imbalance of the brain on the other it is too simplistic to say that in severe cases a person can help himself come out of the depression.

When depression takes over, pulls one apart and makes one feel like one never will feel joy again, then sometimes it is a relief to know that what is tearing you apart is not just you, that something can be done when all other avenues have been exhausted. To be sure this can lead to a very materialist view of the human person and of human ecology, if one is not careful.

But it is just as dangerous to veer too much into the direction of another heresy where depression is concerned, namely a form of Pelagianism where one eventually believes that one can do everything oneself, without God's grace and without the love of others.

All too often people try and tell those suffering from depression to simply snap out of it or to pull themselves together. It is not always possible to do it on one's own, but much of the time in real depression, prayer and Prozac are a great help.

To be fair to Dr Le Fanu, his main point is to draw attention to the shift in what he calls the biomedical model of medical illness which has come as doctors change the way they diagnose depression and often prescribe neuro-meds where they are not necessarily needed, creating new imbalances previously uncharted.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Boyd
By email

Why looks matter

From Mr James Duncan

SIR - How apt of Damian Thompson to compare our churches with department stores (Comment, October 9). Of course the "Apostles did not worry about the cut of their fisherman's clothes", and neither would they have cared what the inside of churches looked like 20 centuries later, but the Church must learn to market itself properly if it is to reverse some of the serious decline it has suffered in the past three decades.

In any organisation appearance matters. It signals how much pride and self-respect members feel for their group and product.

Dr Thompson's point is salient: pre-Second Vatican Council churches might have seemed strange and foreign to non-believers and newcomers, but some of the churches built since commit the far more serious offence of displaying a certain embarrassment about the faith.

I don't imagine that when the Holy Father visits these shores next year he will have time to visit some of the worst offenders, nor will the hierarchy wish him to see them, but perhaps it could still be an opportunity to do a bit of housekeeping.

To extend the corporate analogy (which is admittedly sometimes a dangerous thing when speaking of the Church), we should treat this as a visit from the CEO.

Yours faithfully,
James Duncan
By email

A Catholic voice

From Mr Mark Armstrong

SIR - I fear that the days of the Catholic vote being of any importance to the major parties are long gone (Comment, October 9). The Tories and Labour may have their differences over tax and Europe, but on issues of Catholic teaching about the sanctity of human life from birth to natural death they are united in rejection.

If Catholics, Christians and non-believers sympathetic to Christian values want someone who will represent them in Westminster then they should put themselves forward.

In the North East we already have a young, orthodox Catholic by the name of David Lindsay standing in the traditionally Catholic North East Durham constituency. The area includes the old Catholic stronghold of Consett, the Recusant village of Esh, Ushaw College, and the Passionist Monastery at Minsteracres only just outside.

He is totally opposed to abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, human cloning, and supports the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers, the requirement that the providers of fertility treatment take into account the child's need for a father, and of paying poorer mothers to stay home with their children. He will also defend Catholic schools and RE textbooks, and promise to defend persecuted Christians abroad, which makes him a fine candidate.

Yours faithfully,
Mark Armstrong
Durham

Should there be fasting before feasting?

From Mr Tom Lydon SIR – -Ever since he started in Charterhouse, I just knew I would be writing to you about Stuart Reid sometime. Now is the time.

His Counter-Reformation corner, as he calls it (Charterhouse, October 2), in which he is calling for a change in the Eucharistic fasting rules, is surely ill-considered.

What a juxtaposition to appear on the same page as Ronald Rolheiser, who was lauding the Eucharist as a community celebration. Do you fast at a celebration? Fr Rolheiser claims that the God of the Incarnation is as much about kitchen tables as ecclesial altars. Do you think of fasting in a kitchen?

Let us consider the institution of the Eucharist. Had not the Apostles just finished a full meal when they participated?

So what credence can Reid claim to his call for at least a three-hour fast? He is on a very sticky wicket in an era of plentiful food when it is rare for a three-hour gap between meals.

But I see he makes an exception for the "cuppa". Hooray!

Yours faithfully
tom lydon
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

Darwin's elephant

From Mr Clive Copus

SIR - Stratford Caldecott's piece (Comment, October 2) is fine as far as it goes, but, like so many Catholic commentators on the decline of belief in this country, he is either unable or unwilling to take the necessary final step and identify the elephant in the room: namely, the Darwinian world-view that underpins our secular culture.

As Mr Caldecott says, we have lost a sense of who we are and how we fit into the cosmos. There is no mystery about why this has occurred: it follows naturally from the Darwinian view that we are merely the product of blind forces, rather than the deliberate creation of a loving God.

The key is not, as he suggests, to highlight the complementary relationship of the arts and sciences, their common search for beauty, and the attraction of elegant solutions that please the heart: much of Darwinism's superficial attraction lies in the fact that it appears to satisfy all these criteria, while clearly leaving no room for religious belief.

Rather, we should be highlighting the latest research in such diverse fields as information theory, biochemistry and cosmology, which provide compelling evidence for traditional Catholic teaching on mankind's unique status within God's creation.

Until we (and the Church generally) grasp this nettle, it will not matter one jot how many "humane and intelligent alternatives to the increasingly oppressive secularism of our schools" are devised: our children will continue to regard religious belief as fundamentally irrational.

Yours faithfully,
Clive Copus
London SW12

Ecumenical choice

From Mrs Susan Gladwell

SIR - Bishop Bernard Longley is surely correct when he states (Report, October 9) that his ecumenical experience was one of the key factors in his appointment as the next Archbishop of Birmingham.

His ecumenical pedigree is indeed impressive, dating back more than 15 years, to 1991, when he was appointed Surrey chairman of the Arundel and Brighton Diocesan Commission for Christian Unity. Five years later he became the national ecumenical officer for the bishops of England and Wales. And in 1999 he was appointed moderator of the steering committee of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.

Two years ago Bishop Longley prepared the Catholic commentary on the agreed joint statement by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission, Growing towards Unity and Mission. And let's not forget that he was ordained priest and brought to Westminster as an auxiliary by that leading light of the ecumenical movement, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

The positive impression he has made on the leaders of other Christian denominations cannot have escaped Rome's notice as it sought a successor to Archbishop Nichols in Birmingham.

Anglican-Catholic dialogue has undoubtedly hit a turbulent patch, but this latest appointment shows just how important Pope Benedict XVI considers healthy relations with the Church of England to be.

Yours faithfully,
Susan Gladwell
By email

Missing millions

From Mr Bernard Cartwright

SIR - With all the recent party conference squealing over our national debt, pension age and taxation I do wonder what our finances would have been like if all those potential taxpayers had not been bumped off through abortion.

Yours faithfully,
Bernard Cartwright
Stourbridge, West Midlands

Having a laugh

From Mr Trevor Blanchard

SIR - One might have expected Ricky Gervais to think twice before turning his latest film into a sly assault on religious belief (Report, October 9).

Does he not remember how badly he came off when he argued with the Archbishop of Canterbury on Radio 5? The encounter can be seen on YouTube. Gervais's sixth-form philosophising is almost as funny as The Office.

Yours faithfully,
Trevor Blanchard
Via email

Don't rely on statistics to measure the health of the Church

From Mr John Stevens

SIR - Your leading article on the expected papal visit to Britain (October 2) was bracing, but I wonder if it was not too pessimistic.

No one can dispute that the Church in England and Wales has seen a sharp statistical decline since the visit of John Paul II in 1982. But there have been pockets of growth. You report, for example, in the preceding issue (September 25) that the number of seminarians in the Archdiocese of Westminster has risen for the third successive year. I believe that the archdiocese has also managed to avoid the steep drop in the numbers of laity seen in other dioceses.

Furthermore, as a community which trusts above all in the Holy Spirit, we should not set too much store by figures. There were only 12 disciples but they took the Good News boldly to the outside world without fretting about their numbers or the indifference of society. The work of the Holy Spirit cannot be measured with a calculator. Take the visit of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux to England and Wales. Yes, we know that tens of thousands of people have visited the relics, but who knows what effect the experience has had on their souls? Some, perhaps, have decided to return to the Church, others to enter the priesthood or religious life. These life-changing decisions are irrelevant to statisticians, but they shape the future of the Church.

Then consider the determination and strength of purpose with which Archbishop Vincent Nichols has begun his tenure at Westminster. He is busily building on Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's (sadly underappreciated) efforts to consolidate the Church in this country. And now he will be joined on the national stage by Bishop Bernard Longley, the new Archbishop of Birmingham, who is prodigiously gifted, but only 54 years old.

We have confronted immense challenges since the Second Vatican Council. But our story cannot be reduced to a simple narrative of decline. Something is stirring in the Church in England and Wales. In many places there are signs of new life: vibrant, multicultural parishes centred on the Eucharist and serving their communities; new movements giving lay people a deep formation in the faith; people rediscovering traditional devotions such as the rosary and prayer to the saints; and increased generosity to the poor and needy.

When Pope Benedict comes to Britain it will not be to give the Church in this country its last rites, but to encourage these tremendous signs of hope.

Yours faithfully,
John Stevens
By email

Happy Christians

From Mr Patrick Dickinson

SIR - I was in thunderous agreement with Will Heaven's comments about the off-putting nature of feel-good Christians (Notebook, September 4). I am by no means condemning the notion of being happy in one's faith. I simply think that if Christians are concerned with spreading the Word of God, then they need to view themselves from the perspective of non-Christians.

The non-denominational Christian Union of York University mixes Christianity with modernity in order to appeal to a contemporary audience. Complex moral isssues are condensed into sound-bites and handy Bible snippets, instead of taking time to reflect upon them. It's a very shallow approach to faith, and principles, especially Christian ones, should never be compromised in the face of advertising. It's all about selling the faith, rather than living the faith.

In addition, there appeared to be a lack of tolerance for any other attitude towards faith. You either had to emphatically exclaim it at every possible turn or simply didn't have it.

It has always been my opinion that a contemplative approach to faith is just as valid as an apostolic one. After all, our individual consciences are all under the gaze of God. It is there that our true intentions, feelings and, ultimately, our connection to him lie. As my parish priest said, the best method of evangelism we can embark upon is to lead by good example. We must show how our faith makes us better people to our neighbours and in the eyes of God, not merely how it has benefited us and made us feel better within ourselves.

Yours faithfully,
Patrick Dickinson
York

Pius the Righteous

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - Gary Krupp's plan to propose Pope Pius XII as "Righteous Among the Nations" (Report, October 2) is worthy of merit. Through due to the bias and popular myth presented at Yad Vashem - mentioned by Mordechay Lewy, Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See -_this proposal is guaranteed to fail.

Yad Vashem, which oversees the process of recognising Righteous Gentiles, proposes several criteria; one of these is that the person saved Jews without regard to personal safety and without reward. Several non-Catholic authors have proved Pius's case as a Righteous Gentile, including the Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, Rabbi David Dalin and that great British historian Sir Martin Gilbert. These Jewish writers have used material at Yad Vashem itself to demolish the myth - created by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth -_that Pius somehow collaborated with Hitler to liquidate European Jewry.

Mr Lewy and the Yad Vashem do those Jews who suffered during the Holocaust and knew that Pope Pius was their only friend a great disservice by continuing the slander against Pope Pius.

It is also significant that the American Jewish lobby group the Anti-Defamation League also heaped praise on Pope Pius at his death yet now it has jumped on the bandwagon against Pope Pius. Yet it has not justified its historical amnesia in persecuting Pope Pius, who was not only a great shepherd of Christ's flock but also a Righteous Gentile.

Incidentally, Pope Paul VI opened the beatification Causes for both Blessed Pope John XXIII and Pope Pius XII on November 18 1965 during a session of the Second Vatican Council, and not in 1967 as reported. The website www.ptwf.org provides access to historical documents proving Pope Pius's work on behalf of Jews.

Yours faithfully
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

Pilgrims are free to travel to Medjugorje

From Fr James Mulligan

SIR - I must protest at the totally misleading information in the report "Bishop reiterates rules for Medjugorje" (October 4). The report states that "both public and private pilgrimages to Medjugorje were forbidden". Completely untrue and it is irresponsible of the Catholic press to publish such untrue information.

The Church position on Medjugorje is that while the apparition claims there are being investigated no 'official' pilgrimages are to be organised since Medjugorje is not recognised as a Church-approved Marian shrine. And this is as it should be - but no one is forbidden from going there. Each day in Medjugorje St James' church is overflowing with pilgrims from all over and often between 100 and 200 priests concelebrate Mass in various languages. Often concelebrating are bishops from around the world. Records show that over 50,000 priests have gone on pilgrimage to Medjugorje. If pilgrimages were forbidden that would be disobedience on a massive scale.

When the Church investigates alleged apparitions there are three positions that can be adopted. These are in effect:
1) Approved - in as much that the Church believes such apparition claims are worthy of belief and do not contradict anything in Church teaching;
2) The supernatural character of the alleged apparitions is not (yet) established and the investigation continues;
3) The alleged apparitions are found to be not of supernatural character.

The responsibility for the Church investigation of Medjugorje was removed from the then Bishop of Mostar-Duvno (the diocese in which Medjugorje is located), Pavao Zanic, by Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1986. The investigation was given to a commission established by the bishops' conference of the old Yugoslavia. This commission's findings were reported in 1991 in what is known as the Declaration of Zadar and this has been the Church position since. Bishop Zanic's successor, Bishop Peric, finds difficult the situation that the responsibility for the investigation has been removed from his diocese and sadly appears to be speaking and acting on Medjugorje with all the fury of a bishop scorned.

There were, in effect, only two positions in the above three categories that the commission could adopt. (Category one was not ever a possibility as, while the apparitions are still occurring, the Church in its prudence would never declare the claims approved. An analogy would be declaring someone a saint while they were still alive.) So it was either category two or category three. If it had been category three that would have been the end of Medjugorje. Indeed, virtually all apparition claims are dismissed in this way. The Church commission chose to place Medjugorje in the second category. This is extremely significant and in the fullness of time, after continued investigation, a decision will be reached.

The obsessive determination by some, and indeed some in the Catholic press, to traduce Medjugorje and to malign the manifest good that comes from there I find unsettling. Last year in Medjugorje I spoke to Fr Svetovar Kralijevi, one of the priests with the most longstanding association with the apparition claims there. He told me that, "if one day Rome declared against Medjugorje, I would perfectly peacefully accept it. Why? Because all I have done here is preach the word of God and administer the sacraments."

It's a pity some opponents of Medjugorje cannot adopt such humility in acceptance of the Church position.

Yours faithfully,
James Mulligan
Holy Rosary,
London NW15

Parasitic tendency

From Mr James Bruce

SIR - Notwithstanding the important points he makes on the issue of population and climate change, Dr Dermot Grenham (Comment, September 24) does seem to have accepted a key element of the pro-contraceptiona genda, which in turn feeds into the "anti-birth mentality" described by the Holy Father in his last encyclical.

Even allowing for the fact that this only applies to people in the world's richest countries, surely we don't all have to accept the label of "emitter" (of greenhouse gases); this would amount to saying that homo sapiens, at least in the affluent western sub-species, is essentially parasitic in its relationship with the earth. Moreover, isn't our reckless determination to treat sex and reproduction as two different things at the core of our "parasitic" tendency?

Yours faithfully,
James Bruce
Bristol

Forming a panel

From Mr Anthony Spencer, honorary secretary of the Pastoral Research Centre

SIR - Since the Catholic bishops' conference de-classified all Newman Demographic Survey (NDS) reports and papers early in 2005 a total of 25 have been published. With Pastoral Research Centre (PRC) reports etc, a total of 44 are currently available. However, most of these relate to the Catholic community in the 1950s and 1960s, and very few to the 21st century.

We would like to do more contemporary work but for this we need the help of priests, deacons, brothers and Sisters. We would like to be able to refer factual queries and ideas to a panel of them, and get their comments on our own ideas, current research and draft papers. The PRC Trustees do this at and between meetings, but we need a much larger panel and now invite any willing to collaborate to write to me.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Spencer
Stone House, Hele,
Taunton, Somerset

A difficult journey to the Czech Republic

From Mr Martin Czerny

SIR - Benedict XVI's visit to the Czech Republic (Report, October 2) appears to have been fairly successful despite the circumstances attached to visiting a country where Communism has effectively rooted out Christianity.

Not only because the country is among the most atheistic in Europe, but also when one considers that this Pope is a German in the Czech Republic, where the Bene_ decrees are still in place and Germans are not popular. Also the country's fraught political situation has left most of its citizens preoccupied, so all in all the Pope did rather well.

I was interested to note that he did not seem address the question of Czechoslovakia's secret priests, at least not in public.

After the Velvet Revolution, when hundreds of thousands of Czechs fell to their knees and prayed the Our Father in Wenceslas Square, the men - some married - and women (one who had been ordained in order to minister to the women in a segregated prison) who had been ordained abroad or secretly, came out of the woodwork and asked to be recognised.

The Vatican and the established Czech hierarchy handled regularising these situations very badly, leaving many people who had risked their lives for their faith lost and angry.

It is sad that Pope Benedict did not mention these heroes of the faith, who did so much for Christ, to make amends for the wrongs that were done to them.

This is an issue that should be re-opened and redressed in this year that marks two decades since the fall of Communism in Europe. Yours faithfully,
Martin Czerny
By email


From Jeannette Francis

SIR - How uplifting it was to read of the Pope in the Czech Republic. Thinking of Benedict at the heart of Europe in a country which has, for the most part, forgotten the gospels, preaching about the love of Christ, inspires me with hope.

As ever, the Holy Father has given us reassurance and hope that in a world dictated by relativism and confusion, we can find the Truth through Christ. His reflections on the nature of freedom, on contemporary society's incorrect understanding of what it means to be free, had a particular poignancy in a country where freedom is still valued, because it was only recently returned to its people.

By visiting the Czech Republic in this year which marks the anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain and dedicating this journey as a symbol for all of Europe, Pope Benedict_XVI_has once again shown that he has the regeneration of Europe at the heart of his mission as Pope.

Yours faithfully,
Jeannette Francis
By email

Pursuing happiness

From Lesley Bennett

SIR - It was refreshing to read, in your interview with Fr Robert Barron (October 2), that Catholicism can involve the pursuit of happiness here and now, through the pursuit of virtue.

Too often, to my way of thinking, Catholicism is linked in people's minds with suffering. Suffering is part of life. But it is not the whole story. Priests like Fr Barron who proclaim the Gospel to the world with confidence can seem brash to Catholic eyes and overly influenced by Protestantism. But why should Protestants have a monopoly on joy?

As I understand it, the classical view of Catholics, going right back to Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount and later to the works of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, used to be that the moral life went hand in hand with the pursuit of happiness, where "happiness" meant something like "fulfillment". What are the Beatitudes if they are not Christ's response to the key question of philosophers, the question of happiness?

Would that there were more priests like Fr Barron. Judging by your interview, not only is he fiercely loyal to the Pope but also he has the brains and the presentational skills to confront the modern world head-on with the claims of the Church - on the Church's terms.

Yours faithfully,
Lesley Bennett
By email

A saint in space

From Mr Barry Swan

SIR - I am not sure what Minette Marrin in the Sunday Times meant by "the starry progress of the relics of the Little Flower" (Report, September 25). Perhaps it was the belated news that the US astronaut Ronald Garan on the Discovery space shuttle to the International Space Station last year carried a small relic of St Thérèse.

I happened to see the two spacecraft in procession as they passed over Wales on what was a rare, very clear night.

Yours faithfully,
Barry Swan
Lampeter, Ceredigion

How to enhance your parish music for the cost of a Premier League match ticket

From Lindsay Gray, director of the Royal School of Church Music

SIR - It was good to read Colin Mawby's recommendation for affiliation to the Royal School of Church Music (Comment, September 18). For an annual membership fee equivalent to the cost of an hour or so at a Premier League football match, churches can tap into a wide range of benefits including our training programmes, and quarterly publications such as Sunday by Sunday, which offers weekly suggestions for music linked to the lectionary, including hymns, songs for children, settings of the psalm, as well as music from Taizé and Iona.

Colin Mawby refers to the need for parishes to plan their music-making according to their circumstances, and to the appointment of a competent musician who can offer leadership and inspiration. We are committed to helping and supporting those churches with a wide range of musical resources and expertise. Readers might be interested to know that our training programme, Church Music Skills, is intended for organists and choir directors of all standards. Our courses for cantors and music group leaders will also be available in the near future. As far as the training of singers of all ages and abilities is concerned, our popular Voice for Life programme can be administered locally. We are also aware that there are many churches which do not have the usual SATB choir, and we publish a wide range of liturgical music for unison and two-part choirs, as well as SA+Men.

At the risk of this letter becoming a commercial, I am keen to draw readers' attention to the wealth of help and support that the RSCM can offer to those for whom the realisation of music-making at Mass is a weekly challenge. Colin Mawby is right: sacred music is a powerful instrument of evangelisation, and we can offer help. I am myself in regular dialogue with leading church musicians in the Roman Catholic Church, and we have a large number of RC-affiliated churches and individuals who (in drawing on their RSCM membership to address their own particular musical needs and issues) are indeed transforming their music at Mass.

Yours faithfully,
Lindsay Gray
Royal School of Church Music,
19 The Close,
Salisbury, Wiltshire


From Mr Jack Robbins

SIR - Colin Mawby's excellent article on liturgical music emphasised the need for a first-rate choir in every parish. He also stressed that building a fine musical tradition required strong clerical and episcopal support.

For over a century following the 1903 Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini of Pope Pius X, constantly repeated papal directives urged the renewal of sacred music. The insistent calls for adequate training were made explicit in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II: "Great importance is to be attached to the teaching and practice of music in seminaries, novitiates, and in other Catholic institutes and schools. Teachers are to be carefully trained ... composers and singers must be given a genuine liturgical training ... choirs must be diligently promoted ... religious singing by the people is to be skilfully forstered ... it is also desirable to found higher institutes of sacred music." Such an institute, staffed by eminent Church musicians and liturgists, could be a powerhouse for the various areas of training.

Pope John Paul II in 2003 wearily observed: "This [scheme] has still not been fully implemented." When can we expect an adequate response - from bishops, clergy and laity?

Yours faithfully,
Jack Robbins
Downham Market, Norfolk

A papal trip would glad hearts in the North

From Mary O'Regan

SIR - What joyous news that our beloved Pontiff will visit Britain. Verily, some of us here are like Simeon and Anna in the temple, waiting for the Vicar of Christ, and for "a light to enlighten the Gentiles". The papal visit will cause a greater societal discovery of Catholicism, but the secret thoughts of many will be laid bare. Already, the National Secular Society warns us about their activities to show that "he is not welcomed here by everyone". Put frankly, their threats of hostility reveal the mindset of a bully rather than a secularist's one.

Moreover, there's mention of the possible sparking of sectarian violence should Pope Benedict visit Northern Ireland. Sources in the Vatican articulate that a visit to Northern Ireland may be part of a separate papal visit, which would ultimately mean two visits to these isles. Two years ago, Cardinal Brady thought it appropriate to personally invite the Pope to come to Northern Ireland, and in following the cardinal's example, we too should look benignantly on a papal visit to Ulster.

Our Pope is the embodiment of Christ's serenity, and his visit would send a signal for further reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants, and would rekindle ardour for the peace process. The visit would also inspire those Catholic "men of violence" to re-evaluate their actions in accordance with our Pope's teachings. Our Pope's visit would also console and hearten peaceful Northern Irish Christians who have long prayed for peace.

Yours faithfully,
Mary O'Regan,
London SW7

Don't pity Sir Elton

From Mr Tony Bond

SIR - Mary Kenny (Comment, September 18) refers to Elton John not having been allowed to adopt a Ukrainian orphan because he is 62 and in a same-sex union, arguing: "If you were an orphaned child, would you prefer to grow up in a Ukrainian orphanage?"

Unlike Britain, which has no orphanages but rabid anti-natalist policies consigning "unwanted" unborns to abortion, Ukraine's orphanages at least save some unwanted children from this fate: indeed, a web search brings up several testimonials of loving and caring attention given to children in Ukrainian orphanages. Orphanage life cannot be ideal, but it can be better than some alternatives, including life with alcoholic or abusive parents. And they have occasionally produced people of great merit, including Coco Chanel, as Miss Kenny herself reminded readers in an earlier column.

