The Ogre Of The Parish

We all know that none of us can please everyone –even Our Blessed Lord did not please everyone. But I have to say that, though I am naturally attracted to family life and the intimacy of husband and wife (which is where I believe my call to be -or at least hope it is!) after having worked in the parish office I feel positively put-off the priesthood. Not only because our priests are wrongly maltreated by the public for the failures of the few; not only because during vocation discernment evenings we had the Host exposed on a small coffee table with tea-lights in the middle of a living room; nor because during a discernment weekend at the seminary we sat around as strangers for group work where we shared details of our ‘former’ lives and mistakes. No; it is that I have realised that while most Catholics are very patient, accommodating and supportive of their priests, some can be merciless if upset, which can happen if there is a mistyped name in the Mass list or a delay in offering a Mass (which is usual, because almost everyone requests the weekend with fewer people attending weekday Masses). As with retailers, so with the Church: we are much more likely to profess a complaint than an affirmation. Yes there are things our priests do that cause us to make complaints to or about them. This is true of Father Dickson too. What are the terrible errors of which Father is guilty? 

Unbelievably, this ogre has the nerve:

to use sung Latin chants for the ordinary of the Novus Ordo, as directed by Vatican II;

to remind us that frequent reception of Holy Communion and frequent Confession go together, as explained by Redemptionis sacramentum (32);

to offer Mass ad orientem as found in the rubrics of the ‘new’ Mass;

to remind us that the norm for Holy Communion is still on the tongue and that reception on the hand is only by way of special permission to a country from Rome;

to require those seeking to receive Baptism, Confirmation or First Holy Communion to attend Mass at least during the Instruction period, and be instructed in the norm for receiving Holy Communion;

to carry out the purifications himself as determined by the General Instruction (163) and Redemptionis Sacramentum (119);

to use both forms of the Mass on Sundays in accord with Summorum Pontificum

to preach that Missing Sunday Mass, cohabiting, using contraception, or supporting/engaging in abortion, euthanasia or homosexual activity is gravely sinful and requires Confession before we next receive Holy Communion;

to preach on the necessity of doing good and avoiding evil; the necessity of personal prayer, reception of the Sacraments, the possibility of hell, and the glory of Heaven.

Of course I am jesting that Father “has the nerve” to do all this, but in fact it does take nerve because I have seen how it irritates some people, including other priests who, in my experience, are not following the documents, perhaps from a well-founded fear of offending the people of today by explaining that God has given us an objective moral truth to live by.

Father Dickson is, I think, appreciated for organising summer garden parties, setting up our coffee mornings for our three regular charities (SPUC, WaterAid and Aid to the Church in Need) for regularly consulting via preference slips in the Newsletter and especially for always responding to crisis calls, and he won’t give a man of the road a sandwich and cup of tea without sitting with them. He often says he needs to be more patient, more prayerful, more generous with his time and talents, and that may be true -who am I to say? But he always apologises if he has been sharp with anyone, and is troubled when health issues stop him visiting the school and the housebound. In my opinion the vast majority of parishioners, while they may be irritated by our liturgy and doctrine, are appreciative, kind and generous with Father and their priests. Perhaps what is sad to note is that supportive comments come in less often than criticisms, though this is probably part of fallen human nature: as I said, we are much more ready to return to a retail outlet to complain than we are to affirm them. Oh that our Bishops would realise this! After all, complainants are not always valid; sometimes they are exaggerated because of a dislike for correctly-done liturgy or sound teaching, and complainants don’t, in my experience, always act from good motive. Yes indeed complaints must be heard, but so too must the priest. I wonder if this aspect of justice is truly followed today, or if we have become just a little too ready to presume the priests are at fault...

Dear Anonymous - A Reply

Dear Anonymous

Thanks for your comment. I hope you don’t mind if, with Father’s permission and having discussed your comment with him, I post it as an article. I think it has made points relevant to the original post and requires further explanation from me.

Hello Andrew,

After reading your article I felt concerned at some of the points you have suggested, and feel that I should respectfully give my opinion.

You suggest that people should be encouraged to move from emotion to intellect. Intellect is only one way in which we come to know God, the others being through scripture, tradition and experience. Therefore, all of these ways are valid ways in which a person came come to know God in their life within the context of a community of faith, for us Catholics this is obviously the Church.

