Archbishop Nichols gives a lead on gay marriage

Thank you to Fr Ray Blake for publishing the full text of Archbishop Nichols' pastoral letter on gay marriage.  Go here to read it.

My feeling is that it's a firm but reasonable letter, stating the case clearly and calmly.  No-one can accuse it of being a "rant" but neither is it at all ambiguous. It is to be read out in all parishes of Westminster diocese this weekend; Lawrence England on his blog tells us that it is being circulated amongst parishes in the other dioceses of England & Wales too.  I certainly hope we will hear about it in ours.

Marriage: who's it for?

Alastair Roberts: courtesy Bump Babies Beyond

I'm going to dip my toe into the stormy waters of the gay marriage debate once more, because I think this article that appeared on Bump Babies Beyond over the weekend is very good.  Written by a PhD student at Durham University, Alastair Roberts, it makes a useful distinction between two ways of looking at the definition of marriage and from this explains why a commonly-held definition (as opposed to different individuals or sectors of society holding different ones) is important.

One position, which would be supported by defenders of gay marriage, can be defined as "additive" in character.  This means that the current definition of marriage can be "enlarged" to include a class of couple not currently included, without infringing on the rights of those already included.  The second position is "ecological" in nature.  As Alastair puts it, "Gay marriage does not just ‘extend’ marriage to a wider set of persons, leaving the institution itself fundamentally unchanged. Rather, gay marriage changes what marriage is for society as a whole: it alters the DNA of the institution itself."

Marriage is not simply a question of the private affections and interests of two individuals, or even the public celebration of their affection.  It is a public institution with ramifications for social structure and stability and the nurture of our future generations.  Its function in society transcends the interests of the two individuals who are getting married; that is why we need to consider carefully as to whether we can really consider its definition to be expandable, or whether the current definition is in fact reflecting an ecological reality beyond power of law to alter. (In Christian terms this roughly corresponds, in a sociological context, to the "natural law" argument, as alluded to by Fr Ray Blake today on his blog.) I will not attempt to repeat what Roberts says much better in his article; please read the original!

For Christians and pro-lifers there is another important consideration.  A homosexual couple wishing to bring up children, unless they adopt, will have to conceive via an "assisted" means like artificial insemination or IVF, using a surrogate mother in the case of a male couple.  These means of conception are an issue in themselves, as a future post will consider.

Buy a brick, build an extension, support life!

Pro-Life work is often greatly misconstrued as being a 'one trick pony' so-to-speak, with a large number of people thinking that all we do is campaign against abortion. Whilst that is, of course, a fundamentally important part of our work there is so much more to it than that. As the name "pro-life" itself indicates we are dedicated to supporting, respecting and cherishing life in all its forms. Any one of us can become vulnerable and in need of support at any point in our lives and it is part of our work to help anyone and everyone through thick and thin. Our aim is to promote the wonderful beauty and dignity of each person no matter who they are and one way in which we are doing that is promoting Aila's Fund.

As I have previously posted Aila has Friedreich's Ataxia, a neurological disorder which affects her balance, mobility and speech, and is in desperate need of a downstairs bedroom and bathroom since climbing the stairs several times a day is not only difficult but also very dangerous. I'm extremely pleased to report that support so far has been overwhelmingly generous. Thank you all so very, very much, you are all quite marvellous and I know that Aila and her family are immensely grateful to each and every one of you. The opening event, the cake stall, was a great success and we hope that this will continue with our other events throughout the year.

Some of you will have noticed the recent addition of a PayPal Donate button on the sidebar. This is a direct link to Aila's Fund and allows you to donate to the build without having to write a cheque or send money in the post. It's very easy, 100% secure and your personal bank/card details are never disclosed (PayPal pride themselves on their customer security.) If you would like to make a personal donation then please use the button.

The next step in raising the £16,000 needed to build this extension is our newly launched "Buy a Brick" campaign. This is a wonderful way of giving directly to the Fund (especially if you aren't able to make it to the events) and makes you a part of Aila's future and well being. With each brick you "buy" through making a donation, you will receive a personalised certificate thanking you for your contribution (so please do leave us your name and address so we can send it to you) and for those who buy either the small or big blocks of bricks you will also receive one of our wristbands saying; "I'm supporting Aila's Fund." The suggested donations for the bricks are as follows;

1 brick: £5.00

3 bricks: £12.00

5 bricks: £20.00

Small block of bricks (10 bricks): £40.00

Big block of bricks (25 bricks): £100.00

(Donate using the PayPal button.)

