What the Church offers democracy

Letters to the Editor of The Tablet

Democracy is vulnerable; it needs constant maintenance to survive. I welcome Clifford Longley’s invitation to the Church to share its wisdom on democracy, for it has much to offer (“Could the Pope save democracy?”, 25 October).

Catholic Social Teaching provides some 10 principles enabling any decision-maker to proceed with greater confidence at whatever level – personal, local, even national or global.

Two other areas of Church wisdom support Clifford’s suggestion. First, synodal listening: that is, deep listening.

For Pope Francis, the first step in finding a way to move forward together, on any issue, is for every one of us to listen with attention to each other until we fully understand why the other thinks the way they do. Contrast with parliamentary Question Time.

Second is the matter of energy. This word readily brings to mind petrol, electricity etc. All are important. Yet the Church knows, and we humans know, from our personal and family experience, that the fundamental human energy that really matters in achieving constructive action together is love.

Pope Francis and Pope Leo remind us of this in Dilexit nos and Dilexi te. To take one example, the current debate on the deeply complex issue of migrants shows little of the fundamental human energy that a constructive way forward requires – namely, love. Let us, Church and all, work hard to keep democracy alive.

Martin McEnery
London N16

In a significant article in support of democracy, Clifford Longley urges the Vatican to promote power-sharing as an antidote to today’s authoritarianism. He points to Northern Ireland and the circumstances and origins of the Good Friday Agreement.

There, democracy had given the Unionists a majority in the government, resulting in “the systematic and permanent exclusion of the Catholic minority and the erosion of its civil rights”.

I couldn’t help feeling there was a tragic irony in asking Pope Leo, the leader of a single-party authority which permanently excludes both women from priestly ministry and laity from power-sharing, to ride to the rescue of democracy.

Penelope Middleboe
Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire

It is difficult to miss the irony in Clifford Longley’s question. Even in these challenging times there are still about a million of us who are practising Catholics in the UK, perhaps 300 million across the globe, but there is not one who believes they belong to a democratic organisation.

Jim Foley
Birmingham

I’m afraid I could not help but smile at the irony. Before Pope Leo could proceed to save democracy as urged, he should remove the plank from the eye of the Catholic Church, an institution as undemocratic as it is possible to be.

Francis Hunter
Little Baddow, Essex

Defending women

Liz Dodd (25 October) risks making the LGBTQ+ “community” a privileged placeholder for all the poor and marginalised. As I read her column, I was also following social media updates about women in Australia and the UK who are struggling in the courts to defend their right to exclude anatomical males who identify as transwomen from female-only spaces, groups and activities.

Many lesbians and feminists, and some gay men, have expressed concern about the lumping together of sometimes conflicting rights and demands under the term LGBTQ+. Rights can only be defended when we have clear terms of reference and can ask, in situations of power/exclusion: who has the power, who is being marginalised, and why.

For example, what does “+” mean when referring to sexual identities, rights and desires? It presumably does not mean blanket inclusion, but where are the ethical boundaries?

In the sex and gender politics of late modernity, women and children are losing out to the onslaught of demands from the increasingly polarised extremes of the progressive/conservative lobbies, most of them driven by men’s interests and desires.

Meanwhile, reports of a pandemic of sexual violence against women and children, exacerbated by the proliferation of online pornography and abuse, have no purchase on the often aggressive demand that everybody who identifies as a woman should have access to everything that pertains to women and girls.

The LGBTQ+ “community” is a fiction. Such language fails to acknowledge the conflicted nature of the struggle for rights. It ignores the tactics of abuse by way of which many LGBTQ+ activists seek to close down all debate and dissent.

This includes the bullying of women, including lesbians, for whom LGBTQ+ demands for inclusion have become a bitter struggle to defend what little ground we might have gained with regard to sex-based rights and protections.

(Prof.) Tina Beattie
Camber, East Sussex

Can someone explain to me on what authority Pope Saint John Paul II decreed that the Church has “no authority … to confer priestly ordination on women” (Letters, 25 October)?

I was taught many years ago that binding papal pronouncements were confined to matters of faith or morals. St John Paul’s diktat is not covered by these categories.

Concerns about schism and leavers have to be set against all the walking wounded women denied access to the healing power of the sacraments because the gatekeepers are all men, and all the young women who currently regard the Church as irrelevant but who might begin to see that there is a place for them in the Church.

