SIR – In the hope of helping to heal the rift between those who follow the thinking of Pope Francis on Communion for the divorced and remarried, and those who spurn it, can I reveal that some years ago, in the pontificate of Paul VI, I attended a seminar on marriage at Upholland and found I was the only woman among some very delightful, pastoral priests.
During one lecture they were told that, as Pope Francis now says, priests, after examining the circumstances of individual couples, could allow them to receive Communion without an annulment. The joy among those pastoral priests at hearing this was very moving.
During a pastoral theology course I later attended it was pointed out that the annulment process was not always perfect in its application: for example, in finding witnesses or the fear of some people of divulging their address to a violent ex-spouse.
Second marriages after an annulment are often deeply spiritual and produce happy children. So too do second marriages where an annulment has not been obtained. Ought not the desire of the couple to attend Mass and bring up their children as devout Catholics be part of the reason for removing a ban on receiving the Eucharist? Can such people really be in mortal sin when “actual grace” draws them into church?
Just as John Paul II altered the teaching of Paul VI to a stricter practice, why should Francis not be able to revert to previous generosity of thought?
Yours faithfully,
Elizabeth Price (Mrs)
Linton, Kent
SIR – Fr Mark Drew (Cover story, September 23), revisits the continuing confusion over Amoris Laetitia. It seems that the only thing all sides of the debate can agree on is that the contentious Chapter 8 has been written in a style that is intentionally ambiguous about pastoral implications towards the divorced and remarried.
What then are we to make of what purports to be an expression of the Ordinary Magisterium of the Church, if it obfuscates, rather than clarifies, truth? The Lord has His own advice to give on this subject in Matthew 5:37: “All you need say is yes if you mean yes, no if you mean no; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”
The document’s ambiguity means that each of us must rely on our own personal sensus fidei to determine the truth of the matter, but this will not stop some from continuing to see Amoris Laetitia as being in complete conformity with the Church’s teaching. Others will see in it authentic development and yet others a repudiation of what has gone before. They cannot all be right.
Traditionally we have looked to a Holy Father in Rome, not for his own private personal opinion, but to use his office to speak authoritatively and clearly to the faithful where there is confusion. The real elephant in the room is what the continuing lack of such an authoritative clarification may imply.
Yours faithfully,
Deacon John Wakeling
Arnold, Nottinghamshire
SIR – In his otherwise excellent and helpful article, “How to win an argument about abortion” (Science and faith, September 16), Quentin de la Bédoyère concludes that pro-lifers should avoid mentioning contraception and abortion together because the former is “minor league” compared with the latter, and “linking them merely invites the world to dismiss both as Catholics’ eccentricity”. Unfortunately, this surrenders crucial territory to the opposition.
In societies like ours, where contraception is easily available and its use encouraged among the young without parental consent, abortion figures continue to rise. The primary objective of avoiding pregnancy builds anti-life attitudes.
As Pope St John Paul II observed in Evangelium Vitae: “It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the ‘contraceptive mentality’ – which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act – are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived. Indeed, the pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church’s teaching on contraception is rejected.”
Yours faithfully,
Felicity Smart (Mrs)
London SW14
SIR – Many thanks to Quentin de la Bédoyère for his article “How to win an argument about abortion”. It might be relevant to mention an occasion, many years ago, when I was talking with a senior nurse at a hospital for the mentally handicapped where I was working, and the subject of abortion came up.
My colleague was all for it, so I said: “Suppose it was you who was aborted?” He was rather bewildered by this, and tried to mock it, but he had no answer. Sometimes people don’t recognise something is wrong unless it impinges on them personally.
This bears on the subject also tackled by Quentin de la Bédoyère of “when does individuality begin?” Here it is surely very necessary to distinguish between an individual soul, bestowed by God at birth, and the characteristics which will in due course give the soul its personality.
Just as the body which gives expression to the soul can be injured, deformed or suffer loss during our life on earth, so also can the “personality” or individual characteristics of a person suffer trauma and change, since these are very dependent on the chemistry of the body. Those who argue that individuality is only achieved by a certain stage in the embryo’s physical development are still stuck on a material level, but the soul is spiritual.
Damage to the personality is a horrible thing to happen, but if it does happen, we must have the faith to realise that somewhere underneath all the damage is an immortal soul, invisible but undamaged. Working with the profoundly handicapped all those years ago helped me to understand this.
Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell (Miss)
Exeter
SIR – This week’s quotations (Week in Review, September 23) include the following on Satan by the late Fr Gabriele Amorth, Vatican exorcist: “What he wants most is for us not to believe in his existence.”
He was echoing the words of the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire (1821-67): “My dear brothers, never forget when you hear the Enlightenment praised, that the Devil’s cleverest ploy is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist.”
Yours faithfully,
Kevin Heneghan
St Helens, Lancashire
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