SIR – I write with reference to your interview with Baroness Hollins (June 3), which mentions Marie Collins as “the only survivor” on the Pope’s commission for the protection of children.
I remain a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. When I was encouraged to resign my position by the commission president, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, I told him I was not prepared to do so and he took my decision to Rome for the recent meeting of cardinals.
Upon his return Cardinal O’Malley rang me to say that I was not being “sacked”, but would I consider forming a “victims and survivors’ consultative panel” to support the work of the commission. Something similar to the victims and survivors’ panel that works with the Goddard inquiry here in the UK.
I told Cardinal O’Malley that I would discuss this with other interested parties and that we would speak again in a couple of months. That is the current situation. I continue my leave of absence from the commission but remain committed to do anything I can to help our Church make the world a safer place for children.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Saunders
Founder of NAPAC,
By email
SIR – I refer to the letter of Alan Pontet-Piccolomini (June 17), in which he implies that the position of the priest facing the congregation at Mass is a recent invention of the liberals. He sits lightly to history. This was the design of the churches of Rome for a thousand years.
The original church of San Clements was destroyed by the Normans and when rebuilt in the 12th century followed the ancient pattern. The presidential chair was slewed to the side and the altar dragged against the wall simply through the development of a veneration of relics.
It was the Bishop of Verona in the 16th century who first proposed that the tabernacle should be placed on the high altar. St Charles Borromeo agreed that the connection between sacrifice and sacrament made it appropriate for the Blessed Sacrament to be reserved on an altar – but on a side altar or within a separate chapel, not on the principal altar of celebration. This is still the custom in Rome, except in smaller churches. Lack of reverence is a charge which misses the mark.
Yours faithfully,
Canon Thomas Dakin
St Nicholas Owen,
Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire
SIR – It is easy to sympathise with Alan Pontet-Piccolomini’s letter and he makes some very good points, but I think it is mistaken to emphasise the externals so much, some of which are not always practicable. Surely what is really important is the much-maligned and ignored – even scapegoated – problem of doctrine.
As Mr Pontet-Piccolomini implies, it is the full Catholic doctrine of Our Lord’s Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament which should be the source of all our reverence, and that includes the teaching that the objective change at the Consecration at Mass can only come about by the power of a validly ordained priest within the Apostolic Succession, not by the individual faith of the recipient, which would in most cases be the Anglican position.
This doctrine in itself is, of course, dependent on the true Catholic doctrine of the Person of Christ, that He is both one of us and the divine Word of God, pre-existing from all eternity, possessing in full the Divine nature in union with the Father and Holy Spirit. It is also dependent on a true Catholic understanding of the priesthood and the Apostolic Succession.
And if all these seem difficult to a mere human, these in turn are part of the Catholic understanding of “faith”, which, for us, means believing “all that the Catholic Church teaches” (even when we do not fully understand it), not some muscular interior effort to make Christ present to ourselves by our own “faith”.
This is surely what St Paul meant when he spoke of “the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5). In the interests of ecumenism, differences in doctrine have been given a bad name and often largely ignored, so that we could concentrate on what we share – baptism and a love of Christ. This course of action may have been necessary in order to overcome such deep prejudices as existed and may still exist in this country, and to that extent, has done much good.
But may it not be time, now, to brave the doctrinal issues and speak clearly about them? The failure to do so has often led to great ignorance, both among Catholics themselves and even more, perhaps, among Catholic converts from Anglicanism.
Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell (Miss)
Exeter
SIR – So it’s foreign priests or no priests (News focus, May 27). We’d better go for the former, those of us who still want to be able to go to Mass in their local parish in 10 years’ time. But how much more joyful if we could produce our own priests.
The promotion of vocations, we learn, is no longer a bishop’s priority – that’s no surprise given that it has singularly failed, and given the harsh prospects a young man faces contemplating the priesthood today. The Bishop of Hallam says that something more radical is required to handle the shortage of priests, beyond evangelisation – but we are not told what he thinks this should be.
And that’s the problem: until senior clerics, right up to the top, are prepared to unite, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit – as Pope Francis wants – and recognise the need to bring true love, understanding and mercy to the Church’s teachings today on all aspects of human relationships for lay and clergy, most young men and women will be frightened by the thought of being trapped in an institution whose attitude to people and their personal lives still largely belongs in the 19th century.
Yours faithfully,
Jeremy D Lampitt
Royal Leamington Spa,
Warwickshire
SIR – I am quite often reminded of one of Agatha Christie’s whodunnits when I read in Catholic journals (not the Catholic Herald) that Humanae Vitae never stated why we need to strive within marriage to keep the act of intercourse open to the possibility of life according to the natural designs. The answer is that it was not stated because it is so obvious that, unless this is done, the act is not an act of love.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Bryan Storey
St Paul the Apostle,
Tintagel, Cornwall
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