Miss Kenny's sympathy for Elton John's adoptive aspirations is laudable but misplaced because reason, experience and the Church tell us that it is in the best interest of children to be placed with married male and female adoptive parents. If Elton John's 1984 marriage to Renate Blauel was sacramentally null and void, there is nothing to stop him following through his new found desire to be a father by changing his present lifestyle and, if he can, marrying someone with whom he may still be able to have children.

Neither Nature nor ageist adoption agencies need stand in his way and history, including the Bible, is full of examples of men in their dotage - not just today's celebrities - marrying much younger women and fathering children.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Bond
Kesgrave, Suffolk

Promise of asylum

From Mr William Ellis

SIR - Contrary to what Bishop Kenney said (report, September 25), Africans are not drowning because of "evil" six-metre high fences around Spanish-controlled Ceuta; they drown because the promise of asylum in Europe draws them here.

When Spain's lamentable socialist government gave an amnesty to 800,000 illegal immigrants in 2005, it resulted - as everyone at the time predicted - in a surge of Africans making their way illegally to Spain. It is not Christian to want to encourage Africans over dangerous waters towards a society which cannot accommodate them - it is folly. Bishop Kenney is well-respected by the vast majority of the faithful in this country but please, I beg the bishops not to put their weight behind the pro-immigration lobby.

Yours faithfully
William Ellis
London SW11


From Eleanor Brown

SIR - Bishop Kenney has done a valuable service in speaking up for the migrants stuck in limbo between Europe and Africa. For Our Lord, the migrant would be His main concern in the 21st century. Accepting immigration is not just the right thing to do - it is also in our interest to give our churches fresh vitality.

Yours faithfully
Eleanor Brown
By email

A secret conversion?

From Mr John Beaumont

SIR - I was very interested to read Mary Kenny's item "Did Edward VII become a Catholic" (Comment, September 25). She asks if anyone "can add any more pieces to this jigsaw".

The answer is yes, in the sense that I am the co-author (with Fr Mark Elvins, OFM Cap) of an article on this very subject (see "Popery at the Palace", Catholic Life, January 2009), to which we would refer readers. We set out there the evidence in some detail, including that mentioned by Mary Kenny about Fr Cyril Forster, and note Edward VII's many Catholic practices and devotions and his hostility to the existing coronation oath.

We also note the statements of Sir Shane Leslie and the persistent rumours of a conversion. We go on to deal with other evidence, including that of Paul Cambon, the French ambassador at the time; that of Niall Diarmid Campbell, the 10th Duke of Argyll; of Fr James Martin Gillis, the famous Paulist preacher; and finally that of Mrs Huber. We conclude that there is a real possibility that Edward VII did convert to the Catholic faith.

We also argue that a reasonable case can be made out for the same conclusion to be drawn in the case of George V (and his wife, Queen Mary). Of course, as we state about all of these matters, one cannot be sure, and we too would appeal for further information.

What we can be sure of, however, is the anomaly of the monarch bearing such a Catholic title as "Defender of the Faith" (awarded originally to Henry VIII for his defence of the seven sacraments against Luther) while making an oath to be a "faithful Protestant". This indicates vividly the injustice of requiring the monarch to embrace a faith that may be at odds with his or her conscience.

Yours faithfully,
John Beaumont
Apperley Bridge, West Yorkshire


From Miss Ruth Yendell

SIR - What an extraordinary statement by David Starkey (Feature, September 4) that "When most of the English ceased being Catholics, the Throckmortons in the main line refused to follow. Instead they became (my italics) Roman Catholics or papists." What does he think they, (and indeed the whole of European Christendom) were before the Reformation?

And does he not realise that the notion of Catholicism being "exotic and mildly dangerous" was merely the result of Tudor nationalist propaganda in order to justify the adoption of Protestantism by the crown? I am surprised at such a good historian's apparent blind spots.

Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell
Exeter, Devon

The home of style

From Mr Maurice Ricard

SIR - I was shocked by Nick Thomas's article (September 25) proclaiming Italy as "the world's most stylish nation". I cannot overlook this Anglo-Saxon slight against the nation which gave the world Coco Chanel, Yves St Laurent and Jean-Paul Gaultier. Italy indeed!

Yours faithfully
Maurice Ricard
By email

Anglo-Catholics simply don't want change

From Mr Stephen Ward

SIR - The main reason why the Church is not flooded by converts from that group of Anglicans known variously as Anglo-Catholic, Anglican Catholic or High Church is that they have spent most of their lives convincing themselves that they are already Catholics (Letters, September 25). They see communion with Rome as, at best, desirable rather than as essential to Catholic identity.

There is a grave danger that they would understand any move to the Roman Catholic Church as a change of jurisdiction rather than a change of faith. Though abhorring certain changes in their current denomination they cling to it ever more tenaciously by seeking special protection from General Synod in the form of ring-fenced dioceses. Precisely what they do not seek is change, particularly in their own core conviction that they are already Catholics.

Because of this particular characteristic it would be particularly dangerous to offer this group any special arrangements that would allow their entry into the Church as a group. Anything that could be construed of as corporate reunion would mislead all concerned as to the true nature of conversion.

They should be dealt with in a pastorally sensitive way, taking into account of their many abilities and positive theological insights. The Catholic Church in this country has welcomed converts from Anglicanism for generations and many of them have contributed significantly to Catholic life. But they have all started off as individual penitents seeking the fullness of faith.

I include myself in that last comment: I am an ex-Anglican priest who converted a year ago.

Yours faithfully,
Stephen Ward
Loughborough, Leicestershire

Assisted suicide and the work of Providence

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - Perhaps there was some providence at work in The Catholic Herald of September 25. Along with the report of the assisted suicide guidelines (available from the Crown Prosecution Service website, www.cps.gov.uk), you report the process of the beatification Cause of Mother Mary Angeline Teresa McCrory, the founder of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm.

The assisted suicide (or assisted murder) guidelines are the result of the final judgment from the House of Lords, given in the chamber in July 2009. This is a serious threat to our parliamentary democracy, where Parliament decides these things. Indeed, as your report points out, Parliament rejected liberalising the suicide law already this year.

Mother McCrory, who died in 1984 aged 91, dedicated her life to caring for the aged and infirm. In her later life she suffered ill health. She always believed that no matter how old or how sick a person was each person deserved love, care and attention.

Having read the draft policy, I believe that the safeguards do not adequately prevent an elderly person (or person in ill health) from being pressured to take their life: as that great English moral philosopher Baroness Warnock said in 2007, those with dementia may have a duty to die.

Perhaps we should pray for Mother McCrory's intervention to guide our lawmakers to make laws that defend us at our most vulnerable.

Further information about Mother McCrory is available at www.carmelitesisters.com. Readers may wish to see what our bishops are saying at the following weblink: http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/ccb/catholic_church/legislation_and_public_policy.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

God helps us to cope with withering criticism

From Stephen Griffin

SIR - So religion makes us happier, healthier and able to withstand pain (features, September 25). This, I presume, is some sort of evolutionary measure designed to make it easier for believers to deal with Christopher Hitchens's books, Guardian editorial and tiresome atheist bores at dinner parties. The Almighty thinks of everything.

Yours faithfully
Stephen Griffin
By email

Anglo-Catholics are a spent force so the Church should focus on Anglican Evangelicals

From Professor David Jowitt

SIR - I am mystified by Damian Thompson's "We should throw a lifeline to struggling Anglicans" (Comment, August 7). He writes as if there is simply no such thing as the Anglican Evangelical tradition; the assumption seems to be that if you are an Anglican, you are either an Anglo-Catholic or a liberal.

The truth is that Evangelicals are, and have for long been, a major force within the Church of England and many other provinces of the Anglican Communion. In the Communion's current developing schism the principal dividing issue is not women priests and bishops but homosexuality; and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), which since the last Lambeth Conference has focused Anglican opposition to liberal teaching on this issue, is largely made up of Evangelicals.

One wonders, therefore, why among English Catholics there should be such concern at the possibilities, the modalities, the difficulties, of attracting traditional Anglo-Catholics to Rome; Dr Thompson's own account suggests that they are a spent force. Though the challenge is greater, surely our energies should instead be directed towards winning over Evangelicals: towards convincing them that the Catholic Church is where they belong, since she firmly upholds what they also hold dear, such as the centrality of the person of Jesus to faith, and the immutability of biblical teaching. Perhaps more thought should be given in the Vatican, as well as in Westminster, to this highly desirable goal.

Converts to Catholicism have included many one-time Evangelicals. I am one. So is Scott Hahn, the American writer. So was Newman.

Yours faithfully,
David Jowitt
Jos, Nigeria


From the Revd Dr D Anderson

SIR - Fr Ashley Beck (Feature, September 18) doubts that many Anglo-Catholics are ready to submit to the Holy See. He thus sees no reason why any special effort should be made to help them. He misses the point. It is not about the numbers, though he is wrong about those and understandably out of touch since having left the C of E 15 years ago.

The point is whether submissions are made individually or in some "corporate" way. If the Catholic Church could detach, and be seen to detach, a body of the Church of England it would not only gain a lot or a few new members. It would be seen to be The Church in England. The C of E has three main parts: Anglo-Catholics, Evangelicals and liberals. The Evangelicals are already considering departure for some more orthodox Anglican Communion. Were the Anglo-Catholic party to depart, it would leave the C of E as a tiny bankrupt liberal sect, untrue to its historical roots and probably happy to consent to disestablishment. Already Catholic Communions exceed those in the C of E. There is a very real probability that in a decade the Catholic Church could restore itself to the position it enjoyed before the Elizabethan Settlement.

Many Anglo-Catholics belong to bodies such as Forward in Faith and Societas Sanctae Crucis. These bodies may not be the ideal vehicle, but then other un-ideal formulations have already been used in the conversion process such as the tautologous "full communion", with its implicit self-contradictory implication of partial communion. Forget numbers of converts. This is about one church displacing another. Or it could be if the English hierarchy is up to the challenge.

Yours faithfully,
D Anderson
Woburn Sands, Bucks

Walking on eggshells

From Mr John Deighan

SIR - I was interested to read the interview (September 11) with Christopher Caldwell. His work, given the current climate of politically correct eggshell-walking over Muslim sensibilities, is certainly refreshing. It is encouraging that he is getting a hearing even within the mainstream media establishment.

Yet I think this also has a discouraging side to it. As the author of your article admits, Caldwell's mainstream success "is due to his obvious decency and lack of racism" - while those who dare to openly criticise Islam for its beliefs, its ethics, its law and its practices are still marginalised and stigmatised with accusations of "racism" and "indecency".

I am not a racist. Yet I strongly object to the fact that, in accordance with Sharia law and the consensus of the scholars, blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death in most Islamic states throughout the world. Why should those who wish to criticise such laws and the religious ideology which legitimises them, be branded as racists?

One such critic is Hussain Muradi, an Afghan national and ex-Muslim living in Britain, but about to be deported to his home country, where as an open apostate from Islam he will face almost certain death - to the shame of the British Government.

I have no wish to belittle the faith of others, being a person of faith myself. However, calling something a religion should not automatically prevent us from making important moral judgments. Islam - the religion itself, not those who abuse it - gives sanction to these barbarities and others, such as wife-beating and religious discrimination. Therefore it should receive legitimate criticism from those who love humanity.

Yours faithfully,
John Deighan
Stirling

Thriving community

From Mrs June Rockett

SIR - Dominic Scarborough (Comment, September 4) has overlooked one new community of female religious which is already thriving in England.

He mentions that the Franciscans of the Immaculate have "gained a foothold" in the Plymouth diocese, but ignores the Dominican Sisters of St Joseph, whose priory near Lymington (Portsmouth diocese) was established some years ago, and is now a much-loved and appreciated centre of spirituality for all who know it.

Yours faithfully,
June Rockett
Salisbury, Wilts

The ire of Pullman

From Mr William Dennett

Why is Philip Pullman (Report, September 11) always referred to as an "atheist"? Since the sole object of his ire is Christianity, would it not be more correct to term him as "anti-Christian"?

Like many so-called secularists and atheists nowadays, he is very comfortable in his attacks on people who, by the nature of their beliefs, are unlikely to offer him more than a cup of tea and a mild rebuke, but never a word is heard relating to other major world religions.

Yours faithfully,
William Dennett
By email

Edward Kennedy: a funeral fit for a king

From Mr Paul Kokoski

SIR - One doesn't have to be a high-level theologian to know that abortion is murder and objectively evil. Even a child knows instinctively that, according to Natural Law, abortion is always and everywhere wrong. Hence neither US Senator Edward Kennedy (Report, September 11) nor his multiple host of spiritual advisers can claim any level of innocence on the grounds of what US Bishop Robert Morlino has called their "confusion and ambiguity".

Further, Senator Kennedy had plenty of time to publically recant of his evil political prowess against life in the womb. Instead, he chose to write privately to the Pope, not to ask explicit forgiveness for his civil law collaboration against the unborn, but primarily to convey to the Holy Father his positive accomplishments.

Kennedy may have ultimately confessed privately for his civil law support of homosexuality, embryonic stem-cell research and abortion. If so he deserved a private funeral Mass. But barring public notification of his repentance it is scandalous that he was given a public Mass complete with all the pomp and pageantry befitting a king.

If Kennedy's funeral tells us anything it is that our bishops are totally paralysed to defend the faith with a single, unified voice. They prefer instead to remain pent-up in their comfortable cathedrals and as far removed from the faithful and challenges of daily life as possible.

Pope Benedict XVI, in The Salt of the Earth, had sharp words of condemnation for such "shepherds who are like mute dogs; in order to avoid conflict, they let the poison spread. Peace is not the first civic duty, and a bishop whose only concern is not to have any problems and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find repulsive."

Yours faithfully,
Paul Kokoski
Hamilton, Ontario

Improving lessons

From Mr Robert Williams

SIR - I was interested to read your report (September 18) on the circular letter from the Vatican to our bishops on the religious instruction in Catholic schools (available on the Vatican website). Every faithful Catholic must welcome this move by Rome to improve the lessons on Catholic doctrine given in our schools today.

However, I do agree with Daphne McLeod's comment that, as most parents were not taught the truths of the Faith effectively when they were at school, they will not find it easy to teach their children today. They need all the help available from Catholic websites and good textbooks. But they also need schools which can be relied on to teach the Faith well, while the parents undertake to teach the practice of the faith at home.

This document emphasises that the close link between Catholic schools and the local bishop should "guarantee that the instruction and the education are grounded in the principles of the Catholic Faith and imparted by teachers of right doctrine and probity of life". It seems to me that this is what we must work for.

Every diocesan bishop must now take full responsibility for the Catholicity of the religious textbooks used in his diocesan schools and for the suitability of the religious teachers he engages.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Williams
Bangor is y Coed, Wrexham

Lost in translation

From Fr Martin Queenan

SIR - St Brigid / Briget / Bridget / Brigida / Birgitta has been lost in translation. Godwin Penrhyn-Lowe (Letter, September 18) asserts : "The Brigidines were founded by St Brigid of Sweden, whereas the Brigettines were founded by St Briget of Ireland." It is the other way around - but not quite.

The order founded by St Brigid / Bridget of Kildare did not survive the dissolution of the monasteries and convents in Ireland. The Brigidine Congregation was founded in 1807 by Bishop Daniel Delany of Kildare and Leighlin with St Brigid as patroness.

The letter writer is confused by the Italian translation of Birgitta / Brigid / Bridget. The Sisters at Piazza Farnese in Rome live in the Casa di Santa Brigida and are known in Italian as Suore Brigidine, but in English as Bridgettines or Brigittines and formally as the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St Bridget (of Sweden).

The Brigittine order was founded in 1346 by St Birgitta, or Bridget, of Sweden at Vadstena in the Diocese of Linköping. The order was re-founded on the September 8 1911 by Blessed Elisabeth Hesselblad.

Yours faithfully,
Martin Queenan
Our Lady of Lourdes,
Weston-super-Mare, Somerset

Singing Alleluia

From Mr Tim Roberts


SIR - Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, September 11) calls for "robust rubrics". One that has long puzzled me is that for the "Alleluia": "If not sung, may be omitted." Have any of your readers encountered breaches of this rule? If so, how did they tell that the missing prayer had been sung rather than said?


Yours faithfully,
Tim Roberts
Bracknell, Berkshire

Church teaching does not hinder our lives

From Valerie Gamble

SIR - Cherie Blair has suggested that the Church's stance on artificial contraception stops women from pursuing a successful career (Report, September 4). She says that through their use she has made progress in her career and has been able to control her fertility.

God has given us control over our fertility by the very way He has created women from the beginning, and with the knowledge we have now and the understanding of how we can use it. Thank the Lord that Mrs Blair has achieved things in her life. But if she had listened to the teachings of the Church on contraception she may have achieved even better things. God only knows what He has in store for us all in the future.

Mrs Blair says that "she sees nothing wrong with it". She also says "there is a lot of difference between preventing a life and extinguishing a life when one has come about". The truth is that, when a one conceives a child while taking the Pill and other abortifacients, that is just what one may be doing. It is a fact that the contraceptive pill makes the womb aggressive to implantation, then the conceived child is flushed down the loo or some other means of disposure, This may not sound very nice - but nevertheless it is not a very nice thing to happen when it happens.

Mrs Blair also said she became pregnant when she forgot to pack her contraceptives. How pleased she must be now that she did just that as she would not have the blessing of her son. It is obvious she was fertile at the time, and that is what may have happened to him. Thank the Lord for the teaching of the Church.

Mrs Blair may have progressed in her career but she knows nothing about her fertility and how it works. How sad! I hope that we as Catholics will be praying for her and for her family and that God will give her the grace through the power of the Holy Spirit that she will believe in what our Holy Father is saying to the world.


Yours faithfully,
Valerie Gamble
Hampton Fields, Stroud Glos

Raising birettas

From G Franco

SIR - Many readers will recall your columnist the late Brian Brindley was, in his Anglican days, vicar of Holy Trinity, Reading.


On September 2 there took place the licensing and installation of the Revd David Elliott as priest-in-charge of that parish.


A numinous liturgy (Missa Normativa, I think) for the vigil of St Gregory the Great was celebrated with Latin chant on the High Altar. The Suffragan Bishop of Reading preached a thoughtful homily, ranging from the Curé d'Ars to Pope John Paul II's encyclical on evangelisation in the modern world. Charmingly, birettas were raised at the name of Benedict XVI.


The interior of the church includes the rood screen removed from St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, during the depredations of the 1960s. From an ecumenical viewpoint, a very encouraging evening.


Yours faithfully,
G Franco
London WC2

A stone in the pond

From Mr Philip Trower

SIR - May I throw a little stone into the pond of the discussion about Intelligent Design? For some reason, many Catholics interested in the evolution / natural selection debate seem afraid of the concept because it has been taken up by the six-day creationists.


Not so the Holy Father, however. In one of his meditations on the psalms (Psalms and Canticles, CTS 2006) he writes: "In the beginning the creative Word - this Word that created all things, that created this intelligent design which is the cosmos - is also love." Intelligent Design, may I suggest, is not something that has to be proved or disproved.


Trying to do that is like trying to prove or disprove the existence of someone who is sitting in the room with you. Because of this one can only conclude that the ability or inability to see it depends on a disposition of the mind and heart.


Yours faithfully,
Philip Trower
Ware, Herts

This verdict is not a final judgment on the Medjugorje apparitions

From the convenor of the Medjugorje Apostolate for England and Wales

SIR - Donal Foley (Letters, September 4) is incorrect in asserting that Tomislav Vlasic was "de facto" spiritual director of the Medjugorje visionaries. In saying "de facto" he is acknowledging that there was no legal statement to that effect - not surprising, because such a role has not existed. He describes Medjugorje as a "spiritual movement" which is not the case. A "movement" implies a group of people working to achieve a particular aim, eg civil rights. Medjugorje is a "sanctuary" not a "movement", as described by the bishops' conference of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Zadar declaration of 1991, where people go on private pilgrimage for spiritual inspiration, renewal and conversion.

On Tomislav Vlasic writing to Pope John Paul II about the visionaries, we know that anyone can write to the Pope on any subject. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith investigated the subsequent activities of Tomislav Vlasic after he had left Medjugorje in 1985 to work in Italy. His former superior, the procurator-general of the Franciscan Friars Minor, Fr Francesco Bravi, when interviewed said: "Benedict XVI's approval of the laicisation of Tomislav Vlasic is not a judgment on the claims that Mary is appearing in Medjugorje. Laicisation was not imposed by the Holy See but requested by Tomislav Vlasic himself."

Fr Ivan Sesar, provincial of the Herzegovina Franciscan province, having read the Vatican documents, said: "I do not see the reason to connect this with his activities in Medjugorje or with the phenomenon itself, and even less reason to interpret this as a negative attitude of the Vatican towards Medjugorje."

Cardinal Bertone, Secretary of State for the Vatican and second to the Pope, in his book The Last Secret of Fatima, repeated again: 'The [local] bishop's declarations are not the definitive and official judgment of the Church." Cardinal Bertone also confirmed that "personal pilgrimages are permitted to the site, as the investigations continue".

In answer to Mr Foley's criticisms of the visionaries' lifestyle, they live in the 21st century, not the 19th, not the cloister, but with young families, reflecting the ideals of Vatican II for the laity. Their living accommodation for their families and pilgrims require sufficient bedrooms and amenities. Public transport is limited, their vehicles are used by children and pilgrims, and cost of housing in Herzegovina is moderate, not comparable to western European standards.

Medjugorje is helping millions to restore their spiritual lives by turning back to God. The importance of these events makes it vital to focus on the spiritual fruits, rather than to become embroiled in misjudgments and wrong conclusions.

Yours faithfully,
John Hanrahan
Surbiton, Surrey

Waiting for guidance

From Mr Frank Swarbrick

SIR - It was good to see Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, September 11) drawing attention to the US bishops' excellent website on the new English translation of the Mass, due to come into use in a very short time.

This website has been available for study purposes since August 4 2008. During the past 12 months it has added a great deal of introductory and catechetical material to assist and familiarise the American clergy, religious congregations and of course the lay faithful, prior to the text coming into use within the months ahead.

One would have thought that by now the Bishops of England and Wales would have produced a similar resource for study purposes for priests, religious and the lay faithful.

If Catholics in England and Wales are not prepared for the new translations when they come into use, this could cause similar, if not more, confusion than when the original English "translation" came into use in 1970.

Yours faithfully,
Frank Swarbrick
Preston, Lancashire


From Mr Kevin Heneghan

SIR - Let me thank Stuart Reid for his comment in Charterhouse (September 11) that "there is no twitch on the thread as compelling as the sound of the Kyrie from the Missa de Angelis, and it is easy to sing". What memories his words brought back!

It was 1945, and I was a young soldier newly arrived at our Intelligence Corps depot in Karachi after three weeks of travelling by troopship and rail. On Sunday morning, as the only Catholic in a very small unit, I walked alone to Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral. The strangeness of the surroundings, the different dress of Muslims and Hindus (it was before partition), the tang of burning sandalwood, and the fact that mine was one of the few white faces in the congregation emphasised how far I was from home. Then Mass began and the choir led us in the Kyrie from Missa de Angelis, and at once I felt that I belonged.

How true were those words in the old Penny Catechism that the word "catholic" means "universal".

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens, Merseyside

Brigid and Briget

From G A Penrhyn-Lowe

SIR - I feel compelled to write and point out the error of referring to the nuns called the Bridigines as the Brigettines (Report, September 4). The Brigidines were founded by St Brigid of Sweden, whereas the Brigettines were founded by St Briget of Ireland.

The house of the Brigidines on the Piazza Farnese is known as the Casa di Santa Brigida. When Brigid's husband, the king of Sweden, died, she and her eldest daughter, Katherine, travelled to Rome and stayed in two rooms provided by an Italian nobleman on the Piazza Farnese. In 2000 I was privileged to stay in the same room, as the nuns do take in pilgrims to Rome on a bed and breakfast basis.

