John Allen's Advice To The Pope Regarding Pius

I sent a tweet on this yesterday, but for those of you who do not follow me on Twitter, I thought I'd bring this to your attention. John Allen, now of the Boston Globe, has an interesting view on the Pope Pius XII controversy: go ahead and canonise him and that will sort it out. Citing two other Saints whose Causes created tensions with the Jews, St Maximilian Kolbe and our own St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Allen says that the tensions and controversy died down after the two were canonised, and he is correct there. 

He also states, correctly in my view, that opening all the archives for all to see will not end the controversy. The source of this controversy is not Pius's wartime decisions and actions (nor even his perceived non-actions) but rather it is an ideological attack, not on Pius per se, but on the Church and her adherence to orthodox Christian and moral teachings of which Pius has become the symbol. For example in his book The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Rabbi David Dalin, defending Pius counselled his fellow Jews not to get involved in the controversy because it was not about the Pope's wartime record, but rather liberal Catholics ongoing revolt against Catholic teaching.

The Holy Father has said in a recent interview that he is opening the archives to let people see what Pius actually did.  That process is already underway - Pope Benedict initiated it and it is due to be complete in the next year or so. In the interview Francis also revealed his affection for Pius. 

I think I agree with John Allen, at this stage most of the evidence is out there, the critics have chosen to ignore it and just keeping banging on their tin drums, so the Cause must proceed. As I indicated in a previous post, I do not think it is a good idea to dispense with the need for a miracle, but when one is accepted it is up to the Holy Father to decide to beatify or take the unusual step, which falls within his prerogative, and proceed straight to canonisation.

By the way, my Twitter account is @jshocds, so you're welcome to follow me.

Explaining God

Preaching on the mystery of the Holy Trinity, as per yesterday's solemnity, can be pretty difficult. Many of us resort to St Patrick's supposed use of the shamrock to explain it, however that itself has its hazards, as you will see in the video below. Thought you might enjoy this.

International Eucharistic Congress 2016

As you know the next Eucharistic Congress is due to take place in Cebu in The Philippines in 2016 - Dublin hosted the last one in 2012. A reader, Nino, passed on this video, the theme song for the Congress, so I'm bringing it to your attention. I have no doubt that the next Congress will be a real festival of faith, so it would be well worth saving the pennies and cents to try and get over.  I would love to go, but work and finances will decide. Thanks Nino for the link.

That Story: Two Good Articles

I think I will finish up writing posts on the Tuam Story, it is becoming clearer that this is one the media have cooked up from a genuine piece of research which studied poverty and care institutions in the past. It is not about the Catholic Church, it is about Ireland and the way she treated her most vulnerable citizens.  As someone said to me the Tuam story and the broader issues it raises are more about what Ireland did to the Catholic Church rather than what the Catholic Church did to Ireland. There's something in that.

Anyway, I want to bring two excellent articles to your attention, both from non-Catholic sources: Forbes and Spiked.  The Forbes piece puts the spotlight on the media and notes, quite accurately I think, that "the global media are becoming less and less accountable". It seems checking facts and context are becoming less and less of a priority in the newsrooms of the world.

The article on Spiked is from its editor, Brendan O'Neill, an Irishman who regards himself as an atheist, and one in the honourable sense of that term. He is open, fair and critical, but in what I have read of his stuff he is never dismissive. His piece on Tuam is worth reading and making others aware of it.

So Much For "Choice"

There is a disturbing article on LifeNews detailing how a teenager was forced to have an abortion against her will by a judge in the UK. The judge ruled she was mentally incapable of deciding for herself and so he considered it appropriate that he should supply the consent to allow the abortion go ahead. I have yet to hear the howls of indignation from the pro-choice brigade, but all I hear is crickets, as is usual in such cases.

I am reading Janet Morana's book Recall Abortion at the moment. Morana is co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, and organisation that works with women who have had abortions and are now suffering psychologically, emotionally and physically. Morana and her colleagues give these women space and a way to tell their story, one which pro-choice organisations and advocates deny them. The book is very good and is a must read for those in the pro-life movement. When an abortion takes place two lives are destroyed - the baby is killed, and the mother (for she is a mother now) suffers the repercussions. There are some excellent organisations out there to help women hurt by abortion and we must promote and support them.

