Letters should include a genuine postal or email address, phone number and the style or title of the writer. Email: [email protected]
Due to space constraints, please keep correspondence below 250 words, longer letters may be published online
SIR – I was pleased to see the article on the BBC’s Father Brown by Michael Davis (Arts essay, January 19). I was privileged to be the parish priest at Holy Spirit, Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, when the parish celebrated its centenary. The church was built by the original Father Brown (Mgr J O’Connor) and the EWTN Chesterton expert Dale Alquist was available to give us a talk on his hero. I shared with Mr Alquist my disappointment over the new Father Brown series. He made reference to it in his talk as not being accurate in any sense. I think we were a bit too negative because I have watched some of the programmes and found them entertaining. However, there are problems.
I first avoided them because they were liturgically inaccurate and because the time frame was wrong. I have to admit, though, that I was impressed by the compassion and orthodoxy of the main character (and the actor Mark Williams). How things have changed. I recently watched two episodes which are an insult not only to Chesterton and the Father Brown of the books, but to the Catholic Church too. In the case of murder, Fr Brown is quick to advise Confession and seeking God’s forgiveness. Where fornication and adultery are concerned, he is strangely silent. Here there is no invitation to repent, rather a benign refusal to trouble anyone.
I suspect this is a capitulation to the prevailing secular morality of today, and with a view to maintaining an audience which might otherwise switch off. In presenting such themes the writers may have believed that most Catholics will simply let the lack of orthodox morality pass. Sadly, I think they are right, but here is one viewer they have lost.
Fr John Abberton
Immaculate Conception Presbytery,
Idle, West Yorkshire
SIR – Stephen Bullivant’s article (Cover story, January 5) makes some important points: we have too many parishes now for each to have its own priest. And in many of the existing churches, congregations are smaller than they were.
His question appears to be: how can we make viable again the traditional structure of clergy-directed parishes? His solution is to consolidate fewer larger parishes, where substantial congregations could be assured and with enough priests to serve them.
But this “solution” begs the question – and prompts many more: was the parish, even as we used to know it, ever the ideal “pastoral unit”? Can Mass “attended” by several hundred people ever be experienced as the shared Eucharistic meal that Jesus clearly intended?
Is the “clerical” model of a parish “served” – indeed, largely run – by priests, what we need in the 21st century? Is there no alternative to relying (with a few exceptions) on vocations to the celibate priesthood?
If we were really to address these questions, so that the basic “pastoral unit” was of a size to form a real community, regularly sharing the Eucharistic meal, then far from managing to cope with fewer priests, the Church would need many more priests than we have ever had – and priests firmly rooted in, and experiencing the real life of, their communities.
As a first step forward – and as Pope Francis is clearly ready to consider – suitable married men within each community could be ordained as priests.
Saving the institutional Church as we have known it would only be marginally, and temporarily, helped by enlisting the particular enthusiasms of the ordinariate and other traditionalist groups. Enabling the whole People of God to live and worship in real communities of faith, as Jesus intended and as they once did, will need much more imaginative measures.
Mike Kerrigan
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
SIR – Dr Bullivant’s observations are accurate and informative. I am so glad he has visited our parish here in Houston, Texas. We have been parishioners of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston since 1998, and have witnessed the phenomenal growth of, first, this parish, the Pastoral Provision and then the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.
My personal joy here is the number of young families we have attending, many large in number, who value our church and its liturgy, although they were raised in modern Catholic parishes with a very different style of worship. And we also have converts from Protestant denominations with very different traditions of worship.
We thank God constantly for the work of the Holy Spirit in this evangelisation.
Cassandra Dantoni
By email
SIR – Six years is a very short time in the life of the Church. A lot of energy, time and expertise went into the new translation of the Mass (Letters, January 12). Those who complain that they do not like it cannot surely expect the Church to do it all over again so soon.
Have they considered the harm that their continuous carping may do to the Church in such a vital part of her worship and life? Can they not show a little humility and accept what the Church has decided and then celebrate it with wonder and joy?
For myself, the new translation has enriched the Mass – not least in the prefaces to the Canon.
Fr John Heley
Burnham Market, Norfolk
SIR – Dom Christopher Butler, when headmaster of Downside in the 1950s, told the Headmasters’ Conference that his school did not prepare its boys for life but for death.
To what extent is that the case now (Comment, January 12) – and could it be that the increasing secularisation of the school, its adapting more and more to the values of the world, has had a detrimental effect on the monastery itself?
John Hoar
By email
SIR – You report the suspension by the Diocese of Down and Connor of the customary handshake as a sign of peace, owing to the risk of spreading flu.
In the Rite of Peace, we express to each other our “ecclesial communion and mutual charity” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal). It seems less charitable to share our communicable diseases at the same time.
Let us hope that this pastoral charity in one diocese will prove as infectious as the virus that has occasioned it.
Andrew Todd
Worthing, West Sussex
SIR – Nicolas Bellord’s translation of “ne nous laisse pas …” (Letter, January 12) in the Our Father, as “do not let us enter into …” is exactly as our Scottish Gaelic translation of the original Latin: “Na leig ann am buaireadh sinn”.
Catriona Garbutt
Uachdar, Isle of Benbecula
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