The Vatican’s top prosecutor Mgr Charles Scicluna has said that bishops should be held accountable for failing to tackle clerical abuse.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, led a penitential liturgy last night as part of the unpredecented four-day Vatican conference on abuse.

The Vatican has confirmed that the Pope may visit Lebanon in September.

Matthew Cullinan Hoffman compares 21st-century American Catholics to 16th-century English recusants.

Catholic economist Philip Booth suggests it’s silly to ask whether markets can be moral.

And George Weigel considers whether the Church is ready for a Third Vatican Council.

I told him that I would have liked to buy far more than the twenty or so books I was able to carry away. “You can have the whole lot for a million quid,” he said levelly. That would work out at about a little more than two pounds a volume, I suppose.

Camilla’s does not specialise as such, as far as I can see, though there is a whole room more or less dedicated to militaria, and there were plenty of Books of Common Prayer, but no old Missals. There is a whole room in the cellar that I missed (I will save it till another time) which contains Latin texts. The poetry is excellent. I have been trying to make up for my previous neglect of the great Victorian poets, whom I somehow wiggled out of reading at University: with me in Mexico I have two manageable volumes containing the complete works of Keats and Byron, ideal companions for solitary meals in restaurants.

But two jewels I must share. The first is a novel from the Thirties by Anthony Powell, entitled Agents and Patients. I am a huge fan of his twelve novel roman fleuve, A Dance to the Music of Time, but had never untill now read his “single” works. This is something that has to be rectified. Agents and Patients is two hundred pages of sheer delight, a laugh out loud book, somehwhat reminiscent of Aldous Huxley, but unlike Huxley, actually funny.

The other gem was an old Penguin of a novel I read in my youth, Wise Virgin, by AN Wilson. There is nothing better than rereading a novel that you enjoyed decades ago and finding it even better than the last time. Few authors can actually do this – I have recently been rereading Dickens and finding him disappointingly thin – but AN Wilson lives up the memory of just how good he was first time round. Thanks to Wise Virgin a very long bus jounrey between Guadalajara and San Miguel de Allende passed very rapidly indeed.

Firstly, there is the prior question of women priests. Anglo-Catholics are already members of a Church which ordains these ambiguous beings. Are they priests, or aren’t they? (For the moment, put to one side the question of whether or not anyone in the C of E is a validly ordained priest.) If you believe they’re not, you are already yourself in an ambiguous condition, since you are a member of a Church which has arrogated to itself the power to ordain them, a power which even the Pope (like the Orthodox) denies that he possesses. You are a member, that is to say, of a Church which has already finally divorced itself from any possibility of reunion with the Universal Church of which it has thus far claimed to be a part. So, what kind of a Catholic does that make you? It is a question you must already have asked yourself; and to that problem there is now only one solution: the ordinariate. The existing arrangements for “flying bishops” were a temporary measure, which allowed a constituency of non-jurors to gather itself in preparation for secession: those temporary arrangements are no longer necessary and have now therefore morally lapsed.

But if you accept that women may be priests, that those women already ordained as such by the Church of England are validly ordained (and I actually heard a member of the Catholic group in Synod actually saying on the radio that he did accept them as priests, but that he didn’t want them to become bishops), then what are you on about? If a woman is a priest, then she is eligible to be a bishop. If she’s not, she isn’t. Either way, you are a member of a Church in which there are now hundreds of women priests: and whether you put yourself in a ghetto which doesn’t accept them or not, you are still in full communion with them (and don’t give me that stuff about “impaired communion”: you are in full communion with your own bishops (flying or not), who are themselves in full communion with the male bishops who ordained all these women, so you are in full communion with them: get used to it, or leave.

Expecting special arrangements (the issue which comes before the Synod today) that will allow you to imagine yourself on to some kind of fantasy island untroubled by women bishops as well as women priests is ludicrous. You only have to see the case put to see how ludicrous it is. Here, for instance, is the Rt Rev John Hind, Bishop of Chichester (who has said that women bishops are now inevitable):

Bishop Hind said: “I think the issue facing the Church of England at the moment isn’t whether there will be women bishops or not – which I think everyone accepts is the will of most of the dioceses – the issue is whether the Church of England wants to retain its historic comprehensiveness and generosity and space for dissent.