In the book Morana allows these women to speak for themselves and one of the things which strikes you is that despite all the talk, there is little or no choice involved for many of these women. In one testimony a young woman describes how she changed her mind just before the procedure, but instead of respecting her "choice" the staff held her down and the baby was aborted. One common complaint made by these women was the almost total absence of pre-abortion counselling. I think by law in the US abortion clinics are required to provide some form of counselling before the procedure. But it is just another legal requirement put aside by abortion providers. 

What is obvious from all the testimonies is that the clinics are only interested in money. The reason why abortion continues to be a scourge is because it is making people very wealthy, and these wealthy people have tremendous influence and they use that influence to ensure politicians and the media do their bidding. Indeed many pro-abortion organisations are very fond of bankrolling certain politicians's campaigns to ensure they have minions in the legislatures of the world to protect their interests. Hitler killed out of insane hatred, abortionists and company do it for the money, to enrich themselves and in the process they destroy countless lives. If they do not convert and repent, there must surely be a very hot place waiting for these entrepreneurs. 

Anyway, here are some links for you. The Silent No More Awareness Campaign. Rachel's Vineyard, for women who need help following an abortion: the US site, and the Irish site.

Are We On The Brink Of Persecution Again?

In a landmark development Denmark's parliament has voted through a law which will make it mandatory for the Danish church (Lutheran) to conduct same sex marriages (see the Daily Telegraph for details). While individual ministers can refuse on grounds of conscience, the bishops/ do not have the same luxury and will have to appoint a replacement priest or minister to carry out the ceremony. While this refers only to the Lutheran church at the moment, one wonders if individual Danes will seek to have the legislation extended to all churches.  That said this may be the beginning, should we expect other parliaments in other countries to follow suit, particularly in the EU where "consensus" demands all constituent countries fall into line on liberal issues? 

Fr Ray Blake in his blog wonders if the Church in Denmark will be able to hold out, should this happen - it is a valid question. Given the militancy we have seen around the issue of same sex marriage we can be sure there will be incredible pressure applied to the Church in Denmark now that this victory has been given to them and the historical realist in me leads me to expect that that pressure may well turn violent, as it often has in the past. Are we about to see the expected persecution begin, first in Denmark and then throughout Europe?

Time to pray and to reflect on previous persecutions. And let us pray especially for our bishops - they of all people have to remain firm. We can expect individual priests to flout Christian teaching, but our bishops must not.  The statue of St John Fisher on my desk reminds me that at times bishops can be the weakest of men when courage is needed to defy king, president, government and parliament.

Of course in this matter the Danish parliament is overstepping its competence. It has no right to decide what churches do when it comes to marriages, to do so, as it has done, is an act of interference in the belief system of the various religions in Denmark. In terms of Catholicism, if the Danish parliament should seek to extend the legislation, the Danes would be dictating to us how our sacramental system must work. Surely this would be a breach of the separation of Church and State? 

Also, in demanding that churches abandon Christian teaching on marriage, the parliament is ultimately dictating to God, whose teaching we follow, how he must view marriage. The Danish parliament has no right to tell God that he has to obey an act of the legislature, that is why this law is not only unjust it is also arrogant and the height of lunacy. And if we note the lessons in Scripture we see that such presumption usually ends in disaster not for God or for his faithful, but for the ones who tried to force him to adopt their way of thinking and their way of living.

That said, true compassion, which we as disciples of Christ must adhere to, is rooted in truth - in the truth of God's law, in the truth of who we are as human beings, in the truth of what leads to salvation and what hinders it.

Tuam Story Continued

A brief post to bring this article to your attention. Tim Stanley is a columnist with the Daily Telegraph in London. A historian and convert to Catholicism he has interesting things to say on Catholic issues among others. He has written an thought-provoking article on the Tuam story and it is well worth reading.

