Easter Hymn

I first heard this piece, from Pietro Mascagni’s opera, Cavalleria Rusticana at the funeral of Robin’s elderly uncle. The evocative and rousing melody along with the proclamation of the Resurrection seemed absolutely perfect for the occasion as well as for Easter morning. Perhaps most poignantly, the recording that was played as the coffin departed, featured the voice of the deceased who had sung this in a recent amateur production. How many of us get the opportunity to sing at our own funeral?!

This is a piece of music that never fails to reduce me to tears, it is so incredibly moving. Utterly breathtaking, beautiful, audacious and as triumphal as the event it portrays.

Happy Easter.

O rejoice for the Lord has arisen,
He has conquer’d the power of the grave,
He has broken the gates of the prison,
He has risen in His glory to save;

Does the Church need to renew its relationship with women?

Hot on the heels of the initiative which allows Catholic women to pledge their support for Catholic doctrine (the aim of which is to present Pope Francis with a significant number of signatures as well as present a forum for Catholic women and apologetics), Catherine Lafferty has written a piece for the New Statesman’s version of Comment is Free, which suggests ten ways in which Pope Francis can renew the Catholic Church’s relationship with women.

It is no secret that I have personal issues with Lafferty. Many people witnessed her behaviour towards me last year when I was pregnant, with alarm and dismay. The episode caused considerable distress and much prayer is needed because I still struggle with forgiveness and coming to terms with it all.

This should be borne in mind when reading my critique of Lafferty’s piece – this isn’t about ad hom or personal attack, I wish to lay my animosity to one side and engage with and critique what was written, but it should be noted that perhaps understandably, I find it extremely hard to be objective towards someone, who I believe caused actual harm to my health and that of my unborn baby with a campaign of unfounded and malicious allegations and whose repeated presence in my timeline has been an occasion of sin at the start of the Triduum.

The article’s premise is that the Church needs to renew its approach to its female followers with regards to sex and reproduction. This would seem to be a little misleading, not least because it implies that the Catholic Church somehow needs to change its doctrine, something which is impossible. Secondly, it buys into the myth that most Catholic women are unhappy with the Church, especially in relation to the doctrine on sex and reproduction. This is a myth that I’m looking to disprove.

If women are unhappy with Church doctrine on these issues, the blame can largely be laid at the door of poor or inadequate catechesis. This would certainly be an area that one could argue is in need of renewal, but the Emeritus Pope Benedict did much in terms of sowing the seeds in this regard. The growing Juventum movement is packed with young women as well as men. A newer, younger generation of orthodox faithful Catholic women is emerging. Before claiming that the Church needs to take action to renew its relationship with women, some evidence as to this fractured relationship needs to be provided. A more accurate assessment would be to say that the Church needs to engage with lapsed Catholic women and evangelise better. It needs to send positive and joyful messages of female sexuality as well as remind everyone of the beautiful teachings of John Paul II, in Theology of the Body and Mulieris Dignitatem.

Here’s my take on the some of the suggestions:

Use the reform of the Curia to promote female excellence in the corridors of power. Hard to argue with this one, it’s a point that I have argued and would do much for the Vatican in terms of its perception. With that it mind, it should be remembered that the pursuit of power is not a goal that should be encouraged, for any Catholic in good conscience. Secondly, whilst female excellence should be encouraged, the Vatican needs to be extremely careful to ensure that it does not engage with secular identity politics that are contrary to Catholic teaching which teaches that our identity lies in our dignity as created beings in the image of God. If women are promoted it needs to be because they possess requisite competence and fulfil the criteria of any given position, not solely because of their sex. Woman quotas should be avoided because they are a form of unfair discrimination and buy into the idea that the Catholic Church is somehow oppressive or patriarchal as demonstrated by the priesthood. Whilst it would be good to see more women in the Curia, this should not be for the sake of political correctness. The Catholic Church is not a political party or democratically elected institution.

This bureaucratic reform should be extended downwards to Bishop’s Conferences and diocesan offices, which should also become more efficient and productive with professional staff and dragged out of ‘sleepy backwaters’ with a similar drive for female excellence. This seems primarily a comment on the Catholic Church in the UK. I’m not sure that the same could be said of other countries, such as America for example, and who knows what the situation is in the far-flung corners of the globe. We need to be wary of accusing hardworking diocesan staff of ‘complacency’ or not doing their jobs properly. Many dioceses, such as Portsmouth have in fact, recently undergone restructuring, the Catholic Church works on a model of subsidiarity to which diocesan bishops are key. Where failures are identified, it should be up to the individual bishop to take appropriate action, rather than for centralised guidelines – every diocese will have different requirements. Furthermore some of the staff working in and supervising diocesan offices are stipendiary priests who are unpaid. Many parish secretaries, admin and finance staff are also unpaid volunteers. Instead of replacing them with a professional bureaucracy, which will prove costly, additional training would seem to be the answer in areas where there are gaps in knowledge or experience. There are admittedly diocesan roles that require paid professionals, standards matter and dioceses do conform to employment laws and norms, so I think we need to be careful before making sweeping statements or wholesale accusations of inefficiency. The same sentiment as above would apply when it comes to promoting female excellence. Replacing priests and unpaid volunteers with a professional bureaucracy would cost a considerable amount of money at a time when we know that many dioceses are running a deficit. In any event most diocesan offices are filled with the laity.

Turn all Catholic workplaces into centres of excellence for family-friendly employment. How do we know that this is not already the case? I can think of several positions in my diocese which are staffed by women and are part-time or job-share. As employers, Bishops are subject to UK laws with regards to unjust discrimination when it comes to employment and would legally need to demonstrate that they have the relevant policies in place, which means amongst other things, that women returning from maternity leave will already have the right to request family-friendly hours and parental leave. When it comes to building creches, that is entirely dependent on the size of the plant that a diocesan office may occupy as well as number of staff. There doesn’t tend to be a high staff turnover in diocesan offices, so a creche could quickly become obsolete.

Take a lead in providing affordable childcare. The Catholic Church teaches that couples should be open to the gift of life, a principle which is made harder to live up to by women’s economic needs. Lovely idea in theory. Pie in the sky in real life. The Catholic Church does teach that couples should be open to the gift of life, but she also teaches that parents should be the primary educators of their children. A mother’s economic needs revolve around providing food and housing for her children. Ideally speaking a woman should have the choice as to whether or not she wishes to work, countless surveys demonstrate that most mothers yearn to be at home with their children. Jonas Himmelstrand, a Swedish sociologist, is reporting that psychological disorders in children have trebled in Sweden, widely held up as being a childcare utopia, where over 90% of children under 3 attend full time nurseries. Having children in full-time childcare should not be encouraged. It is not in the common good to encourage or promote a system whereby mothers have little choice other than to become wage slaves. That mothers have always worked is undeniable, but traditionally women needing extra income did this inside the home, whether it be by a bit of extra farming, being a nursemaid, taking in ironing, sewing, craftwork etc. Whilst that is admittedly out of step for today’s era, the rise of the mumpreneur, or woman who works from home, whether that’s freelance writing, running a business on ebay, or whatever, shows that this is still seen as an ideal. Women should be their own bosses, as they always have been, working on their own terms, providing for themselves and their families in a way that fits around family commitments, and not wage slaves to outside employers, trying to split themselves between two masters. Ultimately, it tends to be the children who suffer, when mum has to put them in wraparound care 5 days a week, in order to keep working for an implacable inflexible boss who pays the wages.

Aside from the fact that the Catholic Church lacks the resources to provide free or cheap Catholic nurseries and ignoring the fact that such a practice would inevitably fall foul of laws regarding discrimination, there would bound to be some vexatious litigation surrounding the nature of such provision, encouraging mothers to put their children in nurseries would not renew the relationship with women, but could cause alienation and resentment. The Church would be sending a very definite message as to the desirability of work, and no nursery, no matter how wonderful or gleaming the equipment or activities on offer, can replace a mother’s unique love and care. Children aren’t objects, they should not be viewed as barriers or commodities to financial or economic success and to put one’s own self-fulfilment on the same level as their welfare, is directly contrary to church teaching. Whilst the Church recognises and argues that women should have equal access to public functions and roles, speaking in Familiaris Consortio, John Paul said this

While it must be recognized that women have the same right as men to perform various public functions, society must be structured in such a way that wives and mothers are not in practice compelled to work outside the home, and that their families can live and prosper in a dignified way even when they themselves devote their full time to their own family.

Furthermore, the mentality which honours women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoriung work in the home.