“Everybody understands that women bishops are coming into the Church of England, the only question is, is there going to be a space in the Church of England for those who, on theological grounds and ecumenical grounds, cannot accept that development.”

This is all very puzzling: for only last year, Bishop Hind was saying that he would join the ordinariate (which he warmly welcomed) if the C of E went ahead with women bishops:

“This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican,” he said [of the ordinariate] . “At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I’d be happy to be reordained into the Catholic Church.”

While the bishop stressed that this would depend on his previous ministry being recognised, he said that the divisions in the Anglican Communion could make it impossible to stay.

“How [he continued] can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other?” (My emphasis)

The fact is that it can’t: not for you, at any rate, or for anyone else who isn’t prepared fully to accept that Church’s ordained ministry: for, if you don’t accept its ministry, you don’t accept its sacraments. And if you don’t accept its sacraments, you don’t accept the entire foundation on which it has been so shakily constructed.

The fact is that there is now a real alternative: in your own words, bishop, “at long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England”. I now confidently hope that you will make the only real choice left; a good time, perhaps, would be July – for that is when the General Synod will at last vote through the measure enabling women bishops. When that happens, you will know that the die is cast: and it will be time for you finally to come home. What, for you, is most to be feared is that the Synod will today accede to your request for “a space in the Church of England” to be made for people like you: for if it does, you will enter that space, and find yourself in a limbo of futility from which it may become more and more difficult to extricate yourself.

I wholly endorse what he says. Her Majesty, intuitively and skilfully, manages to remain the still centre of the ever-turning Anglican world simply by affirming her faith in Jesus Christ. In her Christmas message last year, quoted by Damian in his post, she stated: “God sent into the world a unique person – neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive. Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families. It can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God’s love.”

The Queen has met plenty of philosophers and even more generals in her time. With her unique place at the summit of the Establishment, she has had innumerable opportunities to encounter the masters of this world in every walk of life. She knows their place and she knows her own. More than other modern monarchs, I think, she understands the spiritual significance of her coronation oath: a lifelong dedication to her people and her public duties; something to be undertaken with utmost seriousness.

This dedication is deeply admirable. Not for the Queen the possibility of abdication, as in the curious Dutch tradition. As a child of ten she witnessed at first hand the trauma of the Royal Family following her uncle’s dereliction of his duties. Watching her father, unprepared, untrained and unconfident, dutifully take up the burden of kingship as Edward VIII walked away from it, taught her what it means to accept your destiny.

Watching Margaret Thatcher after one of her election victories, the Labour MP Mrs Barbara Castle observed that she had a glow about her: the glow that comes from power. I do not jib at this; by definition, being prime minister is the exercise of power. But it is worth contrasting this with the observation of Cecil Beaton at the Queen’s coronation; that after she had taken the oath and had been anointed with the holy oil, there was an aura, a definite radiance about her. This was nothing to do with vanity, ambition or ego (things that constantly drive politicians); it was the instinctive response to the most solemn moment of a strange and solemn destiny.

When her Majesty said yesterday that she looks to the future with a ‘clear head and warm heart’ I felt that at heart it is her Christian faith that gives her the resilience and the resolve to be able to say this.

Long live the Queen.

I am now in the country where this type of art is most at home – not Spain, but Mexico. These sort of dressed statues are very common in churches and I have come across several Christs in agony, with their long hair and their haunting glass eyes. But always, for me at least, most distrubing, are the glass coffins containing the Dead Christ. I have seen several dead bodies in my time, but none speak as much as the image of this dead body, all suffering now past, at peace, but a peace gained at so high a price.

This sort of religious statuary often arouses negative emotions in English breasts, I think partly because we do not want to be reminded of just how much the Christ suffered. His sufferings can be denied, his betrayal explained away as some terrible musunderstanding, nobody’s fault, or so we like to think – but someone was to balme, and he did suffer, horribly. When faced with that glass coffin, you cannot really subscribe to the idea of human progress or natural human goodess, much as you would like to.

Mexico is a land of dramatic beauty and terrible sufffering. I am told that some 50,000 people have been killed or have disappeared in the current war on drugs, a war that has no end in sight and which has been singularly unsuccessful. And yet, the country will survive this, just as it has survived other disturbances. Incidentally, this unfortunate history is not visible in any of the places I have visited. One feels no danger on the streets, which, as evening falls, come alive with people. I was last here seven years ago. I wonder why I have stayed away so long.

