SIR – David Goodhart (Cover story, April 21) describes childcare as “the most important job on the planet” – for which outside carers get paid but mum gets “nothing”.
Surely the answer is to recognise in-family care as “real employment that should be paid at the appropriate rate”: viz, at least in relation to what “outside care” would receive and certainly no less than the national minimum. This would raise the whole status of in-family carers from “economic dependant” to “contributor”, and give them a real choice between taking the income themselves as a recompense for care, or buying good outside care which would leave them free to pursue an outside career. We would, of course, all have to pay the price (tax) for this, as we do for similar public services including general education; but overall, it would raise the overall level of (official) employment, income and prosperity.
Such a “monetisation of what was previously free” is in fact a fairly standard move in economics. Water supply, for example – once free to all from the village pump – is now specifically priced, but without anyone suggesting that it is anything other than a positive contributor to economic growth.
Putting all certified in-family care on a paid basis would obviously be a radical move. But that’s no reason for not getting the point on the table at this time: “giving family care the priority it should have” could be a practical step in accentuating the new “era of mercy”.
Yours faithfully,
Bernard Cummings
Erith, Kent
SIR – Quentin de le Bédoyère (Science and faith, April 7) invites us to solve Socrates’s puzzle: “Does God love the good because the good is loveable – or is the good loveable because God loves it?
It seems to me, though I am not a philosopher, that there is a very simple answer to this. The answer of faith is surely that God quite simply is goodness. He is the source of all goodness and therefore both statements are true but neither is complete.
To the first, the answer is that the good is loveable because it flows from God who is infinitely loveable and, therefore, God could not fail to love it without hating Himself; or, less emotionally, contradicting Himself. To the second, the answer is that the good is indeed loveable not just because God loves it but because it flows from Him who is goodness. Both premises are flawed, as one might expect from a non-believer, by implying that both God and “the good” are separate objective realities.
With regard to de la Bédoyère’s paraphrase of the problem, I hope he won’t mind if I suggest that it would be truer to say that God “reveals” goodness to us, rather than “defines” it, as the latter could imply once again that goodness was separate from Himself. Nor, surely, can we say that God ever acts “arbitrarily” in the sense of capriciously. Rather, He acts sovereignly, according to the perfection of His own nature and His sovereignty over the whole of creation.
Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell (Miss)
Exeter, Devon
SIR – I entered into the correspondence (Letter, March 24) on the issue of the proposed canonisation of Pius XII because I felt that some in the Church were causing a scandal by the pursuit of that Cause, despite the clear evidence of Cardinal Pacelli’s approach to fascism both in Italy and Germany and its impact in particular upon Jews.
I have no access to any evidence that contradicts my premise that in the 1930s the Nuremberg laws in Germany, as well as the Italian racial laws in 1938, were ever fiercely and continuously condemned – as they should have been – by the Church.
Indeed, there is evidence that priests who did speak out were disciplined, and this is of a piece with this extract from L’Osservatore Romano of August 14, 1938: “But – to put things straight – this [the misunderstanding of any compassion in dealing with the Jews] does not mean that the Jews might abuse the hospitality of Christian countries. Along with protective measures there were decrees of restriction and persecution in their regard.
The civil ruler was in agreement with the Church in this …While Christians were forbidden to force the Jews to embrace the Catholic religion, to disturb their synagogues, their Sabbaths, and their feast days, Jews, on the other hand, were forbidden to hold any public office, civil or military, and this debarment was extended to the sons of converted Jews. These precautions related to professional activities, teaching and even trade.” Hardly a message that Jesus would have subscribed to, and one that I suspect he would have fiercely condemned.
I always worry when I am told that works I have read in this area are “questionably researched” without identifiable details. I have no direct evidence to offer about Pius XII and his sheltering the Jews during the war that followed, but I am quite clear that the evidence is overwhelming that in the 1930s the Church and its officials were ambivalent about fascism, particularly in Italy, and that that ambivalence should hinder any drive to canonisation of those responsible.
Yours faithfully,
Sir Anthony Holland
London EC2
SIR – It is becoming quite a common habit in some churches that during the Good Friday liturgy a simple wooden cross without the image of the Crucified Christ is put out for the adoration of the faithful; the reason being that during the liturgy, the priest or deacon utters the words: “Behold the wood of the cross on which hung the salvation of the world.”
There are those who argue that, literally interpreted, a cross without the figure of Christ is what should be brought out for adoration. However, does this not seem quite strange considering that during the entire period of Lent, the figure of Christ Crucified is what stands at the centre of our attention rather than the barren Cross? Could this habit have been influenced by the Protestant condemnation of images?
This new Catholic custom is in perfect continuity with the ancient Druid practice of worshipping trees, and it is in agreement with the liturgical wording quoted above. However, could this be a case of reading the Gospels backwards, giving the impression that on Good Friday we are already celebrating the barren Cross, which is, strictly speaking, synonymous not with the Good Friday liturgy but rather with Easter Sunday, when we celebrate Christ who is resurrected from the dead?
Yours faithfully,
Fr Geoffrey Attard
Victoria, Gozo
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