SIR – In his article reviewing the periodicals and pamphlets read by those who lived in old Catholic Ireland (Feature, March 11), Michael Duggan gives them what amounts to a backhanded compliment.
He mentions some things that are to their credit, such as their concern for the “golden mean” that Catholic social doctrine can bring to the workplace. But the overall impression I get from his article is that the people in old Catholic Ireland were rather dumb.
He lists three of those people’s worst faults. I will take just the first, “insularity”. How on earth does he come to that conclusion, when in those days scores of Irish missionaries were serving people in a vast number of countries? Has he not read missionary magazines of those days, such as The Far East, which gave its readers insights into the lives of peoples on the other side of the globe, to whom those generous Irish citizens often sent financial help they themselves could ill afford?
Many of the people of old Catholic Ireland were poor materially, but their faith enabled them to call their soul their own; and churches in the many lands to which they emigrated bear witness to the depth of their faith. Besides, the people in old Catholic Ireland did not confine their reading to periodicals published in Ireland. Many, including my parents, read magazines published in England, such as The Catholic Fireside, to which Flora Thompson, of Lark Rise to Candleford fame, regularly contributed. Flora was not a Catholic.
In considering the ebbing away of the Catholic faith in Ireland, Michael Duggan makes no mention of the rapid transformation that took place in the 1960s, when the people of what once was a country where dire poverty prevailed came quickly to experience prosperity and its concomitant secularism.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Michael G Murphy
Bishopstown, Co Cork
SIR – My ears burned last weekend, but I am not unhappy to find my way into a reflection on Abbot Barry of Ampleforth and the founder of Stowe (Notebook, March 11).
In case your article should mislead, I might stress that Chavagnes is not so lost in idealism that it completely neglects academe: most of our teachers are pursuing postgraduate study alongside their teaching; we sent our second boy to Oriel College, Oxford last year (Newman’s alma mater) and back in 2012 we got a boy into Cambridge at 15, for Maths. And now, in collaboration with a local Catholic university, we are starting a degree programme which aims to equip future teachers through an education in the liberal arts.
I was at the Vatican in November when the results of an international consultation of Catholic schools and universities were presented to educational leaders. Rome is clear that Catholic schools are perhaps the last hope for the re-evangelisation of Europe.
As the Congregation for Catholic Education said in the document Educating Today and Tomorrow: “In some bishops’ conferences, Catholic teaching is not considered as a pastoral priority. But once the crisis hits, parishes realise that Catholic schools are often the only places where young people encounter the bearers of Good News. In many instances, these schools have become open to religious pluralism and, in some countries, priests and Religious … are not present … an unprecedented situation, which requires the presence of committed lay people, who are well prepared and willing to engage in a very demanding task.”
As an active but frustrated young Catholic in the 1980s, I thought that whenever the local Church spoke of adult education it was just an excuse for an institutional failure to teach children the basics of Christian doctrine, even with 13 years in Catholic school. But today the necessity for adult education is acute: that is how we are going to make sure that the next generation of Catholic children has worthy and committed teachers to pick up the pieces and respond to Our Lord’s call, once made to the Holy Father’s medieval namesake: “Rebuild my church!”
At the annual meeting of heads of Catholic independent schools (CISC) in January, we heard that independent schools might be the only Catholic schools left in Britain in 10 years’ time, if the maintained sector is crushed by the accumulation of internal and external attempts at secularisation. The bishops have woken up to this danger, after years in denial, although it may already be too late to reverse the trend. But it is only when the tide has reached its very lowest ebb that it eventually turns.
Yours faithfully,
Ferdi McDermott
Headmaster, Chavagnes International College, France
SIR – Andrew M Brown states that “there is an opportunity for a forward-thinking Catholic school here: provide that famous Christian ethos as well as the high academic standards and parents will beat a path to your door”. Look no further than Co Limerick, where Glenstal Abbey School amply meets the requirements of discerning Catholic parents.
Yours faithfully,
William Hanbury-Tenison
Shantony, Co Monaghan
SIR – Your correspondent Robert Ian Williams (March 11) disagrees with my interpretation of New Testament texts about married presbyters (priests), as undermining celibacy. The Epistles to Titus (1:6), and 1 Timothy (3:2 & 22) advocate the ordination of family men. Clearly these men were not celibates, and it set the pattern for centuries that the parochial clergy were usually married.
Mr Williams devotes most of his letter to the implications of the ban on second marriages for priests whose wives had died. That has no bearing on the ordaining of men in their first marriages.
He also refers to St Paul’s preference for the single life, stated in 1 Corinthians 7. He recommended it to men and women generally because he thought that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. Procreation was almost irrelevant in such a situation. He did not forbid marriage to anyone.
The current obligation of celibacy for priests does not go back to apostolic times, but to the Second Lateran Council of 1139. Canon 6 of that council prohibited marriage for clerics in major orders, and justified it by a clumsy paraphrase of Romans 13:13. A careful reading of the original verse reveals that St Paul was not denouncing marriage, but general sins of licentiousness, including sexual irregularities.
The council was reduced to an incomprehensible expedient, because in the whole of the New Testament there is not one verse which forbids the ordination of married men.
Yours faithfully,
Michael M Winter (Dr)
London N19
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