Joanna Pallister
Durham

Loving the poor

Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation “on love for the poor”, Dilexi te, is a wonderful document. However, it has a defect. The Church and its spokespeople, from popes to priests to parish councils to teachers in Catholic schools, talk about the poor.

They presume that they are not talking to the poor. Dilexi te is addressed “To all Christians, on love for the poor”. The unintended but unavoidable implication is that the poor are not “part of us” who are speaking or writing about them.

At no point in the Exhortation are the poor addressed directly; at no point is the voice of the contemporary poor quoted.

I am not singling out Pope Leo for criticism. I am talking to myself, too. This is the kind of Catholic Church in which I, the same age as the Pope, have lived my whole life.

What to do? Especially when that presumption of the materially poor being absent from the public life of my local church is completely accurate. We, the Church, must work on finding a good answer.

Gerrard Hore
Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

There be dragons

Vatican II was a breath of fresh air, bringing new life into the Church. Yet I do feel that the inclusion of an Old Testament reading was a mistake (Letters, passim). I understand the desire to show continuity of beliefs, but there is little value in proving that you have a past, if you cannot ensure a future.

We will not get many converts from their hearing of a seven headed dragon waiting to eat a newborn child, or assertions that God is fighting for the Israelites against the Egyptians.

Many Old Testament people made materialistic associations with the coming of the Messiah and rejected Christ’s mission when he came into the world. There are enough passages from the Epistles and writings of the Apostles to occupy a first reading.

Michael Loftus
Clonmus, Co. Tipperary, Ireland

As complaints against the hierarchy’s imposition of the new translation of the lectionary roll in, there is one unexpected outcome never before achieved: managing to unite the Church on a single issue – the new lectionary. We all hate it.

(Fr) John Danford
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

Filipino hero

Thanks for Hal St John’s article (“Cardinal of the killing fields”, 18 October). A British missionary once told me that Filipinos are blessed with the goodness of their people and beauty of their country. But they are also cursed with leaders they elect. Many church leaders are known to accept dirty money from politicians and contractors. Cardinal David is one of the few prophets of our times. He announces the Good News of Hope in words and deeds, and he denounces the evil of injustice, poverty and killings in our country.

Mabuhay (“viva”), Ambo.

(Fr) Claro Conde
Faringdon, Oxfordshire

Bill for buildings

There are two sides to a balance sheet: assets and liabilities. Some years ago I was the only Catholic representative at a conservation workshop on Faith in Maintenance, and came away profoundly grateful that the Catholic community does not have responsibility for the medieval legacy hanging around the neck of the Anglican Church. One local vicar has 11 such structures in her care.

In France, the churches are the property of the state – hence the speed and ease with which Notre Dame was rebuilt.

T. Peter MacNamara
Faringdon, Oxfordshire

Only one world

Thank you for another editorial featuring the idea of homelands (“Leave the end times in God’s hands”, 18 October).

If indeed Judaism and some strands of evangelical Christianity seek the prophesied return to a homeland as a condition for the coming of a messiah, perhaps they need look no further than the developing idea – thankfully taking hold of all peoples – that the whole Earth is our homeland, floating in space, the cradle of humanity, from which there is nowhere else to go.

Martin Birdseye
Hounslow, Greater London

Feel-good factor

While Michael Pyke (Letters, 25 October) is correct to note that the hymn “Faith of Our Fathers” started life as the battle cry of English Roman Catholics, the words equally resonate with Anglicans. Indeed, it has been adopted by other Christian denominations.

The final verse includes the words “we will love / Both friend and foe”. It would be wonderful if this were sung by the warring parties in Gaza and Ukraine.

Catholics should be proud of our musical inheritance.

Richard Firth
Richmond, Surrey

I have no problem with the line “We will be true to thee till death”. Isn’t that what we all hope? The offensive part is the “suicide-bomber” parent’s plea: “How sweet would be their children’s fate, / If they, like them, could die for thee!”

When we sing the hymn here in Arundel, I replace those words with some mumbled lines of gratitude for not being called to martyrdom.

Oliver Hawkins
Arundel, West Sussex

A few years ago, I enjoyed a full-throated rendition of the hymn at my parents’ parish church. An elderly lady turned round and exclaimed, beaming, “Ooh, that does make you feel good!” Isn’t that the whole point?

Michael Coffey
Bath, Somerset