Letters Extra

In addition to the letters published in this week’s issue of the The Tablet you can find more correspondence here, available free.

Re-imagining the devil

“Talk of the Devil” (The Tablet, 3 July) by John Casey was a sensible start to a re-imagining and a resetting of the paradigms. Our universe is not a self-contained materialism but a mysterious place that opens up to the spiritual. If we can believe in the immortality of the soul and heaven, then it is not unreasonable to believe that there are other forms of spiritual entity, both benign and corrupted. The problem is that such belief has often been abused seeing the demonic behind every sin or sickness, or shifting blame ("The devil made me do it!") Part of the resetting and the reclaiming will be to remember that there are three enemies – the world, the flesh and the devil. Balance, we need balance; not extremes.

In The Tablet, 19 June, you reported that the Pope “blamed the devil for making sure these crimes would be revealed during the priestly jubilee”. There is no doubt that some media, doing the devil’s work, went to town and reported cases of child abuse with malicious intent to discredit the Church. There can be another explanation that Almighty God, “working in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”, willed these revelations to jolt priests and the hierarchy from their complacency in “cover-ups” which appear to have become a system.

The devil Benedict may have known

On reading "Talk of the Devil" and the article about Pope Benedict XVI, "Made in Bavaria", (The Tablet, 3 July) I was reminded of my sojourn in rural Bavaria through some of the war years and the special custom of the double act, St. Nicholas and Knecht Ruprecht (good and evil), performed for the benefit of the children on 6 December. Knecht Ruprecht, also known as Beelzebub or "der Kinderfresser" (child devourer) was made to appear as frightening as possible. He wore a hideous mask, sometimes horns attached to his skull, he carried a bag to put the naughty child in, and "eine Rute" a rod or cane to beat children with. I remember him also carrying a heavy chain which he rattled to send a shiver down your spine. It was a kind of baroque Bavarian thing that perhaps also influenced Joseph Ratzinger growing up.

Celibacy – godly but not imperative

Fr Andrew Stringfellow offers a very brief convincing theology of celibacy, which he says, is one with the mystery of the Cross, what Seamus Heaney calls "the power of power unexercised" (Seamus Heaney). "Sometimes celibacy really hurts” (e.g. not having children, holding a new nephew or niece), he writes. “I am acutely aware that as I hold people in love, in their grief, in their loneliness, and in their joy, there is something profoundly different about what I bring to those encounters and what they bring to me because of celibacy.”
    This is very convincing except for his claim that it is “something profoundly different”. Do married people not share in the mystery of the Cross when they share in the suffering of their children, their partner or friends? Can a married priest (e.g. as a friend, a counsellor, a facilitator) not hold people in love, in their grief, and in their loneliness?  If he wants desperately to minister as a priest and finds himself unwanted, uninvited, and sometimes even blocked in his efforts to minister to people, might that not be the mystery of the Cross also, “the power of power unexercised”? Sometimes that really hurts.
     Perhaps the confusion here is not the difference between celibate and married love, but the nature of that love itself. Both celibate and married love at their best should be chaste, unconditional, generous, and unselfish. They both share in the same love of God and the same mysterious law of the Cross. Celibacy has a theological justification, as has marriage, but it need not be made a condition for ministerial priesthood.

So celibacy has now become a mystery alongside the death of Jesus on the cross? I think not. It is man-made rule, put in place because of ritual beliefs and secular reasons and was never decreed by Christ or the Apostolic church. Does Fr Stringfellow imagine that giving love, sharing grief, loneliness and joy are somehow improved by legislated celibacy? Every parent does these on a daily basis, and not just in the family. Celibacy is indeed valuable, for some, as a way of fulfilling the service of God in his church, if freely undertaken, to enhance the exercise of that service. It is, however, hardly the engine that drives priesthood. The mystery of the Cross is that Christ died once and for all. It is a lack of the sense of true fatherhood that furthers the idea that God encourages us to suffer. Where there is unaccountable suffering, there, is true mystery.

God-given vs church-imposed celibacy

Fr Stringfellow seriously misunderstands my evaluation of celibacy (News from Britain and Ireland, 26 June). The whole issue can be clarified by a simple distinction. First of all there is the God-given special grace of celibacy. Those who receive it are enabled to live without the intimacies of marriage and family life, but they experience great spiritual creativity and freedom. Their lives have enriched the Church throughout the whole of its history. On the other hand there is a second use of the term which scarcely deserves the appelation of celibate life: it is the simple denial of marriage to priests. This rule was imposed upon the Latin rite of the Church by the First and Second Lateran Councils of 1123 and 1139. Lateran II declared in effect that because priests were expected to be holy the married ones must leave. The underlying motive was the opinion that sex was intrinsically unclean and incompatible with the celebration of the Eucharist. Canon 6 of the Second Lateran Council uses the very word "uncleanness" (immunditiis) to designate the marriage relationship. (Ominously that canon indicates no significant difference between a wife and a concubine.)
     The passage of time has brought with it a better understanding of theology and psychology, making it clear that the pessimistic attitude to sex is devoid of theological justification. Sadly it is still be basis of the law debarring married men from the priesthood.

