Two Collects

One of the themes of Pope Benedict XVI's time as Pope was that of the correct relationship between faith and reason, between what we can know through revelation and what we can know through the natural exercise of human reason. Two of his most controversial addresses - that at Regensburg and the one that he was unable to deliver at La Sapienza University in Rome - touched on this in different contexts. The Regensburg address set the question in the light of the nature of religious freedom and the challenge to that freedom represented by coercion of religious belief, before going on to examine the relationship between Christian faith and reason in a treatment ranging from ancient times to the present day. The La Sapienza address started from the point of view of how a historically received set of beliefs still remains a form of the wisdom that should have a part in a contemporary search for ethical truth, and then explored this particularly in the relative relationship between reason and belief in the search for what is ethically true, in the context of the mediaeval university and the contemporary university. Pope Benedict's address in Westminster Hall placed the question in the context of the relationship between religious belief and political activity.

In the light of this, I found the Collect for yesterday's feast of St Albert the Great quite pertinent. I offer two translations, one from the "Liturgy of the Hours" and the second from the revised English translation of the Missal. Their relevance to the pontificate of Benedict XVI illustrates, in my view, how the texts of the Liturgy at once can specifically reflect the charism of a particular saint, but at the same time retain a universal applicability:

Lord God,
you made Saint Albert great by his gift
for reconciling human wisdom with divine faith.
Help us so to follow his teaching
that every advance in science
may lead us to a deeper knowledge and love of you.

O God, who made the Bishop Saint Albert great
by his joining of human wisdom to divine faith
grant, we pray, that we may so adhere to the truths he taught,
that through progress in learning
we may come to a deeper knowledge and love of you.

In my own diocese, Saint Edmund of Abingdon's feast day is today celebrated as an obligatory memorial. He is one of the patrons of the diocese. Again, the Collect for the feast day expresses both something of St Edmund's charism whilst retaining an uncanny relevance to modern times:

O God, by whose grace the Bishop Saint Edmund of Abingdon
was vigilant over integrity in public office
and discipline in religious life,
grant, we pray, through his intercession,
that same spirit of constancy to your Church,
that she may be fearless in promoting justice.

Mis-reporting the survey ...

How does this, from the Vatican Information Service, with my italics added:

Finally, Archbishop Bruno Forte recalled that the approach for addressing the challenges of contemporary family life should be that which Blessed John XXIII noted in his diary shortly before the opening of Vatican Council II: “All is to be seen in the light of pastoral ministry: that is, in terms of souls to save and to edify”. He added, “It is not, therefore, a matter of debating doctrinal questions, which have in any case been clarified by the Magisterium recently … the invitation deriving from this for all the Church is to listen to the problems and expectations of many families today, manifesting her closeness and credibly proposing God's mercy and the beauty of responding to His call”.

become this, from the BBC:

The Vatican has launched a worldwide survey to find out what Catholics really think about its teaching on marriage and family life.

I have only quickly perused the questions contained in the Lineamenta for next October's Extraordinary Synod. But I do not believe there is a single question which asks for what the respondent thinks about Church teaching, or about whether or not they believe it should be changed. Some questions do ask about the extent of acceptance of teaching and about difficulties with putting it in to practice; some others ask about the attitudes and practice in local Churches.  But there is no suggestion anywhere in the Lineamenta of debating the truth or otherwise of the teaching itself...

UPDATE 2: If you saw the earlier update referring to how my own Diocese of Brentwood was presenting the "survey" (it isn't a survey in any conventional sense) on its website, I have now deleted that update. The wording on the Brentwood Diocese website is now significantly different: Calling for Responses.

Thoughts on "Philomena" [UPDATED]

Philomena has gone on general release in Britain this weekend, after premiering in the UK during the London Film Festival. It is a film that is recommended. A screen caption indicates that the film has been "inspired by true events", so one should perhaps see it as representing the story rather than following it exactly in every respect.  Martin Sixsmith's book is probably where one needs to go to find the story in an exact form: The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. [UPDATE: This piece by the real Philomena at the MailOnline gives some indication of where the film varies from the exact story, and gives a perhaps more realistic picture of Philomena's character. A Google search will throw up a number of media reviews. The MailOnline are also now reporting the response of the religious order involved in Philomena's story to the film: Hit film makes us look like villains, say nuns: Judi Dench movie Philomena 'twisted the truth'. The MailOnline report is based on this report at The Tablet.]Nothing in watching the film suggests that it is misleading in any way, though I make that observation as someone who has no immediate experience of Catholic life in Ireland or of the environment of "cover up" that has characterised the Catholic Church's response to historical abuse.

