Report on child abuse in Dublin Archdiocese

It is very difficult to find the appropriate words to respond to the publication of this report. A round-up of the news, and the reaction of representatives of the Catholic Church in Ireland, can be found at Whispers in the Loggia. Catholic Anaylsis offers a reaction to which I would also subscribe. A BBC account of the contents of the report can be found here, and RTE's account from yesterday is here. This is the reaction of a priest today.

There are perhaps three observations that I would like to make.

The first echoes that of Catholic Analysis. Evil, serious evil, needs to be recognised as serious evil. It needs to be called serious evil. And it needs to be condemned as serious evil. The covering up of abuse, when it is known, adds to the original evil of the abuse itself a further evil -  an implicit refusal to call the original evil the evil that it really is. The publication of the report, and other reports like it, contributes to the overcoming of this second evil.

A second observation comes from the picture showing up in the report of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the police and other civil authorities in Ireland. The report also highlights failings in the civil authorities arising from their deference to the Catholic Church. On occasions, police authorities reported allegations to the Church instead of carrying out their duty of investigation that would arise from their position in civil society. My own background is not one from which I have any immediate experience of Irish Catholicism - I am an English Lancashire Catholic by family background and by culture. There is a real sense in which I do not understand Irish Catholicism, and do not think I would live very comfortably with it. The report into child abuse in Dublin illustrates the serious risk that does arise from too close an affiliation between the life of faith and that of civil life. An appropriate secularity is needed in the action of lay Catholics in the world, as mediating the action of the Church to the world, and this is not achieved through the type of subervience to the clergy that appears in some aspects of the Dublin child abuse report.

My third observation is taken from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and suggests a way in which we all, as different members of the Church, might respond in penance to the events reported. The quotation included is from Pope Paul VI, and the emphasis added is mine:

All members of the Church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners. In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time.Hence the Church gathers sinners already caught up in Christ's salvation but still on the way to holiness:  "The Church is therefore holy, though having sinners in her midst, because she herself has no other life but the life of grace. If they live her life, her members are sanctified; if they move away from her life, they fall into sins and disorders that prevent the radiation of her sanctity. This is why she suffers and does penance for those offenses, of which she has the power to free her children through the blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit."

If we are wondering how we, as individuals, should respond to the great evils that are the subject of the news at the moment, then acts of penance seem to me entirely appropriate. Saying this is, of course, easier for me than doing it ...

2+2=5

I am not sure I have fully understood this concept:

Silent Disco on Ice


10 December 2009, 19.45, 21.00 and 22.00 skate sessions

Tickets £16

The Ice Rink hosts London’s first ever silent disco on ice. Come and skate at the silent disco and listen to pop classics or the latest nightclub tracks.

The ecumenical nature of the Church

I am prompted to this post by the discussion that has followed the post Thoughts on Dialogue, with the thought that it is worth a new post rather than just a continued comment.

The particular prompt is this part of NewmanCause's comment on that post:

 .... But that said, Christian witness to the 'social Gospel' is a necessary and powerful thing.


We suspect it makes a more lasting contribution to human well-being, is a more eloquent manifestation of what Christians have in common, and constitutes a more effective path to Christian unity, than the bulk of ecumencial dialogue - at least as it has been commonly practised up to now.

I have for some time thought something similar about those activities which are explicitly labelled as "ecumenical" - joint services during the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, participation in the services or activities of another denomination, pulpit swaps and theological discussions. My experience suggests that the ordinary person in the pew has a natural sense which treats these types of activity with a certain hesitation. Within my own town, for example, the joint service during the Week of Prayer has in effect been abandoned because the members of the local Churches have simply not turned up for it. These types of activity seem artificial, and rather like a pretend at unity. It is only if ecumenical engagement is part of the ordinary life of the Church or denomination, something that the parishioners or members of the Church do as part of their own ordinary Christian life, that it will have something of reality about it.

So, as Catholics, if we wish to look for a genuinely lived ecumenism we should not look for it in these more or less "artificial" activities but within what one might call the normal, internal life of the Catholic Church itself. This follows from the thought that ecumenism is part of what it means to be the Church and not something optional, not an "add-on". And the great thing is that that living of ecumenism within the ordinary life of the Church is there to be found!

One outstanding example is the "spirituality of unity" of the Focolare Movement. This page gives an introduction to the movement, and more about its charism can be found on the page about the sprituality of unity and in the section of the site devoted to ways to dialogue. It is worth recognising the profoundly Christocentric nature of the spiritual charism of the Focolare, centred as it is on the crucified Jesus, and its firm adherence to the person of the Holy Father.

Another example is the charism of hospitality and prayer for Christian Unity of the Sisters of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of Saint Bridget (Bridgettines). An account of their founding and charism can be found here.

I expect that other examples could also be cited. It would be interesting to see the examples that could be cited from within the life of other Christian denominations.

Rowan and Benedict

Stella Maris has posted what I think is both a realistic and a charitable comment on the remarks of Archbishop Rowan Williams at a conference in Rome: The Desperate Archbishop. I found it interesting to re-read my post on dialogue of yesterday after reading Stella Maris' post. The Times report of Archbishop Williams remarks, made at a conference on ecumenism at the Pontifical Gregorian University, is here.

