If you sometimes think Ireland is little better than Britain when it comes to abortion, you're wrong - thanks to various pro-life organisations who (despite serious differences on tactics and strategy) have braved the ridicule and contempt of the mainstream media and ensured that our Government has so far resisted pressure from the EU to fall into line.
It's true that the situation here may well change for the worse in a few short years. It is true that there is already an ugly and lucrative trade to Britain carried on under the fraudulent pretext of "right to travel", and that the pressure to "liberalise" our existing restrictions is continuous and unrelenting.
Nevertheless, for the moment things still really are better here. I was deeply impressed by one entry in a blog by Father John Hunwicke, an Anglican of very strong Catholic leanings who is Vicar of St Thomas the Martyr in Oxford. He can see the difference between the British situation and our own quite clearly - even if many Irish people can't. This is how he puts it:
Among the things one notices if one holidays annually in Ireland is the sight of people with Down's Syndrome. It is no more remarkable to see them in the streets than to see, say, a West Indian or someone in a wheelchair, in Britain. When you get back to Blighty, the streets seem suddenly strange because there aren't any [Downs people]. Then it dawns on you why there aren't any. Rather as, just after the cattle trucks had rumbled off to the East, it must have been strange - and then disconcerting and very frightening - to wander round a German town and see no Jewish faces.
Ugly, isn't it, that the role performed in Nazi Germany by Gestapo or SS is performed in Britain by members of Caring Professions whom we each of us have to visit, especially as we get older, for our aches and infirmities. If anything, ours is a spookier, well, let's be frank - an even more evil - society than Hitler's; one in which the Evil has dug its roots even deeper than it had in his Germany, because it is internalised among more people and more groups and more classes and more structures; and has been so manipulated that, far from being concealed, it is publicly applauded by our Media; and because the killing is, by a Diabolical masterstroke, disguised as Caring and performed by men and women whom we take for granted to be gentle. And yet, throughout my ministry, I've felt that I ought to discipline myself not to mention abortion too often in sermons lest people decide I am fixated on only one thing; or lest I traumatise women who've had abortions. How evil does infect us all.
Spare a prayer for brave young women who embark upon a willed pregnancy and have to face some medical bully. Spare more prayers for those put under enormous pressure to have "tests" to see whether their "foetus" is "abnormal". Find some more prayers for those who are assured, by kind and sympathetic people who only want to help them, that it would be wholly irresponsible to encumber the world with a Downs Syndrome human being. And don't forget, in your prayers, those other victims - the women who have already been deceived and seduced into complicity in the killing of their own children.
Fr Hunwicke is so right. The Sunday Telegraph is much better than most of the other British papers on ethical matters, but in a recent article its "Health Correspondent" Laura Donnelly showed she has bought into the idea that it's quite acceptable to kill an unborn Downs baby. Her piece was deploring the fact that many hospitals are still using outdated methods of screening for the condition, which may result in the miscarriage of a "normal" baby. A positive result of the test, of course, almost always amounts to a death sentence for the Downs baby, who has no rights at all.
I only wish the Down Syndrome Association of Ireland could be forced to listen to someone like Fr Hunwicke, and that the Catholic clergy here would thunder similar denunciations from pulpits throughout the land. They would be met by screams of rage and hatred; but who cares? They could hardly be more unpopular than they are already, and the remaining ordinary faithful Catholics would cheer them to the rafters.
There's quite a bit more about Fr Hunwicke in Straws for the Camel's Back.
James R. Lothian
Barack Obama's campaign slogans were sound bites of sound bites. "Vote for change." "Change you can believe in." "Yes we can". Vacuous, but many people found them catchy.
With a little help from the worsening financial crisis in autumn 2008, the change did indeed come to pass. In November 2008, Obama got elected president and on January 20, 2009 he took office.
The political pundits in the mainstream media hailed it as a new beginning, if not actually the second coming. Obama took to the messiah role like a duck to water.
Things, however, have not at all worked out according to plan. On January 19 of this year, almost a year to the day after the Obama inauguration, a heretofore virtually unknown Republican candidate for the Senate seat previously occupied by Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts won it in a special election.
Let's put that victory into perspective. Massachusetts has not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972. No amount of ineptitude, malfeasance or moral turpitude would have unseated a Democrat in the past. Massachusetts is the American equivalent of a rotten borough. Scott Brown, the winner of the special election, is not some wimp who mouthed platitudes and hugged the middle of the road. Brown made it abundantly clear that he was opposed to the Obama agenda and a majority of the voters evidently found his stance congenial.
Brown's victory, moreover, came on the heels of two well-publicised Republican victories for governorships-one in Virginia and the other in New Jersey, the latter a state that Obama had carried overwhelmingly in autumn 2008.
What happened? In a column in the Wall Street Journal published a week and a half after the Massachusetts senatorial election, Johns Hopkins professor Fouad Ajami hit the nail on the head. He wrote:
In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies. There is nothing surprising about where Mr Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it.
I think the Ajami diagnosis is entirely correct, but what happens next-how Obama and the Democrats react to those setbacks-is the real question. Jimmy Carter, like Obama another more or less blank slate when he got elected president, found himself in a similar situation to Obama, and again like Obama much of it was his own making. Carter hunkered down and stuck with his game plan, making one mistake after another, and hectoring the American people along the way. Bill Clinton, in contrast, watching wife Hillary's attempt to nationalise health care flop, dumped Hillary's plan, cut his losses and began to govern more like a middle-of-the-road type than a leftist Democrat. He got re-elected. Carter did not.
Since the Massachusetts setback, Obama has acted a good deal more like Carter than Clinton. Democratic Congressmen and Senators appear to be watching rather intently. Several already have announced retirement rather than running for re-election this autumn. Others look to be distancing themselves from the administration.
What's the man, himself, been up to? Well, he has continued to whinge and whine about the bad hand he was dealt when assuming office. He has concluded that his current political problems are ones of communication, opining that all he has to do to set things right is explain to the American people how his programme will make them oh so much better off.
Well, the American people are not the dolts Obama seems to believe. The adage has it that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. Normally those are pretty good odds, but they change a lot when and if the great awakening occurs.
Americans do not want an expensive plan to nationalise healthcare. They do not want to see government's share in GDP jump from 20 to 25 per cent. They are worried about a government debt that will close to double as a percentage of GDP relative to its levels in the early 2000s. They are wary of the massive federal expenditures billed as counter-recession measures, but smelling more and more like the usual Washington pork barrel.
There's an historic American flag, called the "Gadsden Flag," dating from the start of the American Revolution. It has a yellow field and a coiled timber rattlesnake ready to strike. Below the rattler is the inscription "Don't Tread on Me". It has never been entirely discarded and it resurfaced in a big way after 9/11. In the last year, the flag and the slogan both appear to be undergoing another substantial renaissance.
James R. Lothian
Ira enim viri justitiam Dei non operatur.
-St James 1:20
Someone has to ask the question: isn't it really about time we had a moratorium on the clerical sex abuse scandal, and waited for Pope Benedict's pastoral letter? Yes, it was frightful, yes, it made one feel like crawling away and dying of shame. If I told you what I think an appropriate penalty would be for those guilty of actually sodomising young children, many readers would cancel their subscriptions. But what did the Media really expect to come out of the bishops' visit to Rome? Public floggings, and sackcloth and ashes in St Peter's Square?
True, the handling of the scandal was quite inexcusable, even bearing in mind that the bishops responsible were frequently acting on "expert" psychological advice that an offender was "cured". In this as in so many other fields-notably religious education-the hierarchy should show some moral courage and stop passing the buck to their experts.
But day after day the media have been demanding more scalps, more humiliation, more compensation money for the victims. This is not a thirst for justice; it is a lust for vengeance.
One is surely entitled to ask how much of Big Media's coverage has been motivated by concern for the child victims and how much by an unholy desire to exploit their suffering in furtherance of other issues-such as abortion, homosexuality, civil unions, priestesses, and Church control of education. Some feature articles have come dangerously close to breaching the laws against incitement to hatred. No one would expect Protestants, Jews or Moslems to put up with media commentary of the kind Catholics have tolerated.
Politicians of all the main parties disgraced themselves in the Dáil debate-notably Barry Andrews, Ciarán Cuffe, Pat Rabbitte and Alan Shatter. But the most outrageous was Deputy Mary O'Rourke of Fianna Fáil. This lady lowered herself thus far:
I was struck by something Deputy Alan Shatter mentioned, the sheer discourtesy of a body called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or something with an equally convoluted title. This wonderful doctrine body, wherever it is, does not reply to letters. [In fact it does, if they are worth answering]. Consider the discourtesy of it, and the discourtesy of the head of the Vatican parading around Ireland in his wonderful glitzy clothes and not replying to letters and not seeing fit to talk to his counterpart, whoever that is. It is just not good enough.
She must be referring to Pope John Paul's visit to Ireland in 1979. Ms O'Rourke would never have dared to project such neo-Paisleyite bile in those days. The fact that she now thinks she can get away with it is surely one more indication of just how far we have sunk. But maybe some faithful Catholics in her constituency will remember her words when she next comes looking for their votes.
It is odd that the entertainment world feel that the film director Roman Polanski, awaiting extradition from Switzerland to the United States on a charge of abusing a 13-year-old girl decades ago, should escape scot-free. The actor Piers Brosnan said on television that because the offence occurred 38 years ago, Polanski should be pardoned. Would he be so merciful to clerical sex offenders? I doubt it.
Let's try to regain a sense of perspective on this whole disgraceful business. It was rather well summed up by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's Permanent Representative to the UN in Geneva. He pointed out that the available evidence shows that in the last 50 years, 1.5 to five per cent of Catholic clergy have been involved in cases of sexual abuse. (Mind you, that is still quite dreadful. The fact that the same incidence occurs among Protestant ministers is no comfort at all. Corruptio optimi pessima est.)