Very soon (within the next fortnight) we will be making our new "I'm supporting Aila's Fund" silicone wristbands available for a suggested donation of £1.00 each (plus £0.50 for 1st Class postage).  They come in a variety of colours. Please do order one (via the PayPal button) and show the world that you are making a difference in the life of this young woman.

When making donations with the Button for bricks or wristbands, please state what you are donating towards (a brick, wristband etc) and your postal details - you should be able to use PayPal's message facility to do this.

And last but by no means least we have our parish photo shoot coming up in only a couple of weeks. Robert Bousfield (who took the lovely photos of Aila and recently did a shoot for families at St. John's primary school) will be hosting fifteen minute photo sessions for individuals and families in rooms 2/3 of the parish hall on Saturday 24th March. He is a professional photographer who produces excellent quality shots for very reasonable prices. You will love the results! Call 01403 257059 to book your slot.

Babies give us our value, not the other way round

The big pro-life news today is, of course, the report by two Oxford university medical ethicists, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, suggesting that "post birth abortion" is morally licit.  This, according to these ethicists, is because newborn babies are not actually people.  Human, yes, but simply being human doesn't by itself make you a person.  Not even if you're 21 or 81, according to criteria developed by ethicists who have influenced Giubilini and Minerva.  More on that later.

This paper, entitled After birth abortion: why should the baby live? and published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, only focuses on the personhood status of newborns.  A newborn - the authors claim - is morally equivalent to a foetus, i.e. is not a true person in their eyes, because it lacks the mental development to appreciate the value of its life (a major ground of this appreciation seems to be the ability to make future aims) and will not therefore be harmed by being deprived of this life.  This means that a range of factors which would constitute grounds for abortion are also valid reasons to kill the newborn child - for example severe disability or posing a threat to the mental wellbeing of the mother.  Because the baby has no inherent value as a person in itself, it only has the value someone else, such as its mother, places upon it.  If she does not feel able to cope with the child and therefore does not attribute value to it as a person, then it has none.  This being so, it is morally permissible to kill a healthy newborn rather than give it up for adoption, if the mother feels she would be more traumatised by having the baby adopted rather than killing it.

A few choice phrases from the report (emphases mine):

"In spite of the oxymoron in the expression, we propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide’, to emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus... rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk. Accordingly, a second terminological specification is that we call such a practice ‘after-birth abortion’ rather than ‘euthanasia’ because the best interest of the one who dies is not necessarily the primary criterion for the choice, contrary to what happens in the case of euthanasia.

"Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’. We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her. This means that many non-human animals (! - but not human babies) and mentally retarded human individuals are persons, but that all the individuals who are not in the condition of attributing any value to their own existence are not persons. Merely being human is not in itself a reason for ascribing someone a right to life.

"Therefore, the rights and interests of the actual people involved should represent the prevailing consideration in a decision about abortion and after-birth abortion.... Actual people's well-being could be threatened by the new (even if healthy) child requiring energy, money and care which the family might happen to be in short supply of."

I appreciate that it is generally bad practice to quote extracts from a report out of context, but I invite you to read the whole thing here and see whether it is any less chilling.

I am grateful to a pro-life colleague for some background information about the report's influences.  The publishing Journal's editor, Julian Savulescu, had his doctorate supervised at Monash University, Melbourne by Peter Singer, who in turn was a disciple of Joseph Fletcher. My colleague wrote that "Savulescu is now Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics which published this paper and also Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University.  One of the authors is affiliated to Monash, the other to the Uehiro Centre."

According to Human Life International, Fletcher was an Episcopalian priest until, in 1960, he saw the light, renounced his belief in God (though apparently remaining an Episcopalian priest), became a founding father of situation ethics and drew up a delightful list of criteria to identify which human beings are persons and which not.  Read them here.  You will notice that if you have an IQ below 40 you are only questionably human (Fletcher drew up his list as qualifying factors for being "human": the terminology has since been adjusted to "personhood"); other factors ruling you out altogether are lack of self-control, a bad grasp of the passage of time, lack of capability to relate to others particularly sexually or romantically, lacking in curiosity, and being either overly rational or overly emotional in character.  One shudders to think of the vast swathes of human beings who would lose their right to life as persons under these definitions. In fact reading the list I couldn't believe anyone would take it seriously... but this latest report shows that they have indeed, deadly seriously.

