Every Which Way but One

On BBC Radio 4 on 9 September 2010 a journalist called Mark Dowd presented an interesting survey of the different voices within the Catholic Church in Britain. In a passage dealing with the attitudes of the young, Mr.Dowd visited St.Benedict's Catholic School in Derby, and questioned two teenage students, shortly to form part of a delegation of young people who were to meet the Pope, and then Father Joe Wheat, the Director of Youth Services in the Nottinghamshire Diocese. Here is the text of the interviews copied town as accurately as I could record them:

Dowd: Are you a practising catholic?
First Student: Yes I am;
Dowd: And what does being a catholic mean to you?
First Student: Like just being a part of something, and that especially there's like a community, and being able to express yourself, and you know I love him (the Pope), I just love him;
Dowd: If you had a few words in his ear, and could give him some advice, what would you say to him?
First Student: I don't know, I don't think he understands that we're quite in the 21st Century yet, and that some of his views are quite outdated - things that he's said about abortion, and, like, same sex marriages.
Dowd: It's quite hard to imagine the Pope changing his mind about abortion and same sex marriages, isn't it?
First Student: I know, I don't think he ever will, despite how many people write letters to him.
Dowd: Do you think it's possible to be a catholic and pro-abortion and in favour of same sex marriages?
First Student: Erm, yeah, I think it is, I know I certainly am, and I don't have any, like, problem with admitting that being a catholic.
Second Student: I think that, yeah, the community aspects of the religion are fantastic, the stuff that's more 'Love thy neighbour' and more social is definitely right, correct to believe in, but I think some of the stuff that's a bit restricting, things almost like chastity and things like that - I think the best thing about being a catholic is, erm, the fact that you can pick and choose which bits you'd like to believe in as long as you kind of worship God, really.

Father Joe Wheat: 'You talk to 50 young people who would refer to themselves as Catholic and you'll get 50 different versions of catholicism - which is brilliant: I think it's fantastic, actually. I think young people are happy to refer to themselves as being part of the Catholic Church; when push comes to shove, they will refer to themselves as Catholic; a lot of their life as a Catholic is not exactly pick and mix, or pick and choose, but there would be a certain distance with some of them from what you might say is the traditional way of being a Catholic. So, for example, young people who say 'I am a catholic' might go to their local parish a couple of times a year, or for granny's funeral or their niece's baptism or whatever, but they wouldn't be there every Sunday and that wouldn't be seen particularly as much of an issue for them.
Dowd: 'A lot of students we spoke to mentioned contraception, aborton, homosexuality - can they, in your view, maintain views that are contrary to Church Teaching but still call themselves good Catholics?
Father Joe Wheat: 'It depends on what your measure of good catholic is, when you say 'good catholic.'
Dowd: 'What's your measure?'
Father Joe Wheat: (laughs) 'I don't have one, erm, I try not to make value judgments about people's catholicism because I don't want them making value judgments about mine. If young people are grappling and struggling with issues, and they are asking questions and exploring them, then that is what I would expect of Catholics young and old; that if you've got a young person that's struggling with an aspect of Church Teaching then the worst thing to do is to say, well, you believe that or your out, or your not a good catholic as the next person who happens to be able to accept that and believe it quite easily. It is very dangerous to do that because otherwise there'll be very empty churches.

Among the various impressions made upon me by these interviews was the absolute insouciance, ignorance and indifference of the students.

It was quite apparent that while they knew that there was something controversial about contraception, abortion, homosexuality and same sex marriages, they did not know what the real nature of the controversy was. For the First Student, the view that there was something wrong with these things was, quite simply, outdated, and if the Pope held that view, then he didn't understand that 'we' were living in the 21st Century. As for the Second Student, he, approved the social doctrines of the Church, but didn't care for those that restricted personal liberty in sexual matters. He thought the 'good thing' about catholicism was that you could choose to 'believe in some bits and not in others', as long as you worshipped God.

Equally astonishing was the insouciance, evasiveness, special pleading, and self-declared relativism of Father Joe.

Father Joe thought it was 'brilliant' that there was no single view of catholicism, but that people would nevertheless 'call themselves' catholics 'if push came to shove'. But what the students actually said was that although they were happy to call themselves Catholics, they probably wouldn't behave like them, 'if push came to shove.' Instead they'd decide for themselves what their Catholicism meant. The Second Student says in terms that the good thing about Catholicism is that you could pick and choose the bits that you wanted to believe in , thereby expressly contradicting Father Joe's assertion that this was not, 'exactly' what his young people believed.

For Father Joe, regular Sunday Mass could be perceived as a 'traditional' expression of the Catholic faith, and one not likely to be a 'particular issue' for young people who would probably turn up once or twice a year, for granny's funeral, or for a neice's christening - much as they do in the Anglican Church.

As for the views of the young on contraception, abortion, homosexuality and same sex marriages, Father Joe felt that it was inappropriate to 'make value judgments' , let alone lay down the law to people whom he suggested were 'grappling and struggling with issues' or 'asking questions and exploring them'. If we grant the slightly doubtful premise that 'wrestling' with doctrine is a better index of sincerity than accepting it, this might have been an interesting argument. The trouble is that the students drawn from Father Joe's mission conveyed no impression whatsoever of 'grappling and struggling with issues', or even with 'asking questions and exploring them'. They had simply absorbed the views current in the secular world around them, and if the Pope didn't agree, it was because he just wasn't living in the same world as they were - a fact upon which we can all, I think, agree.