Of greater significance, though, is the fact noted by Archbishop Tomasi, that up to 90 per cent of the "child abusers" have been homosexuals engaged in sodomising or otherwise abusing adolescents up to the age of 17. The fact that any active homosexuals have managed, by deceit or by collusion with seminary officials, to get themselves ordained to the priesthood needs a separate investigation. It is interesting that in Britain, militant homosexuals are now trying to get the age of consent lowered.
Incidentally, Fr Gerard Moloney CSSR, editor of Reality, insinuated that the granting of greater liturgical freedom to Traditionalists was somehow hampering efforts to root out child abuse. All's grist to the modernist mill, I suppose. Fr Moloney, who seems ambitious to become a recognised "media priest" like Fr Brendan Hoban and others, has been feeding his ideas to the secular media, who of course lap them up.
Nick Lowry
THE toy manufacturer Hasbro has launched a Ouija board, packaged in a cutesy pink box which serves to make the thing look innocent and harmless, and targeted at children (especially girls) ages eight and up. There is also a glow-in-the-dark version available more likely to appeal to boys.
Ouija boards are not toys. They should not be used by children, or by anyone for that matter. One should not even have such things in one's house. Ouija boards are nothing to fool with. The user is like a child tinkering with a telephone, dialling numbers at random, without knowing who will answer, except that in the case of the Ouija board the potential threats are much more severe, and the potential consequences that much more horrifying.
One does not expose oneself to such danger. It is possible that nothing may happen. It is equally possible that some form of demonic infestation may result. One does not want to invite a demon into one's home, where the creature may then lodge and cause mayhem, requiring an exorcism to banish its baleful presence. One certainly does not wish to expose oneself to the danger of being taken over personally - of being possessed - by such a presence. Despite the scepticism of the moderns, evil spirits are as real as anything in the material world. Documented cases exist in which the unhappy user of the ouija board came to grief and had to be rescued - at great physical, psychological and spiritual cost - by the Catholic Church.
Palpable terror
Here is a story related by one of the commentators on Fr John Zuhlsdorf's blog (What Does the Prayer Really Say?) about a youthful encounter with a ouija board. It makes chilling reading.
I was cleaning out the attic in my parents' house back in the mid 80s and came upon a box containing a Ouija board. As a child, I had absorbed all the devilish lore connected with these things though I had never actually seen one.
So it was with some trepidation that I lifted the cursed object from its cardboard coffin. It seemed to exude a sulphurous stench and a lambent glow emanated from it there in the dimly lit garret. A icy shiver of palpable terror paralyzed me for several minutes until my sense of rationality brought me back to reality. I resolved to test this oaken oracle and began by asking it simple questions.
Are you the devil? N-O, it spelled out. Well, that was a relief.
Do you know the devil? Y-E-S. The sense of terror crept back
Do you have a name? Y-E-S. (It always helps to find out a person's name, both in the natural and supernatural realms. Just ask Moses.)
Can you tell me your name? Y-E-S. Sociable little ghost, this. The pungent sulphurous reek intensified and a diaphanous vapor rose up from the board. OK, what is it? Nothing. At least, at first. Then slowly the triangle began to move, seemingly aimlessly then with determination. One by one the letters were selected. B-U-A-N.
What? That's not a name. I asked for the name again. B-U-A-N. I could make no sense of it. I tried yet a third time. B-U-A-N. The stench suddenly became asphyxiating and I was aware of the sound of crack- ling flames and gnashing teeth. I knew I was in the presence of something malevolent and unholy and I fled from the attic in horror.
The next day I summoned my courage and ventured back into the devil's eyrie. I found the Ouija board completely charred and the floor partially scorched. Though it was a hot and humid day, the attic had a glacial, almost unearthly chill. I buried the board in the back yard and put it out of my mind.
Several years later, after the death of my mother, I was walking in the old neighborhood and struck up a conversation with the new owner of the house. He had been mowing and raking and mentioned in passing that in one corner no grass would grow and flowers that his wife had planted immediately withered and died. Where? I asked. As he pointed to the spot I realized with horror that it was there that I had buried the hellish tablet.
I never learned the meaning of the demon's name: BUAN. But I do believe that there is such a malignant spirit who wanders the world seeking the ruin of souls.
There is no demon that goes by the name Buan, at least none that is known to the Internet. There are numerous other occurrences of the name (it is not uncommon as a surname in certain parts of the world) in both private and commercial capacities.
THE unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in R v. R just before Christmas was that human embryos in vitro are not included among "the unborn" whose right to life is protected under Article 40.3.3. There is no doubt that the Government will respond to this decision by bringing forward a new law. The only question is, will it be a good law that puts in place protection for the right to life of such human embryos, or a bad one allowing their deliberate destruction in the course of assisted human reproduction procedures or in the course of research involving human embryos?
Either the Government will bring forward legislation to protect human embryos in vitro to close the breach in legal protection left in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in R v. R. Or else they will opt instead for the easier path of rubber-stamping regulations allowing their destruction that Minister Mary Harney is expected to publish early this year. Which kind of law it will be depends on you and me, on what you and I do, or don't bother to do, over the next weeks.
It's up to us
If the politicians receive very few expressions of concern at the situation left by the decision in R v. R, won't they then conclude that there is no significant electoral cost to them from just letting sleeping dogs lie? Won't they be more inclined to let Health Minister Mary Harney bring forward the proposals she has already said she has her officials preparing which are likely to be a regulatory body unrestrained by a legislative ban on deliberate destruction of human embryos in the course of assisted human reproduction procedures or in the course of research involving human embryos?
On the other hand, suppose politicians all over the country start to get a steady flow of e-mails from their own constituents asking to meet them as they are very concerned about the lack of protection against destruction in which human embryos now find themselves following the R v. R decision. And suppose these are followed up by telephone calls to their local constituency offices asking for a meeting to discuss the issue. And suppose they find they are meeting one constituent after another making it clear to them that they want a law banning destruction of embryos in vitro. And suppose these citizens make it clear to their democratic representatives that they take this matter so seriously that it will decide their vote in the next election. Mightn't that help the politicians to see the matter differently? Mightn't they see a political cost to letting Health Minister Mary Harney bring in her regulatory regime to rubber-stamp the IVF and embryo research industries? And mightn't they see a political dividend in calling and pressing seriously for the bringing in of a law protecting human embryos in vitro against being deliberately destroyed?
Back to the Oireachtas
Interestingly, several of the judges in their Supreme Court judgements echo the conclusion of Mr Justice McGovern in his High Court judgement in R v. R: "...it is a matter for the Oireachtas to decide what steps should be taken to establish the legal status of the embryo in vitro" The Chief Justice, Mr John Murray, in his judgement, for example, states: "The onus rests in the Oireachtas, to make the initial policy determination so as to define by law when the life of the unborn acquires protection. The other alternative is an amendment to the Constitution." There is little doubt that one of the judges' intentions behind the unanimous decisions was to send the matter back to the Oireachtas for a decision to be made on how the human embryo in vitrois to be protected by passing an appropriate law.
Even Ms Justice Denham, who refers to the three frozen embryos in her judgement as "surplus embryos" over 30 times, has this to say about them: "Of course there is a relationship between the frozen embryos in the clinic and the mother and the father - but not the link and relationship envisaged in Article 40.3.3." (par 59) She thus acknowledges that the adults who contributed the ovum and sperm are "the mother and the father" of the embryos thereby generated, that there is a "relationship" between these embryos and their adult progenitors, and that the way to describe this relationship is "the mother and the father". She also states in paragraph 28: "Some states have taken steps to prohibit the keeping of surplus embryos. Other states make specific provision in legislation for surplus embryos. There is no legislation in Ireland on the issue."
The Chief Justice, Mr John Murray, in his judgement states:
I cannot accept the argument that simply because the embryo exists outside the womb that it is incapable of falling under the protection of Article 40.3. If, and I accept it is a very important if, the frozen embryos fell to be considered as having the qualities of human life, inevitably in my view, they would fall under the rubric of constitutional provision. Outside the womb, they have the same qualities as they would have in the womb. That is why they are viable embryos for implantation with a view to the birth of a child...
Mr Justice Geoghegan says in his judgement:
I want to make clear at this stage that I am in agreement with the often-expressed view that spare embryos, these being lives or potential lives, ought to be treated with respect. The absence of a statute or statutory regulations indicating how that respect should be given is undesirable and arguably contrary to the spirit of the Constitution. It is however, up to the Oireachtas to provide such regulation.
And Mr Justice Fennelly says in his judgement:
Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the fertilisation of the ovum brings into existence, outside the womb, the essential unique components of a potential new individual human person. I agree with the judgements of Hardiman J. and Geoghegan J. that the frozen embryo is entitled to respect. This is the least that can be said. Arguably there may be a constitutional obligation on the State to give concrete form to that respect. In default of action by the legislative and executive organs of the State, it may be open to the courts in a future case to consider whether an embryo enjoys constitutional protection under other provisions of the Constitution.
The next step
While one is unhappy with aspects of the formulations of the human status of the embryo, what is striking is the agreement that the next step is for the Oireachtas to bring in a law deciding the protection to be given legally to the human embryo in vitro.
And that is where you and I come in. We are a constitutional democracy. The TDs as our law-makers are our representatives. Our responsibility as democratic citizens is to make our views, and the reasons for them, known in a measured way to our politicians. If we don't tell them we are concerned, and how concerned we are, and what we want done, they won't know. If we do, they may feel the political need to put the brakes on any attempt by the Minister for Health Mary Harney to push through a regulatory body that effectively lets the IVF - and embryo-research industries - destroy human embryos.
She is believed to be planning to base her proposals on the recommendations contained in the Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction (CAHR) issued in 2005. The recommendations included proposals involving the deliberate destruction of human embryosin vitro.