Of course, as my colleague pointed out when they sent over the information, this is all the result of allowing the definition of personhood to become arbitrary.  It is in fact quite logical that, having once allowed human life to become a person in the true sense of the word at some point after conception rather than at the moment of conception, the point at which personhood (and the attendant right to life) is attained becomes a moveable feast.  It depends on subjective factors, on the situational context, on utilitarian considerations, on the point of view of someone who happens in the case of a particular individual to have been handed the responsibility of attributing value to that individual.  Even the authors of the report being discussed admit that  "it is hard to exactly determine when a subject starts or ceases to be a ‘person’", suggesting that in the case of a healthy newborn this would depend on neurological and psychological examination by the relevant experts.  A nightmare scenario indeed.  Here's the maternity ward and here comes Dr Death to decide whether this baby should live or die...

Giubilini and Minerva talk about the mother attributing value to her newborn child.  We have three children and the youngest is now 16 but I can still remember the sheer wonder of those new little people, flesh of my flesh and of my husband's, being placed in my arms... the indescribable feeling of waking up after my first postnatal sleep and turning in bed to notice afresh, as amazed as though it were for the first time, the acrylic cot with a tiny boy or girl in it.  I had no sense of ascribing value to them.  They were perfect, complete little miracles and they ascribed new value to me.  There was no meaning or value I could add to them that they did not already have, and none that I had any power to take away.  The only variable there could possibly be was my response to that value.

Admittedly, at the time these were picture-perfect births in terms of the situation - happily married parents who were not poor and who very much wanted these children.  Many years later, we were to find out that one of our tiny little miracles had actually been born with faulty genes and was destined for a life of failing mobility and a range of other potential problems.  It wouldn't have made any difference if we'd known then.  She'd have been just as humanly perfect, just as meaningful, with just the same intrinsic value.  And over the past years, thanks to that very genetic error and the special needs that elicit extra love and concern from those around her, the "value added" she has brought to our lives is incalculable.

Giubilini, Minerva, Singer, Fletcher - you've got it wrong.  It isn't us who attributes value and personhood to newborn babies, the disabled or the very elderly.  It is they who endow us with value.

Footnote:
Since writing this post and the one below, I have read two excellent postings on each topic from the Christian point of view on "Christian Medical Comment", here and here. Thank you Peter Saunders for a lucid look at the principles involved coupled with a rallying call to Christian integrity and faithfulness!

Judge rules midwives must cooperate with abortions

News is out today about two Scottish midwives who have just lost their legal battle to opt out of supervising other midwives who are performing abortions.  The Catholic Herald reports on it here.

The midwives "argued that they had never been required to supervise abortion procedures in the past, and that the hospital was asking them to be morally, medically and legally responsible for abortions".  Despite the fact that the Abortion Act 1967 allows for opt-out in the case of conscientious objection - "no person shall be under any legal duty, whether by contract or by any statutory or other legal requirement, to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection" (Section 4(1)), this being only subject to the subsection 4(2) which maintains the person's duty to participate in treatment necessary to save life or prevent grave permanent injury to the pregnant woman's physical or mental health - Lady Smith ruled at the Court of Session in Edinburgh that the midwives' supervisory role was not covered by this clause.

It is difficult to see how overseeing a midwife performing an abortion is not participating in the abortion, which presumably would not go ahead without the correct supervision.  It is surely material cooperation.  Where does such a judgement logically leave a number of other medical personnel with peripheral or facilitatory roles in the abortion process?  There are several roles involving promoting, condoning or cooperating in the abortion other than that of the person who actually performs the act itself.

SPUC have been supporting the women in their case and Paul Tully, SPUC's general secretary, said “We are very disappointed by the judgment. SPUC has supported the midwives in bringing their case, and will now be considering their further legal options with them."

Is the law really an ass, or just prepared to ignore the safeguards it has itself put in place?  The Guild of Catholic Doctors (UK) suggests, "The reality is that there is little any law framed like the Act can do to provide significant safeguards once the concept of abortion becomes acceptable".  Scary stuff.  Please pray for these brave ladies and their battle to uphold the right to follow one's conscience.  It is especially poignant that this judgement is affecting midwives, whose primary role is to help bring new life into the world, not snuff it out.