The World Catholic Association for Communications (SIGNIS) jury at this year's Venice Film Festival gave its award to Philomena:

The SIGNIS Award went to the film Philomena, of Stephen Frears (United Kingdom), a film about an elderly woman who has fought during all her life to find her son, taken from her and given in adoption by the nuns of the convent where she was abandoned by her family after becoming pregnant. In its citation, the jury explains that the Award was given to the film “for its vibrant and touching portrait of a woman whose faith sets her free. In her search for the truth, she is further liberated from the burden of the injustice done to her, when she overcomes it with forgiveness”.  

Philomena was widely greeted by critics and audiences, and went on to receive the award of the official jury of the Festival to the best screenplay, as well as the award of the Interfilm jury. It is particularly interesting that, apart from obtaining the Catholic and Protestant awards, it received the award of the Italian Association of Atheists and Agnostics, in a striking demonstration that cinema is indeed polysemous.

The Catholic Church does not come out of the film without some criticism. One of the representative aspects of the film is the dialogue between Judi Dench (as Philomena) and Steve Coogan (as Martin Sixsmith). At times it is Sixsmith who appears to lead by bringing to light a naivety on the part of Philomena in terms of her relationship to the Church and to the sisters in whose care she had lived as a young girl as they respond to her situation. To me this appeared most clearly in the discussions around sexuality - Sixsmith arguing that surely if God has given us a sexual faculty we should enjoy it, while Philomena, recognising that she enjoyed her one night stand, still seemed to retain some sense of discretion (by which I mean shame in its most healthy sense) about it. At other times, it is Philomena who seems to take the lead - as in the closing scenes where she insists on forgiveness over and against Sixsmith who determinedly refuses to forgive, Philomena asserting that she does not want to hate people like he does.

What remains utterly incomprehensible, though, is the somewhat condescending attitude of the sisters towards Philomena as she visits them trying to gain information about the son they had sent for adoption. Whilst sister appears very gentle and caring in the reception room, she nevertheless blocks as strongly as she possibly can any possibility for Philomena to gain the information she wants. When, at the end of the film, it emerges that Anthony is in fact buried in the grounds of the very convent in which this blocking action takes place, one cannot help but recognise a deeply rooted dishonesty on the part of these religious. As portrayed in the film, this dishonesty is not only a dishonesty on the part of individual sisters, but a dishonesty at the level of the institution of the religious community itself.

In the final scenes, an elderly sister defends the treatment given to Philomena (and, by implication, the other girls in the care of the convent) as being a punishment for their immorality, something they brought on themselves, and contrasts it with the virtue of her own life of self-denial. Some of that treatment has earlier in the film been described as "evil" (though Philomena herself is shown as not sharing the use of that term), and I suspect that it is the behaviour of the elderly sister portrayed in these last scenes that prompts one newspaper review I have seen to refer to the behaviour of the sisters as "pure evil".  What is most striking in this scene is that, while Philomena is shown as forgiving the said sister and Martin Sixsmith as refusing it, the elderly sister herself does not even seem to appreciate that a question of forgiveness exists at all.

The Catholic Church in Ireland does have a very striking counter-example to the practice with regard to unmarried mothers reflected in the film Philomena. It lies in the work of the Regina Coeli hostel operated in Dublin by the Legion of Mary. This opened in 1930, and part of its work was intended to provide an environment in which unmarried mothers could keep the care of their children - with no other such arrangement existing anywhere in Ireland at the time. The fullest account that I can quickly find of the work of this hostel is on pp.91-98 of Finola Kennedy's Frank Duff: A Life Story. The arrangements in the hostel, operated by volunteers from the Legion, seemed deliberately to go against that of the provision in convents at the time:

Every woman would pay a small contribution towards her keep, and a "task system" of laundry or domestic work would be avoided at all costs.... The object was to create a "home-life feeling about the place". Duff stressed that the surrounding should be as beautiful as possible because "the silent influence of beautiful and artistic surroundings is incalculable"...