I agree that knowledge comes through experience; my concern is that emotional knowledge is subjective knowledge and can lead us away from Divine Revelation. While emotions are a valuable part of our life experience, they are unreliable by the very fact that they are variable; which is why we can fall in love and out of love –and at the drop of a hat, sometimes.

As a woman I find some of your comments very difficult to accept, especially that women have been told that they should be offended by patriarchy by a group of 'secular feminists'.

I am genuinely sorry if you are offended; that was not my intention. I was pointing out that only when (strident) secular feminists felt offended by patriarchal language did Catholic women express any offence. We might say they were enlightened by sexual feminism, but might we not also say they were socially engineered by them?

Just because someone identifies themselves as having a feminist ideology does not mean that they should be automatically rejected.

I agree. I don’t reject Catholic feminists at all –a number my friends identify as Catholic feminists who seek the equality of women and their inclusion in the life of the world and the Church; but I think such women engage in a Catholic manner: one which does not denigrate their life in the home or their proficiency in nurturing of children. In that women are much better at relationship skills than men they are surely more suited to the nurturing of children than their husbands.

People can validly choose to hold a worldview which encompasses a range of complimentary ideologies and still hold firm to a tradition. I consider myself to be feminist and a Catholic. I am a feminist because I believe in the dignity of women and men which is not always respected in cultures and institutions, especially those who have been embedded in patriarchy. Patriarchy has had some positive impacts in society, but it has also had some damaging and violent consequences which are still being experienced by women today.

I too would hold to the equal dignity of women and men, and I abhor any kind of violence against women. But that should not mean a loss of the distinction between women and men. I am aware that some women feel damaged by patriarchy, but I have to say that the feminisation of the Church, as seen in ‘emotive’ liturgy with emotive songs and wistful dancing, is damaging to men. I and my pals were not invigorated by the liturgies we attended in schools or parishes; indeed we often found them amusing, and forced into a feminine spirituality. As a result, out of a dozen of us, only I continue to practice and I have to say, I was ‘saved’ by my discovery of the Extraordinary Form and the Catechism as taught by faithful priests.

The term, as I'm sure you will be aware means 'rule by the Father', a term which does not lend itself to inclusivity and mutual responsibility, values which are held strongly by many 'feminists'.

I’m not sure I can agree here: there can be no mutuality and equality if there is no male and female, yet there is a real and mutual yet distinct responsibility between men and women as fathers and mothers.

As Catholics, and followers of Jesus Christ, we are obviously concerned by oppression of any person or group who feel marginalised. Listening to their opinions is an important way of acknowledging who they are people, as children of God. If there is a way in language to express ourselves in a way which is more inclusive, this has to be more dignified and Christian, than holding fast to archaic understandings of the world and expressing them exclusively through language. After all, what is supremely important is what leads us to God, to love and to service.

We should all be concerned with any person or group being marginalised; but that would not mean equating sinful behaviours (such as homosexual acts) with graced behaviours (marriage between man and woman). We have to seek to include without approving of acts or attitudes. As for inclusive language, I have to say that of itself it does not necessarily imply equal dignity; equality and dignity might be better experienced in recognising our mutual interdependence, which arises from what is distinctive. For me, that distinction is lost in inclusive language.

I can’t help but add that as a group, we ‘Traditional’ Catholics are often actively oppressed and maligned by our fellow Catholics including, at times, by our Bishops, so we know what it is to be marginalised and oppressed. The rejection of ‘Traditional’ Catholics by those who claim to be interested in the liberation of the marginalised can then seem very false and duplicitous.

I have to admit, that personally, the views expressed in this blog, and from certain quarters of the Church make me not want to engage rather than drawing me in to a community of faith and love in Jesus. Jesus treated all people in an inclusive way and chose to surround himself with the marginalised, giving them dignity and respect which wasn't becoming of the culture of the time.

I’m so sorry to hear that you feel tempted to disengage. I find it hard to see why Traditional Catholic views as Father and I hold and as were held by the great women saints of the Church, should make anyone, man or woman, want to disengage from the Church.  If I may be brief and bold, I think we Catholics simply want to see the woman as nurturer and homemaker without necessarily excluding a career or their place on parish groups; I cannot be anything but unhappy when life in the family home is presented -as it seems to be by strident feminists- as a prison or oppressive.