Loving until it hurts

Gratefully downloaded from Fr Ray Blake's blog

Yesterday was One Of Those Days... and so I am very thankful that God allowed it to be preceded by an experience that was One Of Those Evenings in quite a different sense.  On Monday night four of us (that I know of) from Horsham went down to St Mary Magdalene's RC Church in Brighton, whose 150th anniversary celebrations were started in heavenly style by a celebration of Solemn High Mass of the Holy Ghost (Extraordinary Form).  Our own Fr Richard and Fr Aaron were amongst the priests present.

The Mass was sublime, a genuine foretaste of Heaven, or perhaps rather a kairos moment in which the veils between Heaven and earth dissolve and one is vividly aware of being part of the universal and eternal communion of the Church. It was revelatory for me to hear Schubert's Mass No 2 in G major performed in its intended setting rather than in the context of a concert or CD recording.  There was also a new and spine-tingling composition by composer Tom Bennett having its world premier, Tu es Petrus, and I am inclined to agree with Mulier Fortis who says it made her think of the "terrifying and awe-ful responsibility" that accompanies the office of Pope, echoing down the centuries from Jesus' instigation of the role until the end of our world.

Congratulations to St Mary Magdalene's both on the Mass and on their anniversary!

This was an experience which re-grounded my faith and reminded me of the raison d'etre of everything I do (indeed, of everything I am).  Sometimes the practical challenges and battles of daily life distract and discourage us and we need reminding of the ground of our hope. Another such moment came last week when, in my prayer time, I was reading the Meditation of the Day in Magnificat.  The Gospel (Saturday after Ash Wednesday) was Luke 5:27-32, the calling of Levi, and the meditation was a passage by St Catherine of Siena which had been entitled "What Drew Matthew to Jesus".  St Catherine's answer was, quite simply, love.  As pro-lifers, we can never remind ourselves enough that love should be the "source and the summit" (to re-apply the words from Sacrosanctum Concilium!) of all that we do and say.  Love for the precious, sacred dignity of all human life from conception until natural death.

An excerpt:

Because of its rebellion against God, here are the devils, holding this sheep as their own possession.  Then along comes God's infinite goodness and sees the sheep's sorry state, its ruin and damnation.  He knows he cannot use wrath or war to entice it away from them.  Supreme, eternal Wisdom doesn't want to do it that way, even though the sheep has wronged him... No, he finds a delightful way - the most sweet and loving way possible; for he sees that the human heart is drawn by love as by nothing else, since it is made of love.  This seems to be why human beings love so much, because they are made of nothing but love, body and soul.  In love God created them in his own image and likeness, and in love father and mother conceive and bring forth their children, giving them a share in their own substance.  So God, seeing that humankind is so quick to love, throws out to us right away the hook of love, giving us the Word, his only-begotten Son...

This Word played life against death and death against life in tournament on the wood of the most holy cross, so that by his death he destroyed our death, and to give us life he spent his own bodily life.  With love, then, he has so drawn us and with his kindness so conquered our malice that every heart should be won over... Oh gentle loving Word, with love you recovered your little sheep, and with love gave them life.  You brought them back to the fold by restoring to them the grace they had lost. (St Catherine of Siena)

Humbling words, and a reminder of our own vocation to love until it hurts.

The sublime and the ridiculous

Am feeling too muzzy-headed with a mild cold (violins in background) and jittery because of second go at driving test tomorrow (alarm bells!) to write anything even mildly insightful or intelligent - not that I would generally describe my posts as either of those things, given the abundance of truly insightful and intelligent commentators out there on the "super blogs".  However I was very struck by the latest post on Christian Medical Comment about a perhaps rather surprising defender of faith, Matthew Parris, and wanted to mention it.

The full article by Mr Parris in the Spectator, to which Peter Saunders refers on his blog, is well worth reading.  In terms of what faith is all about, Matthew seems to "get it" a lot better than many of we modern-day Catholics who are continually fed a rather bland and unchallenging diet of tolerance, inclusivism and trying not to upset anyone.  Not that I am against tolerance and sensitivity - I think they're very important.  But not at the expense of compromising Truth and losing passion: not least because without conviction and passion, we will never touch anyone, let alone convert them.