The Catholic Church can plough funding for research into fertility management which complements rather than compromises its core principles. No need for this. The technology, already exists, NFP methods such as Creighton are 99% effective. Pope John Paul II singled out the Pope Paul VI Institute, who are world leaders in terms of reproductive technology for special praise and worthy of support. Catholics have to accept however, that no method of contraception is 99% effective, and whilst couples may have serious reasons not to add to their families, they must also tread a fine line in terms of not falling into a contraceptive mentality. Where the Church needs to do better is at communicating its message on human sexuality to young men and women, which really needs to start at grassroots level. The technology exists, it’s just not promoted heavily enough and neither do many priests do a great job in terms of preaching about contraception or promoting the alternatives. Likewise NaPro technology, has success rates far and above those of IVF, treating the underlying cause of which infertility is just a symptom. A fertile married couple has to regularly think and pray when it comes to the issue of whether or not to add to their family, and not simply use NFP as an alternative form of contraception. It involves a wholly different mindset.

Put women and their needs at the heart of its Pro Life activism. This is what happens now. Organisations such as the Good Counsel Network and LIFE Charity do just that in terms of their activism, campaigning and actual pro-life work. A creaking Pro Life lobby is ill-equipped to consider why women opt to have abortions and what they need to continue their pregnancies willingly. The pro-life lobby in the UK may be creaking, but there are certainly signs of healthy rejuvenation, such as in the recent foundation of the Alliance of Pro-life students and the success of the 40 days for Life movement. Speaking at the launch of APS, Eve Farron their founder, explained how they made common cause with feminists on campus and forced campaigning and provision for pregnant students at certain universities to be drastically overhauled, so that students with a crisis pregnancy were presented with actual realistic options enabling them to keep their baby and continue studying. Again the Good Counsel Network help women on a day to day basis, they are well versed in the multitude of reasons why a woman may find herself at the door of an abortion clinic and provide help accordingly. A pro-life movement that lacks cohesiveness will find it hard to gain political traction, but that doesn’t mean that it is unable to discern why women may abort. Pro-life work does need to consist of a political element, not simply in terms of legislation surrounding abortion laws, but legislation to enact a society that is open to life and the needs of pregnant women, but this is not its only role. For Catholics, pro-life work consists of prayer, politics, practical action and PR. The pro-life movement is at its strongest when we recognise and hammer home the message that a life is a stake here and the injustice of abortion, to mother and child. Politicians will respond to the will of the people and even SPUC, an organisation of which I am highly critical, is extremely effective at marshalling and consolidating grass-roots support. This is vital.

as tough on the causes of abortion as abortion itself. Good soundbite, albeit a modified version of William Hague. But we need to very careful here. Whilst society must clamp down on those factors that contribute to a woman’s feeling that she has little other ‘choice’, the causes of abortion are very often complex, there is not one single factor. Women who abort their babies are not two dimensional creatures simply exercising a choice because they can, or because they see it as a form of contraception and not the taking of a life. Whilst some women undoubtedly do view abortion as a trivial matter, many don’t and abortion is arrived at via a contribution of factors, not least a society that advocates and promotes abortion as being ‘no biggie’ and certainly not something that one should feel guilty about. Whilst we have to work to bring about an elimination of those factors that conspire to make a woman have an abortion, human history shows us that there will always be women who feel they have reasons to abort. We cannot concede that a reason to abort is a justification and neither should we be giving any fuel to the notion that until reasons to abort are demolished, then abortion itself can be tackled. When we consider the causes of abortion, we have to be extremely careful not to play into the hands of pro-choicers, who will argue that abortion has always existed, there will always be a good reason to abort and so abortion must be safe and legal. People will always want to engage in destructive behaviour, sadly there will always be those who are compelled to hurt their fellow human beings and themselves, but that does not mean that society should legislate, normalise and accept harm, on the premise that it is a lesser evil. Whilst we must be tough on the cause of abortion, we must not lose sight of the fact that abortion is, to use the hated words, a moral evil. That does not mean that women who have abortions are morally evil, or of dubious character, but in our compassion, we must not forget what abortion is. We must continue to be tough on it and not fall into the hands of well-meaning pro-choicers who attempt to justify abortion. Being tough on various causes of abortion includes getting tough on lifestyles of sexual impropriety as well as on repeated abortions, and accepting that a woman’s judgement is not always sound or prudent, by virtue of her gender or reproductive organs. This is a always a flashpoint or bone of contention, no-one likes to be seen as finger-pointing or interfering in others’ sex lives, it plays into the Christian fundie fiddling with ovaries stereotype, but ultimately as Christians we are compelled to make moral judgements with regards to certain courses of action, including abortion.

The other points with regards to population control, education and women’s rights are fairly sound. But as I said at the beginning, the Catholic Church needs to be very wary about succumbing to identity politics. Women are signing up thick and fast at CatholicwomenRising to pledge their support for Church doctrine. To state that the Church needs to renew its relationship with women, implies that there is a schism, one that is only evident in the minds of the media. What the Church does need to do is continue to win souls of all ages, be they the elderly, middle-aged, or young. Part of this must involve evangelisation. But Church renewal is a question that each subsequent generation has to face – we have to enthuse our children and young people to lives of Christian witness and holiness. This is why identity politics is so irrelevant, because Catholic doctrine reflects that men and women were created equal but with different vital roles to play. Our strengths and weaknesses are disparate, we are not all one homogenous mass. The way we go about renewal is in two ways – firstly by how we live our lives and the examples we set to others, Pope Francis is leading the way here, and secondly by implementing decent catechesis and instruction at a local level.

That the Catholic Church in the Western world needs to find ways of countering the rising tide of secularism, atheism and the prevailing zeitgeist of individualism and renew itself is indisputable. But it has to start at catechesis and finding effective ways of educating its laity, be they male or female. Women friendly policies may make for fluffy soundbites in left-wing publications and make a convenient flag for Catholics to wave to show off their progressive credentials. But the New Evangelisation requires action that goes infinitely deeper.

Hijacking the Royal Society of Medicine

BPAS are advertising a conference in June which they appear to be sponsoring, called ‘abortion, motherhood and the medical profession’. It seems a strange title for an organisation who is predominantly concerned with removing motherhood, but this conference needs to be called out for what it is. An attempt at co-opting the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM), in order to endorse abortion as being a matter of medical treatment when as a recent symposium on Excellent Maternal Healthcare noted in their press release, abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother.

Abortion is a medical procedure, hence the involvement of the RSM, but this conference will obviously be incorporated by BPAS into their promotional material, with the RSM being used as leverage, in order to endorse any findings or conclusions as being those of a professional body or allegedly evidence-based. The RSM describe this event as a joint meeting with BPAS, which raises questions about impartiality, as well as funding. Have BPAS subsidised this meeting in any way? It probably falls under costs of marketing and PR, in their Profit and Loss account.

In case of any doubt, I’ll run through the programme of events and outline the credentials of the speakers:

Introduction and Opening remarks:

Mrs Joanne Fletcher, Consultant Nurse, Gynaecology, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

An impartial consultant nurse? Actually Joanne Fletcher was the publication co-ordinator of this document about abortion care for the Royal College of Nurses in 2008. Interestingly the document was sponsored by Exelgyn, manufacturers of the abortion pill, RU486, Bayer Healthcare, who manufacture contraceptives and abortifacients. So, absolutely no vested interests there whatsoever then? Back to Mrs Fletcher, not only did she co-ordinate publication of this document but she is also a member of the RCN group – ‘Nurses working within termination of pregnancy Network’. So it’s obvious where she stands on abortion.

Ms Jennie Bristow, Publications and Conference Manager, British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Fairly straightforward who this lady is, she’s in charge of commissioning and publishing research and organising conferences that promote abortion such as this one.

Foetal imaging and imagining the foetus:

This session, is chaired by Clare Murphy, Director of External Affairs at BPAS. She used to tweet as @clare_bpas before deleting her account in favour of a more professional generic BPAS account. I remember her tweeting about the appearance of some of those on 40 days for life – if one can be bothered to search through the blog, I’m sure there’s a tweet somewhere about her deriding the colour of tights of a volunteer, but again, I think we all know where Ms Murphy stands when it comes to abortion.

What intrigues me is why she is chairing a session on foetal imaging and “imagining the foetus”? Is she some sort of leading expert in the field of foetal imaging and diagnostics? Is she a qualified sonographer? My understanding is that she’s been promoted up from her original role within PR at BPAS.

