SIR – I read with interest discussions about the possibility of married men being ordained priest as a norm in the Latin Rite (cover story, November 17). I am a married priest with children.
I suggest that the discussion about married priests is not very well grounded in the theology of fatherhood and priesthood. Often when people talk about fatherhood and priesthood it is in a metaphorical way – that priesthood is like fatherhood but not really fatherhood. The fatherhood of the priest is actually ontological.
The man is made able to have a different order of fatherhood by the sacrament of Holy Orders not by imitating natural fathers. The fatherhood of the priest is expressed most fully not by being pastoral but in the liturgy. It is only from the liturgy that it extends pastorally.
Fatherhood originates in God the Father. Many discussions are really about natural fatherhood lifted higher. Let us reflect on Holy Scripture, especially John 5:19, John 8:28, 1 Corinthians 4:14-15, Galatians 4:19, Ephesians 3:14 and 3 John 4.
Commonly people speak of the importance of the witness of a good domestic father first and from whom priests can learn how to be fatherly. But if we acknowledge that fatherhood originates from above, then in fact priests should learn their fatherhood from Christ and His Father. It is priests who are celibate, being more closely configured to Christ the High Priest, who provide the essential witness for domestic fathers to grow in their understanding of what it is to be a father.
I agree with allowing married men to be ordained priest in certain circumstances. However, I must conclude from the theology of fatherhood and priesthood that the celibate state is the most appropriate state for the priest and should be the norm for the Latin Church.
Fr Ian Hellyer
Pastor of the Buckfast Ordinariate Mission and assistant priest for Saltash and Torpoint in Cornwall
SIR – It came as a surprise to find in Allan Massie’s interesting article on the novelist Muriel Spark (Feature, November 17) that no mention was made of the influence of Blessed John Henry Newman on her life and writing.
Spark wrote the foreword to Realizations: Newman’s Own Selection of his Sermons, edited by Vincent Ferrer Blehl SJ. In it she writes: “My only claim to the subject is that of a novelist with a personal and literary debt to Newman. I spend most of my reading time with Newman books. I find every Life of Newman irresistible, even if it is the same story over and over again. When I am not reading Newman the books stand in peaceful reflection on the shelves, reading and revising themselves, so to speak, for the essays, lectures, sermons and letters all give out something new at each reading.”
As to her conversion Muriel writes: “It was by way of Newman that I turned Roman Catholic. Not all the beheaded martyrs of Christendom, the ecstatic nuns of Europe, the five proofs of Aquinas, or the pamphlets of my Catholic acquaintance, provided anything like the answers that Newman did.”
Finally she said of Newman’s persuasive power: “What did it consist of? Simplicity of intellect and speech. Simplicity is the most suspect of qualities; it upsets people a great deal. I think it was this, more than his actual doctrine, that caused suspicion to gather round the Vicar of St Mary’s.”
She then quotes James Anthony Froude, an undergraduate at the time, in Newman’s defence. Froude wrote: “He was, on the contrary, the most transparent of men. He told us what he believed to be true. He did not know where it would take him.”
I think that was true also, to a degree, of Muriel.
Fr Michael Murphy
Cork, Republic of Ireland
SIR – Your review of A Revolution of Feeling (Books, November 10) that apparently commences with a chapter on “A History of Emotions” betrays no admission that the very concept of emotions as we now understand them emerged out of the thinking of 19th-century Scotland.
This is all explained in Thomas Dixon’s 2008 Cambridge monograph: “From Passions to Emotions: the Creation of a Secular Psychological Category”. The concept of our being in thrall to some dark subconscious drives so that we cannot be held accountable for our actions appalled moral philosophers at the time. Prior to this, we spoke of our passions, which we were responsible for keeping under control.
In so much of the soft sciences we often find what we assume to be there, rather than what is there, and there is a trickle of intellectuals who conclude that this concept of our emotions is both wrong and harmful. Certainly we will not rid ourselves of the snowflake generation so long as they can hide behind this subterfuge with all its ramifications.
Alan Bartley
Greenford, Middlesex
SIR – It is disappointing that once again the Catholic Church is unrepresented in the list of churches remembering road victims each November. This year some 22 churches, most of them Anglican, have responded to the organisation Roadpeace’s request to hold prayerful events in remembrance of those killed and injured on Britain’s roads.
Most take place on the third Sunday in November, a week after Remembrance Sunday. Such occasions offer comfort and companionship to those bereaved or injured by such tragedies. Last year 1,792 people died on our roads, 69 of them children. A total of 448 pedestrians were killed, effectively one in four of all such deaths. Also dying were 319 motorcyclists and 102 cyclists.
Yet it is still rare to learn of any Church leader speaking out against such carnage on our highways, animal as well as human. Last year 63 animals perished upon the roads of the New Forest, evidently the only place in Britain where such records are kept. You can sometimes see their bodies when you visit.
Antony Porter
London, W9
SIR – The article “Why can’t we be Freemasons?” (News focus, November 10) overlooks the theological reasons why Catholics are not allowed to join English-speaking (or “Craft”) Freemasonry, which have nothing to do with Freemasonry on the continent.
The first is that the texts used in Masonic rituals make it clear that it is a naturalistic religion, placing all the emphasis on the mason’s individual effort to improve himself. It is Pelagian – God’s grace is very distant, reflecting the theological outlook known as Deism, popular in 18th-century Europe when Freemasonry started: God as a remote creator, uninvolved in the daily life of the world, a “Grand Architect”.
The second problem is that in Masonic ceremonies Christian prayers (such as the “Collect for Purity” from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) are doctored to remove any reference to Our Lord.
The third reason is the character of the oaths the new mason is asked to swear on initiation requiring him to keep secrets before he knows what they are. This is what moral theology calls a “vain” oath.
These are the main reasons, but there are other difficulties such as the very limited view of ethics for an organisation which claims to be a “system of morality, veiled in allegory”. The masons whom the article claims are active in parish life do need to know that they are not allowed to receive Holy Communion, and so do their clergy.
Fr Ashley Beck
Senior Lecturer in Pastoral Ministry, St Mary’s University, Twickenham
SIR – I was recently watching a television quiz in which a middle-aged lady was asked: “Who was crucified on Calvary?” Hesitantly the answer came: “Joan of Arc?”
This reply shocked me as it illustrates clearly the depth of ignorance in the populace at large about fundamental aspects of Christianity.
Consequently, I wonder what we the Catholic laity can do to dispel such ignorance. Does anyone have any suggestions?
John Barrie
Purley, Surrey
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