SIR – The Catholic Prosperity Gospel is not something new (Cover story, November 30). An aspect of missionary work is to prepare a generous church largely able to support itself. Certainty I speak about money, but once or twice a year is enough.
It’s a good two dozen years since a Nigerian Augustinian explained that Africans don’t feel they’ve worshipped unless they’ve made a donation. But leadership by example is lacking: I’ve joined many African priests in their worship. Rarely did any donate a single small coin.
Eventually a layman explained that many people are unable to put something by for a whole week but they could make a small donation daily if they had the opportunity. So now we have a collection at weekday Mass as well as on Sunday.
Around three dozen years ago I read that when St Mark juxtaposed the greedy scribes and the poor widow (Mark 12:38-44) it was also a serious warning to clergy not to devour the property of the poor.
Only in the last half-dozen years a fellow priest warned me that by not constantly pressing people to donate more and more I’m withholding God’s blessings from them. As if I could. As if the death and Resurrection of Christ and the very real hope of eternal life are not our true blessings.
Fr Michael Walsh, osa
St Thomas of Villanova Priory,
Zing, Taraba State, Nigeria
SIR – Cardinal McCarrick and some other prelates have been guilty of terrible sins, some of them as bad as those that “cry out to heaven for vengeance”, and, furthermore, have gotten away with them for decades. Clearly someone in the Church is not doing their duty.
But there is something else that appals me even more: the large number of weak Catholics that apparently depend on the worthiness and good conduct of the clergy for staying with the Church. What attracted me into the Church in the early 1960s was not the higher clergy, but the real presence of God in Catholic churches and the example of the saints. I vaguely noted that the officials in the Vatican formed an admirable machinery of Church government but nothing more.
Our Lord said that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against my Church”, implying that they nearly would. Those wretched clergy who continue in severe unrepented mortal sin are automatically excommunicated and are no longer even Catholics. Why take any notice of them at all? By the grace of God, it would take more than a few corrupt cardinals to shake my faith in the true Christian Church.
For many to leave the safe haven of the faith because of the scandalous deeds of a few prelates is to give the Devil a greater victory, an even greater triumph than the falling away of a few of our “leaders”.
There are many good, hard-working, conscientious men in the priesthood, and it has been my good fortune to be served by such for the last 50 years. My advice to those whose faith is weak is to be encouraged by them and to avoid unworthy clergy like the plague they are.
Jim Allen
Torquay, Devon
SIR – Dare one observe that the logic of Mary McAleese’s assertion that infant baptism is an abuse of human rights (Books, December 7) is that parents should not introduce their babies to language in case the child might have preferred a different mother tongue. In what language then would the child express this preference?
The excesses of Irish Catholicism should not lead one to the error that belief can come from nowhere. The trick is to give the child a framework, not a straitjacket, so that it can move deeper into, or perhaps move on from, the beliefs of childhood. What one needs to guard against is, in Newman’s words, the idea of religious belief as “an assent to propositions”.
As a Catholic who started life, so to speak, as a Methodist at three weeks old, an eldest child and the only one baptised, it mattered to me later, in a dysfunctional family, that someone had bothered enough. Eventually, much later, I obtained my baptismal certificate in order to be received into the Catholic Church. (It is probably a courtesy of Vatican II that my Protestant baptism was accepted.)
Jacqueline Castles
London W2
SIR – It is with trepidation that I step into the sacred precincts reserved for scholars and, as it seems, authorisation by the Pope himself. However, I feel strongly that I should express my views on this subject.
It is a great relief to note that Pope Francis himself has “put the focus” on the translation of non indurci in tentazione as meaning “lead us not into temptation” (Vatican news analysis, November 30).
I can make no scholarly contribution to the accuracy of the translation but emphasise the feeling of many, now well
expressed by Pope Francis: “I am the one who falls into temptation” and “the one who leads you into temptation is Satan. That is Satan’s office.”
The incongruence as highlighted by the Holy Father has resulted in the translation now suggested: non abbandonarci alla tentazione (“do not abandon us to temptation”). From the frying pan into the fire. This time not just led there but even abandoned! By no stretch of imagination could this interpretation be acceptable and, as indicated in the article, it cannot remotely be justified as a translation.
Abandoning approaching the problem as an exercise in translation, may I follow the guidance provided in Dei Verbum (November 18, 1965) to which my attention was drawn as a student of theology (St Mary’s University). Now St Paul VI exhorts: “The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express.” Needless to say, it would have been far from the intention of Jesus to have us believe that his Father would have intended to lead us into or abandon us to temptation. Our prayer to the Father should be “to deliver us from temptation and from all evil”.
I hope the obsession with the need to abide by accuracy of translation would be replaced by the reality of our intercession. Similar considerations must be given to “peace on earth to [men] those who are loved by the Lord”.
Anton Joseph
Wallington, Surrey
SIR – The figure of the priest in biretta and shades in the photo on page 7 of your November 16 edition looks suspiciously like the disgraceful Cardinal Grotti allegedly invented by your late cartoonist John Ryan some years ago.
If so, he is clearly up to no good still, and a watch for him should be made among the piazzas and cafés of Rome.
Dan Halverson
Halesowen, West Midlands
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.