The characterisation by the Times report of the proposal for Anglican Ordinariates as being a proposal for a "Church within a Church" betrays a particular line on this question. Ruth Gledhill's commentary in the Times of Thursday urges Archbishop Williams to show some backbone in facing up to Pope Benedict (I don't think I am misrepresenting her in saying this, but do check the original here). I did chuckle away to myself for quite a few minutes the first time I read this paragraph:

If Benedict XVI has displayed something of his rottweiler tendencies, cloaked in the most decorative of chasubles, Dr Williams now needs to unleash his inner bulldog.

The model that Ruth Gledhill thinks Dr Williams should follow? Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's "Reformation enforcer" (Ruth's words).

Holding his hands up in helpless resignation while Rome walks off with his traditionalists is not going to earn the Church of England the respect that it deserves and that was hard won by the likes of Cromwell.

Assuming the Times is reporting him accurately, though, I think Dr Williams is correct to say that Anglicanorum coetibus does not offer anything new from an ecclesiological point of view - Ordinariates already exist within the Catholic Church to cater for a specific pastoral situation (pastoral care of military personnel), and there is no recognition of Anglican orders or independent decision making on doctrinal belief and practice.

Thoughts on dialogue

This post is prompted by the invitation to discussion (difficult to use the word "dialogue" twice in the same sentence) about dialogue contained in NewmanCause's comment to my earlier post about Newman and the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. What has prompted me is this paragraph from the post by NewmanCause that I discussed in my post just referred to (my italics added to highlight the aspect which most prompts my thoughts):

It has been axiomatic for Catholic ecumenists that the Church must learn from those with whom she is in ‘dialogue’. What is right in this way of thinking need not be abandoned, once it is recognised, as the Holy Father has recognised, that ‘dialogue’ cannot be an end in itself. Even when ‘dialogue’ is ordered, as it must be, towards conversion to the Catholic Faith, the Church may still stand to learn from those whom she receives into full communion.

Dialogue as encounter with a culture

I would first like to suggest that dialogue has the nature of an encounter with a culture. One might talk of representatives of the Church, or of an individual in the Church, engaging in an encounter with a culture. The culture has its representatives, who might be termed the "partners" with whom dialogue is undertaken.  What I think is a good example of dialogue as encounter with a culture is my post Jessica Hausner's Lourdes. In this I bring to bear my own experience of Lourdes and of Catholic faith to comment on a film which touches on that experience. I also think that Jessica Hausner, without necessarily accepting a supernatural, or even a religious, reality to the phenomenon that is Lourdes, has nevertheless genuinely and honestly engaged with the event that is a pilgrimage to Lourdes. In this sense, she is a genuine partner with whom one can enter into dialogue through commenting on her work.

Inter-religious dialogue, or ecumenical dialogue, can be seen as special cases of this where the partner in the dialogue is a representative of another religion or Christian denomination. To again refer to the sphere of film, the existence of "ecumenical juries" at some film festivals would illustrate this.

In this kind of dialogue, one's own experience gains something from the experience of the dialogue partner. We might see something supportive of our own experience that we had not seen before. In some cases, we might change or adjust our point of view, but not always.

Dialogue as a moment in evangelisation

In its teaching about the nature of evangelisation (Evangelii Nuntiandi, General Directory for Catechesis), the Church speaks about a presence of the Church, or of the individual Christian, in the activity of the world. Sometimes termed "presence in charity", this might not be a presence that is explicitly proclaimed as a Christian presence, but it is a presence prompted and imbued with a Christian spirit. An example of this might be participation in port, hospital or industrial chaplaincy, where many of the encounters one has with seafarers, patients or co-workers might be without explicitly religious content. For most Catholics, it refers to their everyday encounters with neighbours, friends and colleagues.

I think this is also is an aspect of understanding dialogue as encounter with a culture, but brought perhaps to the level of individual human relationships. However - and this is the point at which I would enter into discussion though, I think, not necessarily disagreement with NewmanCause - this will rarely take place with an explicit intention of seeking conversion to the Catholic faith. Indeed, where it to be undertaken with such an explicit intention, there are circumstances in which it would become proselytism of the very worst kind.

What the Catholic Church's teaching allows us to do, though, is to still see this as a moment in the dynamic of evangelisation which imbues the whole of the Church's life. In this sense, it has a reference towards conversion to the Catholic faith, as part of a wider activity of the whole Church. Evangelical Christians have a tendency I think to see evangelism as only occurring when they explicitly proclaim the faith (this is another moment in evangelisation for us Catholics, but not the only one), which does not always lead to positive experiences on the part of their hearers.