What is imagining the foetus? One has a scan and sees a foetus on the screen (well actually you don’t at BPAS, they won’t show you and will dissuade you if you ask, can’t begin to imagine why). What has imagination got to do with it? Either you see a foetus or you don’t, if one is present on screen, it’s certainly not a figment of imagination.

Which is really the entire point of this session. It’s nothing to do with medical science and more to do with helping the client conceptualise her unborn child as being as un-human as possible. It’s about understanding the psychology of a pregnant woman and manipulation, by using medical terminology such as ‘gestation sac’ and ‘the pregnancy’ instead of what’s actually there, a foetus. (Fetus: Latin “offspring”, “hatching of young” “bringing forth”)

So, who have we got discussing foetal imaging and imagining, conceptualising (or lack of) of the foetus?

Dr Stuart Derbyshire, Reader in Psychology, University of Birmingham

A psychologist, able to discuss ‘helpful’ ways of thinking about and describing the foetus to the mother. Not only is he a reader in psychology, but he is one of the medical experts who argues against the notion that foetuses may be able to feel any pain. So no doubt, his talk will have something to do with the fact that even though the baby might look human and fully developed, it probably won’t feel any pain (how can any of us know with any certainty and besides medical opinion is divided) and so it’s perfectly okay to kill it.

Professor Carol Sanger, Columbia Law School

Professor Sanger is also a fellow of St Anne’s college Oxford. She writes articles on family law and women’s ‘reproductive rights’. She’s an abortion advocate who last year delivered BPAS 2012 public lecture on abortion in the US. Sanger has fought against laws in the US requiring mandatory ultrasounds for pregnant mothers.

And our final ‘expert on this session regarding foetal imaging and imagining is:

Zoe Williams, columnist for the Guardian

Zoe Williams frequently churns out pro-choice feminist propaganda for the Guardian. She describes her views as left-wing and feminist and has written some amusing guides to pregnancy and motherhood. Not quite sure what she’s doing on a session which is ostensibly about foetal imaging. I’ve got 4 children to her 2, have had numerous scans and know quite a fair bit about embryology and foetal development, I’d wager that I’m every bit as qualified when it comes to discussing foetal imaging…

So anyway, then we come on to the next session

Information, counselling and the law

Chaired by:

Dr Ellie Lee, Reader in Social Policy, University of Kent

I’m actually rather an admirer of Dr Lee, despite being co-ordinator of the Pro-choice forum and a strong advocate of abortion. She’s often on Women’s Hour and other media, advocating for abortion. Always eloquent, she has written this paper which is essential reading for any pro-lifer, discussing how the issue of abortion must be ‘de-moralised’, i.e. stripped of any notion of morality. She argues that pro-choicers have not yet won the battle on abortion and discusses ways that the issue should be approached in Parliament. Notably for pro-lifers, Dr Lee has observed that failing to sustain arguments about the sanctity of life has derailed pro life groups in the past, but nonetheless, the idea that abortion should be outside of politics is one of concern. That abortion is political, favours pro-choicers as they well know, despite their protestations about ‘politicising the issue’. It seems pro-life hasn’t done very well, when it has deviated too far from the idea that a baby has a right to life. Her research is invaluable for pro-lifers who wish to inform themselves and develop effective strategies.

Dr Patricia Lohr, Medical Director, British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Needs no further comment

Ms Jane Fisher, Director, Antenatal Results and Choices

Despite their title, Antenatal Results and Choices, whilst not overtly partisan, certainly favour abortion, Jane Fisher has spoken about the improvements in first trimester ante-natal testing which means that women can access ‘abortions they need’ earlier – a good thing in her view.

Professor Sally Sheldon, Kent Law School

Another abortion advocate, who argued in favour of a woman’s right to have a sex-selective abortion and states that it should be women, not doctors who decide whether or not they need one. (Unlike every other medical treatment).

After lunch (if they can stomach it) we have the following session

Testing positive, negative and in between: How the semi-quantitative pregnancy test could transform the management of abortion, miscarriage, fertility treatment and ectopic pregnancy

A semi-quantitative pregnancy test is a self-administered urine test that one takes at home, following a medical abortion, that is once you’ve taken the abortion pill. At present, women require a clinic follow up if they have taken the abortion pill, in order for either a blood test or ultrasound to check whether or not uterine evacuation is complete. This obviously increases the clinics’ overheads and the cost of abortions. You’ve given the woman the pill, had her money, sent her home, it’s obviously a bit of a faff for all concerned that she needs to come back for any sort of check in person to see whether or not the pill has done its job or whether there might still be some bits floating about inside. Of course a pill could transform management of abortion and see a significant cost reduction (wonder if this will be passed on) enabling women to do the test at home before trekking back to the clinic where a person can actually check they are alright.

With the vast majority of abortions being performed under 12 weeks and clinics pushing the abortion pill which can be taken under 9 weeks, it’s no wonder they are excited about this option. More free time to see more new clients!

So which experts have we got on this panel then?

Chair:

Ann Furedi Chief Executive BPAS

Say no more, Ann (kill all the unborn up until birth) Furedi

Professor Paul Blumenthal, Stanford University

The man who argued against the banning of partial-birth abortion in America. That’s when they deliver the baby and crush its head as its coming out. A particularly nasty and gruesome procedure which is fortunately now illegal both over there and over here.

Mrs Joanne Fletcher, Consultant Nurse, Gynaecology, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

As discussed above. A pro-choice activist consultant nurse

Dr Roy Farquharson, Consultant Gynaecologist, Liverpool Women’s Hospital

Author of a book on abortion in the first trimester

The day finishes off with the following session

Discussion: A new generation of abortion doctors – challenges and opportunities

Or, how do we entice more doctors into performing abortions, given there is an acute shortage of suitably qualified doctors, with more and more opting out of abortion procedures and training on conscience grounds, something that is naturally very concerning for abortion providers, hence they are resorting to all sorts of measures, including campaigning for the removal of conscience grounds and offering paid interships in order to train medical students.

So who do we have in this session?

Katharine Elliot

A medical student from the University of Newcastle. I’m guessing she’s pro-choice. Perhaps she’s been on one of their placements and can testify to the joys of learning how to be an efficient abortionist?

Dr Richard Lyus, British Pregnancy Advisory Service

Again self-explanatory

Mr John Parsons, Consultant Gynaecologist

A doctor who believes that there are not enough abortions.

In conclusion then, BPAS are hosting a wholly partisan conference, with a variety of pro-choice campaigners, activists and doctors and seeking to leverage the Royal Society of Medicine’s credentials in order to give the conference and any conclusions or press releases that may emanate from it, authority.

Whether you’ve read this in any depth, or simply scrolled through it to get the general gist, there can be no room for apathy. This is BPAS, this is what they do, it is extremely clever and slick manipulation, designed to fool the general public with medical terminology and assurances that their conclusions are following the deliberations and discussions of experts in the field, all highly scientific, evidence-based and neutral.

Nothing could be further from the case and no-one should be fooled. This is where some of the vast income from providing abortions for the NHS is diverted. Into promoting abortion as an option and finding ways of marketing and making it palatable to the general public, under the guise of science and using women’s rights campaigners as unofficial PR.

If SPUC or LIFE or Right-to-Life hold a conference on maternal care, this is immediately dismissed as being the work of loony nutjob fundies and therefore not worthwhile because their views on abortion are apparent in the name of the organisation. What BPAS are doing with conferences such as these, is a clever piece of PR, marketing and strategy, one that is not overtly political, but masquerades as some sort of scientific inquiry.

Pro-lifers need not only to disseminate this information, but also dispel the inevitable narratives that will pop up arising from this conference, as well as raise our game. We need to remember that there are equally well-informed experts who, on looking on the evidence available , take an opposing view, one that is peer-reviewed and evidence-based.

It is not surprising what is going on here, but anyone who feels apathy as opposed to anger, needs a wake-up call. This is life and death stuff, BPAS are attempting the hijacking of the medical opinion to justify and disguise what is going on – the wholesale killing of the unborn, paid for by taxpayers’ money and wrapped up in important sounding conferences, which are nothing more than an echo chamber for abortionists and their supporters.