Sometimes it is too easy to see the world from our own fears and opinions, and it can be hard to move to the place of a marginalised 'other' but this is the way of Jesus, the way for us all to imitate.

I agree that it is easy to see the world through our own eyes and not the eyes of the’ other. Our Lord’s example of inclusivity is, I think, a mark of the Church throughout the centuries in that the Church led the way for women to enter teaching, nursing, social work etc., and even undertake reform in the Church (St Teresa of Avila) or bring the Popes back to their rightful home (St Catherine of Sienna).

 It is very easy to say what you have when you belong to a powerful group or position, it is very hard to stand in the place of the prophet and call for conversion and renewal.

I agree; being in the ‘powerful’ group can make it easy to simply defend; conversion and renewal are needed for us all, but we have to be careful that what we call renewal and conversion are not reformation and  alteration; renewal and conversion are about a return to God and His original plan, not innovation. I think we have to be careful that we do not see change as automatically good: as Father often says, change can be malignant: we call it cancer.

It is also much easier to judge others because of their seemingly 'lesser' viewpoint when you belong to a tradition deeply embedded in an ideology of patriarchy.

I think we need to be careful here: we need to distinguish between received revelation as expressed in Tradition and ideology; those without faith may simply see traditional positions as an ideology, but that is not the Catholic understanding of Tradition as a vehicle of Revelation.

I think many feminists who call for inclusive language are not being difficult but simply saying, 'there is a way which we can express ourselves and God in a way which is inclusive'. It doesn't take anything away from what we believe in the Creed. St. Paul himself said that there is no male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.

I don’t think Catholic feminists are trying to be difficult at all; I think they are genuinely feeling hurt but as I tried to say, I think that feeling is manufactured by secular feminism telling them they should feel hurt. Yes, we are all one, but Paul is, I think, speaking of secular ‘class’ distinction, such as slave and free; he is not eradicating gender in Galatians 3 or he could not have spoken out so forcefully against homosexuality in Romans and 1^st Corinthians.

Finally, it is important to note that the Y chromosome is what determines the male of the species not the X. If we are going to encourage a movement from the emotion to the intellect, then we must ensure our basic facts are accurate.

Oops! I don’t know how I managed to get those the wrong way around-my typing skills are usually better than that! And I have just finished a further professional Diploma in Anatomy & Physiology too! I have corrected the erroneous text now, thank you!

I do hope you don’t mind me responding to your comment which, can I say, is beautifully and charitably written. I only wished to give your comment a better profile so that I could clarify, where necessary, what I was saying in the original post. Thanks very much for your comment. As Father Dickson would say, God Bless you and yours.

On Inclusive/Exclusive Language

I was discussing this topic with Father Dickson this afternoon and he pointed out a post on Catholic and Loving It which I found very amusing and full of common sense. James’ cartoons on the subject are a great way of showing how ridiculous the rejection of inclusive language really is. My favourites are the woman who wanted to get out of the rain but couldn’t because her husband had brought a two-man tent, and the lady swimming safely in the sea because the warning only notified her of man-eating sharks...  I suppose we need to alter our language to say “Two-person Tent” and “People-eating sharks”. But that would be as daft as changing ‘manhole’ into ‘person-hole’. After all, we are not talking of ‘male’ when we say ‘man’ –though even if we were, God has seen to it that the male determines the sex of our offspring in that only the male carries both Y (male) and X (female) chromosomes, meaning the male can stand in for both sexes of humanity -perhaps that is one factor for God determining that the Incarnation be in the male sex?

Personally, I am tired of hearing language manipulated in the liturgy by politically correct clergy. One of the most grating things I ever heard was a changing of the Beatitudes to “You shall be called daughters and sons of God”. What is wrong with “Children of God” –or “sons of God” for that matter? Are women so easily offended? Most, I think, are not. Why are we subjugating Christ and the Gospel to politically correct contemporary language that arose because secular feminists of both sexes felt hurt at not having the female sex explicitly identified? It seems like we are telling God He ought to have been wiser in His use of words when He walked the earth. We then have the heretical idea of “God the Mother, God the Daughter and God the Holy Spirit”.  Those who won’t go that far say “God the Creator, God the Redeemer and God the Sanctifier”. Whichever phrase is preferred, there is an intrinsic rejection of Divine Revelation since Father and Son is how God chose to reveal Himself.