Conditions to enable dialogue

"Moving goal posts" are an image that we often use when we are trying to deal with someone, or with an issue, where the ground rules keep changing; it is impossible to know in which direction to kick the ball if the goal posts don't stay still. Dialogue can only occur if the partners to that dialogue have a common concern for the truth of what is known or believed, and a common concern for the moral rightness of what is done. Indifference to truth or indifference to the idea of moral right and wrong make dialogue impossible. Seeing the school or university as a community of learning depends upon this idea of a common searching for what is true and morally good, a searching undertaken together by the faculty and the students. The enterprise of education is, or should be, an enterprise of dialogue.

This consideration prompts me to identify an excruciating irony in our contemporary political situation, and that occurs when the representatives of a political and social culture that is thoroughly secularist (and therefore relativist in both its attitude to the idea of truth and the idea of moral right and wrong) urges on us the need for inter-religious dialogue! It strikes me that what is needed more than anything else is a dialogue between religious belief and non-religious political and social cultures; but the relativism of the latter renders that dialogue all but impossible.

Bridges and Tangents gave an account of exploring fundamentals without being fundamentalist when introducing the current series of Faith Matters lectures. I think he expresses what one might term the basis on which a Catholic is able to enter into dialogue with others:

The title of the series is quite provocative: ‘Fundamentals of Faith’. At first glance, it makes me think of the word ‘fundamentalism’, with all its negative associations – a belief system that is unthinking, unreflective, arrogant, closed to the truths of history and science, of philosophy and psychology. But perhaps that is intentional. The purpose of each lecture is to show that Christians can explore the fundamentals of their faith without being fundamentalist. The root meaning of the word ‘fundamental’, of course, is something that acts as a foundation. Thinking deeply about the fundamentals of faith should actually make you less ‘fundamentalist’ and more reflective, more open, and yes – more faithful.

Patriarch Fouad Twal speaking about the situation of Christians in the Holy Land

The Bishops' Conference website has published the text of an address to the Bishops' Conference by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The address presents the position of Christians in the Holy Land, and is worth reading. His Beatitude Fouad Twal is realistic in his assessment of the situation, without taking a stance that is "purely political".

The difficulties created by the policies of the Israeli government with regard to new settlements are referred to:

In recent weeks, much attention has been focused on the Israeli government’s plans to wrest Arab East Jerusalem from its Palestinian residents. House demolition, expropriation and new plans to unilaterally define much Jerusalem territory as "national park land" are threatening not only the peace of Jerusalem but also its multi-confessional identity. An important segment of this land belongs to different Churches. Alongside this, the government continues to sponsor settling Jews in Arab East Jerusalem, building neighborhoods and enlarging the existing ones. Most worrying is the fact that the Haram al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, is again becoming a locus of tension as radical Jews do not hide their intention to remove the Muslim shrines there in order to reconstruct the Third Temple.

I noticed particularly His Beatitude's remarks about the part played by Catholic educational institutions sponsored by the Latin Patriarchate. Unlike Catholic schools in the UK, where the premise generally is that they exist to educate Catholic children, this is a context where many of the students will not be Catholics.

Another significant sign of the vitality of our Church is the ongoing development of the planned university linked to the Latin Patriarchate in Madaba. We are convinced that our large, established and respected Catholic school system has had a significant and positive effect upon the life and culture of Jordan, and has been no small factor in Jordan’s role, as a force of moderation and tolerance in the Middle East. We wish to expand that effect by opening this university, which we expect will attract students from the entire region, and not just from Jordan. I urge you to take this new initiative to heart and be involved. ‘Involvement’ does not only mean financial support but help to make strong connections with English and Welsh universities.

In this connection, I might mention the excellent work of our Latin Patriarchate schools throughout the diocese. These schools that are of a high standard and promote Christian values need your support too. We truly believe that through these schools we are making a difference in our region.

Taking a Stand on Sexual Health

This is the title of a press release from the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, my local NHS hospital trust. It does not refer to the adoption of a policy position. It refers to the fact that the Trust is spending some of its money to have a stand at an "erotic exhibition". I can't quite think of the best way to describe the Erotica exhibition, though I suspect that the most honest way is to describe it as an exhibition devoted to different degrees of the pornography industry (though I expect that some of the exhibitors would deny this description). The offiicial descriptor is "consumer adult life style" show.

Let's try and apply some logic.

The BHR University Hospitals NHS Trust think it is a good use of their (public) funds to have a sexual health stand at this exhibition. In the words of their press release (my emphasis added): "The stand at Erotica is the first step to confront sexual health head-on, to move with the times and to go outside of the mainstream to find specific audiences". Therefore, they are recognising that "consumer adult life styles" carry a higher risk of infection with an STI and so provide a "specific audience" that needs to be targeted with services.

So why not discourage people from taking part in "consumer adult life styles"? Rather than helping to publicise them, using public funds?

Now one does find it difficult to take seriously a press release which squeezes "first step", "confront sexual health head-on" (oh, dear!) , "move with the times" and "go outside the mainstream" into one and the same sentence. If any readers wish to take on a challenge, perhaps they could try to do the same with a sentence in the comments box (nothing rude please!).

In the 2008-9 financial year, this NHS Hospitals Trust announced  a deficit of £23 million. One would have thought that their advertising budget would have been a key area to be targeted to achieve savings ....