We need to let our politicians know that the CAHR Report is not a fitting basis for decisions in a democracy because the make-up of this Commission was extremely unbalanced and entirely unrepresentative of the balance of opinion on this sensitive issue among the general public. The Commission had 25 members, but only one out of the 25 members opposed the deliberate destruction of human embryos. The one member of the Commission who disagreed with its recommendations, Professor Gerry Whyte, Associate Law Professor in the Law School, Trinity College Dublin, based his rejection of the deliberate destruction of human embryos on a carefully reasoned argument based on the scientific evidence.
The composition of the Commission, selected by the Government, guaranteed a majority proposal supporting embryo destruction. That is a travesty of democratic representation.
Moreover, the skewed membership favouring embryo destruction does not reflect majority view in public opinion in Ireland. Professional opinion polls carried out for the Pro-Life Campaign show a majority year after year favouring legislation protecting embryos. So the recommendations of the stacked Commission do not reflect the balance of opinion in the general public.
In addition, some of its arguments claiming deliberate embryo destruction was needed are already being overtaken by scientific developments.
Redressing the injustice
Furthermore, the Commission advertised in 2001 for submissions from the public and received "over 1700 responses" (p.38) but the Report didn't reveal how many opposed embryo destruction and how many supported it. Why not?
Every one of us who contacts our own TDs and puts our concerns to them, and gives them our reasons, makes it more likely that more of them will oppose Mary Harney railroading through a regulatory regime that doesn't ban embryo destruction. Every one of us who makes a good sensible persuasive case for a proper law protecting human embryos in vitro makes it a bit more likely that we will get such a law.
The five steps required of us are irksome, perhaps - e-mailing, telephoning, writing, meeting, and meeting again, our TDs - but they are our birthright to do as citizens in a democracy. Surely it isn't too much to ask us to do them now so that proper legal protection is put in place for that whole group of our fellow human beings who through no choice of their own find themselves for the first eight weeks of their existence without any recognised legal protection in this country whatsoever, simply because they exist in vitro. Redressing that profound injustice is surely worth an irk or two?
I WENT to Afghanistan as a British Army chaplain for seven months in September 2007. Almost at the same time as the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum was published. It cheered my spirits and I was determined to use my new-found freedom for the good of my lads and their families.
Having already some experience of saying the Extraordinary Form, I had packed an Old Rite missal into by "battle-box". I'd also packed my combat Low Mass set (Spanish shape - for the fiercely hot Afghan weather, of course). Later the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales kindly sent me some altar cards - and some hand missals for the soldiers I hoped would come to experience the Traditional Rite for the first time.
So how was the Extraordinary Form received by my soldiers?
The effortlessly-assumed liturgical superiority of the Extraordinary Form's opponents tells us that it is too hard, too highfalutin', for ordinary Catholic pewfodder to cope with. How typically patronising - and what a dismal view of the soul. My lads took to it. And once I'd taught a couple of them to serve Low Mass...well, there was no going back. They took a real pride in getting it right. Actively participating, one might even say.
Why? I think it might be something to do with the following.
Most soldiers are not great intellectuals - but they know quality when they encounter it. And they also know when they're being short-changed. Surprising? Not when you consider that it was, after all, a centurion who instinctively knew that Our Lord could cure his sick child. And he was conscious of his own unworthiness to receive the Lord: "Domine, non sum dignus..."
In the killing-zone
Here's another reason. In the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the idea of the Sacrifice of the Mass is in your face. It is absolutely suffused with blood, battle and triumph. This sacrifice is, so to speak, God's weapon against the powers of darkness. The Holy Sacrifice is "gritty" - just like the squaddies' lives. It is an instrument of salvation applied to their lives and in protection of their souls in battle.
The Mass truly summons the presence of Heaven and its holy inhabitants, the angels and saints. Saint Michael the Archangel, our military patron, is literally "deployed" as a weapon in defence of God's children against the demonic powers of error and unbelief. The Leonine Prayers after Mass are as powerful and necessary against he Taliban in Afghanistan as they ever were against the dark powers of Communism in Russia.
For the soldiers, the silences in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass are important. Why? Because the life of the warrior is surrounded by noise and clamour. The killing-zone is not a place of quiet and calm. Silence is rare - and we crave it. Yet the Extraordinary Form of Mass demands our silence: the silence of man's humility - and our adoration in the face of God slain on Calvary for our sakes. In the face of such majesty, such suffering, even a soldier's "lesser calvaries" are put into a certain context.
As a tool for evangelisation, too, the Extraordinary Form has a unique value. How? Because it doesn't matter if you've not been to a Catholic Mass before and all you want to do is kneel quietly at the back of the church tent. You can come to the foot of Calvary discreetly and tentatively. You don't have to worry about finding the correct page in the Mass booklet - or being embarrassed because everyone except you seems to know the prayers. The Extraordinary Form lends itself to a much less "busy" manner of celebration than the ordinary form - and for the tender soul, such simplicity is nourishing, peaceful and non-threatening.
Immediacy and eloquence
The Extraordinary Form of Mass is not going to supplant the ordinary form in most situations. But I have seen its celebration complement it. In my very specialised priestly ministry as an Army chaplain, I have found the Extraordinary Form of Mass can speak with an immediacy and eloquence that old soldiers like St Camillus de Lellis and St Ignatius Loyola would have deployed unhesitatingly.
Thank you, Holy Father, for your gift to simple souls like my lads who are risking life and limb in Afghanistan. And for your gift to their simple priests - who try to be Jesus to them in such dreadful circumstances. You have indeed given us all an extraordinary piece of kit!
With acknowledgements and thanks to Mass of Ages, magazine published by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales
OLD opinions die hard, and it is difficult for foreign observers to reconcile their recurring image of Counter-Reformation Spain, bastion of the faith from Charles V to General Franco, with present-day Spain of anti-Catholic governments, homosexual "marriage" and well over 100,000 legal abortions per annum. Historians write of the "passivity" of the Iberian Visigoths when they were overwhelmed by the Islamic invasion of 711, and this seems equally applicable to the reaction of most Spaniards to the vast transformations in the religious and social life of the country since General Franco's death in 1975.
This general attitude of "anything goes" was prevalent with regard to the adoption of the Novus Ordo, which was received with enthusiasm by some priests and religious and with disciplined obedience by the overwhelming majority of the faithful. At the time of the introduction of the reforms, the Hermandad Sacerdotal Española, a society of priests with numerous members, requested the maintenance of the traditional rite, but it was suppressed by Cardinal Tarancón, a progressive cleric with no sympathy for the traditional cause.
Spaniards in general have little interest in the liturgy. Popular devotions (particularly the processions of Holy Week and Corpus Christi, and the brotherhoods which organise them) have always played a more important role in the religious sensibility of the laity.
Deacons and deaconesses
Although communion in both kinds has not become the norm as it has in England and Wales, at some Masses there is a full complement of lay deacons and deaconesses flurrying about the altars even in churches served by numerous communities of religious orders. Numerous communities? Yes, there are still plenty of priests in some parishes: my own (in Madrid) is run by Augustinians, who offer seven Masses every Sunday (plus two on Saturday evening), all of them Novus Ordo in Spanish. There is no intention of introducing the traditional form even at one of them: "No demand" (and no concept within the clergy of making the Usus antiquior available to the faithful as part of the living spiritual heritage of the Church, despite this being the clear intention of Pope Benedict XVI). The neighbouring parish has nine Masses on Sunday plus two on Saturday evening (all Novus Ordo in Spanish), and in the immediate vicinity there are several other churches and orders of nuns with their own chapels, where Mass is also available.
Sanctuaries have been vandalised, as in other countries, with the removal of communion rails, so that Holy Communion is normally taken standing and often (though by no means always) in the hand. Most Spaniards are satisfied with the Novus Ordo. Mass attendance is quite high in many areas, including Madrid, but people are used to having a church within a few hundred yards of their home and are not prepared to get into a car or use public transport to attend a traditional Mass on a regular basis. They want the Mass to be short and simple, and then they go their way with a clear conscience.
One fact worth mentioning is that the Spanish translation of the Novus Ordo, though containing the occasional error does not apply the deliberately conversational tone of the current English-language version, in which lowest-common-denominator language would appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy. The first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, whatever his possible failings, was a man of culture who deliberately sought elevated and even archaic language for his new Protestant liturgy, and anyone who wishes to see how beautifully many elements of the Roman Missal can be translated into civilised English has only to look at the Book of Common Prayer. Spanish Catholics, like Anglicans, are able to reply "And with thy spirit" (Y con tu espíritu) to the priest's "The Lord be with you". Spanish Masses are also offered para toda la santa Iglesia(for all the holy Church), whereas the word "holy" was removed (on what grounds?) from the current English-language text soon to be replaced.
There are still reasonable numbers of vocations to the priesthood in some Spanish dioceses (Toledo, the primatial see; Madrid, the capital), but scarcely any in others (Pamplona and the Basque region) and few in Catalonia. One sees male members of religious orders (Franciscans, Dominicans, Benedictines) going about their business in their habits, nuns operating schools and charitable homes for the elderly, and numerous convents of the enclosed orders of nuns, though in order to keep up their numbers they are importing sisters from Asia (India, Philippines). Over 17,000 Spanish missionaries are working abroad, but their average age is rising and they are not being replaced in the same numbers. However, young lay volunteers are spending their summer holidays helping Mother Teresa's nuns in Calcutta or performing other good works abroad, and some may later enter a religious order.