Given enough rope

Back to pro-life matters and it’s been heartening to watch LIFE charity who have really raised their game on social media over the past year, in terms of putting out some really useful information, along with biting commentary out into the public domain. Their Twitter handle is @LifeCharity

LIFE were live-tweeting testimony from the Parliamentary Inquiry (led by the all-party Pro-life group) into abortion and disability which examined the unjust discrimination that allows for disabled babies to be aborted right up until the moment of birth, whereas ‘healthy’ children are subject to a 24 week limit. A discrepancy with which the general public are becoming increasingly uncomfortable following the resounding success of London’s 2012 Paralympics, which did much to raise awareness that having a disability does not preclude one from living an active and fulfilling life, nor from achieving success in a chosen field.

All of our medal winning athletes would have been allowed to have been aborted up until the moment of birth according to current UK law.

Ann Furedi, Chief Executive of BPAS made no attempt to hide her extremism, with the following statement, which is an absolute gift to the pro-life cause. Whatever else, one cannot fault Mrs Furedi’s honesty, these are the thoughts of one the UK’s most prolific and influential advocates for abortion:

That’s right. If it’s unfair to kill disabled children up until birth, let’s kill ALL the children, instead of attempting to save the lives of those who can be killed right up until the moment that they are born. And they scoff at the moniker culture of death? Highly appropriate I’d say. Instead of choosing life for all, let’s choose equal rights to be unjustly killed, if at any stage your life becomes an inconvenience.

Here’s another good one.

So when the expectant mother feels her baby kicking and hiccuping from around 5 months, it isn’t really alive, and neither is a baby alive when you can see him or her kicking, somersaulting, stretching, yawning, swallowing on your 12 week pregnancy scans. That’s not life, no it’s just human sentimentality telling us otherwise. When a woman suffers a tragic miscarriage, she has no need to mourn, or hold a funeral because her baby was never really alive? I wonder what this organisation, which exists to support and counsel parents who have lost a baby at any stage in life would make of that?

On the contentious issue of time limits:

I can think of some pro-lifers who may sympathise with that. It’s logically coherent, either abortion is acceptable or it isn’t. If you can kill a baby, does it really matter at what stage?

I think the answer is yes, for two reasons. Firstly, we know that late-stage abortions are physically much more dangerous to the mother, which is why there is always such a rush to get women to abort at the earliest possible opportunity. Late-stage abortions are also a lot more emotionally harrowing for a woman, which any organisation that claims to care about their welfare should acknowledge. Read some of the testimony on this womens’ forum, I linked to in a previous post. Also note, that since linking to it back in November, a pro-choicer has demanded that the moderators remove said thread, due to its age and it allegedly being ‘unhelpful’ towards women thinking of late-stage abortions. Unhelpful being a euphemism for deterrent.

It’s an astounding coming from someone whose organisation purports to care about women, that time-limits which are related to the health and well-being of the mother as well as the baby, are deemed unimportant. Autonomy or choice must come before personal safety and wellbeing.

The other reason why late stage abortions are important from a pro-life point of view is that the 24 week limit means that no attempt is made to help babies who made be born prematurely before this time, such as the case of baby Jayden, who was left to die for hours, as it was against the rules to help him. Ideology must not cause us to stick our heads in the sand over this issue.

But so what if time limits are a political preoccupation? Abortion has become political ever since pro-choicers decided to politicise it back in the sixties. In a democracy politics exist to reflect the will of the people, the majority of whom are extremely uncomfortable with the notion of late-stage abortion. Does Ann Furedi deem public opinion irrelevant in the face of her own personal ideology. It doesn’t matter whether or not stomachs are churned by the idea of fully developed healthy babies being killed subject to the whims of others? People are obviously very ignorant, what matters is that babies must be able to be killed right up until the moment of their birth, if that is what an individual wants, regardless of whether or not it is in step with the views of the general public, who don’t really matter anyway. The kind of atrocities such as those committed by Kermit Gosnell, are irrelevant?

If anyone was in any doubt about the ethic of autonomy being paramount regardless of consequences, here’s a chilling example:

So it doesn’t matter if parents abort a much-wanted unborn baby because they have been poorly informed about their potential quality of life, or future prospects? It doesn’t matter if parents later find out something that had they known prior to the abortion, would have changed their mind and then have to live with the fact that they aborted an unborn baby on a false premise. The anger and sadness of grieving parents doesn’t matter, their right to be properly informed is of secondary import, what really matters is that they made a choice, even if it then turned out to be the wrong one and one that they would not repeat given similar circumstances. All that matters is that a decision is made?

Blowing all claims of impartiality and informing women of all their options out of the water, the Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Services, says this

People were screaming blue murder at Nadine Dorries’ proposed amendment which suggested that abortion clinics did not offer wholly impartial advice and offered to give pregnant women the choice of independent counselling in which all options and alternatives could be discussed. Whilst wary of adoption being offered as a panacea or first solution to a woman with a crisis pregnancy, it should at least be discussed and given equal weight as an option as abortion. It makes a complete mockery of BPAS’ name of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service – the type of advice on offer is one way.

People say pro-lifers are the extremists? Try telling that to those from 40 Days for Life in Brighton yesterday, who had a car drive past them sizing them up, and which then returned to pelt them with eggs. Or to those working at the Youth Defence office in Dublin who found the memory of Savita Halappanavar defiled when her photo was stuck to their office doors with human faeces.

Sometimes there is no need for pro-lifers to make an opposing argument. Give some people enough rope…

A dissenting voice

An interesting comment appeared in response to my post about the Catholic Women Rising project, stating that I am never going to manage to attempt to get every Catholic woman to sign up. Maybe not, but just because something may be difficult, doesn’t mean that it’s not worth doing.

As a point of note, the Catholic Women Rising site is not meant to be a personal vanity project – the intention is to hand over blog administration to any other Catholic women (or men) who may wish to be involved, especially in the apologetics side. The aim is to promote the New Feminism, winning over lapsed Catholics and hopefully even persuading women of other denominations, as well as a manifestation of the huge amount of grass roots support that exists for Catholic teaching. I don’t care from whence the apologetics comes so long as it is not only sound, but gentle – there will be no time for hectoring those who struggle with teaching or at times fall short. Whilst sin or error can not be validated, one catches more flies with honey than vinegar as the saying goes and it is intended to be a place of joyful witness to the truth, not petty sniping or personal carping. I wonder whether women are better placed in terms of evangelising to other women nonetheless.

In the meantime, it will mainly be pro-life and personal ~~witterings~~ reflections as per usual on this site, but so far the response has been overwhelming, my email and social media inboxes have been inundated with support, with Francis Philips of the Catholic Herald, Joanna Bogle and Marianne Cutherbertson, being among those who have supported the site and signed. It’s early days yet, but I do intend to keep plugging away at it and getting as many names as possible and publicising the initiative outside of the internet.

Whilst not wishing to pick on the person who left the comment, another one of her points was that unrest exists within the Catholic church with regards to women. If this is the case then this needs to be identified and engaged with, not least so that women who feel uncomfortable with doctrine, are at the very least, afforded the privilege of being listened to and it needs to be established whether any pastoral solution can be sought, or whether they are labouring under a misapprehension. No-one is claiming that unrest doesn’t exist, but it’s a question of how representative some of the media narratives are. The majority of Catholic female voices in the mainstream media (Catholic Herald staff aside), from Joanna Moorhead to even Cristina Odone, seem to publicly dissent from at least one aspect of teaching. The project aims to offer a response and counter, to which a new post has gone up, which names some of the women of influence within the Holy See itself.

Tina Beattie suggests that the handful of women to whom the Vatican are listening are “selected handmaidens”, a deliberately inflammatory phrase, designed to reinforce the notions of patriarchy and sexual subservience and oppression. If one were of a less charitable disposition, one might wonder whether or not there is a hint of bitterness or frustration that as a theologian in a Catholic university, she is not among their number.

Occam’s razor comes in handy here – if there are not as many women as perhaps would be desirable amongst those positions open to the laity in the Curia, it has as much to do with the fact that many Catholic women have a vocation of wife and mother which is incompatible with a full-time job located in Vatican City. The complaint that ‘diverse prominent women theologians’ are not being listened to is due to the nature of the dissenting views of such theologians as opposed to their gender. Hans Kung wasn’t stripped of his teaching faculties on account of his sex.

If the church fails to take account of the problems of the women in the world, and I’m far from convinced that this is true, then this needs further definition.

But the most interesting aspect of this comment, is that it appeared to jump on the fact that I had apparently misunderstood and taken Tina Beattie’s Guardian quote from Protect the Pope, out of context and it appeared to be leaping to her defence. I have no intention of attempting to out the person who made the comment, who I suspect was a student and neither do I have the time or inclination to pursue or track down those who leave comments expressing disagreement.