In the first week fifteen women were admitted to the hostel. Soon after the opening, a pregnant woman sought admission. Her entry to the hostel and keeping her child led to the inauguration of the Mater Dei aspect of the hostel, a type of hostel within a hostel specifically organized on the basis of units for mothers and children. One of the mothers in each unit elected to stay at home and care for the children, while the others took jobs to pay for household costs. Thus began a revolutionary system for assisting lone mothers to keep their children.

The depth of Frank Duff's feelings in favour of enabling single mothers to successfully keep the care of their children is revealed in a letter written in 1970, forty years after the opening of the hostel, a letter which has earlier recognised the opposition to its work. The following observation from that letter, cited by Finola Kennedy on p.98 of her book, is indeed extremely hard hitting in the context of the events portrayed in Philomena and the recent legalisation of abortion in Ireland:

I find it a little difficult in my own mind to make a broad differentiation between the determined separating of the unmarried mother from her child and the relieving of the unmarried mother from her unwanted child by way of abortion. Deep down it seems to me that those two processes have an identical root. This root would be the denial of the fact that a spiritual relationship of the supremest order exists between a mother and her child, inclusive of the unborn child.

UPDATE: Among the reviews now appearing on Google is one at the Guardian. This is not particularly sympathetic to the Catholic Church - though its description of the process of adoption experienced by Philomena/Anthony as 

.... stealing babies from vulnerable teenagers, selling them overseas and then preventing them tracing their parents by burning records of the transactions...

is pretty much what the film portrays though, for the record, it is not clear from the real Philomena's account in the MailOnline  whether or not any money was paid to the sisters at the time of adoption. It is the final paragraph of the review, though, that prompts my linking to it (with my italics added):

At the end of the film, it's Martin who's bitter and confounded. Philomena, for all that she's been through, is both cheery and serene. Such is the priceless reward that only her faith can yield. How she managed to cling to it while it slipped from Martin's grasp remains beyond his understanding. Yet her ingenuousness turns out to have been more productive than his scepticism. The Catholic church survives its scandals, Philomena's story shows us, because it delivers the goods.

SECOND UPDATE:  The MailOnline are also now reporting the response to the film of the religious order involved in Philomena's story: Hit film makes us look like villains, say nuns: Judi Dench movie Philomena 'twisted the truth'. The MailOnline report is based on this report at The Tablet. Perhaps the most significant points made in the response are that the elderly sister portrayed in the film's final scene,  a scene added in the film and not occurring in Martin Sixsmith's book, had in fact been instrumental in reuniting many mothers with their children.  The sister speaking for the order also denies that any records were destroyed and said they never received any payment in relation to adoption. What I have written in my original post will indicate that I believe the film represents a dialogue - in the film this occurs between Philomena and Martin Sixsmith - exploring the Catholic Church's participation in and response to the abuse involved, rather than any anti-Catholic diatribe. In this, I agree with the observation reported of the film makers at the end of this MailOnline report, and can understand the representive/dramatic character of the addition of the final scene.

UPDATE AT 2nd MARCH 2014: Oscar Night

This is the text of a comment I posted at another blog, responding to a critical stance towards the film.