The house is steeped in history. Brigid and her daughter Katherine were allowed to take over the whole house. The nuns are extremely helpful and come from all over the world. They will gladly take one on a tour of the upper room, where Brigid died and was laid out on a table.

In the adjacent room, Brigid, Katherine and St Catherine of Siena met to find ways of inviting the Pope to return to Rome from his exile in Avignon, also known as the Babylonian exile of the Pope. They eventually drafted a letter I think a copy of the same is on display. In the tiny garden there is a perpetual flame to the memory of Mother Katherine Hasselblad.

From the terrace one can see the dome of St Peter's Basilica and also across the street the house where St Ignatius Loyola and his companion - St Francis Xavier - stayed on their visit to Rome to found the Jesuits, Incidentally the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore or St Mary Major has a great association with Ignatius Loyola, who often said Mass there.

In the millennium year 2000,I stayed at the convent and the then mother superior or abbess was none other than Mother Tekla, who was a very close friend of Pope John Paul II and she gave us special tickets to the weekly audience. We were escorted and seated on the right near the dais a mere 20 yards away from Pope John Paul II, a very memorable day in my life.

Yours faithfully,
Godwin Penrhyn-Lowe
Swindon, Wiltshire

Let's be humble enough to obey the Church

From Mr Peter Littleton

SIR - The debate surrounding arguably the most contentious moral teaching of the Church, the sinfulness or otherwise of artificial contraception, continued to rage last week. No wonder atheists think that Catholics are obsessed with sex.

The fact that there is so much heartfelt feeling on either side of this debate is evidence of the need we have for Holy Mother Church. Throughout history we believe she has faithfully and infallibly proclaimed the truth of the Gospel, even when men thought her teaching to be madness. Why should we doubt her now?

Could not the fact that she teaches such an unpopular line on contraception - a teaching as unpopular as belief in the Resurrection once surely was - not perhaps be evidence of how firmly convicted she is of it?

Elizabeth Price (Letters, September 10) points us to the dissenting views among theologians, as a justification for doubting a consistent teaching of the Church. Yet she knows that our popes are elected by majority vote, not unanimously. If we follow her line of argument then the authority of every pope is called into question when he dogmatically defines doctrine.

I would politely suggest that while reasonable doubt is enough to prevent conviction in a human court, it is insufficient reason to question the authority of the Church, whose teaching is underwritten by the Holy Spirit. Why would the Holy Spirit allow his Church to proclaim error as dogmatic truth?

Catholics need only look to the example of their Protestant brethren to see what happens when questions of faith and morals are left to conscience. There are currently 33,000 Protestant denominations, with new ones being formed all the time - each believing themselves to be in sole possession of the fullness of truth. Christ himself prayed for the Church to be one and this can only be realised if Christians everywhere are humble enough to be obedient to the one Church he established.

I truly appreciate the sacrifice this demands, but I urge Catholics everywhere to trust the Holy Spirit to make this possible in their individual circumstances.

Yours faithfully,
Peter Littleton
By email

Paying Catholic tax

From Mr Alistair Scott

SIR - Thank you for publishing extracts from David Starkey's forthcoming book concerning the Throckmorton family (Feature, September 4). My wife Michelle's maiden surname was Reeve (without an "s"), meaning chief officer or estate manager. Generations of Michelle's ancestors served the Throckmorton family as Reeve at Coughton Court.

Records on public display at Coughton indicate that in 1729 - 100 years before Catholic Emancipation - a Mr Reeve paid £1-10 shillings in Catholic tax. I struggle to imagine an additional tax being levied against any religious community in modern Britain.

As Starkey says, the chapel adjacent to the house was sequestrated in 1688. However, in the post-Emancipation era a new Catholic church and presbytery was established within the grounds. We understand the Reeve family were benefactors, and there is a stained-glass window to commemorate the lives of Edward and Eleanor Reeve.

We look forward to the publication of Starkey's book. Perhaps Father Christmas will be inspired when thinking of Michelle.

Yours faithfully,
Alistair Scott
By email


From Mr John Collins

SIR - Thank you for publishing the very interesting article on the Throckmortons. I believe, however, that David Starkey is mistaken in his assertion that Sir Robert Throckmorton, elected in 1830, was the first English Catholic MP since the 17th century. The Earl of Surrey became Member of Parliament for Horsham on May 29 1829.

Yours faithfully,
John Collins
By email

In good hands

From Mr John Owen

SIR - I recently completed a year as membership officer for one of the provinces of the Catenian Association; the geographical area involved was similar to that of the Archdiocese of Southwark.

During this time I worked closely with many of the parishes and clergy in the province for which I was responsible. This work gave me a rare insight into the everyday life of the Church in this country. It has been very encouraging to see how vibrant and effective is the mission of the Church in contemporary society and how essential it has become to so many people, their organisations and communities. It is a true "rock" in these troubled times.

Above all, I was extremely impressed by the hard work and dedication of the priests with whom I came in contact. They were always courteous and co-operative, many of them working in very difficult circumstances.

The clergy are often criticised but these men were truly heroic and deserve our support and encouragement. The Church is in good hands and this should give us considerable optimism for the future.

In this Year for Priests let us give our thanks and prayers for our clergy and count our blessings for the vital work that they do for us.

Yours faithfully,
John Owen
Sittingbourne, Kent

Newman shouldn't be used to justify dissent

From Fr Ian Ker

SIR - Tom McIntyre (Letter, September 11) quotes Newman in his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on the possibility of conscientiously disobeying a "papal injunction".

But he appears to think, from the examples he proceeds to give, that by a "papal injunction" Newman means a papal teaching.

But by injunction Newman meant an order, writing prior to Mr McIntyre's quotation that "a collision" between "conscience being a practical dictate" and "the Pope's authority" was "possible... only when the Pope legislates, or gives particular orders, and the like".

Newman did have things to say about the interpretation and reception of Church teachings, but it is vain to look to his discussion of conscience in the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk for any justification of conscientious dissent from Church teachings.

Yours faithfully,
Ian Ker
Burford, Oxon


From Canon Thomas Dakin

SIR - It is frustrating to read the balanced letter of your correspondent Tom McIntyre and to note once again a lack of awareness of the development of a theology of marriage by Pope John Paul II. This was the first subject he addressed at length in his Wednesday audiences and later published under the title The Theology of the Body.

This was no rehearsal of the Natural Law argument based on Aristotelian theology but a review of the sacrament as an image of relationships within the Trinity.

It is an intuition which enables the distinguishing of circumstances in which the ideal may be acknowleged but judged not to apply, as envisaged by Mr McIntyre.

For a quick overview one may visit www.stnicholasowen.co.uk and read the article "Making Sense of Sex".

Yours sincerely, Thomas Dakin St Nicholas Owen, Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire

The Church needs to explain itself clearly

From Mr Alan Pavelin

SIR - John Dixon (Letters, September 11) is correct in stating that the Church should encourage independence of mind and intellectual freedom if it is to reach out to the young (and not-so-young); most people are not prepared to accept teachings merely because the Church proclaims them without explanation.

I feel that the reasons given to justify some of the more contentious Church teachings are sometimes woefully inadequate, and beg as many questions as they answer.

A good example of this is the traditional teaching on the non-ordination of women. The conventional reason given for this is that all the 12 Apostles were men. A different reason is sometimes put forward, namely that Jesus was male and the priest at Mass is acting as He did. But these reasons beg other questions (why is one's gender the overriding characteristic? Which reason would predominate if some of the Twelve had been women?).

To my mind, the main case for the non-ordination of women is a purely pragmatic one, namely that it would damage the prospect of reunion with Eastern Orthodoxy (which in numerical terms is far more significant than Anglicanism). This is an argument which anyone can understand, whether or not they agree with it; the "official" reasons boil down to "because it has always been done this way".

So, rather than being told "this is so because the Church says so, full stop", let us have more of "this is so because" followed by a comprehensible reason.

Yours faithfully,
Alan Pavelin
Chislehurst, Kent

The Church should seek to cultivate a greater intellectual freedom

From Mr John Dixon

SIR - How to make the Church appeal to the young? Archbishop Vincent Nichols, I think, contributed significantly to the debate by pointing out that the young are always intensely concerned with asserting their own independence (Report, July 24). If this problem could be redefined in terms which emphasise that this can only be done by holding on to religious faith, rather than by rejecting it, what a difference that might make. In an ideal world, after all, religion should foster a climate where independence of mind and intellectual freedom actually thrive.

I have been studying the life and thought of the Danish existentialist philosopher and Christian apologist, Søren Kierkegaard. It was he who famously trumpeted the virtues of individualism, not in the sense of pursuing self-centred, materialistic goals, but in the sense of embarking on a solitary, arduous journey in life to seek truth and find God. He reacted violently against the philosophy of George Hegel, who proposed, somewhat incoherently, that history was progressing towards a final consummation, at which time it would gloriously wither on the grapevine. This was a perfect formula for utopianism, which Kierkegaard presciently execrated.

It seems to me that this clash between Hegel and Kierkegaard was not just a localised conflict between two philosophers of their own age, but lies at the very heart of the conflict between religion and atheism itself - indeed, lies at the very heart of the dilemma currently facing civilisation.

Confronted with this situation, I suggest that the Church's response should be to devote more of its resources to delineating the boundaries between the individual's autonomy in determining truth and the need for collective religious consent.

Religious consent, of course, is very important, not only where moral teaching is concerned, but also where certain doctrines relating to the Christian view of life are clearly non-negotiable; the divinity of Christ perhaps being the most central. However, I do feel that the Church may have accrued traditions, and sometimes even doctrines, which hark back to the days when she exercised real secular authority, and was often beset by the kind of religious heresy that no longer exists. Now that such authority has all but evaporated, much of this tradition and doctrine may just be proving to be more of an encumbrance than a benefit, because it creates the impression that the Church herself is still an autocratic institution.

Yours faithfully,
John Dixon
By email

Defining conscience

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - As Fr Ian Ker points out (Letter, September 4), Newman in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk does not justify dissent from Church teaching. But after quoting St Thomas ("Conscience is the practical judgment or dictate of reason, by which we judge what hic et nunc is to be done as being good, or to be avoided as evil'), Newman does go on to affirm Church teaching: conscience has primacy. He is strict: "Unless a man is able to say to himself, as in the presence of God, that he must not, and dare not, act upon the papal injunction, he is bound to obey it, and would commit a great sin in disobeying it."

But dissent, surely, is something else. When, in good conscience, a penniless mother shoplifts for her starving children, there was no dissenting from the fifth or seventh commandments. Likewise, when parents "upon serious thought, prayer and all available means of arriving at a right judgment" feel bound hic et nunc to use contraception for their marriage and children's sake, they do not dissent from the pope's instruction - any more than we who contrive to follow it. The world, though, preaches subjectivism. If conscience and charity - God's voice and seal - are refused their primacy in due cases, subjectivist arguments will usurp their place.

All Paul VI's decrees suffer belittling subjective dissent. Humanae Vitae, realist, sensitive, charitable, actually acknowledges the reasonable right of parents to limit their families and the difficulties of natural birth control. More importantly, not least to buttress the family in society against the tides of individualism and statism, it notes the Church's great want (the historical cause not hard to guess): a theology of marriage.

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset


From Fr Bryan Storey SIR - Quentin de la Bédoyère (Letters, September 4) is right to recall that a contemporary Vatican official said Humanae Vitae was not an infallible document; it did not need to be. The teaching is infallible in day to day Church teaching. None of the Commandments has been solemnly proclaimed; we may wriggle and tussle over them but we know they are right.

Contraception is obviously, clearly wrong in the immediate voice of conscience. That is the conscience Cardinal Newman toasted, the immediate one, not the deduced conscientious decision. We all need to bow before it, popes as well. We can make all sorts of deductions and introduce considerations and quotations in reasoning processes; that's all fallible. As the chairman of the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council said on televison at the time: "Humanae Vitae is saying 'no change'." Pope Paul VI said several times before the encyclical that substantial change was never in question.

Yours faithfully,
Bryan Storey
Tintagel, Cornwall

Weight of doctrine

From Mrs Elizabeth Price

SIR - With reference to Quentin de la Bédoyère's statements on the doctrinal weight of Humanae Vitae, it is surely important to note that all the decisions of Vatican II were taken by majority vote. Those always in the minority were members of the Curia. Sadly contraception was not discussed during Vatican II. The bishops consented to this, I believe, because of the existence of the pontifical commission on birth control.

It is important for younger Catholics, taxed in conscience by this issue, to know that at the end of the commission's sittings 16 bishops were added to it, who then took a vote. Nine voted that contraception was not intrinsically evil, three abstained, and the three curial bishops on the commission voted that it was intrinsically evil. There is every reason to believe that had the issue been discussed at the Council the proportions, pro and con, would have been the same but larger.

It is also important to know that even the four theologians on that commission had to admit that the malice of contraception could not be proven to be against natural law. Being a barrister's wife I have always believed in the adage "innocent unless proven guilty". It is a source of great sorrow to me that Paul VI did not adhere to this obvious piece of justice. Were a vote to be taken among the bishops now, the outcome might be different. But the guilt of the sin has still not been proven.

Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Price
Maidstone, Kent

Why some Catholics can't help but feel good

From Mr Francis Holford

SIR - I'm sorry that Will Heaven is annoyed by Christians who have a smile on their face because they "feel good" (Notebook, September 4). But why on earth shouldn't they? The people he is talking about are Christians who have had an experience of the Holy Spirit which has changed their lives. In Catholic circles, these are usually known as charismatics, while in the evangelical churches they often describe themselves as "born again". It's all the same thing.

Millions of Christians all over the world have experienced this phenomenon of the Holy Spirit. If they sometimes look like the cat that has come home with the cream, it is because they have found the "pearl of great price" in other words, the good news of the Gospel. Look at the fruit - healings both physical and emotional, freedom from addictions, broken relationships restored, lives changed, but, above all, an intense love of Jesus Christ and his Church and a burning desire to evangelise. Isn't that what the good news is all about?

Next time Will Heaven sees a poster for an Alpha course or the Life in the Spirit seminars, I would encourage him to sign up. My wife and I did this in 1979 and our lives have not been the same since.

Yours faithfully,
Francis Holford
Guildford, Surrey


From Mr Rodger Germany

SIR - The comment by Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, September 4) concerning a man being thrown out of the confessional for making a phone call reminded me of a time a few years ago in Lisieux. We were in the basilica when we saw, and heard, a man kneeling before the relics of St Therese taking a phone call. We just wonder if he was an intermediary, a go-between for prayers from a third party - or did he have a direct line to heaven?

Yours faithfully,
Rodger Germany
By email

A thriving shrine

From Miss Mary P Scholan

SIR - I am a Lourdes regular but three years ago I decided to go to Medjugorje to find out what it was about. The centre is, as you know, the large Church of St James. There were Masses from early morning to early afternoon. The Mass in English was packed - and I do mean packed. Crowds which had gathered outside because there was not a single place either to sit or stand followed the Mass on loudspeakers; priests came out to give them Communion. There were long queues regularly in the open air waiting for Confession - in different queues for different languages. In the large open space behind the Church there were Stations of the Cross every evening. Large crowds again.

Being 79 years old, I was particularly conscious of the huge numbers of the young with their backpacks - at Mass and queuing for Confession, in the streets, in the shops and in the coffee houses. The town doesn't yet have the 400 hotels that Lourdes has but this is well on the way. The streets are wider than Lourdes but I still found it difficult to find space to walk on the pavements. The shops sold less plastic junk, had a better quality of merchandise and for obvious reasons there were more outlets selling books in English. The French do not have a great deal of sympathy for people who do not speak their language. The Serbo-Croats are different.

My small hotel was, fortunately for me, opposite the Church of St James. It was perfectly adequate and clean with good plain food, all provided by hard-working, self-effacing staff. Honest people doing honest jobs.

During the week we were part of a large crowd addressed by one of the visionaries - a pleasant, matter-of-fact, humorous woman, orthodox in everything she said. Afterwards she took questions, some of which were of course painfully fatuous (eg "Does Our Lady ever mention Ireland?" Answer: "No, Our Lady never mentions nationalities. She is the mother of all peoples.") Pope Donal Foley (Letters, September 4) has decreed that Medjugorje "must be closed down". How?

Yours faithfully,
Mary P Scholan
Edinburgh

Shocking silence

From Mrs Dominie Stemp

SIR - I find it astonishing that a woman of Mrs Blair's intellectual ability (presumably she needs a brain to be a lawyer) cannot understand why the Catholic Church teaches what it does with regard to artificial birth control (Report, September 4).

Most of it is abortifacient - she clearly hasn't studied how the methods actually work - do your homework Mrs Blair. She is clearly wrong - natural methods if used properly are more reliable than chemicals. Every other method is totally against nature and does much harm to the body.

But what is more shocking is the wall of silence on the part of the clergy in this country - here is a woman with a very high public profile openly encouraging dissent and getting away with it. What does her parish priest think? What does her bishop think? It is very dangerous to do nothing - indeed it implies agreement. Please, clergy - perhaps an open letter in the Telegraph? But don't just sit there and do nothing.

Yours faithfully,
Dominie Stemp
Etchingham, East Sussex

The Vatican paper just presented the facts

From the secretary of the Friends of the Holy Father

SIR - That the Allies were guilty of putting greater priority on the destruction of the Nazi regime than on saving the lives of the Jews, as L'Osservatore Romano reminds us, has been well known for nearly 70 years (Report, August 21). It is disingenuous to suggest that the Vatican newspaper's intention was to deflect unjust criticism from Pope Pius XII. It has merely presented the facts and the evidence is overwhelming.

In the spring of 1939 the desperate plight of Jewish refugees was dramatised by the odyssey of the ship St Louis. Its cargo of 900 men, women and children set sail from Hamburg to Havana. The ship made port but the Cuban government turned them away. In a quest for asylum the ship sailed from country to country - 11 in all - but everywhere entry was refused. Many were subsequently returned to Germany and killed.

The British government's White Paper of May 17 1939, limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine, led to the disaster of the SS Struma with 769 refugees on board which was denied entry and sank at sea. In 1942, when Nazi deportations to the east intensified, thousands of hapless Jewish refugees tried to smuggle themselves across the German-Swiss border. Richard Lichtheim, head of the Jewish Agency office in Geneva, reported in August 1942 that the Swiss authorities stopped the influx, and refugees "were taken back to the frontier and were forced to cross it. Nobody knows what happened to them."

At the Bermuda Refugee Conference held in 1943 American and British statesmen rejected proposals to enter into negotiations with the Axis for the release of Jews from Europe.

Prof Haim Fineman summed up matters succinctly at the American Jewish Congress in New York in February 1946: "What renders the situation so horrifying is the fact that this tragedy was not unavoidable. Many of those dead might have been alive were it not for the refusal and delays."

Yours faithfully,
Michael Straiton
Cuddington, Bucks

Justice dictates that limbo no longer exists

From Mr Ivan Stevenage

SIR - Fr Thomas Crean's arguments for the existence of limbo (Letters to a non-believer, August 28) are interesting but do not go far enough. The impression is given, somehow, that limbo still exists. This is not so. Initially created for the souls of all the good people destined for heaven but unable because Jesus had not risen from the dead, it housed the human soul of Jesus for three days while his body lay in the tomb. As God, Jesus is everlastingly in heaven with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, but as man his soul needed "somewhere" to go for three days.

As Fr Crean says a bit further on: "God is just and he can never blame someone for what was not his fault." Clearly this included aborted foetuses and unbaptised children and adults.

It seems to be unlikely that when Jesus opened the gates of heaven and led the multitude of good people into it, he left behind others for all eternity. His compassion surely includes his generosity. Having served its purpose, limbo/paradise no longer exists. One day we will know for sure.

Yours faithfully,
Ivan Stevenage
Thornton Heath, Croydon


From the general secretary of Catholic Concern for Animals


SIR - The "three parent" process reported last week (September 4), which, in the words of the Linacre Centre spokeswoman, "does not respect human life or parenthood", could have been avoided had experiments on animals been banned. All these unnatural and unethical procedures depend on animals being used - in this case nine highly sensitive macaque monkeys. When Cardinal Heenan wrote that God has the right not to have his creatures abused, he could not have imagined the ghastly uses to which they are now being put.


Yours faithfully,
Deborah Jones
By email

Older Catholics try to follow Church teaching, but younger ones do not even know what it is

From Anne Morgan-Jones

SIR - I read with interest both the article by Quentin de la Bédoyère (August 21) and Dr Stephen Milne's letter (August 28). I am now almost 70 and lived my younger life as far as possible according to the teachings of the Church. It was not easy, but at least my generation knew and mostly understood what those teachings were. What concerns me is my children and grandchildren, who have no concept of the Church's teaching on sexual matters because they have never been taught them, either in their Catholic schools or elsewhere. Contraception, sterilisation, IVF etc - all perfectly acceptable practices.

If the Church expects its present young adults and future generations to follow "the rules", it needs to get this message across. Unless they have sufficient interest to attend some of the well-organised conferences offered by the new movements, where there is every possibility they will hear good teaching, they will remain as ignorant as those outside the Church.

Yours faithfully
Anne Morgan-Jones
Wiltshire


From Mr Quentin de la Bédoyère

SIR - The points made in Dr Stephen Milne's letter (August 28) are discussed on www.secondsightblog.com so I will be brief here.

First, he has misread my column. Provability and infallibility are independent issues. Second, Canon 749 states: "No doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this is manifestly demonstrated." Humanae Vitae, which encapsulates the doctrine, was declared not to be infallible when it was promulgated, and those in good faith who disagree are not excluded from the sacraments. Dr Milne is, of course, entitled to his private opinion.

Third, Pope John Paul's approach naturally calls for study and respect. It is certainly "reasonable" in the colloquial use of the word. Whether it is sufficiently conclusive to support an unqualified ban is exactly the question at issue.

Yours faithfully,
Quentin de la Bédoyère
London, SW19


From Fr Ian Ker

SIR - Quentin de la Bédoyère (Science and Faith, August 21) says that Catholics "in those very few instances where they are morally certain that the teaching [of the Church] conflicts with the law of love may... be disobedient. Indeed they must be disobedient because we are obliged to follow our properly-formed consciences. Many will recognise this principle from Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk."

Yes, indeed, Mr de la Bédoyère's fellow liberal dissenters will without doubt recognise "this principle". Not because it is in Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk - it is not - but in their anxiety to claim Newman as a fellow dissenter. Nowhere in the Letter is there any justification for so-called conscientious dissent from Church teaching. Newman did not envisage such a possibility, but he did envisage the possibility of having conscientiously to refuse a papal order - hence his famous toast to the pope, but to conscience first.

Mr de la Bédoyère says: "It is clear that the community of the Church as a whole does not believe in this teaching [Humanae Vitae]." Is it? The Church "as a whole" does not obey many of the Church's teachings, as any priest hearing confessions could tell him. It doesn't mean they don't believe in them.

Yours faithfully,
Ian Ker
Burford, Oxon

How to raise the standard of our homilies

From Fr Joseph McMahon

SIR - From time to time (Letters, August 28) you publish a letter from someone who is very unhappy with the homilies they hear. They seem to suggest that most homilies are of a low standard. My first thought is always to wonder how many different preachers they have heard. They probably refer to a few priests in their own locality. This is surely a very limited basis for such a sweeping conclusion.

I should like to approach the topic from a different angle. Has the correspondent ever wondered how much blame congregations carry for poor homilies? I think many priests get the impression that congregations do not want to listen to homilies. People assume bored postures and they let their children scream and run about. In what other friendly environment would a public speaker be expected to put up with such distractions? It can have a very discouraging effect and so priests put little effort or thought into preparation.

I think parishioners should comment to their priest on his homilies. If they are poor, they should do so in a tactful and kind way. If they are good, they should say so, without fearing to appear flattering. In fact, in these days when clapping occurs in church for all sorts of reasons, why should there not be clapping at the end of a homily which deserves appreciation?

I noted, at Edward Kennedy's funeral, that his parish priest gave a very thoughtful and well prepared homily and was met with utter silence. Barack Obama gave a personal memoir and was greeted with a standing ovation. If preachers were to be encouraged by being shown some appreciation I am sure the standard of preaching would rise.