Mourned by few
In all this panorama of lights and shadows the traditional liturgy was almost forgotten and apparently lamented by few. Latin chants are still heard at the principal Mass in some cathedrals, but since the introduction of the reforms the Mass itself is always Novus Ordo and always in Spanish or one of the other official languages (Catalan, Basque, Galician, etc.). As well as the Roman Rite, Spain has its own indigenous Mozarabic (or Visigothic) Rite, the equivalent of England's Rite of Sarum, but although this is still celebrated in Toledo and certain other places, it also has been up-dated (in a respectful manner) and is usually celebrated in Spanish. Opus Dei churches sometimes celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin, while Benedictine Abbeys of the Solesmes Congregation maintain a good level of Gregorian chant.
Although the official Church eliminated the traditional form of the Mass with such efficiency and even ruthlessness, there was only a minimal movement of frustrated traditionalists towards Archbishop Lefebvre and his supporters. Nowadays, they do maintain a small presence but are not seen by the hierarchy as a serious problem.
With the more generous opportunities permitted within the official structures of the Church by Pope John Paul II, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest arrived in Madrid in 1993 and for some time operated in precarious circumstances with the permission of the Archbishop but the strong opposition of local priests. Gradually, conditions improved and a regular traditional Mass was established at the French Church on Sunday evenings, which permitted the priests of the ICKSP to build up something resembling a normal parish community at first in Madrid and subsequently also in Pamplona.
Summorum Pontificum
In the new circumstances following the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI (2007), Cardinal Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid, allowed the ICKSP to move to the more suitable Church of the Third Monastery of the Visitation (Salesian nuns), where Sung Mass is celebrated every Sunday at 11 am, with Low Mass on weekday mornings; a Sunday evening Low Mass is also celebrated at 7 pm in the tiny Oratory of San Felipe Neri. An ICKSP priest celebrates Mass in Pamplona at the Church of Las Recoletas at 1 pm on Sunday. Mass in the Usus antiquior is celebrated every Sunday by a diocesan priest at the Church of Santo Tomé in Toledo; in Barcelona at the Chapel of La Merced (Calle Laforja 21); and in Seville (Church of San Bernardo), among others. A full listing is given at www.unavoce.es including those on the islands of Mallorca and Tenerife.
There is no equivalent of the Latin Mass Society in Spain. Spaniards are not given to joining associations of any type, and the lack of enthusiasm for matters liturgical makes it unlikely that an extensive lay movement to support the Gregorian Mass will grow up in the foreseeable future, despite the large number of practising Catholics. However, small groups to promote the Usus antiquior have grown up in a number of cities, and to celebrate the first anniversary of Summorum Pontificum some of them formed the Federation of Una Voce Hispania (www.unavoce.es). In Madrid an association, Deo Gratias was created, though it seems to have languished, but there are active groups in Barcelona (romaaeterna@terra.es), Seville (www.unavocesevilla.com) and in Galicia, and a group with an active website (but no Mass) in Málaga (www.unavocemalaga.com).
Although this situation does mark some degree of improvement, it is disappointing in a country where Catholicism is widely practised. Some bishops have proved cooperative in providing churches for the millennial Mass, but they have not yet acted on the real message of Pope Benedict XVI and the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei They also have not yet implemented the instructions of the Holy See to correct the mistranslation of certain phrases in the Novus Ordo. Despite praying for the Pope at every Mass, it would seem that they are in no hurry to take action on what he is insistently saying to them in relation to liturgical matters (though no slower than bishops in other countries).
Apathetic laity
And the laity? Continuing their habitual passivity, behaving like spoiled children. They are used to Church interests being protected by the Government (under Franco) and now appear unwilling to stand up and be counted even on matters of life and death (such as abortion: over one million deaths since 1985), or of great importance for the formation of Spanish youth (in the face of the present Spanish Government's attempt at cultural brainwashing in the new obligatory school subject of "Education for Citizenship"), and still less on merely liturgical matters which have never received a great deal of attention in the Spanish Church.
A more encouraging fact is that two Spanish seminarians are now studying at Gricigliano, the ICKSP seminary near Florence; the ICKSP currently has two priests working in Spain, but neither is a Spaniard. In September 2008 the ICKSP held a course in Toledo for priests to familiarise themselves with the Usus antiquior, with the active participation of Don Juan Miguel Ferrer, Vicar-General of Toledo Archdiocese and recently appointed second Under-Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship. Some 15 priests and seminarians attended. A course for priests was held at Pontevedra (Galicia) during November 2008, organised by the Fraternidad de Cristo Sacerdote y Santa María Reina (http://santa-mariareina.blogspot.com) with the collaboration of the French Institut du Bon Pasteur. It seems likely that such courses for priests will prove to be the most fruitful way forward, as the Gregorian Mass will not be reintroduced into ordinary Spanish parishes until the parish clergy understand its value and actively wish to make it available to their congregations, whether or not there is spontaneous demand from lay people.
Positive progress
There is one recent and most encouraging development:
On Sunday February 7th a Mass in the Extraordinary Form was celebrated in the Carmelite Convent chapel at Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, with a congregation of some 130 people. The celebrant was Canon Raúl Olazábal ICKSP, and it is hoped that a regular Mass will be celebrated there by a diocesan priest at 7pm on the first Sunday of each month. Irish visitors should note that the convent is on Calle Imagen, just off the Calle Mayor and some 20 yards from the Casa-Museo Cervantes. The city makes a pleasant excursion from Madrid, travel by suburban train or bus being quick and inexpensive.
Alcalá de Henares was the Complutum of the Romans, where the boy saints Justus and Pastor were martyred during the persecution of Diocletian. The present-day Cathedral stands on the site of their martyrdom. At the end of the fifteenth century Cardinal Fray Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros, OFM, Archbishop of Toledo founded the Universidad Complutense at Alcalá de Henares and endowed it generously, to provide a complete education for future priests. The new university's first great achievement was the Biblia Polyglotta Complutense in six volumes, completed in 1517.
The first four volumes are devoted to the Old Testament, containing the Hebrew original, the Latin Vulgate, the Septuagint version, a Chaldaic paraphrase, and Latin translations by the Spanish scholars of the time. The fifth volume contains the New Testament in Greek, and the Latin Vulgate translation. The sixth volume contains a Hebrew and Chaldaic vocabulary together with a number of learned treatises. Greeks and converted Jews were among the experts who laboured on this task for 15 years under the Cardinal's close supervision, and he lived to see the final result and give thanks to God for completion of this enormous self-imposed task. The printing was a challenge in itself as oriental scripts had not hitherto been printed, but experts were brought in from Germany to supplement the local talent and the result is a spectacular monument to Catholic scholarship.
In 1836 the university was dissolved, and a State-controlled version was established in Madrid where it was known as the Universidad Central, until the name was changed in the 20th century to 'Universidad Complutense' due to the prestige of its Catholic predecessor. In recent times a new university known as the 'University of Alcalá de Henares' has been established in the city and has been singularly successful at recovering possession of such of its predecessor's buildings as have survived the intervening years, and restoring them for modern academic use.
Among these buildings is the Colegio Menor de San Patricio for Irish and Flemish theology students, financed by the Portuguese Baron Jorge de Paz Silveira and inaugurated by his widow Baroness Beatriz de Silveira in 1645. By the later 18th century it had ceased to operate, and its chapel was demolished in 1795. However, a Foundation worked on its restoration from 1988 onwards, and now in collaboration with the University of Alcalá and the Irish Embassy in Madrid it has embarked on a new academic life as a centre for exchange students.
The Cathedral was ransacked and burnt by republican elements during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), but it also has been restored in a highly satisfactory manner. Alcalá is normally considered to be the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, author of Don Quixote, and a museum not far from the attractive main square commemorates him and his great work.
The editor adds:
Cardinal Cisneros' work had an influence on the
Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and indirectly on
the King James version of the Bible. A copy of the
Biblia Polyglotta Complutense, owned by Thomas
Cranmer, the first Anglican Archbishop of
Canterbury, is now in the library of Winchester, the
English public school. The cardinal's career is well
worth a separate article - one which we hope to carry
in a future issue. He was cultured, austere, chaste,
diligent, demanding and active - just the kind of bishop we could do with in Ireland today.
IN the book of the Apocalypse, chapter 19, verse 1, St. John the Evangelist tells us that he heard the song of heaven in one of the visions given him by the grace of God. He writes: "After these things I heard as it were the voice of much people in heaven saying: Alleluia. Salvation, and glory and power is to our God... And again they said: Alleluia" (Apocalypse 19:1, 3). St. John has reported the song of heaven - the national anthem for the kingdom of God, if you will. It is "Alleluia".
But beginning today the Church ceases to echo this song of our homeland, for we enter upon that season of remote preparation for the high, holy days of our Redemption. The Alleluia is silenced from Septuagesima, all through Lent until the Easter Vigil.
Instead the church begins the sacred liturgy today with the grim cry of Psalm 17: The sorrows of death surrounded me, the sorrows of hell encompassed me (Psalm 17: 5, 6). The church reminds us with this song of exile that we are alienated from the world, for we die. To be alienated is to find something unfamiliar, strange. For creatures who can know the eternal and unchanging, we find death alien and exceedingly strange. And so, Holy Mother Church reminds us that we are exiles in the kingdom of death--strangers in a strange land, for we know we are eternal beings in a place where beautiful things wither and die.
Like Potemkin village
Indeed, for believers the world is a sort of Potemkin Village. Remember where this expression comes from. The Russian minister Gregory Potemkin set up villages to fool his sovereign, the Empress Catherine the Great, during her visit to the Crimea in 1787. Potemkin had hollow façades of villages set up along the banks of the Dnieper River to fool Catherine about what had been accomplished and so make himself look good. The Season of Septuagesima and Lent remind us that such is this world - one vast Potemkin Village. We can go visit such a stage set; we can admire the façade and its loveliness, but the Church reminds us that we must not be fooled. We must see the world for what it is, no matter how much it may delight us. We must remember that this is a façade and thus we are not at home.