WordPress does however automatically log the IP address of those who leave comments and as such I can often identify persistent trolls. This commenter is not a troll, she was simply disagreeing with me as she is perfectly entitled to do so, however what jumped out at me was that WordPress assigned a name to the originating comment, which was St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, a Catholic University, which has been experiencing a fair amount ofshenanigans of late.

That we have a student who seems to be in agreement with Professor Beattie is nothing to get rattled about. But it does once again pose the wider question about what might be going on in terms of teaching or catechesis at that university, which seems rather sad.

Protectors of life, the family, friendships and each other

No-one could fail to be inspired by Pope Francis’ homily at this morning’s inaugural Mass. He calls for tenderness, and describes how authentic power comes with service, reminding us of our duty to protect one another.

We must never be afraid of goodness, of tenderness which is a great sign of strength. A tender heart is indicative of a capacity for concern, compassion, and a genuine openness to others for love.

Just as these are the qualities shown by St Joseph in his role of loving protector towards Mary, Jesus and over the whole church, these are also the qualities inherent in motherhood, whether that be of a spiritual or physical nature. Like St Joseph all of us must watch over and protect Christ’s mystical body, but his homily was a potent reminder of why we must be protectors of life, at whatever stage, from its conception to it’s final moments.

It reinforced the message of Christ to me as a woman, wife and mother, reminding me of my duty to nurture and protect my husband and children, as well as reaching out to fellow women in their moments of danger and crisis.

Last night, following a germ of idea in which I thought it would be a great to have an online space where faithful Catholic women can witness to their faith, I set up a new website, catholicwomenrising.wordpress.com in which women can stand up and be counted for their faith and offer their love, gratitude and prayers for Pope Francis as well as register their unqualified support for Church teaching.

Please could those who commented in the comms box here, go and register their support over there, spread the word and pray. My hope is that this could be a real gift and blessing, not only to Pope Francis, but to the Catholic Church as a whole, countering the repeated negative media cliche that the Catholic Church is not representative of well over 50% of its members.

I’d like women to stand up and be counted for their faith, to show the world that they embrace the freedom and love that comes with adhering to God’s plan for the world. Far from being oppressive, the New Feminism is all about empowerment and recognising the inherent dignity of all women as created beings of God, free of cultural and society’s expectations to become sexual objects and to limit and crush our innate fertility and restrict our ability to love. The culture of death pressurises us to murder our unborn children, put limits on our resources to love and to reject our elderly, in favour of our own selfish needs.

The culture of life and love recognises our abilities and strengths as women, it does not expect us to be subjugated to male desire, it allows for us to fulfil our potential, whether we are married, single, mothers, childless, whether we are working or seeking work, whether we are homemakers, businesswomen, volunteers or a combination of all of the above. It does not seek to put a lid on the female achievement in whatever a woman’s chosen area.

Catholic teaching allows for us to love Christ, to love ourselves and thus reach out to and love and protect for one another. It is freedom, dignity and empowerment.

Please could you pass on the website and urge every Catholic woman you know who agrees to sign. It would be a simple act of faith, in this Year of Faith, but send an incredibly powerful message to the world, that here is a group of happy, fulfilled, empowered and spiritual nurtured women; a message of encouragement, not only to each other and to the rest of the Church, but also to those women who have become estranged from the faith.

The plan is to set up some separate posts and sensible forum debate, whereby women who do not agree with Church teaching (yet) can debate and discuss the issues in an atmosphere of openness and non-confrontation. Where those who might be struggling with some of the challenging issues such as IVF or contraception, can talk this through in a non-judgemental way and receive gentle explanation, encouragement, support and resources in terms of alternatives.

But first and foremost, it would be amazing if we could muster as many women as possible to say “Yes, I love the Catholic Church, I follow her teachings, not because I am brainwashed or fearful, but with a heart and mind that is open to God”.

Catholic women rising

Okay, so this is a bit of an experiment, but I’d really like it to catch on and would also like the support of the entire Catholic blogosphere, certainly in the UK and what an amazing thing if this could go global.

Inspired by Deacon Nick Donnelly, who has such an inspirational apostolate with his Protect the Pope blog, my blood pressure rose when I saw that a certain ‘Catholic’ theologian is once again hinting at doctrinal changes, seemingly misunderstanding that these are simply not possible. This isn’t meant to be a personal attack on Tina Beattie herself, I can understand that it must be unnerving to feel constantly besieged by a group of bloggers on the internet, but in a recent interview in the Guardian she states:

The new pope must show that he is willing to engage seriously with women’s theological voices and moral perspectives in a way which is broadly representative of the diverse experiences and aspirations of women, and not just with a few carefully selected theological handmaids.

The Church is not a democracy. Furthermore doctrines cannot change, Catholicism is based upon the truth that was revealed to us by Jesus Christ and handed down by the apostles to their successors. Revealed truth cannot change, the deposit of faith is comprised of this revealed truth expressed in Scripture and sacred tradition and thus cannot change. The church does not have the power to change or remove anything that has been given to us by Christ and His Apostles.

It is beyond annoying being told what the Church should do in relation to women, by people who are either not Catholic, or want the Church to change her doctrine in order to accommodate their own personal agendas, whether that be to allow self-destructive behaviour, to validate their own insecurity or to give them more ‘power’, which is never a healthy thing. None of us should crave positions of power or leadership.

Many faithful Catholic women are fed up of being told that they are not representative of the Catholic faith, that they are somehow brainwashed or marginalised, that their Church hates them and that most Catholic women are against the Church’s teachings, especially with regards to contraception, abortion and the male priesthood, most of which is based on dodgy poll data.

Here’s what I’d like to do. I’m not sure if this blog is the best forum for it, but then again it is run by a married mother of 4 young girls, who is passionate about female equality and empowerment, it’s just my definition of what that looks like, is very different to that of militant feminists or unrepresentative politicians and journalists, who think working women is all about a high-powered job in a nice city office somewhere on mega-bucks, or perhaps a well-paid newspaper column working from home, whereas the reality for most working mothers and children is entirely different.

I’d like to get as many Catholic women as possible, to sign up in the comments box below, to say that they agree with the following statement.

I am a faithful practicing Roman Catholic woman, who attends Mass at least once a week and who believes in and practices the Church’s teachings, specifically pertaining to matters on sexuality, contraception, abortion, marriage and the ordination of women. I believe that the Roman Catholic Church is sympathetic to and representative of the needs and concerns of women and their children, wherever they may be in the world. I would like to offer our new Pope Francis, my prayers and support and thank him for his continued protection and support of mothers and their unborn children. I fully endorse Church doctrine in relation to women’s issues.

This could be an amazing gift for the Year of Faith. Imagine if every single faithful Catholic woman were to pledge their solidarity to our new Pope and Church doctrine in one place. What a gift, blessing and comfort, not only for Pope Francis, but also for ALL the Catholic clergy, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Monsignors, Priests, Deacons, as well as those members of the laity, who are engaged in catechesis. How heartening for them to see the fruits of their work and how loved, supported and appreciated they are by Catholic women everywhere.

Also, what an opportunity for catechesis this could be, in terms of promoting the New Feminism. If you do see this and you are a Catholic women who feels in good conscience that she cannot sign up, don’t leave a comment on this post, I’ll open up another sticky and we can get debate going there, or better still, discuss it with your priest, or someone you know who can sign in good faith.

What a message to the Pope, to the Church and to the world and media at large. We, the undersigned Catholic women, have a love for Christ and his Church burning in our hearts and we do not wish to alter or change doctrine one little bit. We are empowered by a beautiful teaching that recognises us as having an equal dignity and sets us free to live in love.

Francis Fever

It could be my misanthropic side or maybe I’ve just got a very short attention span or perhaps a combination of the two, means that I’m hoping that Francis fever will shortly subside, once the inauguration Mass has taken place.

That’s not to in any way question our new Holy Father, or throw any of his qualities into doubt, far from it, the Conclave played a blinder with that googlie (indulge me a little Bernard moment to mix my sporting metaphors here) but the constant focus upon Pope Francis, the style of his papacy and his personal gracious humility and simplicity, could I think, become counterproductive.

It’s marvellous that here we have a new Pope who has really got the media buzzing, proving that Catholicism is not as irrelevant as they would have us believe and that coverage has been incredibly positive, aside from one poorly researched attempted hatchet job from the usual suspect, the Guardian, but human nature loves nothing better than to build people up, if only to knock them down again, ably aided and abetted by the media.

