SIR – Your editorial highlighting the need for our Government to have an ethically based foreign policy is much needed (April 1). It could make its overseas aid budget dependent on the recipient countries’ human rights record. This would be an inducement to better behaviour and lead to the protection of minorities, including Christians, as well as those who are persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity. The persecution of Christians has become an uncomfortable subject for Western democracies and media who, if not ignoring it entirely, mostly report it as persecution based on ethnicity such as occurs in Nigeria.
Even here in the UK, Nissar Hussain, a Muslim who converted to Christ has, with his family, been subjected to vandalism and abuse. According to one Christian publication, the authorities in Bradford, where this family lives, have failed to recognise their need of protection under the law and they have been left to suffer ill-treatment. The problem of persecution is very much an inconvenient truth.
Yours faithfully,
John Lovett,
Bedale, North Yorkshire
SIR – I read with dismay Quentin de la Bédoyère’s assertion that “canon law prohibits reporting [child sexual] abuse to the civil authorities, under pain of excommunication” (April 1). He also says that this is because such crimes and allegations come under the pontifical secret.
I am sure Mr de la Bédoyère’s mistake is an honest one, and made in good faith. But his statement is wrong. Neither the pontifical secret, nor any other provision of canon law, ever prohibited the reporting of civil crimes to civil authorities, regardless of their nature. The pontifical secret is simply a level of confidentiality applying to church documents submitted to the Holy See. Furthermore, the recent canonical reforms to which he alludes did not “permit” civil reporting where required by civil law, they incorporated the requirement into canon law. In other words, the reform was not to make civil reporting “permitted”, it having been forbidden; it made what was already canonically permitted and expected something which is absolutely required.
Many of the bishops and diocesan officials guilty of cover-ups say canon law excuses, or even justifies, their criminal behaviour. The opposite is, and has always been, true. The silencing of victims, the failure to conduct full and legally coherent investigations, the total absence of a juridic process against known sex-criminals, the refusal to turn predators over to the civil authorities, all represent not only abject moral failures by those in positions of trust and authority, but also wilful violations of canon law. Far from being the rock under which they should be allowed to hide, canon law remains the mechanism by which abusers, and those who shelter them, can and should be brought to justice.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Edward Condon, JCD
By email
SIR – As Dr Michael M Winter suggests (letter, March 25), it may be plausible to suppose that in early Christian times married men were ordained as priests. But the Church was in her infancy then, and has since listened to the voice of the Spirit and developed in her appreciation of the value of celibacy.
Thus the Council of Trent taught infallibly that ‘‘it is … better and happier to remain in virginity and celibacy than to be united in matrimony’’. As it is appropriate that priests, representing Jesus, should be in the better and happier state of life, it is also appropriate that the Church should prefer to ordain unmarried men.
In fact, between Trent and Vatican II there was, in general, no significant shortage of priests. In this country, as late as the 1950s and early 1960s, bishops were in a position to pick and choose between very good candidates because so many presented themselves.
What went wrong thereafter, it seems to me, was the large-scale demolition of traditional Catholic devotions focused on the saints, Our Lady and above all the Blessed Sacrament. This mediatorial spirituality had successfully sustained the religion of Catholics, but perhaps particularly clergy and Religious, from the Middle Ages (or earlier) right up to the pre-conciliar period.
Its destruction, no doubt often motivated by sincerely held ecumenical ideals, has been disastrous, and left Catholics scratching around for Protestant-type individualistic substitutes which are usually too shallow to support either celibacy or, indeed, traditional Catholic family morality. Before Vatican II, Catholic discipline and devotion had a symbiotic relationship, and taking away the latter has inevitably made the former more difficult to live out.
The chief answer to the shortage of vocations, then, may simply be the recovery of traditional Catholic devotions, especially that to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I suspect that the first bishop seriously and consistently to set about achieving this goal will reap a rich harvest of priestly candidates within a relatively short time.
It is absurd to suppose that God wishes the laity to be deprived of Mass and confession by the rapidly escalating priest shortage. It is even more absurd to suppose that He has deliberately brought about the shortage in order to manipulate the bishops into ordaining married men. The bishops have other options.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Zealley
Eynsham, Oxfordshire
SIR – My husband and I are grieving deeply with the rest of EWTN’s worldwide “family” on the death of Mother Angelica (News Focus, April 1). We thank this amazing woman from our hearts and thank everyone who works so hard for the network.
In the 12 years since we were introduced to it, we have learned a great deal about Catholicism that has deepened our faith and enlarged our knowledge of Church doctrines and history. In view of the scandals that have almost overwhelmed the Church in these years, Mother’s admonishments of wayward prelates and politicians show how prophetic was her voice.
I wish all parish priests would actively encourage their parishioners to bring EWTN into their homes. The doctrines concerning our faith are explained in very engaging ways by a variety of speakers and there are programmes for children, too. The true history of the Church as presented on EWTN is more interesting than the versions that denigrate Catholicism elsewhere on TV and in the cinema.
Yours faithfully,
Morag Marinoni
Druids Heath, Birmingham
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