SIR – Not long after our marriage my husband wanted to “revert” to the Church. I, as an Anglican, wished to convert. This was a second marriage for us both. Right from the start, we understood, thanks largely to a wonderfully compassionate priest, that we must seek annulments.
For many and diverse reasons, our personal experiences of the annulment process were opposites. My husband’s experience with the Diocese of Wrexham was professional, compassionate, efficient and friendly, even though his annulment was thought to be more difficult than mine. However, mine, at the hands of a large London diocese, was the worst experience of my life. Had it not been for the love and support of my husband and parish priest, I would have quit many times. Eventually, after six months and two-and-a-half years respectively, our annulments were granted.
My point is this. Whether or not we as the laity like it, at the moment the process is with us, with all its flaws. Reverts and converts must be treated with love, compassion and kindness, but also with an understanding of the true indissolubility of the marriage Sacrament. However, what I think is much needed is a streamlining of the annulment process so that best practice is achieved in all dioceses, and it is not, as it would appear to many at the moment, a Hobson’s choice.
Yours faithfully,
Emma Green
Sheffield
SIR – The representations of the four cardinals to the Pope alarm me. Their appeal to tradition seems vacuous.
Blessed John Henry Newman, our most profound thinker on the subject, stressed more than once that the Church, unchanging in essentials, must be ever changing in accidentals. Even the essentials – doctrine and dogma, the tradition – is a living entity, unchanging but always developing as the changing world asks new questions of it.
What are the accidentals? If a nuclear bomb struck the Vatican and the Curia and all the cardinals were volatilised, and Latin became incomprehensible, canon law obsolete and plainsong unsingable, would the Church have changed in essentials?
Trent established a new discipline of marriage for the changing times. Increasingly, from the Black Death on, the small – and except for the vagaries of war, weather and disease – unchanging communities of Europe had become fluid and shifting, bigamy and desertion rife. Regulation was urgent.
Trent did not abolish the essential – that a man and woman administer the sacrament to each other. Until then couples did live as man and wife after betrothal; the priest’s blessing was something separate.
The superficial and arbitrary values of our own society are a new threat. Spouses find that their partner’s commitment is unconsciously qualified by our society’s romantic, material, sexual and social perceptions, widely assumed and confidently asserted, of personal autonomy.
It’s inevitable that sincere intentions and false expectations will collide; even costly ceremony can obscure marriage’s absolute self-giving, two becoming one flesh. Add the myriad stresses of contemporary life, and when a modern marriage breaks down without either spouse really knowing why, must not the Church take compassionate account of this – with all Trent’s sensitivity to its own contemporary world?
Yours faithfully,
Tom McIntyre
Frome, Somerset
SIR – Dan Hitchens’s first-rate News Focus, “The letter the Pope won’t answer” (November 18), concludes with the expectation that “this discussion will probably drag on at least until the next pontificate”. However, no discussion is taking place, or is likely to, during this one.
The reward of abuse from some quarters for four brave princes of the Church effectively asking in a polite and humble manner whether the faith has been tampered with hardly constitutes a discussion.
Still, we know that when an interviewer repeatedly has to ask a politician for a clear answer to an important question and does not get one, everyone listening in knows what answer is implied in the blather.
It seems that the timeless battle for the soul of the Church has entered into a new phase. We can be grateful that the phoney war in which all manner of opinion has been portrayed, and accepted by many, as just another slant on the same eternal truths, appears over.
Yes, we will have to wait for a future pope or popes to make sense of the post-Vatican II experience, but, in the meantime, all faithful Catholics need to pray hard so that in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary is triumphant.
At the moment we have not reached that end. To quote a famous Churchillian wartime comment, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Yours faithfully,
Deacon John Wakeling
Nottingham
SIR – While all committed Catholics embrace and understand the importance of Church teaching on respect for and protection of the unborn, I do not feel that it is for English Catholics (Letter, November 18) to applaud the election of Donald Trump based on his stated pro-life stance.
It has already been demonstrated that Trump’s pre-election statements and promises are being amended and cast aside even before he takes office. Catholics both in the United States and here in Britain are able to judge for themselves how appropriate for office candidates are.
For me, and I’m certain for many other loyal and practising Catholics, Trump’s appalling attitude to immigrants, his vilification of Muslims and the disabled, his condescending and cruel comments to the Muslim parents of a dead war hero, his disregard for the sanctity of marriage, his vile and filth-laden opinion of women, all preclude him from holding one of the most powerful offices in the world.
I am concerned also that Fr John Abberton seems not to realise that the Evangelical Right in the States, those who “came out in force to vote for Trump”, do not always display a loving understanding of those with whom they disagree. Many of these far-Right Christians are filled with hatred, and spit venom in ranting sermonising which would rival any coming from ISIS, particularly in respect of those whose sexual orientation they despise. The words “mote” and “plank” come to mind.
When placing our votes, it is essential to pay attention to every aspect of a candidate’s suitability for office, political aims and, most importantly, character: a difficult moral and ethical balance for us all.
Yours faithfully,
Nadine Wylie
By email
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