SIR – In his Notebook (May 5), Stephen Daisley of the Scottish Daily Mail dismisses Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party as “a glorified protest group” and “a lurch into extremism”. I wonder how many of the MPs who deserted Corbyn did so at least partly because they saw enough media moguls had high stakes in making him unelectable.
If Jesus Christ himself came back to earth as leader of the Labour Party and was asked if, as prime minister, he would order the use of nuclear weapons, does any Catholic really believe Jesus would say yes? Or might he reply, like “extremist” Jeremy: “It is an extraordinary question when you think about it – would you order the indiscriminate killing of millions of people? Would you risk such extensive contamination of the planet that no life could exist across large parts of the world?” And then? As now, the powerful of this world would scoff and ridicule and crucify him.
It seems likely Mrs May will win the election. If Brexit turns out to be no rose garden, at least we will be spared the Conservative chorus of how different it would have been in their strong and stable hands. Let the Tories have their poisoned chalice. As one of Mr Daisley’s moderate Labour voters, I applaud Jeremy Corbyn and very many of his manifesto policies and principles, and hope voters will show that they do too, even if we must wait till next time for a Labour election victory.
Yours faithfully,
Sister Rachel Duffy FCJ
Liverpool
SIR – Fr Geoffrey Attard’s letter, “Cross purposes” (May 5), raises points about the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday which need elaboration.
In the CTS Sunday Missal (imprimatur 2011), the liturgy for the Adoration of the Holy Cross is set out.There is first the “Adoration of the Holy Cross” where the priest, holding the cross aloft, recites the words “Behold the wood of the Cross on which hung the salvation of the world.” The response is “Come, let us adore.”
Second, there is the “Adoration of the Holy Cross” where the cross is held at the sanctuary entrance where the faithful, in procession “showing reverence for the cross”, either genuflect or make some other sign, eg kissing the cross.
Where the congregation is too large to do this, the priest may hold the cross on high and he “invites the people in a few words to adore the Holy Cross and afterwards holds the cross elevated higher for a brief time, for the faithful to adore it in silence”.
It is quite clear that the essence of this liturgy is the adoration of a wooden cross and the words “on which hung the salvation of the world” do not negate this.
I suggest that if something like this liturgy is to be retained, the wording and actions should be fundamentally altered to provide a liturgy which is theologically sustainable.
Yours faithfully,
DP Gleeson
By email
SIR – Your correspondent Fr Geoffrey Attard asks why some churches have apparently gone over to the practice on Good Friday of venerating a simple wooden cross without an image of the Crucified. A brief history of the rite might be helpful in this regard.
It seems to have begun in 4th-century Jerusalem, where a relic of the True Cross was exposed for public veneration on this day. By the beginning of the 5th century it was known in southern Italy, as a letter of St Paulinus of Nola attests, but there is no record of it in Rome or elsewhere in the West until the 7th or 8th century. Churches which did not possess a relic of the True Cross used a plain wooden cross instead.
The use of a cross with the image of Christ thereon is an innovation first mentioned in 11th-century England, and is probably related to the introduction around this time of the practice of solemnly unveiling a covered cross. The modern habit of venerating a plain cross may therefore be regarded as a reversion (conscious or unconscious) to the earlier practice, rather than the result of Protestant influence – in other words, as a piece of what has come to be known disparagingly as “liturgical archaeology”.
It makes the rite of solemnly unveiling the cross before veneration somewhat superfluous, and it would be interesting to know whether this rite has also been jettisoned in those churches that use a plain cross.
Yours faithfully,
Philip Goddard
London SE19
SIR – Following Clement Harrold’s delightful solution to an enduring dilemma (Letters May 12), I have to tell him that the Euthyphro dilemma does not refer either to God or goodness. It is as follows: “Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or because it is loved by the gods?”
The question is essentially about whether holiness (or any moral quality) refers to an independent standard by which it can be judged, or whether it is a matter of authority for which there is no external measure; it is thus a question of meaning (Wittgenstein’s “agreement in judgment”). Historically, the latter was termed nominalism, but in philosophy of religion today the distinction is between realism and anti-realism, or correspondence or coherence theories of truth.
Yours faithfully,
Jacqueline Castles
London W2
SIR – Your leading article (May 5) is correct to say that Pope Francis was unwise to use the phrase “concentration camps” with regard to refugee centres. As critics have rightly said, the phrase conjures up memories of the Nazi death camps.
However, there is a wider issue. All too often in Britain today references to “Nazis” and “fascists” are used in political debate as if Hitler and the Nazis were the only dictatorship of the 20th century. We should not forget the horrors inflicted by communism, such as the Siberian Gulags, the NKVD and the show trials. Ukraine lost some seven million in the Holodomor, or famine, created under Stalin.
There was a similar famine in China under Mao, followed by the brutality of the Cultural Revolution.
There is a real danger that the memory of communism is dying, at least in the West. This year is the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia so we should not forget what communism was and did.
As for His Holiness, maybe he should in future refer to “Gulags” so as to keep their memory alive
Yours faithfully,
Neil Addison
Liverpool
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