SIR – I find it hard to recognise the very negative picture of the Irish Church given by Jon Anderson (Cover Story, March 31). Mr Anderson is unfair to the three Irish cardinals of the last quarter of a century – the late Cahal Daly, the late Desmond Connell and Seán Brady – when he describes them as having been tarnished by the child abuse controversy.
Child abuse was not a very critical problem in any of the three dioceses over which Cardinal Daly presided, and the one case most often linked to Cardinal Brady involved his presence as a young priest at an inquiry; Cardinal Connell’s record in regard to abuse is generally recognised to have been much better than those of his two predecessors in Dublin.
Mr Anderson also fails to mention the numerical strength of the Church. Weekly Mass attendance is still more than a million across the island – a figure higher than attendance each week in the Church of England. My own diocese, Down and Connor, is in good health and many parishes are well supported by the laity. The annual diocesan Faith and Life convention is well attended. So too was the inaugural conference in Northern Ireland of Iona, the Catholic think tank. He omits also any reference to that fine weekly publication, The Irish Catholic.
Mr Anderson places too much emphasis on the Association of Catholic Priests, a body founded in recent years but which is stuck ideologically in the 1960s. He says that its membership is elderly. More to the point, it represents only a minority of the clergy and has only a tiny membership outside the Republic.
I fear that I had to laugh when I read that the ACP “is very much a loyal opposition”. It is a pity that Mr Anderson wrote before the Irish Times reported the latest pronouncements of a leading ACP figure, Fr Tony Flannery. Fr Flannery (according to the the newspaper’s reports, which he has not contradicted) has used his blog to reject, among other teachings, the idea of God’s personality, the Trinity and the virginal conception of Our Lord. That may be opposition, but it is hardly loyal.
Yours faithfully,
CDC Armstrong
Belfast commissioner, Diocese of Portsmouth, Hampshire
SIR – Fr Leo Chamberlain and Lord Alton of Liverpool (Letter, April 7) offer a cogent defence not only of Pius XII and his dealings with the Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis, but of the other 20th-century popes.
The Jews were the scapegoats of the nations, and since the 1960s at least Pius XII has served as the scapegoat for the nations’ failure at the 1938 Évian Conference to offer sanctuary to persecuted Jews.
In a strange but telling reversal of received opinion on individuals like Marie Stopes, regarding whom no amount of evidence of racism and anti-Semitism and admiration of Hitler (at least before the War) can dent her posthumous reputation as a benefactress of mankind, no amount of evidence of Pius XII’s help for the Jews of Italy and beyond can dent his reputation as an arch-enemy of the Jewish people. Indeed, I fully expect the next “exposé” to reveal that he actually orchestrated the Holocaust.
The testimony of Jewish defenders like Pinchas Lapide, Rabbi David Dalin and Gary Krupp of the Pave the Way organisation appears to make no difference.
However, even in today’s post-truth world, evidence still counts, and history will judge whether Pius deserves to be remembered as a friend or enemy of the Jewish people; to decide in favour of the latter view would be to hand Hitler yet another posthumous victory.
Yours faithfully,
Ann Farmer (Mrs)
Woodford Green, Essex
SIR – The week before Holy Week, I visited a National Trust property with my daughter and her two children, who joined in the Cadbury chocolate hunt (News focus, April 14).
I was glad that it was not connected with Easter, since we were still observing Lent, with nearly two weeks to go until the great feast.
I was also relieved that they were presented with chocolate rabbits, not eggs, as their prizes. The commercial world has all but destroyed Advent, by identifying it with the Christmas season – let us not encourage the same treatment of Lent! Obviously, I would expect an egg hunt during Easter Week to be named for the season.
Yours faithfully,
Clare Underwood (Mrs)
Cambridge
SIR – Regarding recent correspondence about Amoris Laetitia, an elegant and simple, if partial, solution suggests itself: to reduce greatly marriage break-up rates. The proven way to do this is by promoting natural family planning, which can be used in accordance with the Church’s teaching.
In Amoris Laetitia Pope Francis endorses the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae, which has not been explained and preached: one reason why we have such high marriage break-up rates. Those who do follow its teaching using NFP have dramatically lower divorce and abortion rates.The general divorce rate is one in three compared with one in 150 for NFP couples.
Pope Francis is keenly aware of the malign influence of abortion on the Church. A recent announcement by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service said that two thirds of abortions are attributable to failed contraception, thus underlining the direct causal link between abortion and contraception.
The solution has been in the Church’s “too difficult” tray for 50 years, but the way forward now is surely to promote NFP as an integral part of marriage preparation courses. Something for our bishops to start planning and investing in, for, as Pope Paul put it to priests, “it is your principal responsibility … to state the Church’s teaching on marriage completely and with clarity”, and to bishops he described this as “greatest among the works and burdens entrusted to you”.
Yours faithfully,
Paul Ives
Epping, Essex
SIR – Richard Ingrams (Comment, April 14) notes how the traditional Easter Gospel reading (John 20) always reminds him of Graham Greene, who, when writing to Fr Leopold Duran, his friend and biographer, told how in St John’s Gospel the run by Peter and John towards the tomb was “like reportage”.
Not only was it “like reportage”, it really was reportage, as John confirmed earlier in 19: 34-36: “…one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water. This is the evidence of one who saw it – trustworthy evidence, and he knows he speaks the truth – and he gives it so that you may believe as well. Because all this happened to fulfil the words of scripture.” The “one who saw it” was clearly John himself recounting the incident just as it had happened.
Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens, Lancashire
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