Yours faithfully,
Joseph McMahon
Falkirk, Stirlingshire

Heads in the sand

From Mr Donal Anthony Foley

SIR - Regarding the assertion by John Hanrahan (Letters, August 21) that Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone made a statement in 2008 to the effect that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith treated the case of Fr Vlasic as separate from the Medjugorje phenomenon, it is not clear exactly what document he is basing this statement on. However, in a letter sent to the Bishop of Mostar, dated May 30 2008 and signed by Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the CDF, it is stated: "Within the context of the phenomenon [of] Medjugorje, this dicastery is studying the case of Fr Tomislav Vlasic OFM." In other words, the CDF was particularly focusing on Fr Vlasic's association with Medjugorje.

Mr Hanrahan's statement that ex-Fr Vlasic was not the head of any "spiritual movement" associated with Medjugorje is questionable since he was certainly the de facto spiritual director of the visionaries during his time at Medjugorje in the early 1980s. In fact, he took it upon himself to write to Pope John Paul II about them in December 1983, actively supporting the visionaries, and claiming that he wrote at the behest of the Virgin Mary, and with her approval.

Mr Hanrahan accuses me of constantly criticising the integrity of the Medjugorje visionaries, but all I have actually done is point out the untrustworthy nature of some of their statements and activities. It is a fact that their remarks in later interviews cannot, in a number of cases, be squared with some of the material in the transcripts of the original taped interviews with them made during the first week of the visions. And as is well known, a number of the visionaries live in large houses, drive expensive cars, etc, in a way that is not consistent with how one would expect genuine seers to behave.

No doubt there is some useful material in the book Mr Hanrahan mentions, but given the problems surrounding ex-Fr Vlasic, surely it is time for Medjugorje enthusiasts to see these events as a wake up call, and not to just carry on with a "business as usual" attitude, and continue to bury their heads in the sand about the questionable aspects of Medjugorje - and this is particularly the case with leaders of the Medjugorje movement in this country.

Yours faithfully
Donal Anthony Foley
Castle Donington

Cut agency funding

From Mr Finian Gavin

SIR - I refer to recent reports in your newspaper regarding the Church- funded agency Marriage Care. The first report stated: "Marriage is no better for children," says Terry Prendergast, the agency's chief executive. In an interview on Radio 4 Mr Prendergast made it clear this was his personal view and not that of Marriage Care. He is, of course, entitled to his own view. But it raises the question of who interviewed him for the job of heading up the agency.

It is just not good enough for the spokesman of the bishops' conference merely to say that the views expressed by Mr Prendergast are not a reflection of the Church's teaching. It is odd that the bishops' conference can continue to fund an agency whose head makes such statements and which publishes material opposing Catholic teaching.

Yours faithfully,
Finian Gavin
St Albans, Hertfordshire

Careless wording

From Fr Ronald Rolheiser

SIR - I am sorry that some bad wording in my recent column, "Extraordinary stories, extraordinary women" (August 14), might have given the impression that the injection given to the woman who was terminally ill in some way hastened her death or was in some way a form of euthanasia. Here is the background to that injection.

The woman's system was already shutting down and she had only hours to live. The injection given to her in no way hastened the death process - it only lessened her pain. Indeed it probably lengthened her life since it took her out of excruciating pain (which her body would have tried to escape from). The choice was not between hurrying the moment of death or delaying it, only whether she would be conscious or not conscious during her last hours. I want to assure the readers that the injection didn't speed up the death process in any way.

I am a very strong opponent to euthanasia of any kind and apologise for this misunderstanding.

Yours faithfully,
Ronald Rolheiser
By email

Unpaid wages

From Mr Michael Petek

SIR - Sister Helen Alford says that business managers aren't nasty people with no ethical values (Feature, August 28 ). The trouble with this is that hell is full of nice and affable people, and the most straightforward way to go there if you're a business leader is a failure to pay wages according to natural justice and the Church's teaching concerning a father's wage, which must be paid to all adult men and women.

There is a useful online calculator on the website of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which calculates minimum income standards for various household types. A family of five including three teenagers and a full-time housewife, and with average housing costs, needs to spend in the order of £35,000 a year.

That is more than the gross pay of two thirds of full-time male employees. Eighty-two per cent of them earn less than the gross pay needed to clear that figure after tax.

Very many employers pay less than this, though they could safely and reasonably pay a larger fraction of the family wage, even if not all of it.

Walk into any major supermarket, and you will be deafened by the sound of unpaid wages crying to heaven for vengeance (James 5:4).

Yours faithfully,
Michael Petek
Brighton, Sussex

Dawkins's discovery

From A Fenland Turnip-Topper

SIR - Will Heaven's brief but illuminating article (August 28) on Prof Richard Dawkins's latest tome, The Greatest Show on Earth, brought tears to the eyes. Tears of mirth, that is. At last, after years of biological soul-searching, the notorious God-denier has finally accepted that he is, beyond all reasonable doubt, related to a root vegetable.

How Descartes would have loved him: "Cogitat ergo rapum est."

Yours faithfully,
A Fenland Turnip-Topper
(aka Victoria Gillick)
Wisbech, Cambs

Pro-lifers should call for an end to the NHS

From Mr Tony Bond

SIR - With a General Election approaching, Ed West's comments about the NHS (Comment, August 21), are timely. It is helpful to be reminded that the NHS funds 180,000 abortions a year, plus other "family planning services"; Mr West is "thankful to live in a society where [treatment] is provided free of charge", but it is only "free" at point of service for it currently costs £90bn per annum: spread among some 32 million taxpayers, that's £2,812 apiece. In the absence of the NHS, that would be more than enough to buy private medical insurance (PMI). A comparison website shows that the cost of best PMI would be some £1,700pa for two adults and two children if cover were taken out early in life, a saving of £1,112pa per person.

Best of all, no one would be forced to pay for abortion and related "services" since elective procedures are not covered by most PMI schemes. Such schemes do not generally cover GP and A&E services either but, probably for less than the saved £1,112, insurers could include these covers too and provide a safety net for those unable to pay for health care.

Mr West reminds readers that the NHS can be a tool of social engineering. In the case of abortion and related services, they have more easily crept into the nation's bloodstream because they are seemingly free and easily available, suiting governments' population control fantasies; even now, Jonathon Porritt, a top Government "green" adviser, wants Britain's population to be more than halved - no government should be trusted with such ready means of population control as represented by socialised medicine. If people had to pay for abortions at point of service, there would be fewer.

I suggest that pro-life organisations take a lead from Ed West's comments and make it a plank of their strategy at the next election to urge voters to lobby candidates for elective procedures, especially abortion and related services, to be excluded from NHS cover, and tax cuts made. Better still, the sacred cow that is the NHS might be slaughtered and replaced by PMI, reducing significantly hazard not only to the unborn, but to the elderly and chronically sick whose interests are vulnerable to NHS budgets, care rationing and the looming spectre of euthanasia.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Bond
Kesgrave, Suffolk

Describing Purgatory

From Mr Joseph F Foyle

SIR - Some of your readers may be able to help a number of us who are curious about the gift of Purgatory. We aren't interested in arguments about its existence or whether it is a gift. We feel we haven't time for such speculation. We just want to treat it as a fact and a gift, and be inspired by its joys and sorrows.

In particular, we are interested in analogies that describe, insofar as that is possible, what those joys and sorrows are like.

We would love to have a seven-minute inspirational talk (about 1,000 words) from a priest or other expert on the theme. But we would settle for the text of such a talk to be sent by post to 25 Sandford Road, Dublin 6, Ireland, or by email to defroyle@hotmail.com.

To all who contact us we would send a copy of the text we found most inspirational and, if we think it can be improved, another 1,000-word text containing the best from all the texts.

Yours faithfully,
Joseph F Foyle
By email

Prayer beyond words

From Fr Robin Burgess

SIR - Your weekly column Lectio Divina offers helpful reflections on the Scriptures and their use in prayer. It does, however, misrepresent the final stage of this way of prayer, contemplatio, by offering under this heading "further thoughts or reflections". Contemplation in the classical sense means going beyond thoughts, ideas and feelings to rest in the presence of God.

We are fortunate in our own time that very great teachers, Thomas Keating and John Main among them, have realised the centrality of contemplation to the Christian gospel and taught ways in which people can engage in contemplative prayer. Your readers may like to know of a remarkable series of meetings at Westminster Cathedral Hall called Silence in the City. Several hundreds gather regularly to listen to distinguished speakers and practise prayer in silence for 20 minutes. The next meeting, on October 22, will be addressed by Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

Yours faithfully,
Robin Burgess
By email

We should see the Passion and Resurrection as a continuous whole

From Miss Ruth Yendell

SIR - It seems to me that in the dialogue between the SSPX/ "traditionalists" and the post-Vatican II Church, a glance at the history of Christian art might help (Feature, July 3).

I am not an expert, but it has been pointed out to me in the past that early Christian art, in at least the first five or six centuries after Christ, typically produced representations of the victorious Christ, Christ triumphant over pain and death, and sitting in judgment over the whole world. In other words, Christ of the Resurrection. There was also considerable emphasis on the Last Judgment and the teaching and miracles of Christ (the Good Shepherd, the feeding of the five thousand, etc).

This was surely a result of the terrible persecutions of the first centuries, when people needed to know, above all, that eternal life, not suffering, was the end product of the Christian life and that true judgment would eventually triumph. The reminders of the Last Judgment would also encourage people to keep faithful under persecution.

Of course, Christianity began to feel much more secure after Constantine, but there was still a long struggle against Arianism and it does seem that the above trend continued right up to perhaps the 11th or 12th centuries, when the focus began to swing to the actual sufferings and humiliations of Jesus, His vulnerability, His humanity, the huge cost of our Redemption. Thus we get detailed and often gory representations of the Crucifixion, peaking perhaps in Grünewald's famous altarpiece.

As with the first centuries, this concentration on the Passion seemed to continue right up to the turmoil of the Reformation, when, meeting opposition on an unprecedented scale, the Church to some extent "dug in her toes" and was too busy coping with the turmoil for any change in perspective.

The 20th century saw more martyrs than even the Roman persecutions of the first centuries. Is it not understandable that the Holy Spirit, speaking through the Church, should once again wish to emphasise the Resurrection to encourage us all in a world full of so much suffering and, even now, of persecution of our Faith?

These changes of emphasis seem to happen of themselves, and there is nothing "untraditional" about them. They are all part of the Church's history and tradition and, as other correspondents have already pointed out, at no time can any part of Christ's life be separated from its whole. The Incarnation (coming to its own with St Francis's introduction of the crib in the 13th century), the Passion and the Resurrection will always make a continuous whole.

Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell
Devon, Exeter

Toast to drink-shops

From Mr K E Donovan

SIR - In your leading article of August 7 you mention two temperance campaigners, the Englishman William Booth and the Irishman Father Mathew.

In The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol XXIII, there is a letter to Francis Newman: "As to what you tell me of Archbishop Manning, I have heard that some of our Irish bishops think that too many drink-shops are licensed. As for me I do not know whether we have too many or too few."

Next week I shall be in Ireland and will look into the matter there.

Yours faithfully,
K E Donovan
The Queen's Arms,
London E17


From Professor John Roberts

SIR - What a refreshing pronouncement from our Archbishop. I refer, of course to his lament for "the decline of the traditional English pub" (Report, August 7).

The Archbishop is proving already to be someone with his feet firmly on the ground and with the ability to think matters through before making a statement. This and issues like Facebook are ones affecting the very fabric of our society and should be addressed.

As far as the English pub is concerned, it is a downright tragedy when you consider that never in our history have there been so many exemplary micro-breweries around to provide our pubs with real beer.

I, and I'm sure many others, salute his Grace.

Yours faithfully,
John Roberts
Wakefield

Dangerous minority

From Miss Isabel Vaughan-Spruce

SIR - While I can quite understand Anne Lawlor's feelings towards the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) (Letters, August 14) regarding the announcement by the council that it is taking a "neutral" stand on euthanasia, it is important to note that, as some readers may already be aware, these statistics have been grossly manipulated.

The RCN admitted that only half of its members were even consulted and, of those, less than 0.3 per cent (a third of one per cent) took part in the vote. Less than half of this miniscule number wanted a change in policy. Of the RCN's 400.000 members, only 1,200 responded. In short, this means that a mere 600 members were allowed to overturn the policy of 400.000 members.

Consequently, rather than deciding to have nothing to do with the RCN, Christian nurses (or indeed any nurses with sound ethical views) should join the RCN and make their opinions heard loud and clear. As usual it is the vociferous minority which is endangering lives and if we don't speak up then we will be as much to blame by our silence.

Yours faithfully,
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce
Malvern Link, Worcestershire

Keep on trying

From Mr John Jollife

SIR - If you are not yet bored by Oscar Wilde's crack that "for respectable people the Anglican Church will do" (Letters, August 14), surely Wilde would have been amazed at anyone taking it seriously. He was a joker, as everyone knows except, apparently, L'Osservatore Romano.

As regards saints and sinners, Fr Knott SJ once put it very well, proving that he was a much better guide than Wilde: "Saints were only sinners who kept on trying."

Yours faithfully,
John Jolliffe
Alnwick, Northumberland

Swine flu confusion

From Fr Bryan Storey,

SIR - Noting the variety of recommendations concerning the spread of swine flu (Report, July 31), I recently thought as I washed my hands with anti-bacterial fluid that I am much more likely to touch contaminated hands as I distribute Communion than I am likely to touch a tongue.

Yours faithfully,
Bryan Storey
St Paul the Apostle,
Tintagel, Cornwall

Preaching problems

From the Very Rev Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB

SIR - Perhaps one of the reasons that priests have been reluctant to respond to Professor Scarisbrick's thoughtful article on the homilies he would like to hear (Comment, June 26) is that he himself has laid out so competently the plans for no fewer than five homilies: better ones, I dare say, than we who work at it week by week always manage to deliver.

All the topics he raises should be part of any thought-out homiletic programme, and if we follow the plan of the lectionary all are provided for. For example, this summer, apart from the feast of Corpus Christi, there are three Sundays on which the critically important chapter six of St John's Gospel allows extensive reflection on the Eucharist and the Real Presence. Then the readings around the end of the Church's year and the start of Advent require reflection on death and judgment, to say nothing of the celebration of All Saints and All Souls; and the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord at the end of the Christmas season should allow us to preach about the Life that is given through water and the Holy Spirit.

Professor Scarisbrick has an invaluable theme running through his article: the importance of sacrament, in the first place the great sacraments of the Church, but also in a more general sense, from the value of holy water to the sacramentality of our own bodies, being, as we are, temples of the Holy Spirit. He is absolutely right that the cause of life takes us into the heart of our Faith.

Fr James Hanvey SJ has written powerfully about the necessity for the renewal of sacramental imagination: I am sure that it is here that we can find the key to the renewal of our vision of a world which is penetrated and permeated by the divine presence beyond our perception and material scientific knowledge. All things end in mystery.

Saying all this in homilies is really quite difficult and requires a high priority to be given to their preparation. Priests also need to remember, or discover for themselves, the value of Lloyd George's advice to a young Harold Macmillan about speeches in the House of Commons. As the original House was in fact a chapel, to recall this may not be irreverent.

Lloyd George, a brilliant speaker, told young Macmillan that as a young man, you could only say one thing in a speech; as a Minister, perhaps two; as Prime Minister, he sometimes risked saying three things. Our trouble (and mine) is that we are sometimes tempted to try to say five or 10 things; or, at the worst, not to have thought out anything to say at all!

Yours faithfully,
Leo Chamberlain
St John's Priory
Easingwold, York

An outstanding read

From Miss Katherine Gray

SIR - The part of Mary Kenny's column (August 21) regarding the "Boche bastards" was a particularly interesting read. Let's hope that those many offspring of French women and German soldiers will be granted dual nationality, if they desire it.

An excellent treatment of the subject of these children has been given by Ann Widdecombe in two of her novels. I think her an outstanding writer, and would recommend An Act of Treachery and its sequel, An Act of Peace.

Yours faithfully,
Katherine Gray
By email

The Magisterium, doubt and contraception

From Dr Stephen Milne

SIR - Quentin de la Bédoyère in his article "A test of obedience" (Science and Faith, August 21) claims that Church teaching prohibiting the use of artificial contraception is held on the basis of reason "unproven" and that this makes it a "fallible moral teaching" with reference to the Magisterium of the Church, though one which allows of no exceptions. This needs correcting.

Reasons which demonstrate the inherent "reasonable-ness" of rejecting artificial contraception have been given at length and in depth both through the Magisterium itself and through the development of a personalist tradition in relation to conjugal morality in the last century. John Paul II, for example, reasons: "When couples, by means of recourse to contraception, separate these two meanings [the unitive and procreative] that God the Creator has inscribed in the being of man and woman and in the dynamism of their sexual communion ... the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality" (Familiaris Consortio, 32).

Not only the Council of Trent, but many other documents of the Magisterium, such as Pius XI's Casti Connubii, reiterate the teaching on the intrinsic evil of contraception in ways which make it plain that we are dealing with an uninterrupted tradition of definitive teaching that belongs to the ordinary and universal Magisterium and which is, therefore, infallible.

Its "unreasonableness" has nothing to do with its truth, and everything to do with our society's inability to understand the virtue of chastity.

Yours faithfully,
Stephen Milne
By email

Exposing a disturbing truth about the Allies

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - It is about time that the systematic failure of the Allies during the Second World War to protect European Jewry was highlighted (Report, August 21). Unlike Dr Edward Kessler, I do not think this is some cynical ploy on behalf of L'Osservatore Romano to promote the Cause for beatification of Pope Pius XII. It is highly appropriate that in an age where Pope Pius's pontificate is subject to revision that so too are the actions of the Allies.

As that great Jewish historian Sir Martin Gilbert highlighted, despite frequent requests by Jews the Allies failed to target Auschwitz or any other death camp. Even President Bush in January 2008 said the US should have bombed the camp. However, the systematic failure of the Allies is not confined to the War. At the US-sponsored Evian Conference in July 1938 when anti-Jewish legislation was fully implemented in the German Reich western democracies failed to agree to take Jews in any significant numbers.

Even worse, the great western democracies failed to issue a resolution condemning Nazi polices against the Jews. This allowed the Nazi propaganda machine to demonstrate that no one wanted Jews within their national boundaries. Yad Vashem's website says: "The world's doors, closed at Evian, remained shut throughout World War II." Indeed, the policy of appeasement and accommodation with Hitler of the western Allies merely bolstered his position. Both the abdicated King Edward and the great World War I Prime Minister David Lloyd George were taken in by Hitler.

When we compare this with the then Cardinal Pacelli's warnings against National Socialism as early as 1923 and the visa deal struck with the Brazilian government (sadly frustrated by Brazilian consuls in Europe) we see that the reputation of Pope Pius XII does not need to be exonerated as he demonstrated himself a true friend of European Jewry.

Incidentally, the beatification Cause of Pope Pius XII was introduced by Pope Paul VI in November 1965 and not by Pope John Paul II, as reported in this important article.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

Our tradition balances justice and mercy

From Mr Jim Allen

SIR - With regard to my letter on suicide (August 7), I did not say that "all suicides are lost souls" or "presume to set limits to God's mercy". This distortion of my words sounds like a typical knee-jerk reaction to anything that offends post-Vatican II "compassionate" sensibilities. My critics do not seem to have read all of my letter either.

I actually said that, while we do not know the final fate of suicides, the public expression of a softer stance, while offering consolation to the relatives, does in no way serve the supernatural interests of the tempted soul and might weaken others in the same plight. Obviously it cannot but encourage the assisted suicide lobby.

As for my supposed "chilling words", I think the problem is that the post-Vatican II generation, including the clergy, have decided that hell and its associated doctrines are very unpleasant things that no decent Catholic mentions nowadays; therefore let's forget them. But they are still there with a plentiful supply of millstones still in stock. I have been warned of hell only three times in the last 45 years.

Surely something is very wrong here. If this is "compassion", God protect me from it. Ignore my scribblings by all means but face up to the fact that not all our Saviour's words conform to modern "compassion". In Matthew the God of love warns us of hellfire or its equivalent no less than 16 times. Here are "chilling words" indeed from the ultimate authority. Likewise, Our Lady of Fatima shows that she can be a very stern mother when she thinks it necessary by showing three tender children a real vision of hell, and with people actually in it. They were of course absolutely terrified, unlike, apparently, some readers of this paper.

The description of the end of the world in Revelation must be a nightmare to the champions of modern "compassion"; how do they cope with it?

I think I will stay with the traditional sane balance between God's severe justice and His infinite mercy. Who can deny that to depend exclusively on the latter is a dangerous "feelgood" strategy and incompatible with true compassion which warns people of dangers, particularly potential suicides?

Yours faithfully,
Jim Allen
Torquay, Devon

The spirit of the Nazi death camps continues to haunt the earth

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - I believe that Pope Benedict XVI is right when he says that the spirit of the Nazi death camps continues to walk our earth (Report and Vatican Notebook, August 14).

One of the Nazis' philosophical beliefs was that some people were living a "life that was unworthy of life". Not only did they mean people with disabilities (mental or physical) which they exterminated under their T4 programme, but also people and races who did not fit into the Nazi ideal of the Aryan race, be they Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals or Catholic clergy and religious.

Have we not seen the Law Lords rule that some lives are not worth living in their Debbie Purdy judgment in July? It is somewhat sad that the last judgment delivered by the Law Lords in the Chamber should be one that promotes the "culture of death" that Pope John Paul II preached against.

While I have every sympathy for Mrs Purdy and others who suffer, I believe that such hard cases only result in bad law. We saw this with the Abortion Act 1967, where Labour facilitated the passing of David Steel's private member's bill which was meant to apply to a very restricted number of cases and lead to every baby being wanted. Forty-two years later we know that an unborn child can be aborted for that grave and life-threatening disorder of a hare lip.

It is highly likely, in my view, that just as the Abortion Act has been twisted so to would any guidelines issued by order of the House of Lords by the Director of Public Prosecutions to clarify the Suicide Act 1961. This is especially so given that Baroness Warnock, who is described by the media as Britain's leading moral philosopher, believes that people with dementia have a "duty to die", according to newspaper reports in 2008. Yes, the spirit of the death camps is alive and well in our society.

If Archbishop Peter Smith (Report, August 14) really wants to mobilise Catholic opinion for the consultation perhaps the Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship should develop a briefing pack now for parishes to use, rather than awaiting the start of the formal consultation period later this year.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex


From Mr Jonathan South

SIR - Stuart Reid (Charterhouse, June 5) asks: "Isn't it time we kicked Hitler out of our rhetorical toolbag?" Benedict XVI proves that, sadly, the dictator is not yet "past his sell-by date".

Yours faithfully,
jonathan south
By email

Wilde the Catholic

From Paul Hurley, SVD

SIR - In his article (Notebook, August 7) John Jolliffe stated: "There seems to be some doubt whether he [Oscar Wilde] was received on his deathbed back into the Catholic Church, in which he had been baptised."

First, he was not received back into the Church, as he had never been a member of it.

Second, there is no doubt that he was received into the Church on his deathbed. The interesting circumstances regarding how this came about were detailed in a letter in The Catholic Herald of December 22 1950 from Fr Joseph Smith, CP, of St Joseph's Passionist Retreat, Highgate, London, who wrote: "An entry (No. 57) in the daily register of the Passionist Church on Avenue Hoche, Paris, states, 'Today, Oscar Wilde, lying in extremis at the Hotel d'Alsace, 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts, was conditionally baptised by me. He died the following day, having received at my hands the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. Cuthbert Dunne, CP.'"

An equally interesting account of Wilde's conversion was given by his friend (eyewitness and fellow convert) Robert Ross, in which he quotes this note: "Dear Father Cuthbert, The funeral takes place at nine o'clock on Monday at St-Germain-des-Prés and afterwards at the cemetery at Bagneux, I believe a great distance off. If you would like to attend, I shall be so pleased. Many thanks for sending me the Franciscan Sisters (who came and watched or waked the body for two nights). He was particularly devoted to St Francis and deeply read in his life and literature, so it is very appropriate. Robert Ross."