No, instead, we need to enter into the agonia that St. Paul speaks of in his first letter to the Corinthians. Omnis autem qui in agone contendit, ab omnibus se abstinet. St. Paul reminds us that the spiritual life is like an athletic contest. That we enter into a great contest, a great struggle, an agonia. And in doing so, we must run and run to win. The athlete toils and sacrifices in order to win. So must we who enter into the spiritual life, those of us who would be worthy to be loyal subjects, citizens of the Saviour's Kingdom. The alternative is the bovine life of petty contentment. But such a life is not truly human. To be human is to enter into the agony of the spirit.
But we can be consoled and strengthened if we shrink from entering the spiritual arena, because we know that Jesus of Nazareth has gone before us into this arena, into this struggle against the enemies of our human nature. Those who would be Christians, i.e., who would belong to Christ, must enter the arena of spirit.
Sweat of our brow
Yes the Lord of the harvest sends us into this agonistic arena, into this battle of spirit, to shift to the image of today's gospel, into the vineyard of our labour. In the vineyard where we are to take up the labour, to toil, the struggle that has been assigned to us by the Lord of the Harvest. We are to labour where he wills, to labour as he wills, to receive the reward that he wills.
We are strangers in a strange land; sent to labour, to toil by the sweat of our brow, in the vineyard of the soul, to enter into an arena of the spirit. Our labour is a spiritual one in which we are called to grow strong in Christ. We must face the fact that if we want a Disneyworld, a Potemkin Village, in which we feast on hot dogs and bonbons and listen to fairy tales, that is fine, but we will never belong to Christ, never be Christians. If we would be Christians, we must face reality; we must abandon ourselves to the will of the Master, to the Lord of the Harvest; let us take up the human task, and toil by the sweat of our brows. Such is our agony, such is our destiny.
*Not his real name. Father has a good reason for anonymity.
THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF THE ENGLISH CATHOLIC INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITY 1910- 1950.By James R. Lothian. University of Notre Dame Press, 512pp. Price $60.00
THIS book has a head start in that its very title raises a question. If the English Catholic Church could produce an "intellectual community" over the first half of the last century why can it not do so today? One looks in vain for counterparts to the giants whom James Lothian presents to us. And even looking at the other side of the religious divide, there are none to match the towering figures of the same period.
Lothian takes us on a fascinating journey through the minds and times of the Catholic intellectuals who formed and maintained the intellectual community. The prime mover was undoubtedly Hilaire Belloc, best remembered now for his humorous Cautionary Tales. His views were enormously influential within his own circle but may seem to us eccentric or even quaint. He believed that the State was intent on enslaving the population and produced his book The Servile State as a response to Lloyd George's 1911 National Insurance Act, which introduced a modest system of health insurance for the poor and compensation for workers in a handful of trades subject to high cyclical unemployment rates. He even believed that the public would refuse to pay a modest contribution at their local post office.
He then developed his political ideas to support the concept of monarchy and became, with many other Catholic intellectuals, a proponent of "Distributism". James shows how this idea spread, with its belief that land and money should be more fairly shared and that a society should be made up of individual producers living off their own land and reverting to a mediaeval model of craftsmen, guilds and a monarch, with no industrialisation in the modern sense at all. When one realises that by this time industry had produced world-wide railway systems and ships such as the Titanic it is difficult to see these views as anything but charming eccentricities.
Role of Chesterton
Lothian leads us on through the times of Chesterton, the sculptor Eric Gill (whose communes were regarded by some as models of Distributism) and Father Vincent McNabb, all of whom supported "Bellocianism" in some way or other. In James' words the latter two "shared a rejection of modern, industrial, urban capitalist society even more radical than that of Belloc". Chesterton seems to have had rather less influence on the scene, despite his great literary reputation. His views were described later by Arnold Lunn as mainly focussed on the fact that the Middle Ages were a happier time and that reversion to them would recreate "Merrie England", a strange supposition. However, there can be no doubt that Chesterton played a big part in proving to the world at large that Catholics had important things to say and must have the right to say them. When taken to task for his aggressiveness he responded that "you can't be moderate with a battle-axe".
Jerrold, Lunn and Dawson
We then come to the times of those described by Lothian as "the lesser servants", including such figures as Douglas Jerrold, Arnold Lunn and Christopher Dawson. Several produced and edited short-lived magazines and few will be remembered today, though the names of Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward will certainly survive due to their great Catholic publishing enterprise. Another figure which stands out is the young Barbara Ward, who became a truly dynamic figure during the second World War. The Catholic community was of course greatly exercised by the Spanish Civil war, the declaration of the war against Germany and Hitler's alliance with Stalin, and the consequential problems of anti-Communism and anti-Fascism where it was difficult to draw clear priority lines between the two.
James' portrayals of Cardinal Hinsley and Barbara Ward at this time, with the "Sword of the Spirit" movement campaigning for "a Christian victory and a Christian peace" are vital to an understanding of those times. The Cardinal was an outstanding figure in forming Catholic thought and could truly be regarded as a forgotten hero of the war years.
Lothian concludes with an account of the gradual break-up of the Catholic intellectual community. There does not seem to have been any particular cause. The removal of intellectual figureheads in the fifties and sixties was common to all aspects of life and it is difficult to name even a few in any field of English Catholic intellectual endeavour today who can compete with the likes of Belloc and Chesterton.
James Lothian gives us an extraordinary insight into the lives and times of the English Catholic intellectual community and the book is both very readable and intellectually stimulating. I can recommend it without reservation.
Alec O'Connor is the editor's brother-in law. James R. Lothian III is Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Binghamton University, New York and son of our coeditor and North American correspondent.
THE LOST HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. By Philip Jenkins. Lion, Oxford, 2008, 336pp.
HAVE you met any Nestorians? Probably not. But around 800, the Assyrian Church of the East was bigger than all other Christian denominations combined. From his base in Baghdad, the Catholicos- Patriarch of Babylon had flourishing missions as far away as China and Indonesia and thriving Indian dioceses. The present Assyrian Church is a shadow of this glory.
If Orthodox see Catholics and Protestants as two sides of the same coin, in 800 the Nestorians saw Latin and Greek Churches as two faces of the same creed. They maintained some respect for the Greeks, backed by Imperial Constantinople, but little regard for the Latins, harassed by Islam in the south and paganism in the north and east. Christianity nearly disappeared in the west: Saracens attacked Rome in 846. The Faith's homeland was Asian, and Middle Eastern Christians came to an accord with ascendant Islam. How was the situation reversed?
Questions about Islam
Philip Jenkins gives a fascinating history of Asian and African Christianity from c.400 to the present day. He dispassionately analyses whether Islam could really be described as tolerant. Jenkins asks many questions about the sources of Islam, pointing to similarities between the Koran and Arian apocrypha then in circulation in Syria and Mesopotamia, and how oriental asceticism paralleled practices which became common in Islam (especially Sufism).
He raises issues about early Islamic scholarship. Many of us had had heard about Aristotle coming to the West through Arabic, but few know the Arabs received it from Christian scholars in Syriac. Or that our "Arabic" numerals were brought to Persia by Christians from India, where the system originated. The original encounter between Islam and Christian culture was positive; early Moslem rulers rated Christian as more capable civil servants than their own people.
Arab expansion after Mohammed's death was rapid beyond precedent. Constantinople invented a new literary genre concerning the Antichrist. I saw something this in an Old Irish manuscript - this trend appears across Europe. The relationship between Christian subjects of the Arabs and Byzantium was ambiguous. The Persian Empire was a natural hinterland to Palestine. Persia never converted; Zoroastrianism lingered until Islam displaced it, but Christians found a niche, building Silk Road bases to reach Tibet and China and using sea routes to evangelise much of India.
New Christian states emerged in Armenia, Georgia, Nubia and Ethiopia. Christianity was periodically persecuted in Persia, especially after Rome converted. These churches took different theological directions to those taken by Old and New Rome. They preserved the Aramaic tongue and held many apostolic sources lost to the west. They were bested in ecumenical councils, but looked down on Orthodoxy. They were encouraged in this by the Islamic invasion and reckoned the crescent easier than the Byzantine cross. They seemed justified for some time.
Manichaeans and Zoroastrians
Arab invaders had no desire to wipe out Christianity. Their first targets were Manichaeans. Manichaeanism was a major world religion in this period. From France to China it had hundreds of thousands of adherents, and St Augustine witnessed its competition with Christianity. There is still one known Manichaean temple in China. Christians, Zoroastrians and Buddhists saw it as an internal heresy rather than a distinct faith. Manichaeanism was briefly established by law: a king of the Central Asian Uygurs became Manichaean in 762. Though the Uygurs then held vast territory in northern China, the establishment did not endure long enough to guarantee long-term survival. From an Islamic viewpoint, Manichaeans were vulnerable.
The Zoroastrians were more challenging. They lost power in Persia quickly due to mutual weakening of Byzantine and Persian Empires by constant warfare. The Zoroastrians maintained significant wealth and influence, so mosques only gradually replaced fire temples.
Moslems were more cautious about offensives against Christians; Byzantium was more resilient. The Moslems learned the differences between Christian sects quickly and cultivated Nestorians and Jacobites as allies. In 800, it appeared the oriental Orthodox achieved a modus vivendi with Islam.
Times were changing. The initial Islamic invasion preceded development of Moslem self-identity, giving Christians time. The only Christian region which succumbed rapidly to Islam was Roman Africa. The African church was Roman and urban, with no deep roots among the general populace. Most Christians fled, leaving only traces which vanished completely after 1100. Egypt proved more resistant and there still is a significant Coptic population in Egypt. Conquered Arab territories reacted differently, but intermittent
Two events underscored Christian weakness. The first was the Crusades, beginning when Alexius I Comnenus appealed to Urban II for mercenaries to fight the Moslems. The result was an unintended Western conquest of Palestine, setting off almost two centuries of war between Islam and the West.