Earlier today the Minister for Education and Skills here in Ireland was speaking about the Tuam case. In an effort to set the record straight he said that the cause of the problem was conservative Ireland. While I acknowledge the Minister may well be trying to point out that blaming the Church is too simple and may not reflect completely the reality of what happened, I would have to disagree with him, not because conservatives in Ireland are not capable of the discrimination we saw in relation to unmarried pregnant women, but the reality that liberals discriminate too, they are just as bad as conservatives. Conservatives may have sent pregnant girls into homes, but the liberals want to send them to abortion clinics - either way it is inhuman treatment of unborn children and women and the refusal to do the right thing. Neither captivity, forced adoption nor the killing of an innocent baby are good responses: they are gravely sinful.

The problem was in fact "respectable Ireland" - those who considered their status, their impeccability, their honour, more important than Christian values. To protect their respectability they condemned their "erring" daughters and their offspring to the outer darkness lest they contaminate the pristine reputation of the family. Indeed in some cases in putting out the "fallen" daughter there may well have been an attempt to cover over darker things like abuse in the family which was, and still is, widespread in Irish society. These "outcasts" were dumped on the doorstep of the Church ("let the nuns look after them") and society built a wall of silence around them. The Church in Ireland's biggest mistake was to cooperate with the Irish State and her citizens in this, and in the process she betrayed her commitment to Christ, the Gospel and charity. And now that the skeletons are out of the closet, respectable Ireland is turning on the Church. 

A timely lesson indeed. Let's hope in future that the Church when she sups with the State will use a very long spoon and put the Gospel first even if it offends those pewsitters who are more concerned about their honour than anything Christ may have to say. 

The Whit Monday Myth

If you do not have a sense of humour when it comes to the liturgy, do not follow this link.  Blogger Catholicus offers a new development in the story of the Venerable Paul VI's morning Mass on the 18th May 1970. 

Did it happen? I don't know. But if Catholicus is right, the red vestments were laid out, not for the Octave of Pentecost, but for the feast of Pope St John I, Martyr.

Septic Tank Story: Developments And Qualifications

There have been developments with regard to the Tuam story where it was alleged that up to 800 children and babies were buried in a septic tank in a home run by Catholic nuns. As you know the Church has been hammered for the last couple days as people respond to the revelations.

The first development is that the alleged burial site has been surveyed by radar at the behest of a national newspaper a couple of days ago - not the government note, but a newspaper. The results of this radar will be available in a few days, no doubt posted across the front age of the commissioning paper.

Secondly, in this morning's Irish Times there is an interesting story in which the local historian Catherine Corless who had broken the story through her research is qualifying what she said initially.  It seems she never said that 800 children were buried in a septic tank. She discovered in public records, available to all, so not hidden away in secret Church archives, that 796 children died in the home between 1925 and 1961, the thirty-six years the home was in the care of the Bon Secours sisters. In these public records the causes of death were noted: the children were not bludgeoned to death, or starved by the nuns, but died of those diseases that were causing havoc and innumerable fatalities all over Ireland during that period: TB, convulsions, measles, whooping cough, influenza, bronchitis and meningitis among others. So the Church was not responsible for those deaths, and regardless of how much care these children would have got, at that time these diseases usually proved fatal.

Just by means of an example, in that particular period of time my father's aunt, her husband and all their children bar one (about five or six children) all died of TB in a short space of time - the family was wiped out, as were many others. They were buried in the local cemetery in an unmarked grave - our family could not afford to erect a tombstone over the grave, they barely had enough to feed and clothe themselves. The surviving child, a boy, was raised in the family and eventually had to emigrate to England to find work - economically, things were bad in Ireland. Let it be noted the local Church shared in that poverty, priests and religious did the best they could for poor and ill families, but they had few resources. In our parish we had the Sisters of Mercy, and while there were some tough ladies in the community, they spent their lives trying to make life a little better for the people of our local community providing free education to the girls who had no other opportunity to advance themselves and when they had it, providing food and health care.

In the same article the two men who are said to have see hundreds of bodies crammed into the septic tank are now claiming that they never said that. They saw some bones, maybe abut twenty skeletons. Now if memory serves me right I thought I heard these guys say in a television interview that they saw bones right up to the top of the tank, and skulls piled one on top of another. I'll have to look that one up again. But now the story is not as sensational as reported.