Irish abuse victim Marie Collins told the conference this morning that “apologising for the actions of the abusive priests is not enough“.

Contrary to reports, 83-year-old Cardinal-designate Karl Josef Becker SJ will receive his red hat at the consistory in Rome on February 18.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that Christians in the Muslim world are facing “a rising genocide”.

Robert George and Carter Snead argue that American abortion provider Planned Parenthood has taken breast cancer victims hostage.

And leading Catholic blogger Rocco Palmo pays tribute to his late “spiritual father” and “ever-caring friend”.

The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.

A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week…

A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.

The piece mentions the names of one or two of this growing number of experts. I’m glad that at least the piece didn’t say that this was a generally accepted consensus: for, the idea of an incontrovertible scientific consensus behind current ideas of anthropogenic global warming is itself coming under increasingly sceptical scrutiny from another “growing number of experts”, as you will see from a very interesting article which appeared a week or so ago in the Wall Street Journal.

The article is signed by a large number of scientists, whose names I now flourish before you to prove that they exist:

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

The starting point of the article, headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming” (subheading, “There’s no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonise’ the world’s economy”) is the resignation from the American Physical Society of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, in a letter which begins: “I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.” Dr Giaever had asked simply for the word “incontrovertible” to be removed: the APS refused. He rejoined: “In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?”

The fact is, as the WSJ article says (and as I have said in this column before) that large numbers of scientists don’t accept this supposed consensus, and more and more of them are putting their heads above the parapet to say so. The reason is simple: that more and more “incontrovertible” facts are suggesting that the “consensus” has more to do with ideology than science: the most inconvenient truth, perhaps, is the fact that for more than a decade there has been no global warming to speak of, despite the fact that man-made CO2 continues to grow apace. The scientific establishment has no explanation of this, as emerged with wonderful irony in the so-called “Climategate” scandal in 2009, and particularly in an email from a climate scientist called Kevin Trenberth, who wrote baldly (and he thought secretly) that “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.”

The fact is that the whole anthropogenic warming theory is based not on observation but on computer models: in this case, it seems, computer models in which so-called “feedbacks” involving water vapour and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2. It is, incidentally, interesting that none of the computer models which feed the theory, not one, predicted the present global warming pause: so why, one might ask, should one have any faith at all in their predictive powers about anything else?

Why, on a Catholic website, bother about this at all? Well, because we have been here before. Attacks on the Church over the Galileo affair have been going on for centuries, especially from the scientific community. Now, however, it is the scientific community which is recoiling from free scientific inquiry in the name of a supposedly “incontrovertible” belief based not on observation but on something else, which some have even called a “substitute religion”. And truly, for many, an environmentalism which warns of a man-made doom approaching us all has indeed begun to take on distinctly quasi-religious overtones: and certainly, an environmentalism of this kind is not going to allow its basic assumptions to be challenged. Man needs religion: and if he won’t have a true religion, he will tend willy-nilly to adopt a false one. As Cardinal Pell puts it “some of the more hysterical and extreme claims about global warming appear symptomatic of a pagan emptiness, of a Western fear when confronted by the immense and basically uncontrollable forces of nature… Perhaps they’re looking for a cause that is almost a substitute for religion… In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.”

The effects of these “extreme claims about global warming” have had a direct effect on our national life even to the extent of threatening our economy. Coincidentally, this could in fact be a moment when the government might do something about that. On Saturday, Chris Huhne, Energy and Climate Change Secretary, had to resign from the government. I can’t, I have to say, see exactly why what he is charged with is such a heinous crime that it may well put an end to his political career, but I’m bound to say that I hope either that it has, or at least that he never gets anywhere near “climate change” policy ever again.

He has already, for instance, spent hundreds of millions on disfiguring the landscape with wind turbines, of which there are currently 3,000 onshore and several hundred offshore. They produce just one to two per cent of the nation’s power. But there’s potentially a lot more where they came from. In December, Huhne announced that in 20 years’ time there were going to be altogether nearly another 30,000 of these useless things (which most of the time produce nothing at all), at a cost of heaven knows how many billions. Overall, he has steered the Government into making overall “climate change” commitments we almost certainly cannot afford. We may all, for other reasons, be returning to sanity: so now is the perfect time for the Government quietly to reverse all that.