In other words, the question wasn't one of faith at all, but essentially one of fashion, and that, in the end, was what Father Joe was endorsing. And why? Because, said Father Joe, it is very 'dangerous' to make people feel that by failing to accept doctrine, theyare falling short of what is required of a practising catholic. And why dangerous? Apparently because those who came to Church twice a year or so to bury a grandmother or to christen a neice, might end up not coming to Church at all.

What is particularly remarkable in all this is the inadequacy of the reasons given for Father Joe's apparent abnegation that his is in any way a teaching office. As far as he is concerned, 50 different views of the Faith which he exists to serve is 'brilliant' - although I am more inclined to agree with him when he uses the word 'fantastic' - for believing 50 different things about a single thing goes into a world of fantasy way beyond anything recommended by the Red Queen in 'Through the Looking Glass'. And it must be admitted that there are sufficient ambiguities in the attachment of the word 'good' to the word 'Catholic' to allow a number of different, and perfectly valid queries about what exactly such a description is meant to convey. Father Joe may well be hinting at Our Lord's injunction that we 'Judge not' that we be not judged ourselves. 'For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again' (Mtt.7.1-). But to keep people in ignorance of their faith is nothing if not wilfully to deprive them of the necessary materials to make properly informed judgments for, and of, themselves.

Typical of the evasiveness of Father Joe's position, is his use of the word 'traditional' in place of the word 'orthodox' . This is because when used in its general sense the word 'traditional' has little in the way of moral connotation - that which is traditional, is simply something that has been established over time as the standard way of doing things. We are all used to the idea that traditions may be foolish, outmoded, superstitious, paradoxical, and ripe for ridicule and timely suppression. But Orthodoxy is different. Orthodoxy is the body of teaching based on the Bible, the Gospel, and the interpretation of both mediated through the Apostles, the Fathers, and by successive rulings of Church Councils on matters of Faith. Orthodoxy is not like tradition: it is not the convenience of a practice sanctified merely by persistence through time. Orthodoxy defines what it means to be a Catholic, and cannot, of its nature be paradoxical, outmoded, or unacceptable except as a matter of choice - and the Greek word ('hairesis') from which the word 'heresy' comes means precisely that.

Let us look, then, at the Orthodoxy which underlies the obligation upon a Catholic to attend Mass on sunday. This obligation arises from the Third Commandment which dids man 'keep holy the Sabbath Day' (Ex.31.15). Jesus Christ endorses that commandment in the gospels, and the Early Church consolidated the original obligation with the celebration of a weekly eucharist. Article 2181 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church declares that failure to attend Mass on days of obligation is a grave sin, and of grave sin it is said that 'if it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal damnation of Hell' (Catechism of the Catholic Church, art.1861). In order to sin in this way, a person must have full knowledge and deliberately consent to it (art.1857). Goodness knows whether the young people interviewed by Mr Dowd, or spoken of by Father Joe, fall into this category, although their hearty declarations of dissent from orthodoxy on other matters, regarded, even now, as more serious still than missing Mass on Sunday rather suggest so.

But what is one to make of the extraordinary complacency of a man like Father Joe, who is not just in a position to advise and instruct, but under an obligation to do so? What, one may ask, is the danger of emptying semi-vacant pews compared with the danger of emptying the Kingdom of Heaven?

Nor is it necessary to insist on a catachesis that has at it's heart the threat of separation from God and eternal damnation: the Catechism explains carefully that it is in the nature of grave sin to coarsen the heart, corrupt the soul, and pervert judgment. Isn't it legitimate to feel at least uneasy about the termination of an individual life which, on the basis of one's general belief, would not exist but for God - a seed which has all the potential to develop, flower, and fruit? Can a person of faith avoid the thought that by taking a life into his own hands, Man takes that life out of the hands of God? For a catholic - for a christian - isn't the issue one that needs to be considered not in the contexts of liberties, rights and social norms, but in terms of the individual's relationship with God - in terms of the God in whom one believes, the God whom one loves, the God whose purposes and will it is for his people to learn, to accept and to implement?

And, in relation to te Mass, should it not be enough to remind people that they owe their own existence, and the existence of the world, and of the people whom they love to the God in whom they believe? Is it so much to ask them to set aside aside one day a week to give thanks for that fact by abandoning the worldly considerations of six other days, and to spend and hour or so in Church? Is that really something that they should only do because not doing so can be said to put them in peril of eternal damnation? Should they nor rather feel motivated by a simple sense of gratitude and the desire to give thanks? Might they not, if someone were to take the trouble to explain the basis of the doctrine, and not just the doctrine itself, respond like the Psalmist who was ' glad when they said unto' him 'Let us go into the house of the Lord' (Ps.122.1), and who said 'a day in thy Courts is better than a thousand' and who felt that he, 'had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of ' his 'God, then to dwell in the tents of wickedness' (Ps.84.10).

Is our opinion of the young so low, that we feel that they cannot be instructed, that they will not respond to instruction, and that they will not be moved by appeals to something higher than their immediate appetites and the shallow prejudices that condition the coarse and complacent culture by which they are surrounded?

The clergy have recently been under a lot of pressure for the vile sins committed by some of their number, and the shameful complicity of others in seeking to deny, conceal or ignore those sins. Those who hear a clergyman talking in the way that Father Joe talks, and who have the curiosity to investigate what he says, and who find that what he says does not correspond with the formal teachings of the Church of which he is a servant, are likely to find themselves wondering whether there is any neglect of duty that a catholic priest of this type cannot forgive himself. Those of us who know what the Church teaches, and who contribute to its upkeep, can only feel shame and indignation at this betrayal of its truths and the abuse of young minds - perhaps Father Joe and those like him should re-assess his attitude to judgment by dwelling less on Matthew 7.1-2, and more on Matthew 18.6.