My concern is that this important theme of poverty could swiftly start to become jaded and has the capacity to be caricatured and used as a weapon against the Holy Father, when and if, he does something wholly in keeping with his vocation, by a media who may not fully understand the implications of the office and responsibilities of the Vicar of Christ. Such as, for example, when he travels. Fr Ray Blake highlights an essential point, namely in order to be loyal sons and daughters of the Church we really need to get to grips with and actually understand what is meant by poverty. Anyone who thinks that the Vatican museums or Roman churches can or should be sold off to the highest bidder needs a reality check.

I cannot help but think that the very last thing Pope Francis wants is to be revered as some sort of living saint for the fact that he lives out the values of the Gospel and of his religious order. Whilst it’s entirely laudable that he does so, he is not the only priest or bishop to follow in the footsteps of Christ in this way. I know at least one UK diocesan bishop who drives about in an average non descript car, has very little in the way of personal staff and goes about with absolutely no pomp and ceremony whatsoever. A parish volunteer once related to me about how they once told a man that he couldn’t use a particular space in the church car park, because it was reserved for the bishop who was coming to do confirmations, whereupon the response was a fairly nonplussed, ‘I am actually the bishop’ much to the poor man’s mortification! He had been expecting a grand personage in a smart vehicle, not a low-key looking priest.

Pope Francis may well be on his way to sainthood, as are hopefully all of us, but he is not there yet and the very reason that he took us all by surprise is precisely because he had kept an extraordinarily low profile in the run-up to the conclave, he doesn’t do self-promotion and thus had fallen off everybody’s radar, including the most seasoned vaticanisti. This self-effacing man, whilst indicating that his papacy will be very different in style, does not want to be admired, far from it, but to lead us to Christ. The theme could wear thin very quickly not to mention backfire, if it is over-egged or swift conclusions drawn and I can’t help but wonder how soon we may see the satirists draw unkind Uriah Heep portraits. My mind drifted back to how Fluck and Law of Spitting Image portrayed Pope John Paull II, with a shudder.

Pope Benedict XVI was the one who laid the groundwork in terms of demystifying the papacy, not least by resigning it. His several books that were written in his own name, alongside his prolonged interview with Peter Seewald in Light of the World, in which he let people into his own personal reflections, showed, that in his words upon his election in 2005, that he was ‘a simple worker in the vinyard of the Lord’. Pope Francis seems to have the ability to breathe new life into the Church, he seems to be the right man at the right moment, he could do for the Papacy what Princess Diana did for the Royals, not forgetting that Diana’s charism with the poor and the sick was, however inadvertently, following in Christ’s footsteps, Francis is clearly able to speak from the heart, off the cuff, to rip up formal protocols and win hearts and minds for Christ, but he may not have been able to do so, if Benedict had not already shown the way. Pope Francis is very much what the church is aching for, but the likes of Cardinal Mahoney ought to remember that it was thanks to the Emeritus Pope, that this has been made possible. If we are to remember that the papacy is not a personality cult, then we also need to remember to keep some of our admiration and respect in proportion, before going overboard about a people’s pope. I think Pope Francis will do great things for us, but only if we give him the space, instead of projecting our own interpretation onto him.

As for the matters liturgical, I hate to rain on Rorate Caeli’s parade, but it seems to me, they are forgetting one vitally important point here, in that like everybody else, the Pope is a servant of the liturgy. I know liturgy matters, I’m not a traditionalist, but equally I appreciate the importance of the liturgy in orientating us towards Christ and subjugating our will to His. Liturgy is not about how we “feel” and what gives us the warm and fuzzies, but worshiping God as he has instructed us to do so , in a way that is noble, reverent, respectful, transcendent and mysterious. I guess I’m torn on this, because whilst appreciating the desire for a simpler style, there is a part of me that thinks, look, the Vatican has all these wonderful vestments in its various wardrobes, they aren’t going to sell them, go on, they might as well use the sparkly threads every once in a while. The whole thing is very hard to get right. One doesn’t want vestments that are just so ornate and dazzlingly beautiful that they detract from what’s going on in the Mass, equally we don’t want vomit inducing ’70s lairy florescent vulgar murals, neither does one want a priest that appears almost liturgically naked, his very simplicity being a statement and thus a distraction. The mystery and nobility needs to be retained, but I’m absolutely no expert, I’ve no idea how. It would clearly be a shame if Benedict’s reforms went by the wayside, his papacy was about making sure that the entire Church faced in the same direction, towards God (one of the reasons I’m all in favour of ad orientem) and Pope Francis will continue what Benedict did for the liturgy, in terms of prayer and action.

On the subject on nobility, though it’s as the result of a happy accident, I think we also do need to remember that the Pope is also the Head of State (albeit small), a role which enables the Holy See to achieve a vast amount in terms of international relations and behind-the-scenes negotiations and peace agreements so it is only right and proper that a certain respect is accorded to him in this office. Back to the unprepossessing bishops that I can think of, I think we need to remember that even though one may live simply and reflect this in dress or manner of transport, the dignity of office, the fact that a bishop, cardinal or Pope is one of Peter’s apostles, should never ever be forgotten. I know Anglicans who have often been flummoxed by this, forgetting that an appearance can often belie the office. One of the interesting contrasts I find between the Anglican and Catholic bishops I know, is that the Anglicans are all about the ecclesial purple and pectoral crosses and piping, the Catholic Bishops tend to be a lot more discreet in their dress, often leading to others perhaps treating them with inappropriate informality and yet Catholic bishops hold infinitely more power over their diocese than their Anglican counterparts. The commentators on Rorate Caeli need to remember exactly who they are talking about and the allegiance which is owed to him, Pope Francis has the keys of St Peter, the power to bind and lose.

None of this is to diss our new pontiff, but more to add a note of caution. Yes, we should be delighted that so far, the signs are looking promising, but Joseph Shaw has wise words on Papolatry and prudence. I can see attacks on the Church, on our new Holy Father really intensifying in the near future, from all quarters, including from within, as we have already seen. Whilst I take CS Lewis’ guidance to heart about the equal and opposite errors with regards to thinking about the devil, it seems to me that the reaction, the anger, whether that be from Rorate Caeli, the liberal press or hostile Anglicans, seems to flow from one cause. We have a great new Pope, who promises so much in terms of the New Evangelisation and the reinvigoration of the church. One who is going to re-sanctify the church and bring Christ to the world, especially the poor, sick, the needy, the elderly and the unborn in the twenty-first century. Not only that, technically we have TWO Popes, no matter how bizarre that seems. Not one pope, but two. One who will be actively leading us in prayer and holiness and another former pope, who will be storming the heavens on behalf of the church, with a life of prayer and penance. Think about that for a moment. I said in a previous post that we had two-for the-price of one in Pope Francis, with the merger of the Jesuit and Franciscan. Actually we have that in an actual physical sense, two popes together working for the church although in very different ways. One public and one private. They are even meeting privately next week, in order that Benedict may pass on some of his wisdom and experience to help Pope Francis in some of the difficult decisions. This is unprecedented stuff.

The power of two extraordinarily holy, deeply spiritual and wise men, leading the faithful in prayer. It can be no surprise that someone is angry, someone is furious, whenever great good happens, retaliation always occurs. Someone else has got Francis fever, which is why we need to all be on guard.

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(Oh and as aside, to the critics who are claiming that the Church’s teaching on sexuality and priestly celibacy is misguided because it’s difficult but who are lauding the Pope’s zeal for the poor. The response to which is doing what is right, is not always the same as what is easy. I wonder what they would make of being informed that technically they should be giving at least 10% of their income away to charity. That’s not easy either, especially in these troubled times, but does that mean that it’s equally quite so misguided and wrong? If chastity and celibacy are wrong because they are allegedly difficult and challenging then why doesn’t giving a significant proportion of your income away, fall into the same category?)

The media and a cheeky little grumble

Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t been posting over the past few weeks, even though there has been no shortage of material. The main reason for this has been the time that I spend writing (usually evenings) has been taken up with vast amounts of reading around the conclave process, its history and the background of the various papabili in preparation for any media appearances which may crop up. Catholic Voices has really come into its own during these momentous weeks, many of the speakers have done a tremendous job in terms of informing the media and general public and one thing that I have noticed from my contributions, is that the attitude of the media certainly seems to have softened and become a lot less hostile and more open to a reasoned Catholic viewpoint, although there are occasions when one finds oneself addressing the same old canards again and again.