While we know God does not simply encompass both genders but transcends them, we can have no part with the idea that His Self-revelation was constrained by human culture; indeed the culture in which the Incarnation took place was specifically chosen by God (“At the appointed time...” Gal.4v4)  and as such must have been suitable as a vehicle for His Self-revelation. We, in our turn, are not at liberty to change Divine Revelation just to avoid hurting the sensibilities of those who are emotionally charged (challenged?) and easily hurt.  I don’t see the use of “sisters and brothers” as a ‘justice’ thing, simply because the phrase divides the sexes which, if we take it too far, could end with the proposition that only males are saved...

I am not sure the secular feminists have it right anyway. Inclusivity is better expressed by use of the words “man”, “humanity”, “mankind”  etc., since they include both sexes; phrases such as “sisters and brothers”, “men and women”; “girls and boys” discriminate; they are therefore not inclusive but exclusive since they intrinsically delineate one sex from the other. Truly inclusive language is to be found in the terms “humanity”, “man”, “mankind”, even “brethren”. Perhaps our clergy need to revisit not only the nature of these words but help those who are offended by them to a more  broad, more open understanding of language, and a less emotional reaction.

Liturgy and Music at World Youth Day 2013

I am old enough to remember when my favourite singer of the day (the barefoot Sandie Shaw) won the Eurovision Song Contest singing “Puppet On A String”. I turned on the TV the other night and thought my receiver had somehow switched itself from EWTN to the BBC, since I was confronted by a re-run of the Eurovision Song Contest: the singer was an attractive young lady with a  good voice on a stage with a nice colourful haze that I presumed had something to do with her song.  Then I noticed that he was assisted by an altar server, and I was captured: had heaven decided to enter the Eurovision Song Contest? It was then that I realised this was not Eurovision, but a World Youth Day presentation of the Holy sacrifice of the Mass. It was truly hard to tell the difference between Eurovision and Catholic worship: as with Eurovision, the worship offered that night seemed focused on pleasing the crowd; on being ‘grounded’ or (as some would say) “incarnational”. I would say “earthbound; anthropocentric”.  Liturgy ought to lift us from earth to heaven; it should bring us to meet the Risen and Ascended Lord; it should have a music which is clearly not contemporary to time and place. In short, it requires Gregorian Chant -which is not bound by time or place- if it is to achieve its aim of lifting us toward that which is beyond time and place: Heaven.

Though the liturgy does form man by grace through the worship of God (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10) and does allow us to gain sense of common identity and community adhesion (which we badly need today) it exists primarily for the worship of God, uniting us to the heavenly Jerusalem and to all who inhabit the Holy City of heaven, thereby enabling us to sing “with all angels and all the saints... Holy, Holy, Holy”.  As Vatican II stated:

In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle; we sing a hymn to the Lord's glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with Him in glory (Sacrosanctum Concilium 8).

Although the sacred liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine Majesty, it likewise contains much instruction for the faithful [34]. For in the liturgy God speaks to His people and Christ is still proclaiming His gospel. And the people reply to God both by song and prayer. (ibid, 33)

Thus, in that the liturgy of World Youth Day I saw was hardly distinguishable from the Eurovision Song Contest, the liturgy of World Youth day is failing, and failing badly. If souls are not lifted up toward heaven by the liturgy but are kept grounded in their contemporary world, their souls are kept earthbound; detached from heaven.

Yes there is a need to grasp the attention of the young and to engage with them in a style they can understand, which is why I have often argued for the use of paraliturgies during the week. But let us keep contemporary music and dancing puppets etc for such paraliturgies and for prayer meetings of all kinds; in that way we can give the youth (and all Catholics) a wide experience of prayer situations while highlighting for everyone of us the absolutely transcendent nature of the Mass.  You never know, it might also help everyone to see why paraliturgies are a devotional option and the Adoration of Mass an obligation: “Do this as a memorial of Me”. 

The End of the Liverpool Care Pathway?

 The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is to be phased out in the next 12 months and I am exceedingly pleased. 