1. In evaluating the film Philomena, I do think it is useful to be aware of where the film differs from the actual events that, to quote the film’s credits, “inspired” the film. The statement from the Sisters reported in the Tablet is useful in this. There are other significant differences too. In real life, for example, Philomena Lee did not accompany Martin Sixsmith to the United States, something that is quite central to the narrative of the film. If I understand correctly, too, Philomena was for many years not a practising Catholic, where the film suggests that she is.
2. I do not believe the film to be an anti-Catholic film. One feature of the film is a kind of dialogue between (sceptical) Martin Sixsmith/Steve Coogan and the (believing) Philomena/Judi Dench around their respective responses to the situation of Philomena’s search for her son and the difficulties to this search presented by the sisters. This gives the film a representative rather than a literal/documentary character – and it is in this context that I think the final scenes (which show Sr Hildegard in a less than positive light) need to be understood. While it may be legitimate for the sisters to point out that Sr Hildegard as portrayed in the film, is not the real Sr Hildegard, nevertheless the significance of what her character represents in the film is something that needs to be recognised.
3. I believe the film usefully represents different responses to the experience of women such as Philomena, and represents those responses in a genuine dialogue with each other rather than as conflicting ideologies.
4. The obstructive attitude of the sisters to Philomena’s efforts to find her son, as portrayed in the film, is utterly incomprehensible – and it was that which struck me rather more in watching the film than Sr Hildegard’s unfeeling attitude portrayed in the final scenes. So far as I have been able to determine, the representative character of the film in this regard is accurate to the real events. (I would be happy to be corrected if this is wrong …) The unfortunate aspect of the sisters statement, as reported, is that it does not appear to address this aspect of the film, and nor does it appear to address the practice of involuntary adoption.
4. I recommend seeing the film. As the SIGNIS jury indicated when they gave Philomena their award at the Venice Film Festival: the Award was given to the film “for its vibrant and touching portrait of a woman whose faith sets her free. In her search for the truth, she is further liberated from the burden of the injustice done to her, when she overcomes it with forgiveness”. By all means be aware of where the film differs from reality … but that does not undermine the film’s real and quite genuine value.
[And for the journalists ... there is a sub-theme involving the ethics of journalistic practice ...I missed it watching the film, and only recognised it after reading reviews.]

Law, Morality and Religion

Sir James Munby's recent lecture was given at an annual conference on Family Law organised by the Law Society. As such, the range of its treatment was limited to that of family law, and not the law in general. The full title of the published text of the lecture is "Law, Morality and Religion in the Family Courts" (the full text can be downloaded as a pdf). That having been said, there are some important implications of his lecture that reach across all areas of the practice of law and its relation to the life of our society as a whole.

Firstly, I think we should recognise the truth of Sir James Munby's observation of the morally pluralistic nature of contemporary society (cf pp.7-8 of the full text in pdf). Sir James perhaps assumes that this plurality is mostly driven by a move away from Christian belief by today's citizens, primarily towards secularism (ie lack of religious belief of any kind). Sir James does acknowledge that there is a pluralism in religious belief in society. I would not argue for a privileged position for Christian belief in our law based on the history of our country; I think that any such position is rooted in the extent and manner in which Christian faith continues to be lived in our land (though, of course, that is not to deny that there are historically Christian roots to much of our law and legal process). However, the question raised by Sir James' observation on this point is not that which he pursues, namely, the promotion of an absence of religious consideration in matters of law. On the contrary, I think it raises the much harder question of what is an appropriate consideration of religion in matters of law. If it is quite correct that (p.10 of full text in pdf)

... reliance upon religious belief, however conscientious the belief and however ancient and respectable the religion, can never of itself immunise the believer from the reach of the secular law.

the real underlying question of how the formulation of  law that will apply to believer and non-believer alike takes in to consideration matters of religion remains unasked. As I might choose to express it, rather than religion becoming less relevant, the question of religion and its proper place in society and law is now alive and well and of greater importance than ever.

Secondly, I think we can ask ourselves exactly what Sir James intended by his use of the term "secular" to describe the role of judges and the nature of the law that applies in our land. In France and Italy, the equivalent term is often "laicite" or "lay-ness", with its slightly different nuance. If by this term Sir James intends that any religious consideration should be over-ridden in law unless it happens to be acceptable on secular grounds - and we can be forgiven for believing that this is his intention despite the assertions of the law's having (p.9 of full text in pdf) "every respect of the individual's or family's religious principles" - then he is in effect suggesting the imposition of a secular "religion". Cranmer weighs into this point of view with gusto:

Except, of course, when it comes to enforcing the state orthodoxy of equality and the inviolable beliefs of secularity. In this new theology, there is no theos: human rights are sacred writ, and salvation is found in the veneration of secularism. Therein lies the true source of freedom and justice.

Except, of course, it is no freedom at all; indeed, it becomes a manifest oppression to Christians seeking to live their lives in spirit and in truth....

It is ironic indeed that we are winding back the clock on the 1689 Act of Toleration and 1829 Roman Catholic Relief Act, and moving toward the reintroduction of a religious bar to holding office. Christian magistrates, registrars, paediatricians, GPs, teachers, nurses and foster parents are finding it increasingly difficult to manifest their faith without risk of disciplinary action, dismissal or prosecution for offending the ascendant secular religion.