Wilde's conversion was also confirmed some years later by his son, Vyvyan Holland in his book, Son of Oscar Wilde.

Yours faithfully, Paul Hurley Maynooth, Co Kildare

Full membership

From Professor Emeritus Robin Whatley

SIR - I had great hopes that in Archbishop Vincent Nichols the Church in England and Wales had acquired a leader to be proud of and deserving of support. I was therefore saddened, perplexed and disillusioned to read extraordinarily inaccurate and gratuitous remarks (Interview, July 24) concerning those who choose to worship in the Tridentine Rite.

The excellent letter by Michael Lord (August 7) exactly encapsulates most of the reasons why I prefer the usus antiquor, but to these would add the dignity and reverence of both celebrant and congregation at these Masses.

Perhaps, if an "inexorable distance" does exist between traditionalist Catholics and what the Archbishop refers to as the "Church", he could do much to reduce it and renew our hopes by publicly and regularly celebrating Holy Mass in the Old Rite. Personally, however, I regard myself as a full member of Holy Mother Church, and totally reject the Archbishop's position.

Yours faithfully,
Robin Whatley
Aberystwyth, Cardiganshire

Mary is the ark

From Mrs Carol Molina

SIR - I must address the statement of Brother John Barry (Letters, July 24) that the Ark of the Covenant cannot be in Ethiopia because Revelation 11 states: "Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant could be seen in the temple."

I have found during my studies of Revelation that most Catholic biblical scholars agree that the following verses, Revelation 12:1-5, represent Mary as the ark of the new covenant between Christ and his Church. If this is true, then the wooden ark may still be on this earth, or not. The important thing is that Mary, the God-Bearer, is in heaven, just as the Church proclaims.

Yours faithfully,
Carol Molina
Longview, Texas, United States

The wrong emperor

From Mr John Trappes-Lomax

SIR - The mosaic from Hagia Sophia that you employ (Books, August 14) as a likeness of the convert Constantine I, who died in 337, in fact represents Constantine IX, who died in 1055.

Yours faithfully,
John Trappes-Lomax
By email

Discerning the fruits

From the convenor of the Medjugorje Apostolate for England and Wales

SIR - Donal Anthony Foley (Letter, August 14) is saying that the laicisation of Tomislav Vlasic may adversely influence the Vatican's present commission investigating the Medjugorje phenomenon. If he looks back to statements made in 2008 by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State and number two to the Pope, on the status of Medjugorje, it is clear the CDF has treated the Tomislav case as a separate issue from Medjugorje.

The CDF clearly does not want Mr Vlasic to return in any way to the subject of Medjugorje. The aim for the CDF now is to examine the events at the shrine in their entirety, in order to make a proper discernment of the fruits. Those issues investigated by the CDF concerning Tomislav Vlasic covered the period from 1985 to the present day when he was working in Italy.

The former priest was not head of any "spiritual movement" associated with Medjugorje, although he knew the visionaries while he was living at the shrine. Mr Foley constantly poor mouths the integrity of the Medjugorje visionaries, amounting to calumny and detraction. The six visionaries of Medjugorje lead healthy and independent lives. They are now married with families; they testify to a life of prayer and conversion of the heart, following the message of Our Lady, witnessed by millions of pilgrims over the last 28 years.

I recommend that Mr Foley turns to The Drama of Medjugorje by Fr Richard Foley SJ. In this book he will discover descriptions of the five main pillars of Our Lady's mission for us all: conversion, total commitment to God; faith, to be strong and active; prayer, from the heart being regular frequent and devout; penance, by self-denial and some fasting for those who can; and peace, the climax of the message brought us by the Queen of Peace, through peace in our personal lives we influence every level of human life.

Yours faithfully,
John Hanrahan
Surbiton, Surrey


From Mr Alan Pavelin

SIR - Regardless of the question of the validity of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje, Bernard Ellis (Letters, August 7) is almost certainly incorrect in stating that the Vatican is still investigating the matter.

Last February a directive was issued from the Vatican that anyone claiming to have experienced apparitions should not publicise them before proper investigations by the Church authorities have been concluded, else Church approval would not be forthcoming.

Within days of this ruling, the usual monthly alleged messages of Medjugorje were publicised, thus effectively excluding the possibility of their being officially approved.

In any event, apparitions could only be approved in practice if there was little doubt as to their validity. It seems inconceivable, therefore, that approval would be given to Medjugorje when many respected people, including, significantly, successive bishops of Mostar, do not believe it.

Catholics will remain perfectly free to believe in "Our Lady of Medjugorje" if they wish, but they cannot expect it to become another Lourdes or Fatima.

Yours faithfully,
Alan Pavelin
Chislehurst, Kent

What the East elaborates, the West implies

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - Fr Thomas Crean suggests (Letter, August 7) that the current Simple Prayer Book formulates the Church's belief about the Mass inadequately. But the phrase he objects to, that at Mass "the Church calls to mind the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, which are made present in the Eucharist", paraphrases articles 1362 to 1365 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, beginning: "The Eucharist is the memorial of Christ's Passover." Is it not as members of Christ, the Victima Paschalis, that we are a Paschal people?

Fr Crean implies that the words subordinate the idea of sacrifice. But doesn't the Simple Prayer Book also say: "At the Last Supper Jesus gave us the elements of a sacred rite ... which would make his sacrificial death on the cross present to all people in every age" and "Bread and wine are brought to the altar ... to become the Body of Christ that was offered for us on the cross and his blood that was shed for us and for all men so that sins might be forgiven"?

Does Fr Crean mean that by reminding us now (eg Sacrosanctum Concilium 47) that the Mass is a memorial of the Resurrection, Mother Church herself might weaken belief in the sacrifice? Then why, from the first, was the Lord's Day, the day of her liturgy, not Thursday of the Last Supper, or Friday of the Crucifixion, but Sunday, commemorating Easter Day?

Since Gregory the Great's reforms the western Mass has been succinct, implication sometimes expressing things that the East elaborates. No wonder that the Church must from time to time gently spell them out. Perhaps we had half-forgotten that in the Eucharist Christ is present, as Newman says, "in the fullness of His death and of his Resurrection".

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

Bishops offer comfort to friends after suicide

From Mr Geoff Pearce

SIR - I write in response to Jim Allen's letter (August 7). I think he has addressed the wrong audience in that the "softer stance" gives comfort to those affected by suicide rather than support to those contemplating it.

A friend recently committed suicide and I witnessed the distress it caused those she left behind, not just her husband and children. We were left wondering what we might have done to have prevented it happening. Were there sins of omission? Do we need ourselves to seek forgiveness? She was (and is) well-loved and it was impossible to believe that all hope of eternal life had gone with her suicide. Of course we don't know what has happened to her but I pray for her and ask Our Lady to intervene on her behalf. Happily, burial in consecrated ground is no longer banned.

The Bible says the only sin which never has forgiveness in the sin against the Holy Spirit (a deliberate refusal to repent) so unless the suicide was accompanied with deliberate turning away from God's forgiveness and mercy then there is always the possibility of hope.

I do not believe the Church claims that all suicides are lost souls: she claims saints not sinners. I am speaking here of those tragic souls who are driven to suicide through despair which might or might not be accompanied with mental illness.

More important, I think, is the need to fight the "culture of death" attitude of regarding suffering or "quality of life" as legitimate reasons for ending it, either alone or with assistance. After all, the Founder of our faith did not "die with dignity" in the sense implied by euthanasia enthusiasts, and of course he suffered terribly. Suffering is not in itself a good thing but if we wish to accept death "with dignity" it is a serious delusion to believe that this can only be achieved in a Swiss clinic.

Your faithfully,
Geoff Pearce
Guildford, Surrey

The 'alcoholism industry' across the Atlantic

From Mr Brian Marley

SIR - With regard to the article, "The alcoholism industry" (Charterhouse, July 24), I have spent a bit of time in bars, mostly just having a beer or two and singing karaoke.

My own observation is that alcoholics mostly are just people seeking a social connection, and unfortunately the bar has become their primary place for it. They might not be the best conversationalists, but they can spend hours at a bar, having multiple drinks and exchanging a bit of conversation with the bartender.

For the price of a drink they get conversation and a little bit of television, hour after hour after hour. I had a bartender tell me once that one of the saddest things about his job was seeing some of his customers die. The question seems to then become: why are people spending this much time at bars, and at what point should the bartender try and intervene?

I think that perhaps the bar and other institutions have replaced the Church as the primary social gathering place. It used to be that the church was the primary social gathering place and the bars were secondary. This latter model, I suspect, is the healthier model, and the present reversal of this situation is sad and unfortunate. We don't need to close the bars and abolish alcohol, but we do need to get people back to church and return balance to their lives.

The bar is a good place to meet for a beer and watch a game or chat a bit, but when all of one's social interactions occur at a bar, then one's life is out of balance and one is probably an alcoholic. Does our present alcohol industry, both bars and liquor stores, rely on creating alcoholics to yield its profits? I think it does.

There is a capitalism-gone-awry factor to the whole problem:_profits depend on an unhealthy level of alcohol consumption. How do we get our bars healthy once again? I believe, by getting our churches healthy once again.

With regard to Alcoholics Anonymous, to me the danger in it is that it can start taking the place of the Church. One's AA family might become more important than one's own family and one's own Church. Church is where we praise God and deal with our own sin, consuming too much alcohol being both a sin and possibly an effect of other sins in our life. Has the bottle replaced the hymnal, the Eucharist and the confessional?

Yours faithfully,
Brian Marley
Seattle, Washington, United States

Newman would want us to honour Our Lady for his miracle

From Fr Michael G Murphy

SIR - This weekend we will be celebrating the feast of the Assumption, which usually falls on August 15. The feast did fall on August 15 1790, the day on which a special bond was forged between the Catholic Church in England and in the United States. It was on that date that the first bishop in the United States, John Carroll, was ordained Bishop of Baltimore, Maryland, at St Mary's, the Weld family Chapel in Lulworth Castle, Dorset.

When the then Archbishop of Baltimore, now cardinal, William Keeler, delivered the homily at the Mass marking the bicentenary of Bishop Carroll's ordination in Lulworth Castle chapel on August 15 1990, he quoted "the distinguished historian Fr Robert F McNamara" who described the chapel as "the launching pad both sacramentally and culturally of the Catholic Church in the United States". So conscious was Bishop Carroll, who had an abiding love of Our Lady, of the significance of the date of his ordination as bishop that he dedicated the first cathedral in the United States to the Assumption. It is now the exquisitely restored Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore, which is also a national monument.

All of this came to my mind when reading the excellent article by Dwight Duncan on the miracle which lead to the forthcoming beatification of Cardinal Newman (Feature, August 7). However, there is one omission from that article, namely the date on which Deacon Jack Sullivan was healed of his spinal disorder in 2001. He was healed on August 15. Like Bishop Carroll, Newman had for most of his life a deep devotion to Our Lady. He knew well the power of her prayers to perform miracles.

In his Meditations and Devotions, under the heading, "On The Assumption", he writes a subtitle: "Mary is the Virgo Potens, the powerful Virgin." He tells us: "There is a power which avails to alter and subdue this visible world, and to suspend and counteract its laws; that is, the world of angels and saints, of Holy Church and her children; and the weapon by which they master its laws is the power of prayer." Later on he adds: "This is why the Blessed Virgin is called 'Powerful' - nay, sometimes, 'All-powerful', because she has, more than anyone else, more than all angels and saints, this great, prevailing gift of prayer. Her Son will deny her nothing that she asks; and herein lies her power."

May I suggest that Cardinal Newman would wish us to link the name of the Mother of God with his own name in the delivery of the miracle of God's grace that brought healing to Deacon Jack Sullivan, something indicated to us by the date on which the miracle occurred, and the country in which it happened.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Murphy
St Michael's,
Bishopstown, Co Cork

A scandalous decision

From Mr Martin Blackshaw

SIR - I refer to the report (July 24) with the headline "Anglicans refuse to sell church to SSPX".

Based on the Church of England's own report of the commission set up to consider the SSPX application in London on July 15, the main points were first that over 100 objections to the sale had been received from "groups and individuals including MPs, peers, members of Manchester City Council, the Council of Christians and Jews and the Catholic Church", and second that the Anglican Bishop of Manchester claimed that the sale would not be "in the interests of community cohesion, ecumenical relations or interfaith work".

So there were two types of objection to this sale. First, there was the secular objection based on inaccurate press reports, ignorance and irrational fear which the aforementioned bishop, together with a Lib Dem councillor, very publicly exacerbated - the former linking the SSPX with the BNP, the latter calling it "the church of latter-day Holocaust deniers", and then there was religious objection based on guilt by association.

Overall it was a masterpiece of sensationalism and mob rule that has no basis in the reality of a peaceful, co-existing SSPX presence in Manchester these past 20 years.

Naturally the SSPX does not indulge in "ecumenical relations and interfaith work". But this is a religious conscience issue, not a crime. Either the Catholic Church is the Church to which one must belong if one would be saved, or it is not.

As for "community cohesion", 20 years of good community standing should have been permitted to speak for itself, but was silenced in a quite scandalous manner.

In choosing to pore over the internet searching for a few rogue statements from SSPX affiliates, and then to hold these up as exemplifying a Jew-hating mentality in an institution that numbers more than 500 priests, countless religious and a million lay faithful, is reminiscent of the injustice that secured the crucifixion of Our Lord.

This is even more evident when one considers that Archbishop Lefebvre's father died in a Nazi concentration camp.

It is truly tragic that the local Catholic bishop and other Catholic clerics participated in such an injustice against those of their own creed. But then there would have been no requirement for an SSPX presence in Manchester to begin with had the Catholic bishop acquiesced in the wishes of the popes for a provision of the traditional liturgy for all the Salford faithful who are attached to it.

Yours faithfully,
Martin Blackshaw
By email

Riddling with Reid

From Mr Alan Frost

SIR - I found myself drawn in a cryptic way to the ever-entertaining Stuart Reid's conjecture "If I were Rupe" (Charterhouse, August 7).

I say cryptic not just because the crossword is at the base of his column, but on account of his clever rosary linkage. You see, "Rupe", apart from a reference to a television performer, is also the monastic name of friar Alanus de Rupe, better known as Blessed Alan de la Roche. This latter 15th-century Dominican priest was of immense importance in the wide restoration of the practice of the rosary and is much quoted by St Louis-Marie de Montfort in his Secret of the Rosary.

I dare say the subtle Mr Reid, by raising the point of the distasteful current practice by some of wearing a rosary as a fashion item, is also aware of de Montfort's missionary dictum: "Let me place my rosary around a sinner's neck and he shall not escape me."

See what I mean about "cryptic"?

Yours faithfully,
Alan Frost
By email

Flu and collections

From Mr Charles Crabtree

SIR - I went to the 8am Mass in Winchester recently and was informed that we would be following the Bishop of Portmouth's guidelines, as set out in a letter given out at Mass. The instructions as reported (July 31) were followed to the letter: no handshake, no chalice, no Communion on the tongue. All of these prohibitions were put in place to protect us from swine flu.

And then came the offertory collection and the money bag was passed to each person in the congregation and touched by each one of us.

Yours faithfully,
Charles Crabtree
Winchester, Hants

A priest's downfall

From Mr Donal Anthony Foley

SIR - Regarding the letter from Bernard Ellis on the laicisation of Fr Tomislav Vlasic (August 7), it is possible to interpret this in the way he does - possible, but not really credible.

The fact that ex-Fr Vlasic apparently asked to be laicised does not alter the fact that he has been accused of very serious offences, as indicated by Mr Ellis himself, to the point that if he releases any declarations on Medjugorje in the future he will incur excommunication. It would seem that this laicisation is a case of someone "jumping before he was pushed".

It is fanciful to state, as Mr Ellis does, that "the Vatican has forbidden Fr Vlasic to speak about Medjugorje and this can be perceived as protecting Medjugorje pending the outcome of their investigations into the phenomena." It could just as easily be argued, and with far more plausibility, that this declaration has nothing whatever to do with "protecting" Medjugorje, but rather, by this action, the Vatican is preparing the way for a condemnation of Medjugorje. The question has to be asked: would the Blessed Virgin really have appeared there knowing that one of the principal priestly figures involved would become a cause of serious scandal in the Church? Surely this is unlikely to the point of impossibility?

The facts are that Fr Vlasic made himself known to the visionaries within the first week of the visions, as is clear from early tape recordings. In the interview with Vicka, dated June 30 1981, she stated that Fr Vlasic, who was then at Capljina, had visited the visionaries in Medjugorje and wanted them to come and see him.

Fr Vlasic was then closely associated with the visionaries during the crucial early years of the visions, until September 1984, so it is impossible to argue that his influence on them was minimal. This is quite apart from the fact that various Charismatic authors have noted that Fr Vlasic was present at a Charismatic conference in 1981, when individuals "prophesied" that the Blessed Virgin would appear in Fr Vlasic's country and that he would be at the head of a spiritual movement.

Thus Fr Vlasic was one of the fountainheads of the whole Medjugorje affair, and as he has now fallen so surely Medjugorje itself will eventually go the same way.

Yours faithfully,
Donal Anthony Foley
Castle Donington, Leicestershire

A hoary quotation

From Mr Robert Gray

SIR - Might you possibly publish an issue without that hoary old Wilde quote about the Catholic Church being for saints and sinners, whereas for respectable people the Anglican church will do?

The sentiment, of course, ministers to Catholic self-regard, and for that reason alone should be avoided. It also risks implying that, for the fortunate members of the one true Church, imbued as they are with divine grace, it hardly makes a difference whether one is a saint or a sinner. This is not, perhaps, a point of view with which Wilde's wife and children would have concurred.

Then again, during Wilde's lifetime there were Anglicans who heroically sacrificed their lives to bring spiritual and material sustenance to the slums. Their successors are continuing that work today. But Anglicans, it appears, can never be saints. One may even doubt whether, in the Catholic scheme, they can be respectable.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Gray
By email

We need to give the young sacred memories

From Mr Steve Herbert and Mrs Catriona Herbert

SIR - As parents of children currently at Catholic schools we agree with Daphne McLeod (Letters, July 31) that teaching of the faith in schools and parishes is inadequate and leadership of young people lacks example and inspiration. This is the main reason why so many young people abandon their faith.

Mrs McLeod points out that the young people known to the Archbishop in the 1970s who lapsed returned to the Church later on in life because in their youth they were taught the faith thoroughly. As young people they would also have benefited from memories of devotional practices such as the rosary and Benediction and the witness given by men and women attending Confession and silently praying before the tabernacle. Young children were encouraged to say prayers before images of angels and saints and to light candles.

In our experience parish churches have become places of social gathering, attended mainly by women and children. The children often play in the pews while the adults chat casually. Anyone attempting to pray is made to feel rather self-conscious. This is not a place for the searching hearts and minds of teenagers and young adults looking for God. Children need the witness and encouragement that was once given within parishes to lay the foundations for their faith. Once a young person walks away from the parish of today there is no sacred memory to call them back.

However, the problem we face as parents is far worse than a failure in faith education. The latest initiative by the Catholic Education Service (CES) to provide sex education to infants undermines the role of parents as the first and best educators of their children.

Mrs McLeod is more in tune with the needs of families than the CES. In order to instil the faith in young people and restore the role of parents in the moral education of children, Mrs McLeod's vision for Catholic education should be a priority for the bishop's conference.

Yours faithfully,
Steve Herbert
Catriona Herbert
Aldershot, Hants

War is no longer an intelligent response

From Mr Bruce Kent

SIR - Mary Kenny (Comment, July 31) is at least half right. There is a long list of British names of those who were not only appeasers but even active supporters of Hitler's Germany.

Even in the July of 1939 our country supplied Hitler with massive quantities of war materials (rubber and nickel) despite critical comment in the House of Commons.

But to appease has little to do with making peace. Bringing the rule of law into international life is a vital part of every peacemaker's role. That is why the Bush/Blair invasion of Iraq, without the authority of the UN Charter and Security Council, has been so internationally damaging. In our local communities most of us would never dream of beating up our neighbours as a means of resolving a dispute. That is why we have a police force, courts of law, community councils, mediation opportunities, some level of political and social justice and a prohibition on the private possession of weapons.

War is no longer an intelligent, let alone a moral response to international crises. This is not my idea. See Pope John XXIII's Pacem in Terris, para 127.

Yours faithfully,
Bruce Kent
London NW4

We should not set limits to God's mercy

From Mr Kevin Greenan

SIR - There would be little or no discussion at the moment on suicide if it wasn't for the high-profile cases who have committed suicide in the Swiss clinic or sought clarification in the House of Lords on the legal status of a partner if someone assisted a suicide.

I have heard very reasoned comments on the subject, none wiser than the recent homily by Canon Christopher Tuckwell in Westminster Cathedral. I will not dare to interpret his words but while standing firm on the Church's position on suicide he spoke with true compassion. While declaring himself "very much in favour of showing compassion", one of your readers, Jim Allen (Letters, August 7), wrote in such chilling words. He warned us a that "a presumptuous trust in God's mercy is a risk too far". I was left wondering: What right does Mr Allen presume to speak on the limits of God's mercy?

Not all those who commit suicide do so when the mind is secure - are we to assume that Our Saviour would not judge those with an ever giving love?

As with abortion, we must support the position of the Church and its teachings, but if we condemn without mercy and true compassion then we have no right to comment or expect us to represent the teachings of Christ.

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Greenan
London SW1

Nurses must rise in outrage over this change

From Mrs Anne Lawlor

SIR - For some years I was a member of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), but allowed my membership to lapse a considerable time ago.

Whenever controversial issues have come up I have wondered whether I was right to do so. However, the latest announcement by the council of the RCN that the college will now take a "neutral" stand on euthanasia (Report, July 31) has made me feel that I am thankful that I have nothing whatsoever to do with them.

My husband died as a result of Alzheimer's disease. For six years I nursed him at home, and attended him every day to feed wash and change his clothes until he died in a care centre. During that period it would have been very easy for me to have persuaded him to take a trip to his death in Switzerland. Had I or my children been so inclined I have no doubt we would have been thankful to have the RCN turning its eyes away.

However, my children, who supported me throughout, would have been appalled at the idea of taking such an abusive attitude to their father.

I call on nurses throughout the country to rise in outrage to oppose the council's high-handed decision.

Yours faithfully,
Anne Lawlor
London W4

Have we forgotten the great truth about the Holy Eucharist?

From Fr Thomas Crean OP

SIR - Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown (Letters, July 24) is of course right to say that the Church's faith concerning the Mass has not changed in the last 50 years. But the question is surely whether certain modern formulations of this faith, some of a "quasi-official kind", are as accurate as past ones.

For example, it is instructive to compare the 1957 Simple Prayer Book with the 2005 edition. The former carefully explains that the separate consecration of Host and Chalice represents the death of our Lord, and perpetuates his sacrifice through time; while adding, of course, that it the glorified Christ who is present.

The latter says that at Mass, "the Church calls to mind the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, which are made present in the Eucharist". There appear to be at least two problems with this statement. First, it could suggest that the Mass is somehow generated by our remembering the past ("through our remembering past acts of God they become really present"). But in fact a Mass at which no one was thinking about the past would still be a valid sacrifice, of infinite value.

Next, what is the authority for saying that the death and resurrection of Christ are present in the Mass? The traditional teaching is that the sacrifice of Christ is present in the Mass, not his death and resurrection. Our Lord offers a real sacrifice at Mass, but he does not really die nor really rise again. His sacrifice is renewed: his death is represented. His resurrection is also commemorated but less prominently than his death, because not by the very act which makes the Mass what it is, namely the twofold consecration. This is why it is traditional to speak of the Mass as Christ's mystical immolation, but not as his mystical resurrection.

These are the truths which seem sometimes to be obscured by the emphasis on remembrance and on "Paschal Mystery" in some modern presentations of the Holy Mass.

Finally, I entirely agree with your correspondent Francis Beswick (Letters, July 24) when he writes that we are dealing here with "a profound mystery that transcends adequate description". All the more reason, surely, to be on our guard against whatever could obscure our inadequate contemplation of this mystery.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Crean
Holy Cross Priory,
Leicester

Waiting for Rome

From Mr Bernard Ellis

SIR - There are people who continually misrepresent the true facts about Medjugorje.