When my mum was ill with pneumonia following a subarachnoid haemorrhage (neither of which need be fatal) physicians and nursing staff wanted to use the LCP. That was something I could not accept and so, at my request, mum was given subcutaneous fluids at a rate of 500-750mls per 24 hours (500 being roughly the amount of fluid one loses in exhaled breath over 24 hours, to say nothing of what one loses in sweat and urination). Some sedation was given to control mums agitation and anxiety, but no morphine (she did not give any indication that she was in physical pain). I believe she thus had a very peaceful and natural death, supported by excellent care from her attending nurses and physicians. I do not think this would have been the case if mum had been formally placed on the LCP which dehydrates the person and sedates them to the point that they are not aware of their dehydration; even if they were, they cannot voice it. It all looks very peaceful, but it remains an encouraged death in a sedated patient.

The intention of the LCP was good: helping hospitals to give as a good a care package to the dying and their loved ones that hospices can give, but its application is fraught with difficulty. The common criticisms recounted are that it was not always those formed to use it well who employed it; that there was a lack of consultation with relatives; that it was used to clear beds or to obtain financial reward. However, these are only attendant criticisms which fail to draw attention to the fact that in several ways, the Pathway itself is intrinsically flawed:

1. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy since the removal of fluids or the failure to supply hydration assists in the inducement of death
2. The administration of sedatives and opioid analgesics brings about respiratory insufficiency and the possibility of secondary infection
3. A mistaken notion of ‘a peaceful death’ can only be assumed since the sedated patient cannot voice his/her distress.
4. No one can know when death will occur in order that 72 hours before hand one can commence the LCP (A friend of mine said this flaw “has staff saying ‘We think she’ll be dead by Friday morning so let’s put her on the LCP’, which is not far from ‘Let’s put her on the LCP; she’ll be dead by Friday Morning’ ”.
5. Provision for stopping the LCP after it has been initiated shows that its designers/users were aware that a diagnosis of impending death can be fatally wrong
6. It presumes the difference between hospital and hospice care is one of medication and/or treatment, rather than one of setting and time/support given to patients and their loved ones. Acute hospitals do not have the same nurse/patient ratio as do hospices, and far fewer volunteers.

I will then, be glad to see the end of the LCP. My concern is that it has become so ingrained in staff over the last twenty years that it will continue to be practiced without the title; after all, our current medical and nursing staff are already formed by the LCP and influenced by  contemporary culture which say,s “we wouldn’t let a dog suffer that way; why should mum?” –this is a central argument put forward for euthanasia. When that argument is used to justify the LCP, both the LCP and euthanasia violate the primary principle of care: “First Do No Harm”.

In the early 1980’s I trained as a Nurse and there was no such thing as the LCP. Our hospital patients (including cancer patients) were given sufficient analgesia to keep them pain free, comfortable and conscious, achieved by increasing the dosage of morphine without simply doubling the dosage (though I did see this done). Pain charts monitored the patient’s pain level. Antibiotics were not given, and all unnecessary medications were discontinued. When even sips of fluids were difficult to swallow, patients were kept hydrated either by subcutaneous or intravenous infusion, and frequent mouth care was given.  Hygiene was either a bed-bath or hand and face wash as appropriate to the patient’s comfort; bedding was changed only when necessary. Positional changes were given prudently and only until such time as signs of impending death were noted (i.e., pulse and respiration changes, peripheral cyanosis etc) and airflow beds used to aid comfort and prevent pressure sores.  Thus there was no need for the LCP in my time, and I do not think there is need for it now.

I must have worked with physicians who were astutely careful in their use of opiates and sedatives, and nurses who did not mind how long they spent with a patient or their careful assessment of needs, because I never saw a patient experience a painful or distressing death in my time as a Nursing Auxiliary, Nursing Student or Registered Nurse. In all that time there was never a thought of removing fluids as done in the LCP. I did occasionally see opiates simply doubled when pain relief seemed inadequate, but on asking physicians to try intermediate dosages of analgesia and sedatives, pain relief without undue sedation was successfully achieved.

As noted in (6) above, where hospitals and hospices differ in the care they can give to the dying is not so much in their use of medication as in the comfortable nature of the setting; the time the nurses can spend with the patient, and the time, hospitality and support they can offer to the patient’s loved ones. These are things the LCP did not and could not address.  

