SIR – You report that both the US bishops and Rome are moving towards a “metropolitan model” for holding bishops accountable for their handling of abuse cases. Under this model, complaints against a bishop would be reviewed by his metropolitan archbishop and a review board (Cover story, November 23).
As you rightly point out, this model is seemingly more in harmony with Catholic tradition than the lay-led alternative. It would, however, require a change to canon law as currently only the Pope may hold bishops accountable. So it would, in fact, mark something of a departure from traditional Catholic practice.
One of the most common objections to the lay-led model was that it would require extensive re-writing of church law. But that argument clearly no longer holds given that this is also true of the metropolitan model.
Then there is the broader consideration of which model is most likely to restore trust between bishops, priests and the faithful in the pew. Given that the present crisis has revealed, in places, truly woeful episcopal leadership, is a model in which bishops investigate bishops – with limited input from lay experts – the solution?
If courageous priests were to report misbehaviour by their bishop to the metropolitan archbishop, could they be certain that their complaint would be treated in confidence? Given that some bishops’ conferences operate as a kind of old boy network, could the priest be confident that the bishops wouldn’t close ranks against him? Who would he appeal to then? The same applies to the lay whistleblower, who might face even greater hurdles.
Daniel Kowalski
Durham
SIR – Surely Martin Clitheroe is confusing two separate issues in his letter “A new model for the Church?” (November 16). The authority of “clerics” (his word) has never depended on their moral virtue, desirable and hoped for as the latter is.
A defrocked priest can still give the sacraments in an emergency and in the absence of any practising priest. This is because their authority depends not on their moral standing but on the sacrament of ordination which is indissoluble.
Nor is scandal in high places anything new in the Church. The problem is sin, and no human structure is immune from sin – even one made from “all the people of God”.
I was personally immensely relieved to learn that Cardinal Nichols had spoken up about the results of “excessive synodality” in the Anglican Communion (Cover story, November 2). With their tradition of exalting individual judgment and without the understanding of obedience as a road to freedom, Anglicans have lost the unity which the Catholic Church has managed to maintain throughout the centuries precisely because of the Petrine authority and the hierarchy that springs from it.
Ruth Yendell
Exeter, Devon
SIR – Your edition of November 9 contained an item from your archives in 1968 regarding the use of Hosts which look and taste like bread.
I had never before heard of the use of such Hosts. But some 30 years ago, when I was staying in a village in Haute Provence, I experienced the consecration of small pieces of pain natural in two or three baskets on the altar. The baskets were then passed around the congregation to be consumed. This was clearly very illiturgical, but it did bring the Last Supper very forcefully home to me.
I have since then wondered whether something similar – but within the bounds of orthodoxy – might be introduced in this country. In light of your archives item it seems that it had already been done in the 1960s.
Does anyone have any information as to the outcome?
Patrick Cobbe
Bath, Somerset
SIR – Saudi Arabia has been much in the news recently for allegedly organising the murder of a journalist and for its bombing campaigns in the Yemen, causing mass starvation.
Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia is the largest provider of oil to the Western world, and we have an interest in not disturbing relations with that country. In reality, in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabism is in force, it is not only impossible to build a church or even a tiny place of worship, but any act of Christian worship or any sign of Christian faith is severely prohibited with the harshest of penalties. Thus about a million Christians working in Saudi Arabia are deprived by violence of any Christian practice or sign.
They may participate in Mass or in other Christian practices – and even then with the serious danger of losing their jobs – but only on the property of the foreign oil companies.
And yet, Saudi Arabia spends billions of petrodollars not for the benefit of its poor citizens or of poor Muslims in other countries, but to construct mosques and madrasas in Europe and to sponsor imams in all Western countries.
The Roman mosque of Monte Antenne, constructed on land donated by the Italian government, was principally financed by Saudi Arabia and was built to be the largest mosque in Europe, in the very heart of Christianity. In Pakistan alone more than 20,000 madrasas were built to preach fundamentalist Islam.
All over the world Saudi Arabia has financed extremist groups, and now we are paying the price in terrorism for turning a blind eye to the rottenness of its regime and its ideology.
Brian McKenna
Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire
SIR – As a new reader to the Catholic Herald, I am very interested in your coverage of the sexual abuse scandals in the Church. I notice, however, that one voice, if not condemned, is either ignored or forbidden by the media, including the Catholic press: that of Michael Voris and Church Militant (Cover story, November 16).
Were it not for them, most of the laity would never have heard about the chicanery and abuse. Having tried all other approaches, their direct methods were all that was left to them. We owe them a debt of gratitude for fearless reporting, their staunch adherence to Catholic teaching and, to my certain knowledge, for having brought many lapsed Catholics back to – and converts into – the Church.
Isabella Corr
Greyabbey, Co Down
SIR – Tim Stanley (Comment, November 16) makes some thoughtful points about the campaign to silence Roger Scruton.
One wonders whether there will, in future, be any social role for our philosophers. It is already difficult to imagine one enjoying a similar public profile to, say, that of Bertrand Russell. (France, where I live, is a happy exception to this trend.)
Philosophers have, no doubt, also contributed to their irrelevance by becoming absorbed in arcane linguistic games that can only be grasped by the
initiated few.
James Peters
Paris
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