Secondly, this was exacerbated in the 1200s when Genghis Khan established his empire. A Christian-Mongol alliance could have destroyed Islam. The Mongols were religiously open: disputations between divines of many faiths were frequent in the Khan's court. A Catholic Archdiocese of Beijing was established - an Irish Franciscan missionary reached China before Marco Polo. In the late 1200s, a Mongol Nestorian bishop visited Europe as the Khan's ambassador. Rabban Bar Sauma offered a deal which could have altered history. His Turkic pupil Markos become Catholicos of Babylon as Mar Yarballah III and restored communion between Rome and Assyria in the early 1300s, but the Nestorians soon repudiated this union.
Famine and plague
The 14th century was a darker time. Thirteenth century global warming which brought prosperity gave way to global cooling and plague. Europe was beset by famine, recession and population contraction as the Black Death arrived. Scapegoats were found: Knights Templar; witches, Boniface VIII; and the Jews. Middle Eastern Christians were in like position. Mongol defeats coincided with the fall of Acre in 1292. Moslems identified Christians with crusaders and Mongols. The Mongols lost power to the xenophobic Ming dynasty in 1369, who persecuted Christianity. Earlier hopes were dashed. Mediaeval history ended as Constantinople fell in 1453. Rome and Byzantium definitively split after the 1204 Sack of Constantinople, but reunited at the Council of Florence in 1439. However, for many Greeks the Sultan's turban was preferable to the papal tiara. Thereafter, the Sultan nominated bishops to vacant Greek sees.
Christian communities in the Islamic world largely held their own until 1914. The First World War sparked the first serious threat. The Young Turks anticipated the holocaust by attempting to annihilate the Armenians in 1915. After the war, France separated Lebanon from Syria to create a Christian enclave. The British organised Assyrian troops in levies, hinting at future sovereignty. This didn't happen and Iraqis massacred Assyrians in 1933 (giving rise to the legal term "genocide"). The Christian population of Turkey quickly fell from 20% to 2% in the 1920s (as did the contemporary Moslem population in Greece).
After 1945, Arab Christians changed tactics. They promoted secular ideological alternatives to Islam. They gained influence in the PLO and Ba'ath Party. This leftward drift frightened Cold War Western powers who preferred conservative Islamic regimes.
Several factors worked against Middle Eastern Christians. Their birthrate is lower than that of the Moslems and emigration is an easier option, erasing Lebanon's Christian majority. Their apparent privileged minority status bred resentment. Two Gulf Wars reduced the Iraqi Christian population from 5-6% to less than 1% and the position of those remaining has never been as delicate.
Drastic shrinkage
Christianity in the Middle East has slid from majority to become a vanishing minority. In the 9th century, the position of the Western Church was more precarious than that of Middle Eastern Christians. The Oriental Church saw disestablishment as a positive good. Islamic tolerance and persecution alternated over the centuries bringing a sharp decline in Christian numbers. Andalusia might not be greatly different had the Moors remained in Spain.
Political relationships between Middle Eastern Christians and the West continue to be problematic. The well-intentioned Catholic policy of establishing churches in union with Rome served to weaken Christians further; Protestant proselytising hit at features which make these groups so important to Christian heritage - writings and traditions which connect them to apostolic times, especially the liturgical use of Aramaic. Much knowledge in this respect is lost.
From several points of view, it is desirable to study the historical experience of Oriental Orthodoxy. From a theological point of view, it can teach us a lot about the formation of Christianity in apostolic and patristic times as well as deepening our understanding of Islam and other world faiths. From an historical perspective, we can learn how a church can cope with an unsympathetic regime over many centuries. In purely secular terms, it has much to say on the relationship between the Christian West and Christian minorities elsewhere. One way or another, if this study is not carried out and steps are not taken to defend remaining communities, this expression of Christianity may disappear.
The editor adds: Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428-431, was excommunicated for maintaining that Our Lord was effectively two persons: one divine and the other human. In accordance with his teaching, his followers denied that Our Lady could be described as the Mother of God (Theotokos) as defined by the Council of Ephesus. The Nestorians separated from the Catholic Church (which of course then included the Greeks) and many of them moved to Persia.
The Monophysites of Egypt maintained that Our Lord had one nature: divine. The true Catholic doctrine is that Our Lord is one divine Person with two natures: divine and human.
LOUIS POWER died somewhat unexpectedly on December 4th, 2009. He was born in 1930 outside Dublin city, one of five boys. Louis's eldest brother, Richard, was the author of The Land of Youth and The Hungry Grass, among other works, but he died aged 41. Louis' twin brother Victor published the English translation of Richard's original work: Apple on the Treetopprior to his death, aged 56. Several men in Louis's family had died prematurely due to heart disease, and Louis was the first male Power for a number of generations to survive beyond middle age.
Louis worked in the Meteorological Office for 36 years before retiring at age 54 when he suffered a heart attack. Early retirement in 1985 brought him a new lease of life, both due to his wife's determined encouragement and the renewal of his Catholic faith, firstly through membership of the Teams of Our Lady, leading on to membership of the Community of Nazareth, a Catholic covenant community which grew out of the charismatic renewal.
Louis shared his brothers' gift for writing. He wrote Kevin, the biography of Archbishop of Dublin, Kevin McNamara. He was well-known as a letter writer and contributor to secular newspapers, especially the Irish Times, and the religious press, notably The Irish Catholic, for which he wrote their annual review for several years.
Life of service
Louis contributed many interesting articles to the Brandsma Review, and served for about 20 years on its ad hoc editorial committee. His writings covered a wide range of subjects, from spiritual themes to articles of general interest, oftentimes to correct what he perceived as unfair or inaccurate information on topics of morality and social justice, frequently related to the Catholic Church.
Louis was a happy man, who practised what he preached - although in fact he preached seldom and was more committed to doing what was right. He was a devoted husband and father, and greatly loved in return. He served his covenant community in leadership and administration, and was a tireless worker for the St Vincent de Paul, the Pro-Life campaign, chairman of his local residents' association, and many including meals-on-wheels. He truly enjoyed meeting people, and had a wonderful ability to sense other people's true needs, and to help them. At his funeral many came forward with stories of the "behind-the- scenes" thoughtfulness they and their families had experienced from Louis.
Louis is survived, and greatly missed, by his wife Pat, three children, seven grandchildren, brother Bernard, extended family members and many friends. This year would have marked his 50th wedding anniversary. Ar dheis De go raibh a anam dilis.
The editor adds: One reason why Louis will be particularly missed by the Brandsma Reviewwas his strong sense of fairness and justice. He was assiduous in attending our meetings, and acted as a corrective to my own unfortunate propensity to "rejoice in iniquity" as St Paul expresses it, rather than in the truth. He used to reprimand me gently if he felt the Brandsma had been less than generous in commenting on the behaviour of clergy, the hierarchy and others in public life. Lux perpetua luceat ei.
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6: 12)
Dear Wormwood,
Now you can see how right I was in suggesting that you use the tried and tested method: fill the patient with pride. Once he has plenty of pride in him he is on the slippery downward road to all sorts of moral corruption. Oh yes, the proud priest, or nun, or brother is doomed, and will ruin others too.
When you had told me that the days of physical persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland were well and truly over I admit I was depressed. Hell knows, but I did enjoy seeing a price put on priests' heads, and lay people being tortured and killed for hiding priests. Just when we were on the point of ridding the country of that wretched Catholic Church you and the others took your eyes off the ball, took things easy, and those ignorant Irish succeeded in restoring the Catholic Church in their land.
A totally different approach was needed, now that they were masters, and prosperous masters at that. We had to get themto take things easy, planting the seed of pride in their hearts, giving them a sense of power. Why not power over children? Ha! Ha! I saw in my mind's eye that if a) we could get them all to believe that they were too sophisticated, too educated to believe that we devils exist; b) or to forget that we exist; c) or to warp the so called "good" people by getting them to see us only in other people, even in the children placed in their care, then we could bring them to act devilishly.
Psychology, not prayer
The object is always the same, Wormwood, to destroy the voice of the enemy, who has chosen to speak to the world through that miserable Catholic Church. I suppose the easiest way would have been to kill off those Catholics. But with all this tolerance and prosperity around something far more refined was needed. As I explained to you all those years ago, we had to silence the enemy's voice by bringing about a situation where people would say of the priests, nuns and brothers, "Who are they to be telling us how to live, when they are doing such evil deeds themselves?" And you've done it, Wormwood. Congratulations. But don't drop your guard by taking things easy this time.
Remember what happened in the past. Just when we thought we had finished them off, one of them would be so holy as to be able to plant the seed of humility in the hearts of others, and set them to praying from their hearts again, turning the tables on us. Seek to get them to put all their faith in psychology and not in prayer. Once we get them to think that they can put things right themselves, without the involvement of the enemy, then we will triumph. Good luck.
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape
"Let me explain the problem science has with religion." The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.
"You're a Christian, aren't you, son?"
"Yes sir," the student says.
"So you believe in God?"
"Absolutely."
"Is God good?"
"Sure! God's good."
"Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?"
"Yes"
"Are you good or evil?"
"The Bible says I'm evil."
The professor grins knowingly. "Aha! The Bible!"
He considers for a moment.
"Here's one for you. Let's say there's a sick person
over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would
you help him? Would you try?"
"Yes sir, I would."
"So you're good...!"
"I wouldn't say that."
"But why not say that? You'd help a sick and
maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we
could. But God doesn't."
The student does not answer, so the professor continues. "He doesn't, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Hm? Can you answer that one?"
The student remains silent.
"No, you can't, can you?" the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax.
"Let's start again, young fella. Is God good?"
"Er...yes," the student says.
"Is Satan good?"
The student doesn't hesitate on this one. "No."
"Then where does Satan come from?"