At the risk of sounding repetitive, there was no need for the LCP in my time, nor should there be now. Good nurses never needed it before; they shouldn't need it now.

A Blog Post For Adults: Why Same-sex ‘Marriage’ Does Not Make Sense -Updated

I, and all Catholics, would be among the first to demand that homosexual persons be treated with respect and given the same right to life, shelter, education, health care, employment, a just wage, inheritance, freedom from violence etc, as anyone else. My cousin is homosexual who shares her home with another woman, and I would not want either of them treated badly in any way, shape or form. All people, homosexual and heterosexual; young and old, black and white, Christian and Non-Christian, share the same world, and we must get along with each without violence or oppression but care and concern, so that the peace and happiness of heaven may penetrate this world and the lives of all who live in it. But we Catholics are in a difficult place in today’s society in that we cannot support the homosexual person’s engagement in homosexual acts; as such, we cannot support homosexual ‘marriage’. We recognise that the homosexual inclination is a disorder for which the individual is not responsible and for which they cannot, therefore, be judged responsible, but homosexual acts are intrinsically at odds with the will of God and souls who wilfully practice such acts place themselves in danger of hell by refusing to adhere to the will of God. We also need to be clear that homosexuals are not excluded from the life of the Church: by quietly living a celibate life (as all unmarried Catholics are called to do) they can obtain the consolation and strength of the sacraments, take a full part in the liturgical and social life of the parish, establish wholesome friendships and find salvation. We must, however, remain clear that homosexuality is a disordered inclination; homosexual acts an unnatural use of the reproductive faculty and homosexual ‘unions’ and ‘marriages’ social constructions outside the natural order; constructions which destabilise society by destabilising and disregarding the natural family as the natural foundation of the human community. The rearing of common offspring necessitates the unity of the parents, thus marriage is by nature the permanent union of a man and a woman in that on-going, collaborative rearing of their common offspring; a union which provides the bedrock necessary for societal and individual stability. All extra-marital sex is a threat to the stability of society and the individuals within it by reason of it being a series of non-committed, temporary encounters, and by the fact that sexual diseases increase as promiscuity increases.

Since homosexual activity of its very nature is nothing more than mutual masturbation (a non-procreative use of the procreative act) it cannot be equated with the copulation of marriage. It is true that sterile heterosexual couples cannot procreate either, but such couples are of an entirely different order in that they are emotionally and physically complimentary; only a physical ailment prevents the couple bringing children into the world. The homosexual pair, on the other hand, deliberately employ the procreative faculty in a non-procreative manner. Fundamentally, no real union can be achieved by homosexual acts. As such, even the idea of a homosexual union is nonsense, even more so is homosexual ‘marriage’. Passing a law which ignores this reality is like passing a law which pretends gravity does not hold things down: such a law cannot change reality: Governments can no more rewrite the laws of biology than they can rewrite the laws of physics.

What about the union of homosexuals as persons, which transcends the union of bodies? Can this idea justify homosexual marriage? It cannot, because persons are not disembodied beings; disembodied beings are ghosts, and we don’t marry ghosts. Marriage is for the living and is the union of the whole nature. It is absurd to pretend otherwise.  

What about the marriage of a transsexual? This too is nonsense, because even by undergoing plastic surgery the transsexual is only helped to simulate being a member of the opposite sex. God forbid, but should a transsexual lose his or her life in a fire, their remains will not be identifiable as to their simulated sex: their DNA will identify them as the sex of their conception and birth. Governments might pass laws requiring us to acknowledge that a person has changed their sex -they may even allow for their sex to be changed on their birth certificate- but such laws only deceive society at large about a person’s objective sex reality, while simultaneously facilitating the transsexual’s continuance in subjective error as to their gender. In reality, transsexuals remain for all eternity the sex of their conception and birth.