To quote parts of Mr Parris' article, "This goes to print on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So allow me to pitch in to February’s religion-versus-secularism debate from a new direction. As an unbeliever I wish to complain on behalf of serious religious belief. Faith is being defended by the wrong people, in the wrong way... Jesus did not come to earth to offer the muzzy comforts of weekly ritual, church weddings and the rhythm of public holidays... The (Muslim) Chairman of the Conservative party, Daniel Finkelstein, the Archbishop of York, Giles Coren, the Queen and Eric Pickles [have all] expressed alarm at the advance of ‘militant’ secularism. Only a minority, however, have reaffirmed with any muscularity their belief in God...

"My 'Times' colleague Daniel Finkelstein, in a moving column well summarised by its headline ‘It’s easy to mock religion — but then what?’, as good as declares himself a Jewish atheist but goes on to assert the importance of faith and religious ritual in holding people together. Affectionately he recalls fiddling as a small child with the fringes of his father’s prayer-shawl. He thinks it good (as do I) that human beings ceaselessly struggle to find meaning and purpose in life; and deplores the illiberal ‘liberalism’ that seeks to sneer at that...

"If a faith is true it must have the most profound consequences for a man and for mankind. If I seriously suspected a faith might be true, I would devote the rest of my life to finding out... As I get older the sharpness of my faculties begins to dull. But what I will not do is sink into a mellow blur of acceptance of the things I railed against in my youth. ‘Familiar’ be damned. ‘Comforting’ be damned. ‘Useful’ be damned. Is it true? — that is the question. It was the question when I was 12 and the question when I was 22. Forty years later it is still the question. It is the only question."

Mr Parris, defender of our faith?

Those often referred to as "miliant secularists/atheists" also seem to get it, in a way.  They are certainly passionately concerned with establishing their own modern-day system of belief and proselytising the rest of us.  Tolerance and rubbing along together are not on the agenda (as a friend, who describes himself as being at the liberal end of the Catholic Church, recently remarked, it often seems there's no-one as illiberal as a liberal).  Because of course, if you are asserting your right to the social acceptance of your worldview, you are also asserting the same right for those of other worldviews - whereas what is actually happening is the abrogation of some people's rights in favour of others.

If I shopped in a store owned by Muslims, I would not necessarily expect them to stock and serve alcohol, even if that type of store was legally permitted to sell it and I was permitted in law to buy it.  There would be plenty of other places to go buy my booze.  Just as there are plenty of bed and breakfasts whose owners would not be being forced to act against their deeply-held beliefs by renting double beds to homosexual couples.  If a committee to which I belonged held Buddhist meditation at the beginning of its meetings, or some other sincerely-motivated prayer ceremony, I would politely sit through it or at the most assert my right to wait in another room until that part of proceedings was finished (supposing no human sacrifice or the like was going on of course, which seems rather unlikely).  I would not storm off to the nearest court to protest.  In the same way, I wouldn't turn up at a mosque and demand to be married there whether I met the criteria for their definition of marriage or not - there would be other options available to me.  As far as I can see, that is what rubbing along together in our society means, and the essence of true tolerance, one that gives us all the right to passionately defend and even promote our beliefs but not at the price of denuding others of theirs.  The whole concept of "individual rights" has been twisted and hijacked for the interests of a minority, in a way that is often frightening. 

It's all barmy really.  And the barmiest thing is that when it comes to a true human right - the right to life, based not on some arguable definition of when an embryo becomes a person, and not on a misdefinition of a foetus as being somehow part of a woman's body, but on the undeniable fact of simply being a human life in existence - we are happy to dismiss it, even though without this basic right to life no other human rights exist in the first place.

Hey-ho.  I've strayed from my first point (the vital, life-changing importance of religious belief, which believers should stand up for and agnostics have no right to denigrate or patronise) to a second (the hypocrisy of what our society today labels as tolerance and liberalism).  I said I was virus-ridden and muzzy-headed!  Having said that, the two points are essentially related, because the only way for the first point to flourish is for the second one to be got right.  And getting the second point wrong, the true nature of tolerance and human rights, means that many of we Christians today are not the witnesses for our faith that we should be - either because we're misguided as to those concepts ourselves, or because we're frightened.

Let's hope my muzzy-headedness has cleared by tomorrow, or that my driving examiner has eaten a lot of Weetabix for his breakfast.  Apologies to those of my friends who have already been treated to the video below!