SIR – Fifty years ago the Abortion Act was passed. Since then more than eight million abortions have been carried out in Britain. More and more babies are being born – and survive – at 23 weeks gestation and yet the law allows abortion up to 24 weeks and beyond.
Instead, there are those who would remove the few, modest safeguards in place – such as the requirement for two doctors to authorise an abortion – and discard the right of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to exercise a conscientious objection to be involved in abortion. In the past two years we have seen doctors performing abortions on grounds of gender not being disciplined by the law.
With the general election approaching, the electorate has an opportunity to question our candidates about this most important matter. We can ask: are you in favour of keeping the present law unchanged? Or are you in favour of lowering the upper time limit for abortion? Are you in favour of protecting the rights of the disabled in the womb? Do you support the right of conscientious objection for those in the medical profession? Do you oppose abortion on grounds of gender?
Each year in Britain there are around 200,000 abortions. This is not to ignore the deep problems that many women face in pregnancy, but surely there are better, more caring and positive ways of dealing with such problems.
Yours faithfully,
John de Waal
Chairman, East Sussex Life, By email
SIR – Ann Farmer is right (Letter, May 12). The process of canonisation requires a detailed sifting of evidence. The problem is that too many of the critics disregard the result, or else have another agenda altogether, to do with their ideas about the Church after Vatican II. Even the discovery recently that the vast majority of the Houses of Life, protecting and hiding Jews, were Catholic institutions and responding often directly to papal initiatives – this means nothing to them.
Ann Farmer is right again that in the 1930s the Holocaust was inconceivable to most Germans; and that Italian fascism was not markedly anti-Semitic until the racial laws of 1938; and even then, there was little enthusiasm.
The Church tries to ensure the sacramental life for the faithful. The popes of the 20th century looked to work with governments, negotiating concordats safeguarding Catholic rights. Pius XI supported his then secretary of state Pietro Gasparri over the Lateran Treaty which established the modern Vatican State. Pacelli, like Gasparri, looked for accommodation where it was possible.
He was in very respectable company. Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, the top official at the Foreign Office, argued against Eden for accommodation with Mussolini after the invasion of Ethiopia, to keep him from alliance with Hitler.
There were policy disagreements between Pius XI and his new secretary of state, but never on principle. There is absolutely no doubt of the repeated condemnation of fascism and Nazism by Pacelli and of his complete identification with Pius XI’s “spiritually we are all Semites”.
Pacelli had Jewish friends from his youth, worked under Benedict XV in the interests of Judaism, did all he could for Italian Jews after 1938 and was regarded by the Nazis as “Jew-loving”. In his one meeting with Ribbentrop in Rome he made his views utterly clear. His cautious public statements were well understood both by the Nazis and in the West.
L’Osservatore Romano is not just the mouthpiece of the pope or Pacelli. It did, and today still evidently does, reflect the views of different groups in the Curia. That is all Sir Anthony Holland’s long quotation (Letter, May 5) proves. Moreover, in August 1938, Pope Pius XI was very ill, and not active. The article Sir Anthony questioned was one response to the new laws.
Generally L’Osservatore was highly critical, which led to fascist demands to cease its “subtle propaganda”, and the arrest of one of its assistant editors. Pius XII’s own view was given to an Italian military chaplain, Fr Scavizzi, in 1943. Pius said: “After many tears and many prayers, I came to the conclusion that a protest from me would … multiply acts of cruelty. Perhaps [it] would win me some praise … but would bring down on the poor Jews an even more implacable persecution.” And, of course, destroy the life-saving work the pope was undertaking.
Pius knew of the Nazi reaction against such public protests that had been made. Sir Anthony might look further and start with a compelling review by Sir Martin Gilbert in the American Spectator, July-August 2006, succinct and easily found.
Whether Pius XII made all the right judgments may be discussed. What is incontestable is his conscientiousness, and the very considerable good he achieved. What would Jesus have said? I would not be as confident about that as Sir Anthony. I remember the lapidary sentence, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”.
Yours faithfully,
Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB
St John’s Priory, Easingwold, North Yorkshire
SIR – Your reports on Fatima (May 12) make mention of the spinning sun phenomenon. I can imagine many people wishing there had been a video camera present. But a video recording of such an event at the John Bradburne pilgrimage hill at Mutemwa, Zimbabwe, does exist, and makes fascinating viewing.
To my eyes, the effect is not so much of spinning as the sun switching on and off, though the people who were there do repeatedly call it spinning. What makes the recording special is that the event was so unexpected. The amateur cameraman was routinely filming the pilgrims’ climb, with everyone chanting out-of-breath Hail Marys, and it takes everyone by surprise.
Further to my article in the Catholic Herald last year (August 19) about John Bradburne, readers may also like to know that a petition for the Cause of his beatification has just been launched online by the Memorial Society. It can be signed by clicking on Beatification at johnbradburne.com.
Yours faithfully,
Professor David Crystal
Holyhead, Gwynedd
SIR – Section 143 of the English version of Amoris Laetitia ends: “Human beings live on this earth, and all that they do and seek is fraught with passion.”
“Passion” could be improved and “fraught” is simply wrong. The translator has confused two different words. It should read: “Human beings live on this earth, and all that they do and seek is freighted with passion.”
As well as showing the deficient knowledge of English that characterises the new Mass translation, this also looks like a Freudian slip.
Yours faithfully,
Catherine McLoughlin
London W14
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