SIR – As an Anglican who has the periodic privilege and pleasure of all too brief visits to the Benedictine community at Buckfast Abbey, one thing I find interesting is to read the Roman Catholic periodicals, including the Catholic Herald and the Tablet.
You recently carried an article, “Anglicanism in steep decline” (Home news, September 8) and the Tablet carried an article, “Dramatic increase in Catholic acceptance of abortion” at about the same time.
The Tablet article states that in 2016, 61 per cent of so-called Catholics supported a woman’s right to have an unborn child aborted if the woman decided on her own that she did not wish to have the child. The article stated that in the same survey 76 per cent of supposed Catholics said that pre-marital sex was not at all wrong; while the survey reportedly stated that 62 per cent of alleged Catholics said that same-sex relationships were not wrong at all.
I have been looking at The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults into the Roman Catholic Church, which requires that I make a declaration of faith to the effect that I accept the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church before I can take Holy Communion from a Roman Catholic priest, as I would like to do when staying at Buckfast Abbey or if Holy Communion is not available at my own church for whatever reason.
Please, by what definition can those who support abortion, pre-marital sex and same-sex relationships be considered to be members of the Roman Catholic Church?
Peter Couch
Plymouth, Devon
SIR – The decision by the council members of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to call for the decriminalisation of abortion should come as no surprise (Home news, September 29).
That the decision was made by a small elite group without consulting the wider membership body is also no surprise.
Although an act of arrogance, it is probably not of any great relevance, as it is likely that the wider body would have voted overwhelmingly in the same way.
It is important for the general public, however, to realise that the call for decriminalisation is designed to protect doctors and other professional personnel working in the abortion industry from possible prosecution. It has little or nothing to do with the protection of women from prosecution, as the RCOG Council and others try to claim.
For several decades doctors have broken the law by abusing the Abortion Act of 1967 and there may be a fear that these crimes of the past and present may eventually catch up with the perpetrators.
It is well known that abortion referral forms are often signed in advance to help speed up the process of referral. The law specifies that these forms should be completed by two doctors after careful consideration of each individual case to assess if the decision to proceed meets the criteria as specified in the Abortion Act.
Furthermore, it is well established that the vast majority of abortions (98 per cent each year) are carried out on the grounds that “the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”.
Within this group, most abortions are carried out on the premise that the mental health of the mother will be adversely affected by continuing with the pregnancy. Very few, if any, are performed to protect the physical health of the mother.
Women referred for abortion do not, in general, receive any psychological or psychiatric assessment to truly determine if there is any possibility that their mental health will suffer if they do not undergo an abortion. Even if such assessments were made, there is absolutely no evidence to support an opinion that abortion is ever necessary to protect a mother’s mental health. On the contrary, there is a growing body of evidence that abortion frequently results in mental health problems for women and men.
As the law stands at present, deliberately induced abortion in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland) remains a crime unless carried out under the conditions as laid down in the Abortion Act. It is no surprise that some doctors and others complicit in abortion should want it to be considered a healthcare option and not a potentially criminal act.
At present, the majority of abortions performed in the UK are, in fact, criminal acts, flouting the law. The general public and Parliament need to consider carefully who would have most to gain by decriminalisation.
Dr Dermot Kearney
Consultant Cardiologist, Gateshead, and registrar for the Catholic Medical Association (UK), Ryton, Tyne and Wear
SIR – While it is true that the Alpha course is open to criticism for omitting key parts of Catholic teaching, all the correspondents on this subject seem to have overlooked the “Alpha in a Catholic context” and “Post-Alpha Catholic Teaching” materials which exist to address these lacunas.
If one is not happy with Nicky Gumbel’s videos it is possible to run the course by having a series of speakers cover the topics instead – and I know of one Catholic parish that did just that. Certainly it would be useful if there was a series of videos that featured speakers presenting Alpha’s subjects from a Catholic perspective, but no such resources are currently available and parishes work with what they have.
If people have reservations over Alpha then there are other courses such as Bishop Robert Barron’s Catholicism Study Programme. But shouldn’t we leave each parish to use the course that works best for them? Surely the most important thing is for the Church to engage modern society with Our Lord’s Gospel of love.
John Newton
Cheam, Surrey
SIR – I was inspired to learn of the beatification of Fr Stanley Rother (Feature, September 22), who was martyred in the pastoral service of the very poorest in Guatemala. A traditional English forename has become a Christian name.
The Duke of Cambridge was born a week after the capitulation of the Argentine forces at Port Stanley in the Falklands, and even then I believe that it was mooted that one of the baby prince’s forenames should be at christening “Stanley”. I do not think that his grandmother, being head of the Church of England, would have approved a non-religious name.
However, the Cambridges are expecting their third child and the beatification has completely changed the situation: to name a royal prince or princess after a heroic young Christian serving the poorest of the poor could be completely appropriate, while the name Stanley has no specific gender appropriateness, thus qualifying perhaps for a wider acceptance at the present time.
Stephen Bédoyère
London SW1
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