Praying for school places

An item from our Parish Newsletter this week read: “St Xyz’S SCHOOL: Thank you to everyone who prayed for the families and children appealing for a place in St Xyz’s Catholic College. We have been successful and all the children have got a place. We give thanks to God”. As a retired teacher I wonder about the children from other parishes whose parents were presumably out-prayed in this rarefied competition. I had the good fortune to grow up in the 1950s in Africa, in a convent school run by German Sisters, where we got an excellent religious grounding including detailed study of the Gospels, followed up by meeting wonderful Jesuit missionaries and scholars at university in the early 1960s. In England recently, this kind of thing has been stripped away in the academic and economic rat race. Sadly it could be said that Catholic schools are really losing their point, except for ambitious parents. In the official Church, obscurantism is back with a vengeance, and the last thing that is wanted is a laity articulate in religious matters.

Money alone won’t change the Church

Fr Gerry McFlynn (Letters, 3 July) is to be congratulated for his succinct and perceptive analysis of the malaise in the contemporary Church. He is right to identify the failure of the hierarchy to address the need for institutional change and a new understanding of Church since Vatican II. In Portsmouth Diocese at present most of the dynamism has been absorbed into an American-inspired project of planned giving under the misnomer “Living our Faith”. This scheme may well realise nine million pounds over five years for diocesan maintenance. What it does not address are the issues Fr McFlynn outlined. “Living Our Faith” invites people to pledge financial support for the Church as it is, i.e. more of the same. I would have welcomed the option of confronting the need for a change agenda which Fr McFlynn's letter so powerfully identified. Perhaps now that parishioners aspire to the status of stake-holders, the Spirit may prompt them to find voice and insist on a renewal of the Church.

Differentiating between Israel and its Government

Duncan Macpherson (Letters, 3 July) is mistaken in outlining the difference between Zionism and Judiasm. The distinction to be drawn is not between Zionism and Judaism, but between support for Israel, which for most Jews is now rightly part of our moral and religious outlook, and support for all actions of the Israeli Government, which is not and never should be.
    That said, Mr Macpherson’s letter contains, sometimes by implication, a number of inaccuracies: Israel has always been willing to tackle the refugee problem as part of an overall negotiated peace agreement and in a way consistent with its security. Israel has also indicated willingness, as part of such an agreement, to withdraw from settlements on the West Bank, and provide compensation for any land retained. There is no legal or systematic discrimination against Israel's non-Jewish citizens. The blockade of Gaza would end immediately if Hamas replaced its declared aim of destroying Israel with the aim of seeking justice for the Palestinians.

Detecting abuses of the Host

On two occasions recently I have witnessed priests remonstrating with young worshippers whom they suspected of not consuming the host they had received at Communion. On both these occasions the suspicions were unfounded. Such encounters are usually mildly aggressive in tone and detract from the solemnity of the Sacrament. It is, of course, desirable that the host should be consumed on the spot, but this should be achieved by instruction and preaching rather than through embarrassing challenges to individuals. It does seem likely, in any case, that, once the host has been placed either in the hand or on the tongue of the communicant, it has passed into his or her possession, which is beyond any control the Eucharistic minister can legally exercise. And any later abuse of the host, though deplorable and technically sacrilegious, is more likely to be mildly eccentric rather than seriously damaging. Since it cannot be difficult to make off with a consecrated host, whether received on the tongue or in the hand, one wonders about the state of mind of those who fail to achieve it undetected.

To write in to The Tablet, email thetablet@thetablet.co.uk, fax your comments to 020 8748 1550 or post your comments to The Editor, 1 King Street Cloisters, Clifton Walk, London W6 0GY.  Include your full postal address and contact telephone number.  The Editor reserves the right to shorten letters.

For other recent letters, select from the list here:

       

He has only worn the mitre for 18 months but Bishop Mark Davies has already made a big impression ...

There comes a time when you have to stop pulling bodies out of the water and go upriver ...

Precisely why has the British branch of the Knights of Malta had a huge falling out over ...