 What is really required of the law and of judges is that, while not promoting or imposing any one particular religious belief (or, for that matter, secular "religion"), they allow the space in society for those beliefs to flourish. This is what Pope Benedict would have termed an "appropriate secularity". The address in Westminster Hall in 2010 sets out both this and a way of understanding the part to be played by religion in political processes, and by implication in the law and law making process:

Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law...

The central question at issue, then, is this: where is the ethical foundation for political choices to be found? The Catholic tradition maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers – still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion – but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles. This “corrective” role of religion vis-à-vis reason is not always welcomed, though, partly because distorted forms of religion, such as sectarianism and fundamentalism, can be seen to create serious social problems themselves. And in their turn, these distortions of religion arise when insufficient attention is given to the purifying and structuring role of reason within religion. It is a two-way process. Without the corrective supplied by religion, though, reason too can fall prey to distortions, as when it is manipulated by ideology, or applied in a partial way that fails to take full account of the dignity of the human person. Such misuse of reason, after all, was what gave rise to the slave trade in the first place and to many other social evils, not least the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. This is why I would suggest that the world of reason and the world of faith – the world of secular rationality and the world of religious belief – need one another and should not be afraid to enter into a profound and ongoing dialogue, for the good of our civilization.

But the third, and perhaps most worrying, point to be made about Sir James' lecture is its advocacy of a relativistic standard for the working of judges (p.7 of the full text in pdf):

Today, surely, the judicial task is to assess matters by the standards of reasonable men and women in 2013 - not, I would add, by the standards of their parents in 1970 - and having regard to the ever changing nature of our world: changes in our understanding of the natural world, technological changes, changes in social standards and, perhaps most important of all, changes in social attitudes.

As a letter in today's Times points out:

What if in time these changes render acceptable matters which he currently views as "beyond the pale"?

[cf p.10 of full text in pdf where forced marriage, female genital mutilation and honour violence are listed as being in this category of "beyond the pale"]. One can see here an almost complete refusal to engage at the level of genuine reason, despite Sir James' use of the adjective "reasonable". And its inevitable consequence, as Cranmer cited above appreciates, is the persecution of the minority who do not adhere to the prevailing majority "social attitude". Am I naïve to think that the role of judicial decisions is to uphold the rule of law?

In the specific context of family law that was Sir James Munby's subject, this does have a significant implication. Whatever the historical context of case law cited by him in the first pages of his lecture, and whatever view one might take of those judges in the past who have seen their role as being, at least to a certain extent, one of  upholding morals in society, there are nevertheless strong legal grounds for giving to marriage a preferential protection in law. Article 16 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, states:

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

And we should be clear - as intended by the declaration we are here talking about marriage between one woman and one man, with a view to children, and it is this that is intended by the term family. At the time of its writing, no other meaning would have been intended and it would be quite misleading to interpret the Declaration in any other way. If the law, and the work of judges, does provide this preferential protection for marriage and (authentic) family, it is not a question of judges being guardians of public morality in any sense. It is instead their acting in the interests of a common good that is for the welfare of all in society.

And a final aside. Sir James suggests (pp.7-8 of the full text in pdf) that earlier jurisprudence assumed a society marked by a very high degree of homogeneity in moral outlook, and that the content of this outlook could be easily ascertained. Now, on many of the topics coming before the courts, society no longer has a single, discernible voice. Does not this raise a very significant question with regard to what is nowadays referred to as social cohesion? How much commonality of moral outlook is necessary in order to assure social cohesion, and at what point does a lack of such commonality lead to social disintegration?

Pope Francis and Ideology

As I pondered the reaction to Pope Francis' remarks about a faith that can become an ideology (and here), I found it interesting to read this week two blog posts suggesting that the (however delicately expressed) criticism of Pope Francis from Traditionalist, or Traditionally minded, circles is not really the way to go: Just a thought .. and Is this the Pope's Response to his Critics? There is something in these posts of my own thoughts expressed here: Puzzled ... but not by Pope Francis. The efforts of the Chair of the Latin Mass Society to argue that it is the Traditionalists who are really the most Franciscan are entirely different in character than the criticism being offered from other quarters, though I suspect that they still do not issue in what I might term a "comfortable attitude" towards and with Pope Francis.