Anyway, the story is taking an interesting turn, and I wonder given the developments will it now crawl to the back pages and then just disappear? The radar will turn up results and I wonder if the qualifications now being reported are related to that? I don't know, we shall see. However, whatever happens now the damage has been done, true or untrue, simple or complex, and I suppose that is enough for some people.  And it won't stop some running with the story. When it comes to the media Mark Twain's comment is worth keeping in mind: "never let the truth get the way of a good story": that is particularly true when it comes to the secular media reporting on the Catholic Church.

That said, I still say investigate and excavate.

Caroline Farrow has a good piece on the latest developments. She reiterates what Catherine Corless believed regarding the bodies: they were those of famine victims unearthed during digging works and put into a hollowed out tank. 

The Tuam Story

As you all know the media in Ireland and elsewhere is ablaze once again with the story of a Mother and Baby home in Tuam. According to reports, up to 800 babies are buried in a septic tank in a mass grave on the former site both of the home and an earlier Workhouse.  The story is not new, such allegations have been the subject of media reports on and off for the last ten years or more.

Now I do not know if these reports are true or not. What I do know is that figures and allegations are being reported, but I notice, while people are being stirred up, the media is being careful in the language it uses. And of course it has to because at the moment, despite what many are now saying, there is no physical evidence that these allegations are true. So far we just have the thesis of a historian and the memory of two men who claim they saw bones when they were twelve.

I am not denying that the allegations could be true, nor do I know if they are false or confused. But given that the topic is so serious a proper investigation must take place, and an important part of that investigation must be a thorough excavation of the alleged burial site. This for two reasons: first of all to establish that there are bodies there and to see if they are crammed into a septic tank as alleged. If there are bodies it must be established who they are: the site was used both by the home and a Workhouse - if bodies are there they could have come from either institution. The second reason why an excavation must take place is to provide the remains, if there, with a respectful burial in consecrated ground.

A simple investigation or tribunal is not enough. We cannot have a situation where the site remains untouched, now that the allegations have been made justice demands that the site be examined. Any refusal to do so should be viewed with suspicion.

On a couple of issues being reported in the media.  First that the babies were denied baptism: that is a outright lie, pure fabrication and malicious in nature. For all the faults of Catholics, when a baby was born one of the first things they did was baptize. Secondly, that those adopted from these homes are being frustrated in their search for their natural parents by the nuns who ran the homes. In reality it is not the nuns, oftentimes it is the State and at times birth mothers themselves who have created various fictions to prevent adoptees finding their origins. At the moment an adopted person cannot get a copy of their original birth certificate without the explicit permission of the birth mother. The law, seeking to protect the identity of the birth mother, has put in place various barriers to prevent a child getting information without the woman's consent. That is not right.

As regards the situation with Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland. They were not nice places. Most, if not all, were run by religious institutes be they Catholic or Protestant. They were required because the "good Christian people" of Ireland felt they had to put their pregnant daughters away lest the family lose respectability in the community. In Ireland then, and still today, respectability far outweighs Christian values. The very existence of these homes lead me to wonder if the Irish ever really got the Gospel - events in the last number of years of Ireland lead me to continue asking that question. Many seemed to have been deaf to the Gospel and Church teaching. As a Catholic who has lived in Ireland all my life, I see such scandals as revealing a darker side not of Catholicism, but of the Irish, and we as a people have yet to face up to that dark side. To be honest, I cannot see that happening: as a people we may have abandoned Christianity, but as secularists our flaws remain, and may well worsen.

In the homes themselves we find women and girls dumped by their families and the Irish State, put into the care ("custody") of nuns and others who had little resources and often few skills to provide for the needs of many of these unfortunates. The State was not committed to providing real assistance, offering miserly stipends to the homes, measly amounts that put the orders and homes under pressure. One nun I know who worked in an orphanage spoke of social workers arriving unannounced with a child or a family of children in tow and dropping them off to be looked after. The nuns were left to care for these children, often for years, with little or no support from the State, while the social workers skipped off to save the day in another poverty-stricken Irish family home.

Does that sound harsh? Well, as the filth is flying, being thrown in one direction, I think the respectable and offended Irish need to have a good examination of conscience and see that they might well deserve to be in the firing line too.