SIR – As Catholics, we should be concerned about the standard of our public debate. We should also be concerned to maintain respect for our public institutions.
The decision by the High Court on Article 50 was one of pure law and was based on entirely orthodox constitutional and legal principles. The outcome was predictable.
Whether or not the Supreme Court agrees remains to be seen, but the attacks in some of Friday’s newspapers on some of our most senior judges were unjustified and should be unacceptable to us. Respect for the rule of law is fundamental to our culture and our way of life. It protects us all. It should not be undermined lightly.
Yours faithfully,
David O’Mahony (barrister)
London WC1
SIR – Robin Aitken is right to draw attention to the BBC’s bias on the topic of abortion (Feature, October 21). However, the point needs to be made that the problem of media bias on this subject is not confined to the BBC.
To my knowledge, the three main “quality” national newspapers – the Times, Telegraph and Guardian – carry articles opposing abortion only rarely, if ever. In my own experience – and no doubt that of others – it is impossible to have letters on the pro-life side printed in those publications. Two of them (the Times and Guardian) regularly print pro-choice articles; only the Daily Telegraph can be expected to print stories on matters such as sex-selective abortion, which show the pro-choice lobby in a poor light.
Few leading journalists are prepared to make the pro-life case in the national press – and that, I fear, includes well-known Catholic columnists; one of the few exceptions is Dominic Lawson, and he is neither a Catholic nor a religious believer of any sort. What can be done to ensure a more balanced coverage of abortion in the media?
Yours faithfully,
CDC Armstrong
Belfast
SIR – It is no doubt necessary to keep challenging the BBC’s attitude to abortion, as argued by Robin Aitken, and likewise other questions of human life. Even if complaint responses, and appeal decisions by the BBC Trust, simply mirror the disedifying partiality of programme-makers, evidence of such apparently institutional bias is thereby placed on record.
The BBC Trust’s responsibility for determining editorial complaint appeals is due to be transferred to Ofcom in April 2017, as part of the BBC Charter renewal process. Perhaps genuinely independent regulatory oversight can make the broadcaster more accountable for the way in which it influences public understanding, in line with the “public purposes” defined in its Royal Charter.
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Todd
Worthing, West Sussex
SIR – I assume the majority of readers subscribe to GK Chesterton’s famous truism that “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, then they become capable of believing in anything.” In my opinion, nothing proves the accuracy of this observation more than the relatively recent import to the United Kingdom of the (predominantly American) commercially driven cult of “celebrating” Halloween on October 31.
While I readily agree with the sentiments behind the belief that “when England returns to Walsingham, our Lady will come back to Walsingham”, I fear that this particular innovation is a more deadly attack on “the faith once delivered to the saints” in the British Isles.
As a stalwart member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, who feels my return to Walsingham is akin to coming home, I am far from blasé about the centrality of the Shrine of Our Lady in Norfolk.
However, I believe that the increasing sell-out in our British culture to that of Halloween and the pronounced marginalisation of the Solemnities of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day (on November 1 and November 2 respectively) is something we should challenge as believing, Catholic Christians. In my view, the “celebration” of the forces of darkness at Halloween – the ghouls and demons – demonstrates more than anything that we are now living in a post-Christian era in Britain.
After the very real attacks made to the sanctity of human life, David Cameron’s assault upon the Christian sacrament of marriage, the fact that everyone from nurses to Northern Irish cake-makers are persecuted for upholding their Christian faith, the embracing of Halloween by secular society is profoundly worrying.
Admittedly, my former parish church, dedicated to All Saints, held a very high doctrine of the Communion of Saints (and the liturgical celebrations were only marginally less magnificent than at Easter or Christmas). But surely Halloween is further confirmation that Christians are now facing a first millennium era of suffering and endurance in modern British society?
Yours faithfully,
Richard Eddy
Bristol
SIR – A priest said to me that art is for children, modern art is for the esoteric elite. Indeed, modern art is really “art for art’s sake”. However, whatever form art takes in the Church (Leading article, October 30), it has to be narrative because the Faith is a narrative.
It is the story of salvation, starting with the Fall, going on through Abraham, Moses, the Exile to the Return and then to Christ. That is quite a rich story. As a Catholic artist I have attempted to rise to the challenge. Have I succeeded? One would have to ask the parishioners of St Edward’s, Kettering, and other churches where they have appeared.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Koenig
Northamptonshire
SIR – As in the case of abortion, in the matter of “mercy killing” (Mary Kenny, October 21) are we not losing sight of the supernatural dimension?
The Lord can transform any agony into peaceful acceptance, and recognition of the need to make reparation for one’s sins, in one intense moment before death.
If somebody intervenes and forces that death in “their” time, rather than God’s, may we not be depriving a soul of its final critical encounter with God?
Is not the Christian reaction to comfort, yes, where possible, but also to pray intensely for one’s friend and leave the rest to God?
Yours faithfully,
Ruth Yendell (Miss)
Exeter
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