SIR – Regarding the possible canonisation of Pope Pius XII, Sir Anthony Holland (Letter, May 5) says he is “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”.
Post-Holocaust, fascism has come to be irremediably associated with Nazism, with a variety of interwar groups and individuals being labelled fascist because they failed to denounce fascism, or even evinced a love of order; in hindsight it is easier to be clear about such developments, but initially fascism was seen as “the latest thing”, and even some Italian Jews were involved in the early fascist movement.
Winston Churchill initially saw Mussolini as a counter-force to communism, but whereas the Nazis were obsessed with race – indeed, it was their defining feature – Italian fascism was not markedly anti-Semitic until Germany put pressure on Mussolini, leading to the 1938 racial laws. More Jews were rescued from destruction in Italy where, to Nazi frustration, the anti-Jewish drive was less than wholehearted.
This does not mean that fascism was right; but by the 1930s it was abundantly clear that communism was trying to eradicate Christianity as a religion, while the attempted eradication of the entire Jewish people was in the future. Pope Pius’s canonisation is not a foregone conclusion, since the whole point of the process is to weigh up the evidence on both sides.
Yours faithfully,
Ann Farmer (Mrs)
Woodford Green, Essex
SIR – In “The rural Catholic crisis” (Feature, April 28), Constance Watson quotes Fr Robert Miller, a priest with many years’ experience of ministry in rural parishes on Exmoor and in a remote area of Wiltshire. Both are part of the vast Diocese of Clifton, which includes several large conurbations, such as Bristol, Swindon and Gloucester, all served by multiple churches.
Surely the closure of one or two urban churches, whose parishioners and priests face shorter journeys than those in far-flung areas, would allow more priests to serve in rural parishes and ameliorate the plight of their Catholic faithful.
Yours faithfully,
June Rockett (Mrs)
Salisbury, Wiltshire
SIR – It is surely a testimony to the catholicity of the Catholic Herald that your April 17 issue includes an article by Colin Brazier in which he claims that Martin Amis is his favourite living writer.
I am glad to say that I could never finish the repellent Money or any other of Amis’s novels, which collectively just rub our noses in contemporary ugliness.
My preferred reading during the recent Triduum was Dante’s Commedia, which schools readers in the sanely Catholic moral sense of the narrator as he passes successively through hell, purgatory and paradise.
Yours faithfully,
David Jowitt
University of Jos, Nigeria
SIR – The issues surrounding Communion for the divorced are important, and are a challenge for some Catholics who feel that their faith may be threatened by the outcome. There are, however, much more fundamental aspects of our faith which the Church as I experience it makes little effort to clarify, and these relate to the interpretation of Scripture, and what Catholics must accept as the truth.
Dei Verbum (1965) states that Scripture expresses God’s revelation in different literary forms, including those relating to history, prophecy, poetry and so on. The task for exegetes is to work towards a better understanding of Scripture. The question for Catholics, particularly with regard to the Old Testament, is whether certain passages are to be taken as literal fact, or whether there is underlying truth which needs to be interpreted.
My experience in the Church is that all scriptural passages are routinely treated as being literally true. As an example, your leading article “What death cannot hold” (April 14) asserts that God made Adam from dust and breathed life into the nostrils. Is that how it happened?
It goes on to say that death was decreed by God as a fitting punishment for Adam (and for us all) for his sin. Is so much suffering in the world the direct intention of God? That makes me feel very uncomfortable. What am I to believe?
Yours faithfully,
Paul Doherty
Sheffield
SIR – It may be the approach of my 78th birthday during this season of Eastertide, but my thoughts have been turning lately to my inevitable death and judgment, leading to heaven or hell. Stephen Daisley’s article on “the moral agony of the life-long Labour voter” (Notebook, May 5) limited this question to the support or otherwise of Mr Corbyn whose policies he saw as extreme. The moral dimension of the coming election is relevant to this.
When that dreaded hour comes Jesus will ask each one of us why he had to go to a food bank; why he was evicted because he could not pay his rent; why we did not pay him a proper living wage; why we did not look after him in his vulnerable old age.
What will we say? As a lifelong Labour voter, conscious of the social teaching of the Church, I can only say that I have never supported these policies.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Donohoe
Christchurch, Dorset
SIR – Quentin de la Bédoyère (Science and faith, April 7) presents his readers with the famous Euthyphro dilemma. Given that I hope to begin university to study philosophy in the autumn, I thought I would take a crack at this.
First posed by Socrates in one of Plato’s dialogues, the dilemma asks: Is something good because God wills it? Or does God will it because it is good? The answer, I believe, is neither, for the dilemma is a false one.
There is a third possibility, namely, that God is goodness itself. Thus when God makes moral commands, He does so in accordance with that objective standard of goodness which is essential to His being. Therefore, the rather more interesting question, in my opinion, is simply: “What is goodness?”
Yours faithfully,
Clement Harrold
By email
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