Actually, this way of rearing children lasted until after the last War – indeed, until the 60s when everything seemed to change. As a child of the 50s, my parents did not question their right to physically check us if we stepped out of line. My father did it very rarely, mainly because spending his spare time on the golf course was pleasanter than disciplining his noisy, argumentative children. I have one vivid recollection of him putting a younger sister over his knee and spanking her, saying emphatically, “I hate lies.” I doubt if my sister even remembers this incident and I only recall it because it was so rare.

My mother, it must be said, often tended in the impatience of the moment to ‘lay about her’, sometimes with a wooden spoon on the palm of the hand. This was painful and I don’t recommend it; nor would I say, as people sometimes aver, that “it did me no harm”. Smacking a naughty child who is below the age of reason but not above the age of dangerous exploits like running into the road is one thing; deliberately using an implement of chastisement is quite another. I made a conscious decision never to do this with my own children – though I have smacked occasionally.

David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, made the important point (and the headlines) when he remarked recently that working-class parents, who traditionally would have corrected their offspring by physical punishment, feel powerless to discipline them now that smacking has been redefined as physical violence, and outlawed. This came about through Left-wing middle class diktat and it is as patronising and unworkable as you would expect from such a source. Parents hell-bent on abusing their children physically will continue to do so, laws or no laws. How can they be stopped? Other parents, well-meaning and caring, but unconfident and inexperienced, cease to use any discipline at all. Factor in fatherless families and other social problems and you see Lammy’s point: it is all very well legislating from the vantage point of self-confidence, good education and established authority figures – but what of large swathes of the population lacking these features?

My sister-in-law told me that when she and my brother were considering adoption, an officious social worker asked them if they intended to smack a child they might receive. Being honest, she replied that she wouldn’t rule it out completely, but only if it was appropriate to the child and the circumstances etc. This response did not go down at all well.
I have just been reading Great Expectations. Mrs Joe Gargery brings up Pip “by hand” as she often harshly reminds him, meaning frequently knocking him about. Dickens, who loathed all violence to children, gives her a savage come-uppance for her cruelty. Social workers and legislators of the Left-wing consensus need to be reminded that most parents are not like Mrs Joe; they love their children, are occasionally driven to distraction by their behaviour and sometimes administer a smack, just hard enough to stop the miscreant in his tracks. This is not abuse and parents should not be penalised for it.

The US Army has censored a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains criticising the Obama administration’s ruling on contraception coverage.

The Church in Kerala has criticised a poster by the Communist Party of India depicting Barack Obama as Jesus and other world leaders as disciples at the Last Supper.

The number of candidates for the priesthood in Central Java, Indonesia, has risen dramatically, reports AsiaNews.

Fr Federico Lombardi and John Allen preview a major international conference on clerical abuse that begins in Rome today.

Fr Stephen Wang explains how his suggestion that Britain should host World Youth Day went from “a social networking doodle” to “a global mainstream media news story”.

Andrea Tornielli examines the mystery of Fidel Castro’s excommunication ahead of his meeting with Pope Benedict next month.

Fr Dwight Longenecker points out that Blessed John Henry Newman was “misunderstood, blocked, ostracised and undermined” after he became a Catholic.

Graeme Wood hails the Italian cardinal who spoke more languages than anyone else in recorded history.

And Saint Peter’s List gathers photographic evidence that Benedict XVI has a healthy love of beer.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the Society of St Pius X, has said that “even if we are fighting with Rome, we are still, so to say, with Rome“.

The US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi has dismissed “with prejudice” a lawsuit filed against the Holy See by insurance commissioners in five states.

Robert McClory profiles Michael Ryan, an American security specialist who has fought tirelessly to increase financial transparency in the Church.

Francis Beckwith defines the “new anti-Catholicism” as an effort “to employ the coercive power of the state to force the Church’s institutions to violate the Church’s own moral theology”.

And the BBC has produced a new documentary series that “goes behind the headlines to explore what it is like to be Catholic today”.