SIR – In his searching article “Can jihadists be rehabilitated?” (December 6), Tim Stanley says: “Many of us have been taught to think that man isn’t born bad and even when he becomes bad he can be turned back …”
Mr Stanley surely puts his finger here on a core modern heresy. The Catholic Church teaches something rather different. That we are made in the image of God is true, but it is also true that, even from birth, that image has been damaged by our inheritance of original sin as a result of the turning away from God of our first parents, leaving us with a fundamental tendency to sin.
It is only after baptism that we can say that the image of God is restored in a human person, and even then, because each of us is born with free will, that image can be damaged again through sin. Somebody who voluntarily persists in grave sin to the moment of death and without repentance may destroy this image irrevocably. That is what Our Lord’s warnings about hell mean.
If it were true that we were “born good” without qualification, then of course there would be no need for salvation -– that is the second part of the heresy. The idea that we can “turn people back”, or they can “turn themselves back” by their own efforts, given the right human conditions, is the sort of extension of “do-it-yourself healing” that has led people to the idea that we can heal our souls by means of material conditions and without supernatural help. This is really a confusion of categories, arising from widespread materialism and unbelief.
Ruth Yendell
Exeter, Devon
SIR – In his interesting article “Justice and charity – revisited” (The Last Word, December 13) Fr Rolheiser points out that charity is more than spending “several hours helping serve a Christmas meal to the homeless” so that I can “feel good about what I just did”. Rather, in addition to these “feelgood” works of mercy, my charity (to be true) must tackle the underlying causes of homelessness.
In this Fr Rolheiser is parsing Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate which begins: “Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love – caritas – is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace.”
However, the author of the late 14th-century spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing is clear that real works of charity have one single return or impact that transcends the realm of good feelings: in the 24th chapter, entitled “What charity is in itself”, the author states that the practitioner of charity “neither cares nor notices whether he is in pain or pleasure as long as the will of Him he loves is fulfilled.”
So when we serve a meal to the homeless this Christmas our reward is less to feel good and more to know that, in humility, we have been agents of God’s love in this fallen world.
Henry Broadbent
London SE28
SIR – In his recent letter creating the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time as Sunday of the Word of God, Pope Francis says: “Those who draw daily nourishment from God’s Word become, like Jesus, a contemporary of all those whom they encounter: they are not tempted to fall into sterile nostalgia for the past or to dream of ethereal utopias yet to come.”
The recent correspondence about banning or allowing Liturgies of the Word and reception of the Eucharist in the absence of a priest is surely vindicated here.
Daily Mass-goers appreciate the continuity of the readings (for example, the post-Easter preaching of the Resurrection by the Apostles, or the story of Joseph). In trying to ban such services those doing so are depriving others of this much-valued continuity; and what are they themselves gaining spiritually from such a ban?
Elizabeth Price
Linton, Kent
SIR – The Catholic Herald is doing the right thing in publicising the repression of Catholics (and other religions) in China (leading article, December 13).
Yes, we should pray for our persecuted brethren … but surely there should be a concerted, worldwide attempt to force Beijing to answer one simple question: why are you so afraid of the Catholic Church?
John D Rogers
Nantymoel, Bridgend
SIR – How characteristic of Adrian Snow (Letter, November 22) to emphasise St John Henry Newman’s particular concern and design for secondary education actualised in the Oratory School (particular to the point of reproaching Hilaire Belloc for not eating his fatty mutton), without mentioning that he himself, as headmaster of the school in the 1970s and 80s, had kept Newman’s ideal aflame. Appointing married housemasters was more than a gesture to the vital women’s influence that Newman desiderated: Snow expected an active input from housemasters’ wives, nowadays augmented by housemothers.
Although capable of direct action (in the first holiday break he got housemasters to join him in repainting the studies), Snow’s low profile was typical, as was the micro-management of each teacher’s potential that soon found the school over-subscribed and academically ahead of its peers.
A convert, like most OS heads, Snow kept Newman’s priorities in view. “Our purpose,” he sharply reminded a housemasters’ meeting, “is to save [our charges’] souls.”
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset
SIR – I strongly agree with Peter Davision (Arts, November 22) when he writes of the dangers to music-making in the digital age.
In a speech given in July 1964, Benjamin Britten warns against the substitution of the “loudspeaker” for true musical experience: “Music demands more from a listener than simply the possessions of a tape-machine or a transistor radio … It demands as much effort on the listener’s part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy triangle of composer, performer and listener.”
Perhaps an analogy might be drawn between that other “holy triangle” of priest, congregation and Almighty God?
Hugh Robson
Marlow, Buckinghamshire
SIR – The trailer for the new James Bond film, No Time to Die, has been released. There is a striking line where Bond tells his foe that “History isn’t kind to men who play God.” Bond is also rumoured to be married in the film. I wonder, with the final scene in the Italian hilltop village of Matera, is Bond on his way to Rome?
Dominic Gallagher
Glenavy, Co Antrim
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