Whilst there will always be the same detractors, the one thing that should be borne in mind, is that despite the excellent and rigorous training and preparation for what it is like to be in the hot seat, there is no substitute for experience. The more media appearances you do, the more confident, relaxed and skilled you become at the whole process, so those who vociferously complain in the various coms boxes really need to bear this in mind before they let rip. I can certainly see an improvement and marked contrasts between my recent interviews and those of a year ago. It isn’t always easy being subject to scrupulous, superficial and often ignorant scrutiny when one has a microphone or camera trained on you. In most of these situations, nuance or an in-depth detailed theological discussion is impossible. Very often, such recently on the Big Questions, it’s superficial scattergun apologetics, bouncing from one neuralgic issue to the next, to the next, with no time for considered thoughtful answers. The opening shot of an interview I did yesterday was “well you obviously follow Catholic teaching on contraception then, you’ve got 4 children”. It then went down the usual rabbit holes and on reflection, I can see how at times I missed my chance to refocus the interview on the Pope, but it’s pretty difficult to concentrate when one is being poked in the eye with a sharp stick. But on another occasion, God Willing, I’ll be able to handle that better, having learnt.

I did an interview the other morning for Radio Merseyside, having woken up for the early morning interview chock full of cold and lurgy. It proved our saying, you are never as good or as bad as you think you are (I thought it was absolutely terrible), but judging by the stat counter on my blog, I’d obviously confused the listener by using the word pallium, without explaining what this was. Several people arrived here having asked google about “Caroline Farrow’s pallium”. I then received some friendly advice about not using specific liturgical terminology. ‘The problem is’, they explained, ‘that nobody knows what a pallium is. They probably spent the rest of the interview highly distracted wondering what a pallium was, how big is it, did he mean to leave it there and did he ever get it back. What happened to it? Is it like something out of Dr Who’. Which is fair comment and goes to show that for certain audiences, detailed complex theological or philosophical concepts are going to go way over people’s heads and prove counterproductive. But by the time I’d done 11 back-to-back interviews for local radio the other Sunday, I think I’d pretty much got the issues down pat and nailed, the only difficulty being attempting to make the same sentiments sound fresh after 2 and a half hours of non stop opining. As long as one can relax and enjoy the interview and realise that the presenter actually wants to find you winsome, a bit of jocularity goes down a lot better than jargon-heavy hectoring and might actually motivate people to find out more.

We’re in the realms of cloud cluckoo land if we think a short slot on local radio should aim to deliver the thunderbolt that sends the listeners rushing to their nearest confessional, certainly the common theme in both my journey of faith and those that Catholic converts have shared with me is not necessarily one incident but whole series of interlocking events that looked at as a whole, formed a path leading to the truth. A compelling media appearance can certainly play a part in that, but a 3 minute slot is not going to have the same effect as an hour’s talk or presentation by a great Christian or Catholic apologist.

The last few weeks have been something of a roller-coaster for us all. We’ve barely had time to come to terms with the resignation surrounding our beloved Pope Benedict, before getting into the swing of the conclave and the speculation surrounding his successor. On a personal note, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been rushed off my feet preparing for interviews, which not only takes it toll in terms of time but also emotional energy as well as, for someone like me, logistics. It’s not especially easy to arrange childcare at short notice when one’s husband is miles away at seminary and family needs to come first. I was really disappointed to have to turn down Sky News on the day of Benedict’s final general audience, but Robin had his official formal interview and feedback for the diaconate, which was infinitely more important. And let’s face it, doing the big media stuff is always fun and challenging, even if nerve-wracking, although one really needs to be on guard for spiritual vanity, which is one of the consequences of this kind of work and a trap which I really do have to work very hard not to fall into. If readers could continue to pray not only for me, but for all of us who try to speak for our faith in whatever medium, it would be hugely appreciated. We always make sure that we have a prayer chain of folk praying for us before we go on air and in the final moments before the camera switches on, I always clear my mind and pray.

But now onto the grumble and observation. Last week, I had word that the BBC were looking to fly me out to Rome to be a part of their coverage for the conclave. To say that I was beyond excited is something of an understatement. Robin and I agreed that if it were possible, given that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, that we should do whatever we could to make it happen, hence I had a week of rushing about like a headless chicken, and a precise timetable of chores, involving making sure that two of the children could stay with their grandparents, clothes were meticulously laundered into handy piles, favourite cuddlies and books stockpiled and packed, along with bibs, beakers and all the various paraphanalia to ensure that life was as easy as possible both for them and my parents at the other end. A rota of other parents were enlisted to pick up the eldest from school and various favours called in, whilst in the middle of the week I made an eight hour journey to Peterborough and back to procure a passport to enable me to take the baby, as well as beginning to acclimatise her to taking a bottle of formula milk, in case the passport did not arrive in time and/or to make life easier whilst out there.

In between all the dashing about, I waited and there was nothing. No confirmation of what was happening or response to an email asking whether the trip was still on. As is their prerogative and their right, the BBC decided to change their line-up and were too preoccupied to respond. That’s fair enough really, it’s entirely up to them who they wished to cover the event and my childcare and personal arrangements are irrelevant and none of their concern. This kind of thing happens all the time – we need to be ego free, prepared to be dropped at a moment’s notice, but it was more than a little frustrating having to put in place a complicated contingency plan should I suddenly be asked to get on a flight at moment’s notice. Of course I could always have said no from the outset, but the BBC had asked specifically for a woman and the other candidates were already indisposed. Naturally I wanted to go, if at all possible. But it wasn’t to be.

Then to add salt into my wounds, the phone rang on Wednesday night, between the appearance of the white smoke and Pope Francis on the balcony, asking whether or not I would be able to appear on Newsnight. Robin said fine, he’d put the kids to bed and I ran to jump in the shower, with BBC News playing on full volume on the radio. Having made myself look vaguely presentable, I then sat there for a few hours, having spoken to the producer of the show, trying to stop the children from smearing sticky fingers and spilling milk all over my only clean suit, waiting for him to phone back and confirm that a car was on its way, having pressed on him that one needed to come quickly if it was going to get me from Brighton to London in time. All the while trying to compose myself as well as some cogent thoughts about our new pontiff. At 9pm, an hour before I was supposed to be at the studio, no car had come, so I rang the show, only to discover that they had decided to drop me in favour of two priests and had forgotten to ring me back and tell me.

So all dressed up, tons of adrenlin and nowhere to go. Which happens, it’s incredibly frustrating, part and parcel of life and every single Catholic Voice will have a similar story about being dropped at the last minute, it’s not the first time it has happened, it won’t be the last and is all part of being ego free, but nonetheless I was feeling a little antsy and fed up yesterday, having invested a great deal of time and emotional energy. It is disappointing when that happens, especially when one has built oneself up. So another thing to remember next time one sees anyone on television or on radio. We’re all members of the laity, we’re not full-time professional media commentators, we’ve all got lives and families of our own and we do this work gladly out of love for the church and though we undoubtedly enjoy what we do and strive to do well, it does entail sacrifice, and this week was something of a double-whammy in terms of building up expectation and adrenalin, only to come crashing back down again. I obviously need to take a leaf out of our new pontiff’s book in terms of humility.

So moaning aside, and yes this is admittedly a minor personal grumble although I am sufficiently recovered and able to take disappointment in my stride, what I find most interesting about this, is that the BBC, who are usually preoccupied with diversity and representation and who repeatedly question the Catholic Church in terms of whether or not it represents women, have on two occasions in its recent coverage, ignored the opportunity to represent the viewpoint of an ordinary faithful Catholic woman in the church, in favour of men. I’m loath to draw any conclusions about political agendas, sometimes these things just happen without reason, but I can’t help but wonder whether or not a dissenting or ‘liberal’ Catholic woman would have made a more compelling narrative? I think it’s why they were keen to interview me over the celibacy controversy and found that they didn’t quite get what they were bargaining for.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Catholic TV station EWTN had Colleen Campbell doing an excellent job covering events. Whereas the UK media’s coverage was predominantly male-dominated. In some ways that doesn’t bother me, I’m not one for shortlists, it should be whoever is best able to do the job, regardless of gender and certainly in the case of Newsnight, Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith was his usual erudite and charming self. But next time the BBC wishes to berate the Catholic Church over its representation and treatment of women, it perhaps ought to look at the predominant gender of who it chose to represent the faithful in their coverage of the past few weeks.

Still it’s all part of life’s rich tapestry and an additional Lenten penance. I’m now due for a bit of a rest, unless anyone fancies subbing me a quick flight out in time for the inaugural Mass…

A Tale of Two Francis

Here is the full unedited version of a piece I wrote for Mercatornet on our new Holy Father.