The student falters. "From God"
"That's right. God made Satan, didn't he? Tell me,
son. Is there evil in this world?"
"Yes, sir."
"Evil's everywhere, isn't it? And God did make
everything, correct?"
"Yes"
"So who created evil?" The professor continues. "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil."
Again, the student has no answer. "Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?"
The student squirms on his feet. "Yes."
"So who created them?"
The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. "Who created them?" There is still no answer.
'I have only my faith'
Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerised. "Tell me," he continues on to another student, "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?"
The student's voice betrays him and cracks. "Yes, professor, I do."
The old man stops pacing. "Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?"
"No sir. I've never seen Him."
"Then tell us if you've ever heard your Jesus?"
"No, sir, I have not."
"Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus?" Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?"
"No, sir, I'm afraid I haven't."
"Yet you still believe in him?"
"Yes"
"According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn't exist. What do you say to that, son?"
"Nothing," the student replies. "I only have my faith."
"Yes, faith," the professor repeats. "And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith."
No such thing as heat
The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of his own. "Professor, is there such a thing as heat?"
"Yes."
"And is there such a thing as cold?"
"Yes, son, there's cold too."
"No sir, there isn't."
The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. "You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can hit up to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest - minus 458 degrees.
"Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it."
Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.
"What about darkness, professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?"
"Yes," the professor replies without hesitation.
"What is night if it isn't darkness?"
"You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?"
The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. "So what point are you making, young man?"
Flawed from the outset
"Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed."
The professor's face cannot hide his surprise this time. "Flawed? Can you explain how?"
"You are working on the premise of duality," the student explains. "You argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood, either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it. Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?"
"If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do."
"Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?"
The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realises where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.
"Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavour, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?"
The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided.
"To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean."
The student looks around the room. "Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor's brain?" The class breaks out into laughter.
"Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor's brain, felt the professor's brain, touched or smelt the professor's brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir. So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?"
Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. "I guess you'll have to take them on faith."
"Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life," the student continues. "Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?"
Now uncertain, the professor responds, "Of course, there is. We see it every day It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."
To this the student replies: "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
The professor sits down.
PS: the student's name was Albert Einstein.
Cardinal Newman and Vatican II
Dear Editor,
Since the late 1970s it has become easy for us to suppose that the post-Vatican II model of the Church is the only one that has ever existed or indeed will ever exist. Such a conviction flows from the writings of many scholars who failed to give Vatican II its true context in the history of the Church. That spirit of discontinuity is harming the true development of doctrine in the life of the Church. It leads to a shallow perception of the mission of the Church flowing from the Gospel, bringing a false sense of pride in our being the only authentic wise ones in the history of the Church, disinheriting younger members of the Church who are unaware of the rich resources available to them from the past.
Turn to the writings of Cardinal John Henry Newman and experience what it is to stand in the full flow of past, present and future in the life of the Church.
Whereas in recent years all sorts of changes have come and gone in the life of the Church, one finds in Newman's words a deep awareness of the everlasting presence of Jesus Christ, giving the Church its serene continuity in the midst of all the changes occurring constantly in the world, the Church being in the world, but not of it. Newman was credited with being Òthe invisible peritusÓ at Vatican II. May his beatification in 2010 bring about a new authentic understanding of the significance of Vatican II in the life of the Church, in the spirit of Cardinal Newman, leading to a restoration of our awareness of the mystery of the Church in human history.
Pastor Emeritus
Cork
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Good out of Glenstal?
Dear Nick,
I have wanted to say for some time that I think you are somewhat off-hand about Glenstal Abbey. I think the Brandsma Review is a very worthwhile voice in the Irish Catholic world, but I admit that my view is not shared by the majority of monks here. This is because they categorise you and your contributors as Right wing backwoodsmen, and so they never read the Review - and so they never change their minds! In other words, they stereotype you. And that, I feel, is exactly what you do to Glenstal.
Can any good come out of Glenstal? you ask yourself, and the answer, in ignorance, is "no"! As your records will show, I have taken the Review for a good many years now, and my impression is that all the things you hold against it are really quite peripheral and based on hearsay. I have been here myself for some 16 years and am greatly impressed by the faith and commitment to the Catholic Church that I see here. In fact, I'm distinctly humbled by it.
With the very best wishes,
Yours sincerely
Dom Anselm Hurt OSB
Glenstal Abbey
Murrow
Co Limerick
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Sackcloth and Ashes
Dear Editor,
Keep up the good work despite all the shenanigans over there.
Makes me want to cry out for a Lent of sackcloth and ashes for all the people of Ireland in the mode and manner of Jonah and Nineveh!
God bless,
Fr Oliver O'Connor SVD
Liverpool
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Exclude Me in or Include Me Out?
Dear Nick,
Thank you for the copy of the Brandsma Review which you sent in the post. I am sending it back to you, having read it. I found much of the content very interesting (especially the cover story) and challenging (the article on Vatican Two for example; I disagreed with every word of it but found it an interesting read). However, the comment on Derek Furniss's funeral brought me up short and actually made me gasp. It reminded me of the terrifyingly petty, joyless, and ungenerous Catholicism of the 1960s when I was small. But apart from the cosmic unkindness of this comment towards the dead man and his family, there is the point that it was just this kind of pettiness and regulationism that distinguished Irish Catholicism from every other kind of Catholicism in Europe, and created a culture where religion was nothing but rules. When the rules were gone, nothing was (is) left. That is the predicament we are in now.
Thanks all the same,
All the best,
Caitriona Clear
Galway
The comment by Stramentarius, far from being "cosmically unkind" was respectful of Captain Furniss's decision to withdraw from the Catholic Church. The Humanist Society (?) would surely have been happy to have arranged a ceremony, if requested, and I believe this would have been in accordance with the Captain's wishes. - Editor
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A Humble Petition
From time to time we publish letters sent to other publications, or to individuals, which we think deserve an airing. Here is a message to President McAleese, dictated to a secretary in Aras an Uachtarain:
Your petitioner humbly prayeth that the civil union bill currently in the D‡il be referred to the Council of State and/or the Supreme Court as to its constitutionality.
Patrick Kiely FRCSI
Ballincollig
Co. Cork
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And here is a letter sent to Fr Gerard Moloney CSSR which surely sums up all that needs to be said about his editorial on clerical abuse
Dear Father,
It was with great disgust that I have just finished reading your piece in Reality.
Rather than expressing your concern for victims of abuse and providing workable solutions, you have merely used the issue to express your own prejudices against the Holy Father's efforts to bring liturgical practice and expressions of faith into line with what the Second Vatican Council originally had in mind. By fundamentally misunderstanding the disease of paedophilia and the crime of abuse, you have merely added to the confusion surrounding the issue.
I can tell you, as a Criminology graduate and a student of law, that the vast majority of men who abuse children are married. As a young woman I find your comments deplorable and offensive, particularly in suggesting that if priests were to marry they would not abuse children. How exactly did you come to that erroneous conclusion? This psychological illness is not as a result of liturgical practice, and to suggest that it is would be laughable if this was not such a serious matter.
It is not difficult to understand how such a horrible situation came about. The Irish Church as it was (and to some extent still is), saw the priesthood and the religious life as a social stamp of approval and treated it as such. With the life that some priests led, it was seen as something to aspire to, not as an authentic vocation. With this, seminaries were at bursting point and from Rome's point of view, the Irish Church must have been doing something right. Rather than screening seminarians and postulants, seminaries and convents flung open the doors to let everyone in. It seems that we now have the result.
I would respectfully suggest that you continue your priestly work in bringing people closer to Our Lord instead of suggesting that you understand the issue of abuse-which you clearly do not.
With prayers and good wishes,
Alice Woolven BA (Monash)
Melbourne, Australia
B.O.O.M. Strike over Virgins
Moslem suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda management have so far failed to produce an agreement.
The suicide bombers' union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (or B.O.O.M.) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action. General secretary Abdullah Amir told the press: "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of jihad. We don't ask for much in return but to be treated like this by management is a kick in the teeth."
Mr Amir accepted the limited availability of virgins but pointed out that the cutbacks were expected to be borne entirely by the workforce and not by management. "Last Christmas Abu Hamza alone was awarded an annual bonus of 250,000 virgins," complains Amir. "And you can be sure they'll all be pretty ones too. How can Al Qaeda afford that for members of the management but not 72 for the people who do the real work?"
Speaking from the shed in the West Midlands where he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained: "We sympathise with our workers' concerns but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day jihad, in a competitive marketplace. Thanks to Western depravity, there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."
He defended management bonuses by claiming these were necessary to attract good fanatical clerics. "How am I supposed to attract the best people if I can't compete with the private sector?" asked Mr Bin Laden.
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Beefing up the Papacy
Anglican Father John Hunwicke, commended in one of our current editorials for his sturdy pro-life stance, seems considerably more in tune with the Holy Father's way of thinking on Christian unity than most of the neo-Mod and neo-Con English Catholic hierarchy. This was his reaction to Pope Benedict's recent lifeline to clergymen wanting to get clear of priestess-pushers and the lavender mafia within their own communion:
There seem to be a lot of bits in the media from Important People, even sometimes the Great and the Good, about how Benedict sinned and behaved "uncollegially" by issuing Anglicanorum coetibus without lengthy consultations with mainstream Anglican bishops and their liberal chums among the RC bishops and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All.
Personally, I regard it as one of the prime functions of the Successor of St Peter to reach out and protect small, orthodox, and persecuted minorities against all manner of heterodox local bully-boys and playground tyrants/tyrantesses.
I'm not quite sure where that is spelt out in magisterial documents. "It isn't," you say? Well then, that is an important item for the agenda of Vatican III. What we need is a stronger and more interventionist Papacy.