Governments which pass laws facilitating homosexual ‘marriage’ must admit that they might be seen as either so intoxicated by their (temporary) political authority that they have lost awareness of the limitations to that authority (which is powerless to rewrite the laws of nature) or as supremely arrogant in their disregard for those laws. It is not easy to see them as pursuing inclusivity or diversity when they allow the oppression of those who see homosexuality as abnormal (such as clergymen) and of those who cannot in conscience facilitate homosexual activity (such as owners of Guesthouses).  As laws are passed allowing homosexual pairs to acquire the designation ‘married’ Governments must, to ensure they are truly inclusive and valuing of diversity, enact laws that:

(a) protect the religious person’s conscience in the exercise of their professional lives

(b) protect freedom of speech so that those who disagree with homosexual ‘marriage’ can say so without fear of being persecuted and/or prosecuted for voicing that opinion

(c) protect religious institutions from being forced to provide religious Rites to same-sex pairs;

(d) protect religious schools from having to present homosexuality as biologically and socially normal.

On the latter point, it is my belief that no school, religious or otherwise, should teach that homosexuality is normal: they may as well teach that one can achieve good a hold with two bolts or two nuts as one can with a nut and bolt. Presenting homosexuality as normal not only flies in the face of common sense, but it may produce an artificial upsurge in homosexuality in that children exposed to such teaching might consider themselves homosexual (and block their psycho-social development) at the pre-adolescent age when boys have no interest in playing with girls and girls no interest in playing with boys. Surely children have a right to be taught about the natural biological and psychological complimentarity of the sexes, and to have false information kept out of their classroom? Where Governments demand that their contrived social construction be taught, they should have the integrity -or at the very least the decency- to allow schools to present the natural law too, if only for the sake of freedom of speech, respect for conscience, and freedom of religion.

Too conclude, Catholics are among the first to demand that homosexual persons be treated with respect, but so too must the laws of nature and common sense, to say nothing of the laws of God as found in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

Responding to Dr Tracey Rowland

DrShaw has already made an erudite reply to Dr Tracey Rowland’s remarks in her CNS interview. While this blog is only a minor player in the league of blogs, I do hope that if Dr Rowland is aware of the criticism she is receiving and decides to google it, that she comes across this short response.

Dear Dr Rowland,

I am sorry if your experience of attending the Extraordinary Form (EF) is as poor as you seem to suggest. I started celebrating the EF before the days of Summorum Pontificum, and while I found long-time adherents to the EF rather unwelcoming and perhaps suspicious of newcomers, I recognised this as understandable since they had been boxed into a defensive corner by thirty five years of struggle and derision. In that hostility towards the EF is still present among many in the Church (who seem to think that what was good enough for the saints of millennia is beneath them) those who prefer the EF are not likely to overcome their fears and defensiveness easily, and your interview does not help the situation.  

First, you seem in this interview to be very one-sided and rather unaware of the wider picture. You say that in your experience people attending the EF dissect the celebration, yet you fail to mention a widespread attitude among those who attend the Ordinary Form of “I prefer Fr X’s Mass to Fr Y’s Mass” and the even more common “I didn’t like those hymns today”. In my experience of celebrations of the Extraordinary Form the content of the homily is much more likely to be commented upon; rarely the mistakes Father makes with the rubrics. I grant that the singing may sometimes be subject to criticism, but that criticism too is not restricted to celebrations of the Extraordinary Form.

Second, comments about being “dressed in funny clothes” or “belonging to a different era in history” seem remarkably condescending and indeed, rather off-key. It is my experience –even when celebrating the EF before Summorum Pontificum when only the brave and dedicated dared to attend- that the dress of those present was simply formal, not that of another era. It might have been good for you to note how those who attend the Ordinary Form dress immodestly; females in skirts that barely cover the buttocks and males in T-shirts with dubious messages and images.

Third, while we do indeed need to correct the idea that attending the EF is a statement against the Second Vatican Council, it might have been good for you to note how among a number of those who attend only the Ordinary Form there is often a rejection of the Church’s Tradition as expressed in the EF, and a displeasure with the Council of Trent and the First Vatican Council.

In conclusion, I am sorry to say I do not feel this interview presents you in a good light, and hope this is due to editing. I feel you come across as someone who is either very unaware of the wider picture or as one-sidedly critical. Further, I feel you are not so much “friendly towards" the EF as “not antagonistic” towards it. Sadly, friends of mine -who simply dress modestly and are actively engaged with and understanding of the liturgy, do not seem to be given due respect in your comments.

Regards

Fr Dickson.