Fr Vlasic (Report, July 31) asked the Holy See to be dispensed from the obligations of priestly ministry because he does not want to accept the sanctions that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith imposed in 2008. These sanctions were levied because of reports about Fr Vlasic regarding "the diffusion of dubious doctrine, manipulation of consciences, suspected mysticism, disobedience towards legitimately issued orders and charges contra sextum [against the sixth Commandment]".

The Vatican has forbidden Fr Vlasic to speak about Medjugorje and this can be perceived as protecting Medjugorje pending the outcome of their investigation into the phenomena. We should await their decision.

Fr Vlasic had an important role at the beginning of the Medjugorje event in 1981, when the six youths began to affirm that Our Lady was appearing to them. However, he was transferred to Italy in 1985 and has not been involved in anything happening there for 24 years.

Though he has publicly and in writing offered interpretations of Medjugorje, he has on occasion been contradicted by the visionaries. For example, he affirmed that the community he founded was born because of an express wish of the Virgin, but Marija Pavlovic, one of the visionaries, denied this in a letter she sent to the Holy See.

The Bishop of Mostar, where Medjugorje is located, has made declarations against the apparitions, but the phenomenon continues to be studied by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in his The Last Secret of Fatima, published in 2007, said the bishop's declarations are not the definitive and official judgment of the Church. He clarified that personal pilgrimages are permitted to the site, as the investigations continue.

Yours faithfully,
Bernard Ellis
Bletchingley, Surrey

Inexorable distance

From Mr Michael Lord

SIR - Archbishop Vincent Nichols (Interview, July 24) may be no fan of the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, but what prompted his needlessly hurtful and inaccurate remarks about those who attend the usus antiquior?

When I attend the Gregorian Rite, I am uniting myself with popes, saints and martyrs down the centuries and showing unambiguous allegiance to the orthodox Catholic Faith and Christ's Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, with Benedict XVI as Supreme Pontiff. But, according to the Archbishop, I and my fellow Catholics are "inexorably distancing [our]selves from the Church".

Likewise, thanks to the extraordinary form, I continue to celebrate, as does the Pope, the feasts of the Epiphany, Ascension and Corpus Christi on their traditional days. By contrast, Archbishop Nichols and his fellow bishops have chosen to do so on a day of their own choosing. Is this inexorable? Sadly, it would appear so.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Lord
Abingdon, Oxon

Wilde's kindness

From Mrs Mary Hunt

SIR - Oscar Wilde (Letters, July 31) was once at a gathering of famous writers and intellectuals of his day when he saw, sitting in a corner, a little girl who was looking as bored and lonely as any child would at a grown-ups' gathering. Wilde left his brainy friends, went and sat beside the child and chatted to her for some time and kept her amused.

That little girl was my mother, aged eight, who often spoke of "the kind gentleman" who took the trouble to entertain a bored little girl at a grown-ups' party.

Yours faithfully,
Mary Hunt
East Grinstead, West Sussex

Deafening silence

From Mr H J Coghlan

SIR - It is a month since Professor Scarisbrick's "the homilies I would like to hear but never will" appeared (Comment, June 26). I notice that among the correspondence it has generated, none has been from the clergy.

The silence is deafening.

Yours faithfully,
H J Coghlan
Stourbridge, West Midlands

Newman's spiritual father: a saint in waiting

From Mr Kevin Heneghan

SIR - Many of us will share Christopher Keeffe's delight (Letters, July 24) that Cardinal Newman is to be beatified next spring. The time, however, between beatification and canonisation can be lengthy. Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Italian Passionist missioner who received Newman into the Church, was beatified by Pope Paul VI on October 27 1963, but still awaits elevation to sainthood over 45 years later. At the time of Dominic's beatification, two miracles were required and a further two for sainthood, since then reduced to one at each stage.

When Dominic's Cause first began, Newman testified officially in Rome to Cardinal Parocchi, Supreme Secretary of the Holy Office: "Fr Dominic was a marvellous missioner and preacher filled with zeal. He had a great part in my own conversion and in that of others. His very look had about it something holy. When his form came within sight, I was moved to the depths in the strangest way. The gaiety and affability of his manner in the midst of all his sanctity was in itself a holy sermon. No wonder that I became his convert and his penitent."

To the very end of his days Newman revered Dominic Barberi as his spiritual father in God.

In 1982 the Passionist superior general presented a petition to the Vatican requesting the Holy Father to canonise Blessed Dominic without awaiting miracles other than those accepted by the Holy See at his beatification. It was signed by two papal nuncios, six cardinals, four English and Welsh archbishops, 30 ordinary and auxiliary bishops, 15 foreign prelates, 28 MPs and other prominent Catholics, the heads of 23 Passionist communities and the heads of 83 other religious houses. Nothing more was heard of it.

Causes for canonisation have a better hope of success if they receive the Holy Father's personal support, as in the case of St Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, who was beatified in May 1992 and canonised in October 2002.

What wonderful encouragement it would give to the Catholic Faith in England if, without too long a delay, Dominic Barberi and his protégé, John Henry Newman, could be crowned together with the aureole of the saints.

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens, Merseyside

United at the polls

From Mr Peeter Vosu, leader of the Estonian Christian Democrats and chairman of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM), and Johannes de Jong, political adviser of the ECPM

SIR - Michael Elmer (Letters, June 19) makes explicit and implicit statements concerning the European Christian Political Movement. We would like to point out that his remarks have no basis in fact.

The ECPM is an explicitly Christian Democratic platform in Europe that is not aligned with any faction in the European Parliament. The ECPM started in 2004 and now has 22 member parties and 11 associated think-tanks, as well as individual politicians from all over Europe. We are glad to count Catholic politicians and groups among our members.

Mr Elmer suggests that the ECPM is an exclusive "Protestant" movement. This is not the case. At the ECPM website anyone can see that the member parties come from all denominational backgrounds, as a matter of principle. These backgrounds depend on which denomination is dominant in a certain country.

The Dutch ChristenUnie has indeed a Protestant background, but is open to all denominations. As is the case for the Christian Peoples Alliance (CPA) in the UK, some member parties are also open for non-Christians, but these details of membership policy are of no concern for the ECPM.

Mr Elmer implicitly tries to link the ECPM to the Dutch SGP, an exclusive Protestant party. But there is no formal or informal link to this party. The (already ended) electoral alliance between ChristenUnie and SGP was of no concern for the ECPM. The ECPM does not mingle in the electoral alliances of member parties, which are often a necessity for those parties to succeed at election time.

Christian democracy is vital in today's Europe and Christians from all backgrounds should together make their voice clearly heard. The choice whether to back a certain Christian Democrat party is best made on the basis of that party's programme. The question of whether they are open for people from other faiths is, for a Christian voter, not the most urgent issue. The issues of life and family, economy and social justice are the urgent questions that should determine our vote. In this regard, there are not many differences between Catholic social teachings and the programme of the CPA.

We would therefore recommend that UK Christians back a party that is already there and which showed in previous elections its potential. We hope that Christians with disagreements in the past will overcome these in the Spirit of Christ and stand united in this effort of establishing a Christian Democratic voice in the UK.

Yours faithfully,
Peeter Vosu
Johannes de Jong
By email

A grandparent's love

From Mr Peter Hall

SIR - What a coincidence that, in the wake of the Pope's words (Report, July 31) urging prayers for grandparents to encourage their educational role in passing on their Faith to their grandchildren, my late wife's - Nicole Hall - three books about her Catholic faith, From Granny with Love, which she wrote for our grandchildren are expected to be available in the autumn.

They cover Confession, the life of Jesus and confirmation and also include stories of people struggling to lead a Christian life. Further details from: info@fromgrannywithlove.com.

Yours faithfully,
Peter Hall
Bovingdon, Herts

The dangers of a softer stance on suicide

From Mr Jim Allen

SIR - I see that the bishops' conference Day for Life is "aware of the complex causes that lie behind suicide" and implies that some may still be saved (Report, July 17).

While I am very much in favour of showing compassion to those in the terrible temptation to suicide, or to any other deadly sin for that matter, I doubt the wisdom of spelling out publicly the conjecture that God, knowing all the facts in a particular case, may still have mercy (grant salvation) to a soul after the irrevocable deed has been done.

A mind "clouded by confusion and despair" is only too willing to clutch any straw and "may have mercy" easily becomes will have mercy, especially if Church leaders appear to hint at this possibility.

"God's mercy is without end." But this must not be stretched too far; sins are by no means all swept under the carpet. Suicide is doubly serious in that afterwards, unlike other sins, there is no chance to repent. A paedophile or a murderer can go to Confession and amend their lives but not the suicide.

A presumptuous trust in God's mercy is a risk too far.

Is a soul in the blackness of this temptation unable even to make a weak cry, be it never so feeble, to God for help? And will not God respond? If not, we can all despair.

God may indeed, for all we know, let certain souls escape hell after killing themselves, but for some top Church leaders to air the possibility that some may get away with it cannot but weaken potential suicides in their dire struggle. Doubtless the anti-Catholic media will twist things and use headlines such as "Vatican says suicide no longer a sin". This could not but advance the culture of death and would be meat and drink to the euthanasia lobby.

Traditional severe anathemas served the potential suicide much better than the modern tendency to dumb down sin. The secular view is that there is no such thing as sin at all. Talk of God's mercy after suicide is best kept between the parish priest and relatives in private.

Yours faithfully,
Jim Allen
Torquay, Devon

The Spirit is not confined to the Vatican

From Mr Philip Butler

SIR - Don McGovern (Letters, July 24) seems to include me among "modernists" who loathe the miraculous and reject the Resurrection. In my letter of July 17 I merely asked why Bishop O'Donoghue should replace belief in the Resurrection as the central tenet of Catholic faith with acceptance of the papacy's ban on contraception.

I cannot speak for the views of millions worldwide as Mr McGovern does, but it is clear that in this country many, probably a majority of Catholics have rejected this view of contraception for the last 40 years or more - hardly "the latest moral fashion". I am not saying they are right to do so. I can only say that they are just as much the Church as popes and bishops and therefore should be listened to. This teaching has not been received: in what sense can it be called the teaching of the Church? I drew attention to the unresolved question this raises about its authority.

The Church has several times had to revise its understanding of its own faith in the light of new developments in what we call the secular world, eg advances in science. It would seem therefore that the operation of the Holy Spirit is not confined to the corridors of the Vatican. Why should the Spirit not be speaking to us through the secular world of today? Again, I do not say that he is, only that we should listen far more before pronouncing.

Whenever I talk to non-Catholics I am aware of the deep revulsion they often feel for the Catholic Church, what they see as its arrogance, its inhumanity and the cynical hypocrisy of its leaders, saying one thing when they know its people do something else.

The Church does not only exist so that its members can congratulate themselves on being loyal to the Pope. It exists to serve the world. In its current state it is doing so very badly. Mr McGovern may not be concerned about that; as a faithful Catholic, I am.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Butler
London NW10

We need to be enriched by the glories of the Orthodox Church

From Mr Richard Ashton

SIR - Henry McGrath (Letters, July 24) does well to remind us of the many ways in which Orthodoxy can enrich Roman Catholicism: her pure, intense and glorious liturgy; her awareness of fasting as an instrument of bodily prayer; her theology deeply rooted in Scripture, the Fathers and authentic tradition; and above all, her urgent spirituality which reaches into every corner of daily living.

In these ways and others it is easy to see how many of the ills which afflict the western Church could be corrected by Orthodox teaching and practice: superficially at least, our liturgy has become protestantised, focusing on the community of the faithful rather than the object of faith. Fasting has become trivialised, or undervalued as "mortification of the flesh". Large numbers of nominal Catholics feel free to proclaim their individual version of the deposit of faith and its attendant morality, while remaining Catholic. So much of Catholicism as practised in the congregations and schools of England, France and Germany seems to have more to do with habit than with the one true religion, the religion of the heart.

But now is the hour and history cannot be forgotten or remade. For a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire the western Church, for better or worse, provided the only institutional framework for the preservation of civilisation in Europe. There was villainy, abuse and the corruptions of power, but also, on a massive scale, practical concern for the needs of poor people. If at times some prelates and priests failed dismally in their duty, many others have taken the Gospel to every corner of the earth. I suggest that it is this embeddedness in the fallen world which has determined the strengths and weaknesses of the western Church. It is not fanciful to suggest that the dismal music endured week by week in many parishes has the same source and inspiration as the heroic achievements of numberless missionaries and artists - namely, the sometimes misguided impulse to engage anew with secular culture.

Pope John Paul II wrote of the two lungs of the one Church, and there is no doubt that the big bad West needs all that the leaner, purer East can offer. However, the See of Peter is the only conceivable locus of Christian reconciliation and unity, and there is much we can offer in return, not least our energy, our rich traditions, our worldwide presence, and our structural openness.

Theologically our differences are vanishingly slight. We must learn to value the merits of the other and acknowledging our own shortcomings, rather than the reverse, and pray that those who carry the burden of re-establishing the unity to which Our Lord calls us may find the means to do so while respecting the integrity of all parties.

Yours faithfully,
Richard Ashton
Maidstone, Kent

Support fragile love

From the director of the department for pastoral affairs of the Diocese of Westminster

SIR - It is almost futile to pass comment on the remarks made by the chief executive of Marriage Care during his speech to the annual meeting of Quest (Report, July 17). He is of course entitled to his opinions, however erroneous.

May I therefore take this opportunity to draw to your readers' attention the work of Retrouvaille (from the French for "rediscover"), which the Diocese of Westminster will be supporting this year. Retrouvaille is described as a "lifeline for troubled marriages".

The Holy Father addressed the Retrouvaille association worldwide gathering in October 2008, calling members "custodians of a greater hope that troubled couples need and have lost along the way" and said that through Retrouvaille they can "rediscover the hidden treasure of their marriage, the fire left buried beneath the ashes".

Many a marriage has been miraculously saved and healed through Retrouvaille weekends and the diocese will be helping to host a weekend from October 23-25 at the Ramada Jarvis Hotel in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Details can be found at www. retrouvaille.org.uk. Research shows that couples who complete the whole programme have a more than 70 per cent chance of being together two years later in a satisfying relationship - even when they have been living apart before the weekend through either separation or even divorce.

Surely this is the authentic Catholic pastoral response to fragile spousal love, as well as solidly proven marriage enrichment to be found in initiatives such as Celebrate Love, Marriage Encounter, Teams of Our Lady, Couples for Christ, etc, and even www.alexanderhouse.org, which I hope to introduce at some point in the future.

Yours faithfully,
Edmund Adamus
London SW1

Doubting the mission

From Fr Ian Ker

SIR - Tom McIntyre (Letters, July 24) says that my assertion that "Vatican II was deafeningly silent about ... evangelisation" is "inaccurate, of course". I was, of course, using a slight rhetorical exaggeration to make a point. Apart from the decree on foreign missions, the index to the Flannery English translation of the conciliar documents only lists four references to evangelisation.

Not surprisingly, therefore, in the years immediately following the Council missionaries began to doubt their mission in the light of the Council's teaching on the presence of truth in other religions, while in this country

it was not uncommon for priests to discourage conversions as being against the Council's teaching on ecumenism. In 1975 Pope Paul VI responded to this imbalance with Evangelii Nuntiandi, anticipating Pope John Paul II's call for a new evangelisation.

However, as I explain in my CTS pamphlet The New Movements: A Theological Introduction, I do believe that the first two chapters of the Council's Constitution on the Church provide the theological basis for the new evangelisation.

I am not sure that I understand the import of Mr McIntyre's series of rhetorical questions that are apparently aimed at me. But I can assure him that I no more "belittle" Vatican II than does Benedict XVI with his "hermeneutic of continuity", an interpretation that my article argued would certainly have been adopted by Newman.

Yours faithfully,
Ian Ker
Burford, Oxon

A spelling mistake

From Mr Chris Miles

SIR - My treatment of Jehovah's Witnesses (Letters, July 24) is to explain that "Jehovah" is a spelling mistake made by someone who couldn't read Hebrew properly, eg Luther or Tyndale (Bishop Challoner's note on Exodus 6:3 in the Douay version explains this), and that a spelling mistake can't be the basis of a religion, especially as it is such an ugly word, and that in the Masoretic or pointed Hebrew text the name of God was never intended to be pronounced as written.

I have found that this argument scares them off, but so far I have been unable to convince my fellow-Catholics.

Yours faithfully,
Chris Miles
By email

Humanae Vitae: No painless primrose path

From Mr Alastair McCallion

SIR - Sadly, Philip Butler seems deeply hurt (Letters, July 17), but his contention that Bishop O'Donoghue is seeking to "replace the Resurrection of Christ with rejection of contraception as the central tenet of Catholic faith" is plain wrong: a litmus test acts as an indicator, not as a dogma.

Mr Butler might prefer to replace obedience to the consistent Magisterium with conformity to the cogitations of a commission or to the opinions of "most of the people of the Church" - to replace Pope with committee, papal encyclical with referendum. Yet it was to Peter that Christ said: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep", and to Peter that he gave the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the disciples - even St Paul, despite their disagreements - accepted Peter's primacy.

I wonder if Mr Butler has read Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Humanae Vitae, either in Latin or in the (admittedly sometimes laboured) English translation. If he had spent reflection time and prayer upon it he might agree with many (perhaps I should not claim most) of the "people of the Church" that it is an inspired, prophetic document. Its title ("Of Human Life") indicates immediately that it deals, ambitiously, with more than just contraception, but the regulation of birth is treated compassionately and in context. It is not an easy read, nor does it claim to point a painless primrose path - sacrifice is demanded of us, as it has always been.

Thank God for the generosity of those men and women who, sacrificing the joys and compensations of married family life, dedicate themselves to the service of his Church, helping to bring us the support Christ promised: "Come to me, all you who ... are heavily burdened, and I will refresh you." To dismiss priests as "celibate men... arrogantly indifferent" to the difficulties of those of us who have chosen the blessings of marriage and family betrays an arrogance far greater than any I can detect in Bishop O'Donoghue's retreat address. Besides, was not Jesus a "celibate man" too?

Yours faithfully,
Alastair McCallion
Baldock, Hertfordshire

Missing teaching

From Mrs Daphne McLeod SIR - Many anxious Catholics are now living with the knowledge that their grown-up children are not practising their religion and their grandchildren are not even baptised. This is not teenage revolt; this is a breakdown due to ignorance. So I am surprised to see Archbishop Vincent Nichols (Interview, July 24) suggesting that all parents need to do to bring their lapsed children back to the faith nowadays is to continue practising the faith themselves. I wish it was as easy as that.

The Archbishop says lapsed sixth-formers he knew in the 1970s returned to the faith when they were older. But, with all respect, he is not comparing like with like. Sixth-formers in the 1970s would have started school in the 1950s or early 1960s, well before the disastrous catechetical revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This means they would have been taught the faith for at least some of their school years so they had something to return to in later life.

Catholic school leavers lapsing in the 1980s and up to the present day have not been taught the faith in its entirety, and as the Holy Father says: "To teach the faith partially brings it into contempt." Nothing will bring them back except prayer and sacrifice because nothing can restore the teaching they missed out on, through no fault of their own.

Remember, the Holy Father, speaking as Cardinal Ratzinger in October 2003, warned us, as he launched the commission who would write the Compendium of the Catechism: "There exists now an enormous religious ignorance... in the times after the Council it is evident that we have not succeeded in transmitting in a concrete way the contents of the Faith."

However, we can do something besides pray. We can ensure the present generation of Catholic school pupils do not lapse out of ignorance by furnishing schools with sound religious textbooks like the American Faith and Life series. We could also bring back the annual religious inspections which check the faith is being effectively taught and is properly understood by pupils.

Yours faithfully,
Daphne McLeod
Great Bookham, Surrey

Swine flu at Mass

From Dr John Newton

SIR - Why do the Catholic Church's guidelines on preventing the spread of swine flu (Report, July 24) envisage the chalice and oral Communion being prohibited as a first stage and shaking hands at the sign of peace only being later precluded as a second stage?

Surely this means that initially you could be receiving the Host on a hand that has just made contact with several others - some of which could (potentially) be infected? Wouldn't this mean you're more likely to contract the virus?

Yours faithfully,
John Newton
Cheam, Surrey

A biblical feline

From Fr A G H Attree

SIR - Mary Kenny (July 17) declares that there is no mention of cats in the Bible. Mary, how about Baruch 6:21?

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Attree
Our Lady and St James,
Worsbrough, South Yorkshire

'Cleansing' Iraq

From Dr Joseph Seferta

SIR - Allow me to express my gratitude to you for highlighting the plight of the Christians of Iraq at present. As if they haven't had enough brutal persecution by Muslim fanatics since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, resulting in hundreds of deaths and many thousands fleeing the country, yet another wave of attacks on churches has just taken place (Report, July 17).

These ancient Christians (the majority being Chaldean Catholics) trace their roots back to the preaching of St Thomas the Apostle in Mesopotamia, Persia and India. They have suffered many persecutions under the rule of the Parthians, the Arabs, the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks, until reduced to a small minority. But they have always persevered in their faith and been loyal to their country. Now they are being treated as enemies by the fanatics who want to cleanse Iraq of its non-Muslim population and turn it into a theocracy.

Neither the American nor the Iraqi authorities have done anything to protect them, apart from mere words and promises.

Futhermore, the secular press in this country does not show any interest in the religious cleansing of Iraq's Christians. Political pressure is urgently needed, therefore, but above all fervent prayers by all of us.

Yours faithfully,
Joseph Seferta
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

Other pilgrim paths

From the managing director of Pax Travel

SIR - While delighted to see that you have recognised the importance of the Oberammergau Passion Play (to be performed between May and October 2010), I was disappointed that Conal Gregory (Feature, July 17) did not mention the packages that have been put together by English Catholic tour operators such as Pax Travel and Tangney Tours, which include a performance of the Passion Play as part of a pilgrimage holiday, including visits to Germany's major Catholic shrine of Altötting, called by Pope Benedict "one of the hearts of Europe".

Among our many pilgrimage itineraries, one of our favourite ones is the pilgrimage that we have designed for Bishop Christopher Budd, "In The Steps of St Boniface" (the patron saint of the Diocese of Plymouth), which includes a stay in Fulda, renowned for its monastery founded in 744 by Boniface who did so much to establish true religious life in this part of Germany.

I sincerely hope that your readers will consider the pilgrimage tour operators when deciding to book their visit to the play, as well as looking at the brochures of the equity release, and home and motor insurance specialists SAGA, along with their subsidiary, Interchurch Travel (which will apparently be operating its first tours for many years).

Yours faithfully,
Philip Dean
London NW1

Wilde was a man in constant search of God

From Mr Martin Blake

SIR - Regarding the interesting references to Oscar Wilde in the July 24 issue, it seems that an Italian writer has made a new study of Wilde and that L'Osservatore Romano has reviewed it favourably.

It surprised me greatly that neither your reporter nor the writer of the leading article mentioned Joseph Pearce's biography The Unmasking of Oscar Wilde, published by Harper-Collins in 2000 and by Ignatius Press in 2001. This outstanding study gave an entirely fresh slant to Wilde that the new Italian book appears to be following.

Whereas previously Wilde had been seen by his far from satisfactory biographers as either a licentious Victorian decadent or else as the first modern homosexual liberationist, Pearce showed that in fact he was a brilliant literary artist constantly in search of God. For most of his life he wore a mask which Pearce cleverly strips away, and which he finally shed after his two years in Reading Gaol.

It is far and away the most penetrating study of Wilde's life and writing, by one of the outstanding biographers of our time. It is also a deeply Catholic interpretation.

Yours faithfully,
Martin Blake
Glastonbury, Somerset

An Orthodox Christian perspective on Vatican II and the SSPX

From Mr Henry McGrath

SIR - Orthodox hymns often sing of the balance between Mount Calvary and Mount Tabor, between the Crucifixion and the Transfiguration. On the one mountain, Christ is sacrificed for us; on the other, He gave us a foretaste of our deification, heralding that, like the Apostles, we would see the Divine Light of God, that we would become "partakers of the Divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). In the words of St Irenaeus, St Athanasius and many other Church Fathers: "God became man so that we might become God."