That the emergence of Traditionalist discomfort with Pope Francis should prompt the question in dogmatic terms of what must be followed of a Pope's teaching and what may be the subject of  "respectful" disagreement is surely very telling: Assent and Papal Magisterium. In the discussion around our response to Pope Francis' interviews and morning homilies this is not the question at stake, and only to one whose ecclesial environment is "dogma" alone could it appear to be the question at stake. Rather it is a question of trying to grasp in the manner of Pope Francis' exercise of his office as a Christian, as a priest, as a Bishop, as the Successor of St Peter the roots from which his life in the Church emerge.

So, for example, with Pope Francis' decision to live at the Casa Santa Martha rather than in the apartments of the Apostolic Palace. Time and again, Pope Francis has explained this as being, not the result of any great sense of poverty or virtue on his own part, but rather as being a result of his own felt need to live with and alongside others. Some Traditionalists have wanted to see in it a certain turning away by Pope Francis from the dignity of the Office of the Papacy. But perhaps one should see its root, consistently with Pope Francis' own explanation, in his experience of the movement Communion and Liberation where there is a great sense of the encounter with Christ being experienced and lived out in a community of life with others in the movement and in the Church.

And I suspect that a familiarity with Communion and Liberation is perhaps the way to gain some understanding of the homily in which Pope Francis refers to the possibility that a certain manner of living the Christian life can in fact constitute an adherence to an ideology. Don Luigi Giussani's book The Religious Sense , which represents the most fundamental articulation of the charism of Communion and Liberation, for example has a section headed "Preconception, Ideology, Rationality" (and, as Cardinal Bergoglio, Pope Francis presented the Spanish edition of this book at its launch in Argentina):

Ideology is the theoretical-practical construction developed from a preconception.

More precisely it is a theoretical-practical construction based on an aspect of reality, a true aspect, but taken up in such a way that it becomes unilaterally and tendentiously made into an absolute; and this come about through a philosophy or a political project.

This last suggests the way in which an ideology achieves intellectual expression in the realm of ideas or practical expression in the pursuit of objectives that are more or less explicitly political (with a small "p"). Towards the end of her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt discusses something of the role of ideology with regard to the practice of totalitarian regimes. Don Giussani continues:

Ideology is built up on some starting point offered by our experience; thus, experience itself is taken up as a pretext for an operation that is determined by extraneous or exorbitant preoccupations.

Vaclav Havel's essay "The Power of the Powerless" (an edition, with other essays, is currently the "Book of the Month" at the website of Communion and Liberation) is a classic account of the part played by ideology in the ordinary life of people under the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. To quote from Havel, though you need to read the whole essay to grasp his full notion of what ideology is and does to a human person:

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them.

All of this can help us understand what it is that Pope Francis refers to in his use of the term "ideology". What Pope Francis is warning against is a shift (which can happen all too imperceptibly) from centring our Christian life on the person of Christ to centring it on the proximate requirements of a moral system - not to say that Catholic moral teaching does not form a consistent whole that is based in the dignity of what it means to be a human person, nor that it is "secondary", but rather to say that the living of the moral life arises in the encounter with Jesus Christ and not apart from that encounter. Without that openness to the "whole" of Christian experience, the Christian life becomes an ideology - a partial perspective, a theoretical-practical construction developed from a preconception rather than being something rooted in the "whole".

It is possible to go further in suggesting Communion and Liberation as a way to help understand this homily by Pope Francis. Don Giusssani has a short book entitled Morality: Memory and Desire in which he gives an account of what Christian life should look like. The suggestion that the one who does not pray falls into living the Christian life as an ideology in the sense indicated above, expressed in Pope Francis' homily, can be recognised in this book, though the book does not identify it by the term ideology.

... the key point at which we begin to do good [in the world at large] is found first of all in those whom Christ has placed at our sides: our fellow Christians.

According to a "moralistic" attitude, however, this key point is derived from ideas or plans that originate in our own consciousness.

.... which could be termed an "ideology" in the sense suggested above.

