SIR – Robert Ian Williams (Letter, December 23) asks what provision the Church makes for the respectful treatment of the remains of Catholics subjected to archaeological digs. Perhaps I may be able to help.
In Britain it is difficult to liaise with archaeological trusts as there is no established protocol.
As a member of Dyfed Archaeological Trust, I follow its digs. When excavating St John’s Dominican Priory in Carmarthen they found 125 bodies; and at the Franciscan Church (perhaps the largest in Britain), they found 239, 105 of them from within the chancel. Not only were the bodies pre-Reformation, but they had, I believe, died before 1435. The bodies were medically examined in Cardiff (one skull was found to have been trepanned) and returned for burial.
It was proposed to mark the occasion with an interdenominational service, but when I pointed out the dead were all Catholic, they readily agreed my alternative suggestion of a Latin-sung Requiem Mass. So it came about that in 1994 I buried the remains of 364 people in Carmarthen Catholic graveyard.
Collectively they were too large for the church, so we first placed them in the open grave and then built a catafalque in front of the altar. Bishop Mullins presided, and I sang the Mass. It was so well received that later, when more graves were exhumed elsewhere, the Catholic liturgy was used.
Pace Mr Williams, though I would like to think that Jewish practice in Britain might guide us, I am not sure, for in the Holy Land the Rabbinate insists on Jewish bodies being reinterred immediately, before examination. This is plainly unwelcome to scholars who wish to enlarge our knowledge of the past.
Yours faithfully,
Canon Seamus Cunnane
Cardigan, Ceredigion
SIR – Dr Martin (Letter, December 23) claims that “battle cries are rising against the Pope” in a manner reminiscent of the “Pharisees and teachers of the Law testing Jesus”, but this claim misrepresents the situation in two ways.
First, courteous requests for clarification, in the manner of the dubia raised by the four cardinals (Cover story, January 6), are not battle cries.
Second, in the Gospels, it is Jesus, not the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, who states (Matthew 19:9): “Whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery.”
Jesus’s teaching about marriage may seem a burden to some, but has been a comfort and protection for many others, such as the famous example in English history of poor Catherine of Aragon.
As for how Scripture and tradition became the foundation of the Church’s laws on marriage today, there is a very good book on this subject: Remaining in the Truth of Christ (edited by Fr Robert Dodaro).
Yours faithfully,
Fr Andrew Pinsent
Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford
SIR – Dr Felix Martin writes that in the wake of Amoris Laetitia the Church must acknowledge that concrete situations may render it impossible for people to avoid sinning.
Presumably, that is why some Canadian bishops have suggested that the sacraments should be available for some people who are determined to go ahead with assisted suicide.
I have been in dialogue with a “Catholic doctor” who both receives Holy Communion and performs abortions. He believes that his NHS contract makes it impossible for him to avoid such procedures in his given “concrete situation”.
That is why it is my belief that the teachings of Veritatis Splendor, especially on the nature of intrinsic evil, must be upheld as never before.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Pravin Thevathasan
By email
SIR – The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) does indeed claim that two thirds of the abortions it performs are following failed contraception, but I did not write, in my letter of December 9, that the answer is better contraception, as Dr Reiss claims in his letter (December 23).
I have been teaching Natural Family Planning (NFP) for more than 50 years. Modern methods of NFP have been proven to be far more effective than contraception and lead to far fewer surprise pregnancies.
St Mother Teresa, in 1976, taught NFP to 20,000 couples of all faiths. The failure rate was 0.16 per cent. Dr Bob Ryder published these results in the Tablet in 1993.
In 2003 the Shanghai Institute published its NFP statistics: 37,000 teachers of NFP, 2.7 million users, success rate 99 per cent in avoiding pregnancy.
What impressed the Chinese government was that 32 per cent of “infertile” couples gave birth. And the abortion rate fell from 4.06 per cent to 0.61 per cent.
In 2009 the Lancet published the German research paper of Dr Petra Hermann-Frank et al. Nine hundred women submitted data for 10 years. The failure rate was 0.06 per cent. It was announced on BBC News.
The sad fact is that young people are being pressured into the use of contraception. They are not being taught the knowledge of their God-given gift of fertility.
We need more publicity about the reliability of modern methods of NFP, and more NFP teachers.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Olive Duddy
Bury, Greater Manchester
SIR – In her article in your December 23 issue, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton says the date of Christmas was determined by Constantine, who ordered that it be celebrated on the birthday of Mithras.
This is possible but unlikely. The reason for the Nativity being celebrated on December 25 is disputed, but the most likely explanation is the widespread belief in the ancient world that Christ’s earthly life (from conception) began and ended on the same day of the year.
The date of the Crucifixion was celebrated by various churches on either March 25 or April 6, which produced a date of either December 25 or January 6 respectively for his birth.
The matter was resolved by agreeing to celebrate Christmas for a period of 12 days, with the Nativity commemorated on the first day and the visit of the Magi on the twelfth. The first recorded celebration of Christmas on December 25 is in AD 336, in Rome, the year before Constantine died in Constantinople.
Yours faithfully,
Philip Goddard
London SE19
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