As Orthodox, we often wonder whether the balance between the two mountains has been lost in the Roman Catholic Church. Has too great an emphasis been placed on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, and not enough on its transformational nature? Do Roman Catholics focus enough on the fact that the Holy Gifts are given to us to deify us, to return us to the likeness of God, which we lost at the Fall? Have they lost sight of the healing nature of the Mass?

Perhaps Vatican II was an attempt to rebalance the excessive focus on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, in particular the notion that a wrathful Father must be propitiated by the agonising death of His Son. In this it was correct. However, it did not correct the original imbalance by re-focusing on the transformational nature of the Mass. The focus on sacrifice was taken away, and left only a void.

In order for the Gifts to be effective in transforming us, we need to make our own sacrifice, and we need to unite this sacrifice with that made by Christ. This requires that we prepare properly for the Mass: we need to pray hard, especially on the evening preceding the Mass. We need to fast properly during the week: Orthodoxy still observes the canons of the early Church which require fasting from all animal products on all Wednesdays and Fridays; perhaps Rome could re-introduce a proper pre-Communion fast and re-invigorate the Friday meat fast. We need to struggle constantly to remind ourselves that we are about to receive the actual body and blood of Our Lord.

If they are received unworthily, the Holy Gifts will burn us, as St Paul warned the Corinthians. But if they are received in humility, they will heal us. There is no place for a casual approach.

The Society of St Pius X may well be right that something was lost at Vatican II (Feature, July 3), and that the holy nature of the Mass was undermined. However, holiness is an inner state that is cultivated by personal struggle.

There is a complex interaction between theology, liturgy, and this personal struggle. Each strand must be correct, and liturgical reform can never be the answer in isolation. A theological balance must also be struck between the sacrificial nature of the Mass, and its healing nature.

As an Orthodox, I wish you well on your journey.

Yours faithfully,
Henry McGrath
By email


From Dom Aldhelm Cameron-Brown OSB

SIR - Fifty years ago, when I became a Catholic, I was taught that the sacrifice of Christ, his death and resurrection (for you cannot separate them - the resurrection is, as it were, God's answer to Christ's death) are made present to us at Mass under the sacramental signs. Moreover, it is the risen Christ who gives himself to us in Holy Communion as an integral part of the whole sacrifice. I do not believe our faith has changed since then.

Yours faithfully,
Aldhelm Cameron-Brown
Prinknash Abbey, Gloucester


From Mr Francis Beswick

SIR - Your letter columns have recently included letters on the subject of the correct theology of the Eucharist. The letter-writers seem to overlook the theological truth that the Eucharist is a profound mystery that transcends adequate description. Anyone attempting to describe it is like someone standing on the edge of an ocean of truth, knowing that he can but dip into the shallows.

The Eucharist is profoundly linked to the mystery of God, creation, and the Church. Is it any wonder that no theology can ever come near to encompassing it? I do suggest, therefore, that as all theology is inadequate in the face of this mystery we should not be too concerned about whether or not the Eucharist should give prominence to the resurrection as well as to the death of Christ. In the Eucharist we remember the Lord's death, but it is the risen Lord with whom we communicate.

Yours faithfully,
Francis Beswick
Stretford

No deafening silence

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - Fr Ian Ker (Comment. July 10) says "Vatican II was deafeningly silent about... evangelism". This is inaccurate, of course. Lumen Gentium, Apostolicam Actuositatem, Unitatis Redintegratio, Christus Dominus and Ad Gentes all make their evangelical points, the seeds of Pope John Paul II's initiatives. But what does Fr Ker think Vatican II was about?

For three centuries Mother Church's only address to the world had been to condemn the world. At Vatican II she equipped herself at last for mission again. She reminded bishops of what a bishop is and the laity what a lay person is, and of their vocations in Christ "that through Him all men might believe". She gave them the means and language to speak not only to the world but to the rest of Christ's Body.

Would Newman's "instinct for the essential", as Louis Bouyer called it, confuse the obedient striving Church with factions that actually sow confusion? Would he disregard the Church's instructions? (Newman, Anglican priest with Catholic mind, still obeyed the Protestant rubric.) Would his historical awareness lead him to belittle a General Council of the Church - or rather to work for its understanding as he did after Vatican I? Would his postscript to Vatican II not be his postscript to Development?:

"Put not from you what you have here found; regard it not as mere matter of present controversy; set not out resolved to refute it, and looking about for the best way of doing so... Wrap not yourself round in the associations of years past, nor determine that to be truth which you wish to be so, nor make an idol of cherished anticipations. Time is short, eternity is long."

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset

A dash of holy water

From the Revd Michael Galloway SSC

SIR - I read with some amusement the correspondence regarding Jehovah Witnesses (July 10). I was perpetually (it would seem) pestered by them at the front door of my rectory when in Essex, despite my asking them not to call.

One day, on returning from a funeral, I had placed my portable holy water sprinkler on the hall table. The doorbell rang and there they stood saying that, like me, they were students of the Bible. I politely told them that I had not the time for any discussion but would send them on their way with a blessing, which I duly did, including a liberal sprinkling. Of course, they regard the Trinity as satanic and anything such as holy water as the Devil's brew. The two women ran screaming down the path, vigorously brushing their clothes. Needless to say, I was never bothered again. I thoroughly recommend this method.

Yours faithfully,
Michael Galloway
Chard, Somerset

The wrong John

From Miss Katherine Gray

SIR - David Twiston Davies's review of Stories by John Buchan (July 17) was a pleasant reminder of Buchan's books enjoyed in the past. The photograph accompanying the article though was of his son, the second Baron Tweedsmuir (also John). He was a very active member of the House of Lords and a businessman. While hardly known as a writer, he did publish autobiographical works that revealed his love of the countryside and commitment to conservation.

His wife Priscilla, also pictured, was an MP for 20 years before joining her husband in the Lords as a life baroness.

Yours faithfully,
Katherine Gray
By email

The demise of a Rite

From Mr Winston P Lewis

SIR - Fr Christopher Benyon (Letters, July 17) infers that the Council of Trent "suppressed" the Sarum Rite. His knowledge of Church history seems poor.

The Council Fathers allowed for traditional rites. Any Rite that had been in existence for 200 years was allowed to carry on, eg Carmelite, Dominican, Ambrosian etc.

The Sarum Rite was well over 200 years old, and would have probably survived if the Reformation in England and Wales had not taken place. Thus events beyond the control of Trent saw its demise.

Yours faithfully,
Winston Lewis
Llanelli, Dyfed

Sticking to tradition

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - We should all rejoice that Pope Benedict XVI has approved the miraculous healing of Deacon Jack Sullivan at the intercession of Cardinal Newman (Report, July 10).

Since his election to the See of Peter Pope Benedict has underlined the difference between beatification and canonisation, which had been blurred since the Second Vatican Council, by not presiding over any beatifications of his pontificate to date.

Essentially, canonisation permits universal veneration of a person. Beatification, however, permits restricted veneration to a local church or region and religious community. As such, since 1646 and Pope Urban VIII, the pope has delegated either the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints or a local bishop to preside at the rite (after which the person is entitled to be styled Blessed). Pope Paul VI broke tradition by presiding at the beatification of Maximilian Kolbe on October 17 1971 and Pope John Paul II continued the practice.

Thus it may be that Cardinal Newman may beatified whether in Rome or in Birmingham (or Westminster) by Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

While it is accepted that the Holy Father has a deep affection for Cardinal Newman it seems likely that Pope Benedict will stick with his return to tradition. I note that on October 9 2005 the beatification of the "Lion of Münster" Cardinal Clemens August Graf von Galen was presided over by Cardinal Saraiva Martins, the then prefect of the Congregation for Causes of the Saints. This great German cardinal elevated by Pope Pius XII stood against the tide of Nazism.

Of course, all things are in the hands of the Holy Father.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

No Ark in Ethiopia

From Brother John Barry

SIR - In his Vatican Notebook (June 26) Edward Pentin informed us of the claim of the Orthodox Patriarch of Ethiopia that the Ark of the Covenant, which housed the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, was in his country and had been so for 3,000 years.

However, he was honest enough to say that he had no proof it was the genuine ark. Indeed some kind soul should nicely direct the good patriarch to Revelations 11:19: "Then God's temple in heaven was opened and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple." The Ark of the Covenant is in heaven.

Yours faithfully,
John Barry
Abbaye Notre Dame de Scourmont,
Forges, Belgium

Why English dioceses aren't granted Arms

From Mr Peter Drummond-Murray of Mastrick

SIR - Fr Mark Elvins is an old friend of mine and I gratefully seize this opportunity to correspond with him in public in reply to his letter (July 10).

The reason that the College of Arms does not recognise Catholic dioceses is not because they are corporations sole although such do suffer certain disadvantages in respect of holding property.

While the Catholic Relief Act, 1839, did leave Catholics with some legal discrimination, the root of the problem is Cardinal Wiseman's proclamation re-establishing the hierarchy in 1850. This delivered "from the Flaminian Gate" was triumphalist in tone and resulted in a cry of Papal Aggression.

This resulted in the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 prohibiting Catholic Sees from using territorial styles. It was a dead letter from the start. It never applied to Scotland because of the existence of the Episcopal Church there. The Catholic hierarchy in Scotland was not restored until much later. Common sense would have shown that a Catholic bishop had no more authority outside his see than does an Episcopal one.

The Act was repealed in 1871 but it was stated that the use of territorial styles by Catholic Sees has no legal force and that such styles fall within the jurisdiction of the Crown. On these grounds the Kings of Arms will not grant Arms to Catholic dioceses. No such disability applies to Catholic schools such as Downside. The result is that all Catholic sees in England use Arms that break the Law of Arms in that country. As this is not enforced an unfortunate situation has arisen.

Meanwhile, in Scotland all Catholic dioceses have been granted Arms with the exception of Galloway. All have mitre, crozier and the appropriate cross. Primates have the pallium. It is one of the foibles of our bishops to ensign their personal Arms with a hat that they do not possess instead of a mitre that they do.

Is this not a subject that should have the attention of a Catholic Member of Parliament?

Yours faithfully,
Peter Drummond-Murray
By email

Franco was not to blame for priests' deaths

From Mr Graham Moorhouse

SIR - The secular Left, a creed that is responsible for the murder of untold millions of innocent people throughout the 20th century, both born and unborn (and its modernist allies within the Church), will never forgive General Franco, a devout Catholic, for having stood up to them and defeated them. Consequently, as children of the father of lies they will continue to churn out their black propaganda ad nauseam (Report, July 17).

The simple truth is that General Franco was not given overall command of Nationalist forces until September 12 1936. Shortly after Cardinal Gomá, the then Primate of Spain and a Franco supporter, vigorously protested at the execution of Basque priests. Notwithstanding the fact that these were men who had supported the murderous anti-Catholic republic in exchange for an endorsement of Basque nationalism (and consequently were heartily despised by the majority of Spanish Catholics), Franco responded swiftly, and on October 26 ordered these executions ended, and his order was obeyed.

Thus it would be more accurate to say that Franco, once he had control of the situation, used his authority to bring an abrupt end to these executions, rather than that he was responsible for them.

Yours faithfully,
Graham Moorhouse
Dartford

After Vatican II, 'Jones followed Jones'

From Mr Don McGovern

SIR - Philip Butler (Letters, July 17) appears to find some dichotomy between the resurrection and the Church's teaching on artificial contraception. There is none. The resurrection proves the truth of Christ's claim to be God. Because Christ was God Catholics accept the authority of the Church He founded, and to the leaders of which Christ said: "Who hears you, hears me."

Modernists, who led the post-conciliar charge against the Church's teaching on artificial contraception, loathe the miraculous every bit as much as they do the Church's moral teachings. Consequently, they also reject the resurrection, teaching that Christ's body remains in the tomb.

Neither is it true, as Mr Butler would want us to believe, that all Catholics reject the Church's teaching on artificial contraception; millions of Catholics worldwide embrace the Church's moral teachings joyfully. Indeed, rejection is notably concentrated significantly in the affluent West.

If all the Church is required to do is endorse the latest moral consensus, one must question why we need the Church in the first place. People like Mr Butler are always eager to credit the Holy Ghost with responsibility for the latest moral fashion, but only of course when they are personally in sympathy with it. Thus the Holy Ghost is pressed into service as a mere rubber stamp for their own inner light. To quote Chesterton: "When Jones follows the inner light, Jones follows Jones."

Yours faithfully,
Don McGovern
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

It is not true that you could once go anywhere in the world and understand the Mass

From Fr Christopher Benyon

SIR - A number of people kindly responded to the letter I wrote (August 17 2007) about the numbers of people wanting Tridentine Masses. Since then there has been the Motu Proprio allowing its greater use. I made a statement to the 650 people coming to Mass here that I was happy to use the Rite if people wanted it. I had one person ask for it. This reflects my experience in a former parish of some 450 Mass attendance where, with permission, we had a Tridentine Mass whenever there was a fifth Sunday of the month. Then, after an initial 40-plus present, in two years the numbers diminished to about 12 who were gracious enough to say that I should not put myself to the trouble for so few.

The only cases of parishes where it has been introduced that I know of, are where it is the priest's preference, not the people's.

The Tridentine Rite was the Rite of Mass used in Rome at the time of the Council of Trent as revised by the order of Pope Pius V. It was imposed on the Western Church, replacing a number of more local traditional rites such as our own Sarum Rite. It was not imposed on (and has never been used by) the Uniate Churches, which have never used Latin (and have always had married priests).

So all statements that you could go anywhere in the world and understand the Mass were never true; likewise, any idea that somehow the Tridentine Rite was some sort of infallible Rite which could never be replaced because of the edict of Pius V. To quote the Bull Quo Primum itself, the New Roman Rite was to be used by all Rites "saving only those in which the practice of saying Mass differently was granted over 200 years ago simultaneously with the Apostolic See's institution and confirmation of the Church, and those in which there has prevailed a similar custom followed continuously for a period of not less than 200 years; in which cases We in no wise rescind their prerogatives or customs aforesaid" (paragraph 5). Like all such edicts concerning the Liturgy since, it applied to most of the western part of the Church, not the Church Universal.

The Second Vatican Council sought to return to the traditional practice of the Church allowing the whole Church to develop the Liturgy, within certain limits, according to the commitment, devotion, reverence and needs of the different peoples who are the Church. As Pius XII wrote in Mediator Dei (50): "The sacred liturgy does, in fact, include divine as well as human elements. The former, instituted as they have been by God, cannot be changed in any way by men. But the human components admit of various modifications, as the needs of the age, circumstance and the good of souls may require, and as the ecclesiastical hierarchy, under guidance of the Holy Spirit, may have authorised. This will explain the marvellous variety of Eastern and Western rites."

The Liturgy is "the work of the people", not the practices of one part of the Church, and least of all the preferences of this or that priest or what I think is good for the people. I pray I may never be guilty of either.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Benyon
St Mary of the Angels,
Worthing, West Sussex

Bishop O'Donoghue: Is he right to speak of a Catholic litmus test?

From Philip J Butler

SIR - Your headline (Report, July 3) says that Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue believes "disobedience is harming the Church" and the accompanying article says that he thinks agreeing with the ban on contraception is the "litmus test of the acceptance of obedience in the Church". By what right does the bishop replace the Resurrection of Christ with rejection of contraception as the central tenet of Catholic faith? Is he just as much a pick-and-choose Catholic as he would no doubt accuse those with disagree with him of being?

The derivation of obedience from a Latin word meaning "to listen" indicates that obedience in the Church should not be a matter of a self-selected elite telling everyone else what to think and do, but all of us together seeking to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. For over 40 years most of the people of the Church have agreed with its own pontifical commission in finding that that the sinfulness of contraception cannot be proved.

In choosing to disobey that voice, not because he disagreed with it but because of the fears stirred up in him by his curial bureaucrats, Paul VI created a crisis for authority in the Church that has persisted ever since, has never been resolved and scarcely even addressed. Subsequent popes and bishops who will not address the issue are, more than anyone, responsible for the low estimation in which people at large hold the Catholic Church and which so corrosively undermines its credibility and witness, seeing that they simply find it to be thoroughly hypocritical when its leaders insist on teaching which most of its members reject. In this sense it is bishops like Patrick O'Donoghue whose disobedience is harming the Church.

It is no surprise that the bishop's views were expressed at a retreat for priests. Only celibate men who do not themselves have to undergo the trials as well as joys of childbirth and the raising of families could be so arrogantly indifferent to those who do. A year celebrating priesthood as a thing apart hardly bodes well for the Church.

Yours faithfully,
Philip Butler
London NW10


From Mr Jack Hoar

SIR - Bishop O'Donoghue (Report, July 3) has delivered a devastating indictment of his fellow English bishops and it should not pass unnoticed. He writes: "I don't know why my Fit For Mission document hit a wall of silence among the bishops in this country. All I did was reiterate the teaching of the Church but this has been treated as unacceptable and unspeakable. Why?"

He answers himself:_"We have witnessed a wholesale rejection of the Church's perennial teaching against contraception. This is the litmus test of acceptance of obedience in the Church... If we reject [the Pope's] teaching on this matter we are saying we know better than the successor of Peter! Is this tenable in a priest?"

The answer is no. The teaching of the Church stands or falls as a whole. Reject one teaching and everything else is questionable - and it is already being questioned.

For 40 years the bishops have failed to support the teaching on contraception for three reasons:
a) They know the teaching is unpopular among the laity and they do not wish to be unpopular;
b) It is a bone of contention with the Church of England and they regard ecumenism as of the first importance;
c) They regard themselves as political liberals and are aware of the animosity the subject inspires among their fair-weather friends in Westminster and the media.

In the last 40 years I have not heard a single bishop publicly proclaim, let alone support, the teaching. As a result of their silence the bishops have become increasingly reluctant to speak out on related topics such as IVF, embryo experimentation and homosexuality.

Let us hope and pray that our new leader at Westminster will have the courage his predecessors lacked.

Yours faithfully,
Jack Hoar
Wilmslow, Cheshire

Keeping the flame

From Miss Ruth Yendell

SIR - It is inaccurate to state (Report, July 3), that the Bridgettine order "was obliterated by the Reformation" and that the new convent of "re-founded" Bridgettines at Iver Heath was "the first in England since Henry VIII dissolved... Sion Abbey".

In fact, the Sisters of the original Syon Abbey at Twickenham left the country at the Reformation and continued as an English house in exile, first in the Netherlands, then in France, and finally at Lisbon, until the repeal of the Penal Laws in England in the 19th century allowed them to return to this country, settling at Chudleigh in Devon.

At the beginning of the 20th century they moved a few miles to South Brent because of increasing numbers of vocations.

During their exile they insisted on remaining an English house and took only applicants from England, so as not to lose their unique identity. Since they were founded by Henry V, they have been able for years to claim to be the longest surviving religious house in this country and the only one which, in fact, did survive the Reformation. They are, however, strictly enclosed contemplatives, which was the wish of St Bridget when she founded the order in the 15th century.

The new, "re-founded" Sisters have a different character since they are not purely contemplative but offer hospitality and often, I believe, work with the poor and the sick. While this is no doubt admirable, such a way of life is more in keeping with a direct imitation of St Bridget of Sweden's personal life in Rome in her later years than with the character that she envisaged for her order during her lifetime.

Sadly, Syon Abbey at South Brent is now dwindling for lack of vocations. But they should go down in history for their heroic survival over so many centuries. It is also worth mentioning that a few houses on the continent, in Spain, Germany and Holland, also survived the Reformation and were certainly keeping the original Bridgettine flame alight when I last knew about them, towards the end of the 20th century.

Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell
Exeter, Devon

Hidden abortions

From Valerie Gamble

SIR - The letter from Jean Keenan (June 5), in answer to your headline of May 29, "Surprise drop in abortion numbers", says "no statistics can be found as no one knows how many take the morning-after pill". I say no one knows how many take the contraceptive pill which can cause an abortion if one becomes pregnant.

Yours faithfully,
Valerie Gamble
Stroud, Glos

A new understanding

From Marlyn Hilliard

SIR - Profound thanks to Moyra Doorly (Feature, July 3) for challenging the "new understanding" of the Mass and Holy Eucharist. Surely the many manifestations of their de-sacralisation since Vatican II should have warned the Church.

What could symbolise this very grave erroneous understanding better than the removal of the Tabernacle from the centre altar in so many "re-ordered" churches?

Yours faithfully,
Marlyn Hilliard
Schull, West Cork

Pope Pius inspired anti-euthanasia protests

From Stephanie A Jefford

SIR - Edward Pentin is interesting on the continuing Cause for the beatification of Pius XII (Vatican Notebook, June 26).

Whenever the subject of that Pope's dilemma during World War II comes up, I am struck by how often post-war detractors (whether or not historians) conveniently overlook his opposition to the Nazi euthanasia programme, as evidenced by his prohibition of the direct taking of life of any physically disabled or mentally handicapped persons. This was issued on December 2 1940 and one might raise a credible claim that it gave an impetus to other, more specific protests elsewhere.

One thinks of the denunciation from the pulpit by the Blessed Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster, at the Lambertikirche on August 3 1941, and again that same month in writing from the Bishop of Limburg, addressed to the Reich Minister of the Interior and others apropos of the systematic murders then being carried out in the Hadamar Nursing Home.

These and other protests would return to haunt Hitler's Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, at the Nuremberg Trial when it emerged that it had, been he who had jurisdiction over nursing homes, hospitals and asylums and had known full well that insane, sick and elderly people were being systematically put to death. In its verdict against Frick the tribunal noted that "complaints of these murders reached him, but he did nothing to stop them".

Quite probably the guarded approach of Pius on the Holocaust stemmed, as was suggested by his wartime confidante Sister Pasqualina in 1998, from an awareness of the savage reprisals taken by the Nazis in Holland in the wake of efforts by bishops there in 1942.

Yours faithfully,
Stephanie Jefford
Ireland Wood, West Yorkshire

Unfurl the safety net

From Sister Gillian Price FC

SIR - In his new encyclical Pope Benedict writes: "The current crisis obliges us to replan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones" (Report, July 10).

One such positive initiative is the global fund to fight Aids, TB and malaria launched by the G8 in 2001, which has already saved four million lives.

Building on this positive experience Archbishop Tutu, Mohammed Yunus and other leaders have sent an open letter to the G8 calling for them to announce an agreement to launch a fully resourced global fund for education by the end of the year in order to provide coordinated international aid to basic education.

"Education," they say, "can leverage huge returns in women and children's health, nation and peace-building, and global economic development."

It is to be hoped that the Government will support this call in its Education for Development strategy on global education (promised by the end of 2009).

At this time of financial crisis it is more imperative than ever that the world community provide the "safety net of knowledge" to the world's poorest children and save them from paying with their lives for our financial mistakes.

Yours faithfully,
Gillian Price
St Elizabeth's Centre,
Much Hadham, Hertfordshire

A copy for a copy

From Mr Tim Field

SIR - When Jehovah's Witnesses call and proffer a copy of The Watchtower (Catholic Dilemmas, July 3), I agree to take one on condition that in return they accept a copy of The Catholic Herald (kept in a handy place close to the front door for this purpose). The interview is promptly terminated with honours even.

Yours faithfully,
Tim Field
Solihull, West Midlands

How the sign of the cross changed my life

From Christine Howitt Wilson

SIR - Reading Jack Scarisbrick's article (Comment, June 26) with my husband, and moved by his statement "when I make the sign of the cross, I am doing something truly stupendous", I felt I must share some events in my life.

On March 4 2008 I had a terrible stroke, and just found it impossible to cope. The frustration was unbearable and I kept saying to the Lord: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? How can I be any use when I cannot walk or stand?"

My grandson, Hugo, had given me the answer. On his first day at St Joseph's School, Aldershot, he came home to his mother, Sarah, thrilled, and said: "I learned the most wonderful thing at school today. Do you know that you can make anything a prayer if you say: 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen'? If you say that before opening a door or driving your car, and give it to Jesus with love in your heart and in your mind, it becomes a wonderful prayer. You do not have to read books or remember long prayers. It is so easy."