But what happens if you read of Pope Francis' homily outside of this kind of context, particularly from a somewhat Traditional background? It isn't going to make much sense, not helped by its nature as an unscripted (though not necessarily unprepared) homily, by the lack of a full text and, possibly, by being delivered in a language other than Pope Francis' first language (Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II would appear to have been much stronger linguists than Pope Francis).

So perhaps it is going to take an effort to get to grips with the ideas of this homily. But for me the idea that the Christian life could be lived in a way that constituted an "ideology" was not new....

If .... then why not .....

Am I alone in wondering why, if the UK Government can arrange to process a Visa application in China in 24 hours (Visa rules for Chinese coming to the UK to be relaxed and scroll down to the end of the report), they can't sort out asylum applications in Croydon (UK immigration backlog 'tops 500,000' say MPs )?

Archbishop Bergoglio: ".. the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin."

The "Day by Day" meditation in Magnificat for today is an extract from the text of an address given at a book launch by the now-Pope Francis but then-Archbishop Bergoglio in 2001. The original source, and a fuller text, is the magazine Traces of Communion and Liberation, in an article entitled: The Attraction of the Cardinal.

What is topical in the text of this address is the way in which the now Pope Francis presents the Christian conception of morality as a response to the encounter with the person of Jesus. The articulation of the primary proclamation of God's love for us in terms of God's mercy towards us has become an almost every day feature of Pope Francis' teaching. It is now very familiar when, listened to during his first Angelus address, for example, it sounded very unusual. In the text of this address published in Traces we can detect a long history of this theme in Pope Francis' own personal thought, and we can see it as Pope Francis' particular way of experiencing the charism of Communion and Liberation:

Everything in our life, today just as in Jesus’ time, begins with an encounter. An encounter with this Man, the carpenter of Nazareth, a man like all men and yet different. The first ones, John, Andrew, and Simon, felt themselves to be looked at into their very depths, read in their innermost being, and in them sprang forth a surprise, a wonder that instantly made them feel bound to Him, made them feel different.

Thus far Fr Luigi Giussani and a classic account of the idea of the encounter with Jesus according to the charism of Communion and Liberation. But then what, with the hindsight of Pope Francis' preaching since being elected Successor of St Peter, we might see as Archbishop Bergoglio's distinctive articulation in terms of mercy (this section of text taken in its fuller form from Traces - my emphasis added):

We cannot understand this dynamic of encounter which brings forth wonder and adherence if it has not been triggered–forgive me the use of this word–by mercy. Only someone who has encountered mercy, who has been caressed by the tenderness of mercy, is happy and comfortable with the Lord. I beg the theologians who are present not to turn me in to the Sant’Uffizio or to the Inquisition; however, forcing things a bit, I dare to say that the privileged locus of the encounter is the caress of the mercy of Jesus Christ on my sin.

Archbishop Bergoglio then goes on - following the line of thought of Fr Giussani and the classic presentation of Communion and Liberation - to indicate how a moral imperative arises from this encounter:

In front of this merciful embrace .... we feel a real desire to respond, to change, to correspond; a new morality arises. .... Christian morality is not a titanic effort of the will, the effort of someone who decides to be consistent and succeeds, a solitary challenge in the face of the world. No. Christian morality is simply a response. It is the heartfelt response to a surprising, unforeseeable, “unjust” mercy .....The surprising, unforeseeable, “unjust” mercy .... of one who knows me, knows my betrayals and loves me just the same, appreciates me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, and expects from me. This is why the Christian conception of morality is a revolution; it is not a never falling down but an always getting up again.

 And, again in a manner that is familiar from his preaching as Pope Francis, Cardinal Bergoglio goes on to speak about the Church as the place where Jesus is encountered today:

Jesus is encountered, just as 2,000 years ago, in a human presence, the Church, the company of those whom He assimilates to Himself, His Body, the sign and sacrament of His Presence.

The topicality of Cardinal Bergoglio's words lies in the way in which a Christian conception of morality is consequent upon the encounter with Christ. It allows us another insight into Pope Francis' controversial observation about the teaching with regard to abortion etc coming after the first proclamation of God's mercy, an observation that I have previously understood in the context of an understanding of the different stages in evangelisation archetypally taught in the Decree Ad Gentes and Pope Paul's Evangelii Nuntiandi.