SIR – Dan Hitchens provided an excellent and balanced article on the EU debate (Cover story, March 4). There are three basic considerations that we all need to face up to.
a) The EU will never achieve the status of a United States of Europe, as member states have a history and differences that the US never had as a new nation created from scratch. The varieties of culture, language and custom, let alone economics, will make that unworkable beyond a certain point.
b) Great Britain is no longer “great”, let’s be honest. We do not have the Empire and are not the world player that we once were, significant though we might be in smaller stakes. Do we really want to “go it alone”?
c) The EU is not to be embraced uncritically as it is but needs to be reformed. John McDonnell elucidated the Labour stance on this superbly recently when he pointed out that we want stay in the EU, but also to change it. It is not a black-and-white vote between remaining in the EU as it is or the need to exit. When in France recently, I noticed their media commenting on the proposed Brexit, and rather than alarm and condemnation, there was interest and criticism of the EU, seeing Brexit as a symptom of a malaise.
There was also concern, though. Perhaps the referendum is just too close and we need more space to reflect and have the facts and figures clearly presented. At present there are too many knee-jerks and emotive positions, particularly from the “little island” mentality that can so easily afflict us.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Kevin O’Donnell
Rottingdean, East Sussex
SIR – Dr Michael Winter (Letter, March 4) is wrong to conclude that the New Testament texts which refer to ordained married persons undermine the teaching of celibacy. In fact, they support it. A careful reading of the texts shows that St Paul is teaching that married clergy (who were drawn from a world were celibacy was not the norm) were not to remarry on the death of their wives, and a person chosen for ordination could only have been married once. Marriage after ordination was strictly forbidden.
This the Catholic Church faithfully upholds to this day, and even a man who has married and has sadly been widowed twice cannot be ordained in the Church. All married clergy, permanent deacons and converts if widowed are also not allowed to remarry if they wish to remain in Holy Orders. Far from bolstering the case for a married clergy, these texts show the scriptural case for the discipline of celibacy. Indeed, some fringe Protestant churches, cut off from the historical context, further misinterpret the texts and believe only married men should be ordained. Such reasoning is absurd, when St Paul’s advice in chapter seven of First Corinthians is noted.
As for the holiness of marriage and the marital union, this was always Catholic teaching and can be so viewed in any pre-Vatican II catechism. The wife in the pre-Cranmerian marriage vows promised to be “bonny and buxom in bed”. All that Vatican II did was definitively proclaim the teaching.
Yours faithfully,
Robert Ian Williams
Bangor-on-Dee, Wrexham
SIR – There is clearly and will always be a place for priestly celibacy. But surely the key question to consider is what benefit to the Church might a married man bring? Jon Anderson (Cover story, February 26) argues that there may be a financial argument against having married priests, but as a married man considering the permanent diaconate, I would be willing to fund myself from continuing to work as a social worker during the week and minister at weekends. I hope I would bring the particular life experience of both my workplace and family to ministry and be able to support my over-worked parish priest in whatever way I could.
Yours faithfully,
Frank Browne
Dublin
SIR – I am writing in response to Prof John Loughlin’s feature on the future of religious life (February 26). He mentions the Religious Life Vitality research project conducted by a consortium of the Religious Life
Institute at Heythrop College, the Centre for Catholic Studies at the University of Durham and the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology in Cambridge, generously funded by the Conrad N Hilton Foundation.
Prof Loughlin chooses to emphasise what he calls the “individualised approach to religious life” and the “disjunction between the Sisters’ lifestyle choices and what they call the ‘institutional Church’” which he finds within the report. What he does not choose to mention is the remarkable and highly edifying level of commitment to contemplative prayer, self-sacrificing love in humble service and transformative ministry which we found in every individualand congregation participating in the project.
Older and frailer the Sisters may be, and declining in numbers and prestigious ministries from the period just prior to the Council, which itself was an historical anomaly in terms of high membership; there is also, for some of these seasoned ministers of God’s word and charity, an understandable disappointment that their years of vibrant experience in ministry are often ignored and disregarded by clergy to whom they offer their services. Nevertheless, the spiritual richness of their presence is a gift to the Church and the world and continues to be an inspiration to those around them. Their willingness to engage with change and challenge shows deep humility and courage.
Their enduring commitment to prayer of whatever type is part of what they understand God to require of them for the sake of the world. Conrad Hilton believed that he owed his life’s success to the example of religious women. The Religious Life Vitality Project shows that he was not mistaken in his admiration
of them.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ
Director, Religious Life Institute,
Heythrop College, University of London, London W8
SIR – I have read some weird editorials in my time, but “Why Satan loathes Latin” (February 26) takes some beating. The way you eulogise about the language, one would think it had been created by a community of mystics remote from the corrupting influences of the world.
In fact, it was the product of one of the most ruthless and totalitarian empires ever to have existed, reducing the peoples of surrounding nations, including the Jews, to servitude and virtual slavery, and which was responsible for the execution of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Devil didn’t appear to have much difficulty getting his message across – in Latin – then!
Yours faithfully,
Fr John Danford
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
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