We went to see him that day and he picked up his red plastic chair, put it in front of his computer table and before starting to use the computer made the sign of the cross and said: "In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Then, some weeks later, when his baby brother, Noah, was born and placed in his lap, the first thing he did was to trace the sign of the cross on him. So I said: "Lord, that is what you want of me, that I give all the agony and frustration to you as a prayer, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

Yours faithfully,
Christine Howitt Wilson
Gillingham, Dorset

We'd like to hear homilies on the Catholic press and the King of Pop

From Mr Tony Galcius

SIR - I would like to hear a homily on the Catholic press (Comment, June 26). I am saddened by the numbers of Catholics who never read any Catholic paper or magazine. You only have to look at how many copies are left over at the back of the church from week to week. The parish I attend provides two copies of the Herald, the rest are sold at the church with which we are linked.

I think we are fortunate in this country to have a press which caters for all manner of opinion. According to our PP, the Herald is "Right-wing". Then there is the Tablet with its "liberal" tendencies, and the safer "centre" or "Left of centre" journals such as the Catholic Times and the Universe. An excellent historical and cultural magazine is Catholic Life, a monthly, professionally and attractively produced.

It should be pointed out that matters of moral concern, such as abortion, the demise of our adoption agencies, assisted suicide, etc, are only dealt with adequately and in accordance with the Church's teaching in the Catholic press. The ignorance of Catholic teaching is widespread among Catholics, even those who belong to various associations or societies.

Whatever the hue of any particular Catholic paper or magazine, therein you will find the Word of God: a reflection, the spiritual page, a saint's feast. If people cannot afford to buy a weekly paper let them be given one, because you can be sure that on the Monday or Tuesday after, or perhaps up to the end of the following week, any Catholic papers or magazines which are left over will end up in the dustbin.

Priests, please promote the Catholic press.

Yours faithfully,
Tony Galcius
By email


From the Revd Ian Shackleton SSC

SIR - The mindless and fatuous media coverage of Michael Jackson's death would have precipitated my terminal decline had it not been for Nick Thomas's column (Comment, July 3). His analysis of our current sorry situation is at once objective, unadorned and, above all, in every respect true.

Our "culture" (or lack of it) is characterised by the trivialisation of the serious and the weighty obsession with the trivial. A society which has been manipulated into believing that money, sex, football and "pop" define a fulfilled humanity is wide open to external control and is ultimately doomed.

Mr Thomas's article should be top of the list of "homilies I want to hear" - because it needs to be said and needs to be heard.

Yours faithfully,
Ian Shackleton
Walmer, Kent

The Rock of Truth

From Mr Alan Frost

SIR - Having had the good fortune to have worked in recent times, albeit very briefly, with Daphne McLeod, it was a great pleasure to see her comments on the education of the young (Letters, June 26). Heed her, she knows what she is talking about after a lifetime never swaying from the Rock of the Truth in her teaching the Faith to the young.

Apart from her important booklet Will Your Grandchildren Be Catholic? Mrs McLeod reaches an international audience of youngsters and parents through her programme on Mother Angelica's Catholic television channel EWTN (Sky 589). She is right about the absence of proper Catholic teaching books in the schools and the very questionable teaching that has taken place over the last

40 years, particularly in some junior schools. This we now see has led to such abuses as the enforcement by some priests and teachers of children receiving Holy Communion in the hand because they deliberately ignore the example and writings of the Holy Father, and the idea that it's "cool" to chant at Mass (the abuse of the Gloria) in the manner of football supporters on the terraces. We have had only one bishop (Lancaster) speak out about these shortcomings.

Like many plain-speaking, unpolitical, non-papacy-challenging believers in the Christ-appointed Petrine Church, Daphne McLeod personifies in her teaching what it is she is teaching about: love.

I hope I haven't made her blush.

Yours faithfully,
Alan Frost
Sandbach, Cheshire

Return to asceticism

From Mrs Dominie Stemp

SIR - Your description of St Josemaría Escrivá (Saint of the Week, June 26) is rather inaccurate. St Josemaría inherited his title quite legitimately. He hated the very idea of it. He most certainly did not "solicit" it. In fact he passed it straight to his only brother.

As for the "savage mortifications", mortifications have always been part of the Catholic faith and are a very common practice among religious. Even the Little Flower, St Thérèse, practiced painful mortifications (yes, she did lash herself), as was the norm. It was not regarded as anything odd, but expected.

Sadly, the very idea of mortifications is frowned upon in many Catholic circles. And who does a Friday penance anymore? We need to get back to asceticism. Then the soul will be elevated to the things of God.

Which biography of St Josemaría did the author read? The fact is two thirds of all bishops asked for his canonisation.

St Bernadette also suffered from a bad temper. Saints are human beings after all and suffer the same faults.

Yours faithfully,
Dominie Stemp
Burwash Common, East Sussex

A hedonistic lark

From Professor John Roberts

SIR - Like many of her generation Mary Kenny (Comment, June 26) asserts that paganism is in some way akin to the "modern religion" of the environment.

This is in fact a fallacy as evidenced by the huge amount of litter left at Stonehenge. Paganism is a hedonistic lark, a sub-section of the consumerist culture. Most litter is dropped by the 15-24 age group. So much for environmental awareness.

I agree, however, that paganism has never produced a Mozart "or even" as Mary Kenny says, a James Joyce.



Yours faithfully,
John Roberts
Wakefeld, West Yorkshire

From spray to jet

From Mr Kevin Heneghan

SIR - Cardinal Basil Hume, who drenched Paul Hill with holy water (Letters, July 3), wasn't the only priest with a considerable sense of humour. Jokes, however, can sometimes bounce. Soon after ordination a close friend, now departed, was celebrating Sunday Mass in his home parish church on a blazing hot day when he noticed Tom, a neighbour, home from the Navy with his new Portuguese bride, who spoke very little English. Tom was wearing a thin shirt, so, as he carried out the Asperges, my friend switched the aspergillum from spray to jet and landed an icy dollop in the middle of his chest. As he continued up the aisle, the church echoed to a shrill "Tomas! Tomas! What is 'b---er'?"

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens Merseyside

Catholics remain confused about the liturgy

From Mr Tom McIntyre

SIR - Aidan Nichols's luminous account (Features, July 3) of the hierarchical action of the Mass hardly squares with his curious beliefs about its reform. ("Of its nature liturgical life has to strike people as something that happens, not something that is planned.")

True, in the hands of bishops mediaeval liturgy changed piecemeal. Even the Creed spread slowly from use to use. But gradual organic development ("something that happens") ended when Trent, at the crisis, entrusted the liturgy to the Vatican. Henceforth the liturgy must develop by decree: "something planned". After three centuries fresh papal insights - Missal translations, daily Communion, praying the Mass, active participation, liturgical theology, Mediator Dei, the restored Easter Vigil, Mystici Corporis, lay readers, the pruned 1962 Missal - convinced a now educated faithful that the Mass's accidentals must change.

Nothing in Pope Paul's scrupulous implementation of the Church's liturgical consensus astonished the faithful. Astonishment had come earlier.

To learn that their "collection" was liturgy astonished: after that, the Offertory Procession made sense. To learn of their active part in the Mass astonished; after that, the vernacular made sense. To learn that they offered the sacrifice astonished; after that, witnessing the sacrificial acts made sense.

Pope Paul was not "imprudent". He had wise foresight, only not clairvoyance. He was braced for the devil's assault on the Spirit's work. He could not predict its forms. Lefevbrism was predictable. Not the calumnies of the Council minority. Misinterpretation was predictable. Not perversion to fit worldly concepts. Lingering subjectivism was predictable. Not priestly ego cults. Difficult exegesis was predictable. Not the collapse of religious education. Materialist pressures were predictable. Not the cult of anti-authoritarian self-indulgence - still less its silent assumption in traditionalist and modernist extremism.

Ought not Fr Nichols to justify the Holy Spirit's work to the confused rather than belittle it?

Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset


From Fr Thomas Crean OP

SIR - Moyra Doorly raises some important questions in her article, "Rome and the SSPX: a very puzzling dialogue" (Features, July 3). The Mass today is often described as the "making present of the Paschal Mystery". But according to classical theology, it is our Lord's sacrifice that is perpetuated in the Mass. The twofold consecration effects the sacramental separation of the Body and the Blood; Christ's immolation on the Cross is thus sacramentally continued.

But we don't say that in the Mass Christ's resurrection or ascension are sacramentally continued. So St Paul says that at Mass we "show forth the death of the Lord", not that we "show forth his death and resurrection". For this reason, it does seem problematic to define the Mass by means of the "Paschal Mystery", since this phrase apparently gives equal prominence to Christ's death and resurrection.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Crean
Holy Cross Priory,
Leicester

Correct the Arms

From Fr Mark Turnham Elvins OFM Cap

SIR - I would like to put in a plea for the correct representation of the arms of the new Archbishop of Westminster. He already has arms granted to him as Archbishop of Birmingham, but these are personal arms. The problem lies with the arms of the see of Westminster which are normally impaled (put side by side) with the personal arms of the archbishop.

In 1893 Cardinal Herbert Vaughan was desirous of having arms for his Diocese of Westminster, and was advised to have the same arms as Canterbury, but with the field changed to red instead of blue, in commemoration of the English martyrs. He thus petitioned Rome and on June 30 1894 Pope Leo XIII granted him the said arms for his diocese. The problem was that a Catholic diocese, in law, was not a corporation sole and therefore could not be granted arms. The arms of Catholic bishops, when lawfully borne, are therefore confined personal arms. There is however legal argument, put forward by a barrister, that Catholic dioceses are indeed corporations sole but this needs to be given a test case. The succession of the new Archbishop would present an ideal opportunity.

Some have complained that the arms granted to the Diocese of Westminster would look the same as Canterbury in monochrome, but if cross-hatching was employed a distinction could be made. Red is shown by vertical lines and blue by horizontal ones. What is not acceptable practice is to tinker with arms granted by Pope Leo XIII, as arms when granted by a reigning sovereign can only be changed by a re-grant.

Thus the late Archbishop Bruno Heim, who should have known better, had no right to change the head of the pastoral staff into a fleur de lys. What is worse is that in Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's arms the pastoral staff was completely removed. The use of the arms granted by Pope Leo demands that they be shown intact, with the pastoral staff behind the pallium, or dropped altogether.

Yours faithfully,
Mark Turnham Elvins
By email

Ignoring bad laws

From Mrs Rita Akerman

SIR - Following your two earlier reports and leading article (June 12) about the proposed Equality Bill, I am writing to support the views of Dom Cameron Brown OSB and Audrey and Paul Edwards (Letters, June 19).

Should this "proposed" legislation become law then our "proposed" response is simple - as suggested by your correspondents: the legislation should be ignored by all Catholic individuals and institutions. The proposed legislation currently under scrutiny is yet another example of the anti-Catholic attitude of society in general and some politicians in particular.

As you pointed out in your leading article, it demonstrates an ignorance of the fact that our Faith is "not for us an optional extra but a total orientation of our lives towards our Redeemer".

In fact, this latest development should encourage us to display and wear the symbols of our Faith more boldly - with pride, dignity and courage. After all, one of the Spiritual Works of Mercy is to instruct the ignorant. Images such as a crucifix, for example, can do just that.

The authorities could not bring us all to court or put us all in prison.

Yours faithfully,
Rita Akerman
Enfield, Middlesex

The homilies we'd love to hear: spiritual warfare, true humility and the nature of free will

From Margaret Dollas

SIR - Regarding Professor Jack Scarisbrick's article (June 26) I do have a homily that I wish I would hear but never have and it is on the topic of spiritual warfare.

I would like to hear a homily that would give the congregation the nuts and bolts about who the Devil and demons are (where they got their start and what they do now), what Jesus did when he encountered the Devil and demons, what the fight is that St Paul talks about in the Bible, what my role is in the Church Militant (after learning what the Church Militant is) and what the spiritual armour needed to fight this battle is. A history and handout on the St Michael prayer would be most helpful too.

Even when the Gospel is about spiritual warfare I find priests shy away from speaking the clear truth on this topic. When my parish priest performs a baptism, at the time when he says the prayer of exorcism, he always says: "This sounds much worse than it actually is."

I wish the topic of spiritual warfare wasn't constantly downplayed. So many people have absolutely no idea what is going on in the spiritual realm and have no idea they are supposed to be fighting spiritual battles as a member of the Church Militant.

Yours faithfully,
Margaret Dollas
New York, United States


From Mr Kevin Heneghan

SIR - I wish I'd heard a homily on true humility, which, for those who possess it, is indeed a thing to be proud of. It doesn't mean timidity or a denial of our own self-worth. It does mean freedom from arrogance that recognises the worth of other people and accords them proper deference. Marriages, families and friendships are split because nobody can admit "I got it wrong". Religions are divided because one cannot recognise the others' rights to different points of view.

True humility is a realisation that any gifts we possess come directly from God and can be taken away in the blink of an eye. Irish poet Thomas Moore expressed it well in his "Loves of the Angels": "Humility, that low, sweet root / From which all heavenly virtues shoot." So, please God, let's have more of it.

Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens, Merseyside


From Mr Raoul D'Rozario

SIR - I just read the most interesting article written by Prof Jack Scarisbrick on homilies he would love to hear. I come from a traditional Catholic family, the ninth son of devout God-fearing parents, I belong to a tiny community called Anglo-Indians. I had the great privilege to grow up in an all-boys Catholic boarding school run by the Salesian Fathers.

In my humble opinion, and through a lot of communication with fellow Catholics, I have found that many adult Catholics are very poorly catechised and the only way to get through to them would be from the pulpit. Sadly very few priests take advantage of this powerful gift.

All those homilies mentioned by the good professor are also on my list but there are two I feel should be talked about and explained at great depth for our spiritual edification: that is, the powerful gift of free will and the great salvific gift of purgatory.

Yours faithfully,
Raoul D'Rozario
By email

A depressing view of Mary Tudor's reign

From Mr John Martyn

SIR - In the extracts from Professor Eamon Duffy's book, Fires of Faith, which you printed (May 29 and June 5), Professor Duffy is honest about his views, but they are depressing ones.

The traditional view, as I believe it to be, is that most English people accepted the restoration of Catholicism under Mary Tudor. They became Catholics again, if indeed they had ever ceased to be such. Many of them were, however, sufficiently tolerant and humane to be hostile to the persecution of Protestants, and some of them showed their hostility by open protest.

Prof Duffy tells us that very few, if any, English people who were not Protestants were hostile to the persecutions, and what few there were protested little, if at all.

Prof Duffy shows his honesty by stating his view that Catholic men or women on the 16th-century street were less tolerant and humane than previous Protestant historians had believed them to be. It must, however, be depressing - at least to most Christians - when a Catholic writer feels obliged to put forward this view.

Professor Duffy also seems to attribute our present-day hostility to religious persecution to the Enlightenment, rather than to any Christian learning curve (and/or repentance). His view on this must gratify Gibbon, Voltaire, Thomas Jefferson and the other leaders of the Enlightenment. They, the sceptics and the liberals, have won. They have converted conservative and orthodox Christians to toleration. Even a distinguished Catholic historian now asserts this.

Prof Duffy's apparent view that we owe toleration to the Enlightenment, and not to any Christian learning curve, must also gratify admirers of The God Delusion. It supports that book's argument that religion is a bad thing. Christians are likely to be less pleased, except again by the Professor's honesty.

I think a case can be made that toleration and humanity did prevail, at least in part, because of a Christian learning curve. I hope that a historian, or historians, will come forward to argue for that.

Yours faithfully,
John Martyn
Bromley, Kent

Problems of accuracy

From Fr Anthony Symondson SJ

SIR - A week or two before seeing the Baroque exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum I went to look again at the Sacred Silver and Stained Glass galleries. Visually they are a constant source of pleasure and I do not demur from the acclamation I gave them in The Catholic Herald when they opened in 2005.

In a case of 19th-century and 20th-century church plate there is a gilt hanging pyx designed by Sir Ninian Comper for St Mary's, Egmanton, in Nottinghamshire. Some time ago I sent Dr Murdoch some corrections concerning the date and execution which had appeared in the first caption and I was glad to see that some of them had been incorporated in a revision.

However, I was surprised to read the hanging pyx described as an object "used to carry the Holy Sacrament to the sick". It is not. A hanging pyx is a suspended tabernacle used for reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. The caption confuses the pyx, a small gilded or silver box used to take Holy Communion privately to the sick, with a hanging pyx. Consecrated Hosts are taken from it and placed within the small pyx to achieve this purpose.

Then I went to see the Baroque exhibition and was so alarmed by the mis-descriptions of liturgical vestments and ornaments in the captions and in Nigel Llewellyn's essays that I was moved to write the article which stirred Dr Murdoch's welcome response (Letters, June 12).

The scholarship of the Department of Metalwork embodied in the work of Charles Oman and Shirley Bury (both of whom I knew) was, indeed, entirely accurate, and it is reassuring that Dr Murdoch desires to maintain it. But, on the strength of the caption from which I have quoted, this is no longer a reliable as it was and points to a problem of scholarly accuracy relating to religious artefacts that is peculiar to our time.

Yours faithfully,
Anthony Symondson
London W1

Seeking brave souls

From Mr Robert Tickle

SIR - It is sad that the Catholic Children's Society is no longer to assess couples for adoption (Report, June 26) and, further, that some Catholic adoption agencies have broken from the church owing to the Sexual Orientation Regulations.

I am sure that this retreat is both unnecessary and that it is not in the interests of children. It is unlikely that gay couples would seek adoption through a Catholic agency. Even if someone did to prove a test case the agency should still stand firm on its principles. What could be the outcome? Maybe the agency would lose its registration which would leave it where it is now. At worst, an officer might face imprisonment. I have spoken to retired people who would be prepared to face that to make a stand if they could be named as the person making the decision.

Surely the Church can recover the valour and resilience of the recusants of our own country and that of martyrs in oppressive regimes elsewhere. You quote Ann Widdecombe as saying: "If you do not subscribe to the prevailing orthodoxy, you might as well be living in the Soviet Union." Quite; but in the Soviet Union there were brave souls who faced sanctions to witness to their faith.

Yours faithfully,
Robert Tickle
Harrold, Bedfordshire

Standing in the way

From Mr Martin Vianney

SIR - Ann Farmer's comments (Letters, May 22 and June 19) regarding Pope Pius XII, Israel and Zionism are unfortunately wide of the mark.

The campaign against Pius XII has for decades been led by the mainstream Zionist organisations, from the Israeli government to the Yad Vashem museum, to the ADL (B'nai B'rith), the American Jewish Congress, the World Jewish Congress and many similar institutions.

As Fr Peter Gumpel, who is spearheading the campaign for Pius's beatification, has pointed out (Report, June 26), prominent Jewish leaders have told Pope Benedict threateningly that "relations between the Catholic Church and Jews would be definitively and permanently compromised" following any beatification.

Without the backing of these powerful bodies and individuals, the sustained and very public smearing of Pius XII, against which other Jews have rightly protested, would not have happened.

Mrs Farmer complains about those who equate Jews with Nazis, but neglects to mention similar demonisation of Arabs by prominent Israelis. Regarding Israel, Mrs Farmer neglects to mention, among other things: Israel's use of "legal" torture and hostage-taking; that a majority of Israeli land is in fact reserved for Jews only; that spouses of Israeli Arabs from Gaza or the West Bank have been barred from uniting with their families; that Arab parties frequently run under threat of arbitrary disqualification; that Israel's present foreign minister has said in the past he would like 90 per cent of Palestinians expelled from Israel. All of this is well known and thoroughly documented.

Loyalty to a cause must never stand in the way of justice and truth.

Yours faithfully,
Martin Vianney
Brighton, East Sussex

Harming the Cause

From Mr Christopher Keeffe

SIR - So Archbishop Józef Zycinski of Lublin directs the faithful to suppress any papal letters that they may have received from Pope John Paul II in case their publication torpedoes his beatification Cause (Report, June 19).

The learned archbishop may wish to note that Pope John Paul II reformed the laws applicable to the beatification and canonisation process in 1983. In the document Divinius Perfectionis Magister Pope John Paul instructs that the bishop of the Cause is to ensure that the Servant of God's published and private papers be theologically examined. This would include Dr Wanda Poltawska's letters over her 58-year friendship with the pope.

I do not recall a similar outcry when the pope's former private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, published his memoirs of his 42-year friendship with the pope. It seems that some members of the Polish episcopacy are so sensitive about the robustness of Pope John Paul II's Cause for beatification that they are inadvertently undermining the process.

If publication of private letters does undermine causes (regardless of the moral aspect of publishing) then perhaps those advocating the beatification of Cardinal Newman should cease writing about him in order to ensure his beatification. These letters, properly presented, may provide a greater insight and appreciation of the heart of this great shepherd of Christ's flock.

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Keeffe
West Harrow, Middlesex

Don't allow liberals to deny the facts of life

From Mr B J Toolan

SIR - In his Charterhouse column of June 3 Stuart Reid did an excellent job of reporting the arguments used by liberals after the death of George Tiller. As Edmund Adamus has already pointed out (Letters, June 19), he was mistaken in thinking that they do have a point about the use of rhetoric, but their pro-abortion arguments also need to be refuted.

The three main pro-abortion arguments were that the purpose of dialogue is to establish that the foetus is human; that calling abortion a crime against humanity is immoral because it might cause someone to murder an abortionist; and that refusal to pay tax is the way ahead for the anti-abortion movement.

When talking to children or the poorly educated the purpose of dialogue is to establish the humanity of the foetus. When talking to articulate and well-educated liberals, the purpose of dialogue is to stop them pretending that they don't know the facts of life. They know perfectly well that human embryos are the young of the human species; that every abortion kills a baby; and that crimes against humanity are quite likely to cause breaches of the peace. The murder of an abortionist does not justify acting in such a way as to give the impression that there is some doubt about the humanity of the unborn child. That would be tantamount to bearing false witness against our unborn neighbours.

In my opinion, the way ahead for the anti-abortion movement rests in the hands of Christian wordsmiths like Stuart Reid himself. One of them should emulate Harriet Beecher Stowe and expose the horrors of abortion in an emotive way which polarises society and prevents politicians sitting on the fence.

Yours faithfully,
B J Toolan
Plymouth

The day I was drenched by Cardinal Hume

From Mr Paul Hill

SIR - I read the memories of Cardinal Hume (Features, June 12) with great interest and would challenge a point made by Fr Michael Seed, who happens to be the only one of your contributors whom I have met.

In my experience as a friend of the great cardinal I found him a splendid leader of the Church and the possessor of a considerable sense of humour. But I must contradict Fr Michael - as Basil Hume was not a saint nor would he wish to have the Cause opened on his behalf. An instance of his idea of fun I remember on two occasions in holy weeks, when the holy water is blessed, I was foolish enough to stand in full view some 15 feet from Basil, who without twitching a facial muscle filled the brush with water and sent it with swift and unerring aim straight to my nose. Fortunately I shared his sense of humour, though I never got the chance to retaliate.

Something else I remember is that when attending Mass out in the sticks I came across Basil giving a rough ride to the parish priest who wanted a year off to consider his position. Basil grasped my arm and seemed to derive the extra strength he needed for the task in hand. Perhaps he was not such a stern bishop as he would like to have been.

Lastly may I recount the occasion when, rather belatedly, I visited his tomb. Money was being raised for a 50-foot cross in the cardinal's honour and I thought: "Well, at least I could send £100 to the fund." Immediately within my head I heard a well-known voice exclaim: "A hundred pounds? Send £1,000!" No easy matter at the time.

I just wish to enter my opposition to the number of Causes being started.

We appear to be hiding in the skirts of Mother Church when the time is surely ripe to join with Anglican, Methodist and other Christians to counter-attack the current array of smart-alecky atheists. Perhaps I have said enough.

Yours faithfully,
Paul Hill
Grantham, Lincolnshire


From Mr Thomas Peterson

SIR - I am convinced that Cardinal Hume was a saint. Why? Because, like all saints, he gave the Church a human face. That was no mean achievement in an age that regards the Church as cold, bureaucratic and controlling.

Yours faithfully,
Thomas Peterson
Norwich, Norfolk


Back to Top