The world’s Catholics are reeling with the shock election of the Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as the new successor to Peter, even the most seasoned Vaticanistas were not predicting that the runner-up to Ratzinger in the 2005 Conclave was a serious contender, his age and his Jesuit background both seemed to count against him.

Surprise swiftly melted into joy, excitement, anticipation and gratitude upon confirmation that age is clearly no barrier to innovation for the former Cardinal, as signified by his choice of name – the first Pope Francis in almost 2,000 years of Church history.

The name Francis is an indicator as to the future direction of a papacy which will have the themes of simplicity, humility, discipline, reform, rebirth and outreach at its heart. Not only do we have the first ever Pope from Latin America, but in Pope Francis we have something of a two-for-the-price of one, with a fusion of two major religious orders, whose founders both heralded a period of Church renewal and reform. Bergoglio could well prove to be a man for all seasons, combining the spiritual discipline of St Ignatius of Loyola with the humility and simplicity of St Francis of Assisi.

One of the defining qualities of the Jesuit order is that they don’t mess around and always mean business – something that could prove very useful for a Pope for whom reform of the Curia, the Vatican’s bureaucratic arm, is high on the agenda. The recent Vatileaks brouhaha was a symptom of the internecine factionalism that currently besets and hinders this small, but essential part of the Church from running in as efficient a manner as possible. A Pope who could be both governor and enforcer was one of the prerequisite criteria and a key theme emerging from the General Congregations, the meetings that preceded the Conclave. A religious order with a reputation for getting down to business , sorting wheat from the chaff seems to be exactly what the doctor ordered, and those who might doubt whether or not he possess the passion to bang heads together, ought to remember his scorching attack on clericalism, just six months ago in September 2012, when he denounced priests who refused to baptise the babies born outside marriage, as being guilty of “rigorous and hypocritical clericalism”. Pope Francis has no time for what he deems “the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church”.

All of which augurs well, as does his track record of swiftly appointing loyal bishops to troubled dioceses – the Catholic church is not a top-down organisation and depends upon good local governance. Rapid deployment of strong faithful intelligent bishops is key to rooting out decay and planting the seeds of the future.

John Allen, the veteran Vatican observer, has wondered whether or not Bergoglio’s lack of solid experience inside the Vatican itself would prove an obstacle, but an outsider with an Ignatian passion for rigorous discipline and an agenda for change, wholly untainted by insider corruption or personal interests, is ideally placed to implement the much needed root and branch reform. Pope Francis has previous form when it comes to taking action. He rose to prominence following his appointment as the provincial of the Jesuit order in Argentina in 1973, and unlike other Church leaders refused to back the country’s military dictatorship. He held firm against the rising tide of liberation theology sweeping Latin America, discouraging priests from political activism and insisted that Jesuits continued to staff the parishes and chaplaincies where they were needed instead of forming communities. Bergoglio’s insistence on obedience and stamping out of heterodoxy and dissent won him some local enemies, but indicates a desire to get things done, and is a trait that will stand him in good stead when it comes to continuing to root out what the Emeritus Pope Benedict described as the filth of the child abuse scandals, that have rocked the Church in recent years. There can be no doubt that Pope Francis will continue to act with an iron fist when it comes to sorting out sexual transgressions and there will be no room for cover-up. His struggle against the military government of Argentina together with the rise of liberal theology prefigures the battle against the pervasive rise of moral relativism in an increasingly secular West. “After a battle” he reportedly said, “you have to act firmly”.

The previous two pontiffs can be characterized as theological powerhouses, whose teaching was reinforced by a vast canon of personal writings and both of whom could be studied as philosophers and theologians in their own right. Following thirty-five years of academic reflection, many have felt that now is the time for some intellectual breathing space, to give the faithful time to digest and apply what we have been taught by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who unpacked and applied the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Whilst Pope Francis is no intellectual slouch – he trained as a chemist, before joining the priesthood, he has an undisguised passion for literature having taught the subject at University level alongside psychology, philosophy and theology and in true Jesuit tradition has encouraged priests to exercise their cerebral and artistic gifts, few people can pack the cerebral punch of Carol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger.

Bergolio’s election is nonetheless a manifestation of the growing desire to see a different style of papacy, one that teaches and leads through its actions as well as words. It can be no surprise that a Cardinal noted for his humility and love of the poor has chosen St Francis of Assisi, the man who reformed the church through simplicity, as his namesake. Of humble origin, born of an Italian immigrant railway worker, Jorge Bergoglio has eschewed all trappings of office, avoiding media interviews and urging people not to spend money on plane tickets to Rome to celebrate his election to the Cardinalate in 2001, but instead to give the money to the poor. Instead of living in a lavish episcopal mansion in Buenos Aires, he chose instead to live in a small apartment where he cooked his own meals, did his own housework and took the bus around town visiting the poor, rather than a chauffeur driven limousine. True to form, following his election to the papacy, he chose to take the bus back to the hotel instead of using the Holy Father’s car, to spend one final night with the cardinals and emerged suitcases in hand in the hotel lobby, to pay his own bill.

In an era that is reaping the consequences of globalisation and the ravages of a rampant unchecked capitalism, the Christian message of concern for the poor and of social injustice is of paramount import. In Francis, we have a Pope who embodies the compassion of Christ, whether that be by kissing the feet of AIDS victims, or rolling up his sleeves and going out and ministering to the poor, accompanied by a rhetoric that denounces the failures of neo-liberalism.

One of the frustrating aspects of the papacy of the Pope Emeritus was that his constant critiques of an economy based on individualistic greed and mind-blowing masterclasses on natural law and reason were subsumed and ignored by a media only interested in sexual ethics and scandal. Pope Benedict’s problem was not that he was by any means ineffective, it is thanks to him that the Catholic Church now sets the gold standard in terms of child protection issue, but that self-promotion was not his forte and the Vatican failed to communicate the extensive measures that had been taken and neither did they initially understand the nature of a rolling global 24/7 media. At times it appeared that the Vatican press office consisted of an elderly telegraph machine and answerphone, allowing, in the words of Mark Twain, a lie to travel half way around the world, whilst the truth was still putting its shoes on.

The willingness to engage with the media could potentially pose one of the few problems for this naturally modest yet deeply spiritual man. Yet from the moment that the world caught of a glimpse of the new Pope it was clear, that whilst not possessing the natural charisma or showmanship of John Paul II, his prayerful nature demonstrated by breaking with tradition and asking the crowd to pray for him, before giving the customary blessing, this simplicity will be precisely how he will win hearts and minds in the New Evangelisation. Pope Francis is a man whose actions will demonstrate that he is all substance over what will be a very humble style.

Pope Francis has something for everyone, a seamless garment- a man who straddles all aspects of a diverse church, a man who holds the concepts of social justice as close to his heart as issues surrounding the unborn, the elderly and the protection of the nuclear family. His first papal blessing was given to a pregnant woman who happened to have got up early to pray at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he too had gone to pray before the Roman image of the Mother of God. Pope Francis, will be a pope of the people, leading the way forward by example in prayer and in a lifestyle of simple humility.

Whilst there is some concern amongst traditionalists in terms of liturgical preferences, there is no reason to believe that he will be openly hostile to the reforms of Summorum Pontificorum – frankly he has bigger fish to fry and is too canny to alienate a significant proportion of the world’s faithful. Although yesterday’s Mass may have caused some facepalming amongst those delighted in Pope Benedict’s liturgical reform of the reform (‘Holy Father I love you already, but what’s with the polyester and freestanding altar’ said one friend), whilst Pope Francis may see a temporary return to practices that some may have hoped were on the decline, I think we have to remember that if he wishes to face the people, or changes the Benedictine altar set-up, it’s simply because he wants the people to see Christ – it is with good heart and intent, not because he has some secret liturgical agenda.

Though 76 and with only one lung, Pope Francis still has plenty of life to breathe into the Church, combining the evangelical zeal of St Francis Xavier, with the reforming simplicity good works and love of the poor of St Francis of Assisi. Whilst the Church may not be in ruins, this holy man from the South may be just the breath of fresh air that it needs. Jesuit decision-maker and political negotiator melded with poor mendicant friar will sow the seeds for a twenty-first century Catholic revival, in a world grown jaded and weary with the selfish excesses of consumerism. Catholics will need to start putting their money where their mouths are.

Pope Francis on an Argentinian tube — Snapped unaware on the Tube

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