Back in 2004, in a book review, our editor made just the same point-that one of the vital functions served by the papacy is as a bulwark against injustice at local level. He wrote:
At school I had to study Calderón's play El Alcalde de Zalamea (the Mayor of Zalamea). The mayor, Pedro Crespo, orders the execution by garrotting of Captain Álvaro de Ataíde who has raped the mayor's daughter while billeted on the family. A confrontation then builds up between Crespo and the General, Don Lope de Figueroa. If events take their natural course the mayor will certainly face death by court martial for killing an army officer.
Suddenly King Philip II arrives unexpectedly on the scene. He orders an inquiry and decides that the mayor acted rightly. Justice-by the standard of that time-is seen to have been done. In the context of the 21st century Church-whatever about collegiality-Rome sometimes has to fulfil a function analogous to that of the king in this 16th century play.
Anyway, please come on in, Fr Hunwicke! The water's chilly and rather mucky, and it's even worse when you get used to it. But now, thank the Lord, we do have Benedict XVI, who's doing his best to get rid of the worst of the tat. And you and your pals might be able to help him more than you know. The battered old barque of Peter really does need priests like you-the more the merrier!
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A Downs Baby Jesus?
Another reason why I approve of Fr Hunwicke is that he is very nice about us! This is what his blog says:
Somebody kindly sent me a copy of this Irish bimonthly [The Brandsma Review] which is full of good stuff. An article on the Hiberno-Catholic priest (Anglo-Catholic seems an inept term) Fr Basil Maturin; on Dr Johnson's sympathy for Catholicism; and many sound opinions well argued. Oestrogen pollution in our waterways ... Filippo Lippi's La Madonna dell' Umiltà with a discussion about whether the Infant Lord is portrayed as a Down's syndrome baby.
Interesting, that last. Artists have portrayed Christ, so as to make a point, as negroid or Asiatic; no harm there, since he was Jewish and yet we have often portrayed him as Caucasian. But offensively female Christs have appeared, as avant garde artists and ultra-liberal clerics conspire to make their silly point. We could play this game too. Christ with Downs Syndrome would be a telling way of making a good point about the holocaust to which those thus formed are subjected in our thanatophiliac culture. And about the equal worth of all humans. Yes?
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Dawkins and Delusion
For his own reasons Richard Dawkins, a sort of atheist proselytiser, is furious about Benedict XVI's ordinariate for Anglican converts. In a frenetic and ignorant rant far exceeding Ian Paisley at his worst, Dawkins attacks almost every aspect of Catholic belief.
But really: if all believers in God are deluded, what difference does it make where and how they choose their delusion?
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Apologia pro Vlad the Impaler
When I revealed in our last issue that Peadar Laighléis had completed a questionnaire which purported to show that he had much in common with Vlad the Impaler, Peadar was quick to defend that gentleman's record:
Vlad the Impaler has a bad press. It is true he was ruthless with his enemies-in particular the Turks. As a boy, he spent years as a hostage of the Turks in Ankara. Among the things he learned was the practice of impaling, a very slow and painful death. The name Dracula is derived from the Order of the Dragon, a fifteenth century order of chivalry whose members swore to oppose the enemies of Christendom. Vlad put this into practice in his campaigns against the Turks whom he impaled in turn. On one occasion a Turkish army was demoralised by the sight of 20,000 Turks on stakes. Vlad was marked out from Eastern European princes as he remained faithful to the Union of Florence, which reunited the Catholic and Orthodox churches in 1439. In 1460, he was the only prince in Europe who responded favourably to Pius II's call for a crusade against the Ottoman Turks (which could have potentially saved Trebizond, which fell to the Turks in 1461). This earned him the respect of Pope Pius.
For all his life, Vlad was a major thorn in the Turks' side until he died in battle against them in 1476. To campaign effectively against them he spent a lot of time combatting internal enemies in Wallachia. This broadcast an image of an oppressor, which was widely disseminated. Among other things, these tracts were combined with eastern European vampire lore by Bram Stoker to give us the Dracula stories we are now familiar with. However, this obscures the original Vlad Tepes. Without question he was tough and brutal, but he was confronting a long-standing enemy in a manner he knew would make an impression. Not one of the more attractive Christian heroes-but without a doubt a formidable foe to Christianity's enemies.
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Marian 'Doom and Gloom'?
Fr Gerry Moloney, editor of the Redemptorist magazine Reality, continues to make a name for himself.
His attack on Traditionalists is mentioned in an editorial, and also in one of our "Letters" to editor, but he had earlier had a go at the recent silly and clearly bogus "apparitions" at Knock, making the rather obvious point that it's "extraordinary" they should have attracted so much attention. So far, so fair enough.
But what is so troubling, he argues, is the content of the "alleged messages". Invariably, he says, they are negative in tone. "Mary is issuing warnings or threats. People better behave-or else." In these messages, he says, Our Lady is "big into doom and gloom, heavy on fear and forebodingÉWe do not need dancing suns and regular Marian pronouncements to show us the way."
Hold it right there, Father. Genuine apparitions, too, are frequently rather alarming. Fatima had what he calls a "dancing sun", witnessed by around 60,000 people, and there were plenty of severe warnings-what Fr Moloney and the secular media would call "doom and gloom". Does that cast doubt on its authenticity? If so, how about the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the rest who so often accurately predicted "doom and gloom"? As did Our Lord Himself.
It might be revealing if Father would also tell us what his criteria would be for assessing Lourdes, Guadelupe, Beauraing, La Salette? And what about the original vision at Knock?
Funnily enough, he makes no mention of by far the most popular-and interminable-series of recent alleged apparitions: Medjugorje. These are full of optimism.
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Ethics and Warming
It has been fun to watch the discomfiture of the Warmists in response to the coldest January for 30 (40 or 50 or whatever) years. Some of their supporting scientists, at least, have been shown to be in the habit of suppressing evidence which doesn't back their thesis. The Newsnight programme on BBC 2 has a reporter-in fact, a green propagandist-they have dubbed "Ethical Man". He fronted an experiment in some council house in London's East End, purporting to prove we are on the way to the frying pan-or at least the dust bowl. The cameraman, perhaps unwisely, showed the scene outside, with snow beginning to pile up in the streets.
The experiment consisted of two transparent globes, one of which was treated to "global warming" and the other not. The former ended up with more carbon dioxide than the latter. Q.E.D.? The experts in the audience were Warmists, and the non-experts consisted of some sceptics and some true believers. There was no sceptical scientist on hand to challenge the basis of the experiment, though plenty could have been found.
One of the quality controllers at Guinnesses told me some years ago that they are in the habit of brewing a small batch of stout-I think five gallons-along with the main brew in any given week or whatever. The small batch never turns out quite the same as the large. Similarly, the Warmist thesis is based, I understand, on computer projections which can make no allowances for random factors like the influence of sunspots.
But you can't win with these people. "Ah," they say with a pitying smile. "But you don't understand that there's a difference between "climate" and "weather".
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Dairy Farmers Please Note
Still on matters Warmist...
If you are as old as I am, you will remember the American singer Johnny Ray. Like the Kennedy aide "Onions" O'Leary, much in use at funerals, he had what might be described as the gift of tears, which accounted for much of his popularity.
One of Ray's songs was I Believe. It began:
I believe, for every drop of rain that falls
A flower grows...
My own Warmist version goes
I believe that every time a heifer passes wind
A flower dies...
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Rise, Sir Cat
In Minsk, in one of those Stalinist blocks of flats found all over the former Soviet Union, there dwell the Venezuelan military attaché and his very beautiful and intelligent cat who goes by the name of Don Gato (which means "Sir Cat").
When Don Gato has to go outside and wants to get back in again, he has discovered that if he waits around, someone will eventually come and press the lift button. He then accompanies them in the lift, gets out at whatever floor it stops, and finds his way to his own flat.
Still on matters feline, a friend of my parents married a Tsarist refugee from the Russian Revolution. The couple adopted a pregnant cat, whom they called Pushka. When the kittens were born, they named them Omsk, Tomsk and Minsk.
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Bring Back the Sedia!
Back in July 2007, being in provocative mood, our editor called for the restoration of the old sedia gestatoria in which, on special occasions, Popes were carried on the shoulders of the Noble Guard up the main aisle of St Peters. He pointed out that this chair in fact had a very practical role. It wasn't intended to make the Pope feel superior, lifted above the heads of the simple faithful; it was to enable the crowd actually to see him. Now, most of them would find considerable difficulty in doing so.
We didn't realise it at the time, but there was another good reason for the sedia gestatoria-the physical safety of the Holy Father. This became very clear this Christmas when a crazy but athletic woman managed to attack Pope Benedict during a procession. That could never have happened in the old days.
Let's bring it back. And the Noble Guard, while we are about it. And the ostrich feathers. And the papal tiara. They are fun. To hell with the miserable latter-day Cromwellians who got rid of them.
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How about Sackcloth?
Which reminds me: Big Media took a perfectly understandable interest in the visit of the Irish Hierarchy to Rome, to discuss the child abuse issue with the Holy Father. But why did many of the hacks make such a fuss about the fact that all the bishops were properly dressed for such an occasion, and observed protocol by kissing the Pope's ring? Somehow this was regarded as an insult to the victims-I can't imagine why-and evidence of cold, aloof authoritarianism and general lack of compassion.
Would the ladies and gentlemen of the press get in such a tither about the Dalai Lama in his saffron robes, Sikhs in turbans, Anglican bishops in gaiters, Greek orthodox priests in kalamafkioi or rabbis in skullcaps? Do they not know that Mao Tse-tung, probably the most monstrous tyrant in history, responsible for scores of millions of deaths, always wore a boiler suit?
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Edited by Nick Lowry, and James. R. Lothian, and published by Brandsma Books Ltd., 14, Villarea Park, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin. (Tel: 01 280 3540). Cost of yearly subscription in Ireland (six issues), EUR19.80.