Cafod: setting the record straight

From Bishop John Rawsthorne and Ms Pat Jones Sir, Mr Hester persists in repeating inaccurate and misleading statements about CAFOD and its website.
We have each given lengthy explanations to him in correspondence over the past year and recently in these columns. The single sentence which yet again he quotes is not on CAFOD's website, so CAFOD cannot remove it. It is found on page 22 of a 48 page report on the Panos website. Anyone looking at the CAFOD website has to go to Panos's website to find the report and read through 22 pages before finding the sentence. The Panos Institute is a well known development information think-tank, which produced this report jointly with the United Nations. The report deals with the critical role that young men aged 15-24 play in the global AIDS pandemic and how prevention strategies have tended to ignore them. The report is not CAFOD's report; the posi tions it takes are not CAFOD's positions or policy. There is no case for CAFOD to answer. Mr Hester is simply wrong.
It is extremely disturbing that Mr Hester is propagating these false and irresponsible claims that CAFOD's website contains "an incitement to child sex abuse". It is calumny to harm the reputation of others and give occasion for false judgements concerning them.
We would add: there are hundreds of links offered on CAFOD's website. A link to the Vatican website is the first link found on the Links page, and the HIV/AIDS section quotes numerous papal and episcopal teaching statements.
We repeat: in all its programmes and policies, CAFOD is faithful to Catholic teaching.
Yours faithfully, +JOHN RAWSTHORNE Bishop of Hallam, Chairman of Trustees PAT JONES Deputy Director, CAFOD, Romero Close, Stockwell Road, London SW9 9TY
Reclaiming sacred space
Sir, Why is the Church the last bastion of the modernist style of architecture? The secular world has been demolishing its brutal modern buildings for years and the results of the great building disaster inflicted on the Church by the adoption of the modernist style are sadly everywhere to see. But still its supporters cling on; still they defend the indefensible.
The critics of the OUCH! campaign, "Campaigners prepare to do battle with ugly modern churches", (May 3) clearly demonstrate how difficult it is to speak out for modernist church design, since they can only resort to the accusations that its critics are either ill-read or living in the past. The architect Austin Winkley must know that for any other client but the Church, his modernist approach would be considered outdated to say the least. And yet he accuses anyone who criticises the kind of work he produces of being oldfashioned.
It's a wonder that anyone responsible for the reordering of churches can sleep at night. Back in the 1950s and 60s, the term "scheduled for redevelopment" was capable of sending honest citizens running for cover when planners applied it to their streets and neighbourhoods. The term "reordering" is a bit like that.
It is something of a puzzle, but the -dismantling of the church building that has taken place in recent decades was never demanded by Vatican II. Canon Alan Griffiths advises that I look in the revised Roman Missal where he claims there is, "an express commendation of Mass to be celebrated facing the people whenever possible".
The only reference I can find in the General Instruction on the Roman Missal, 1970, is in paragraph 262 which states, "Normally a church should have a fixed and dedicated altar, freestanding, away from any wall, so that the priest can walk all around it and can celebrate facing the people." If Canon Griffiths is referring to the latest revised missal, then we will have to wait its translation and publication. At any rate, according to the 1970 Roman Missal at least, there seems little justification for the wide scale and complete reorientation that has taken place.
Since Mass facing the people is hardly mentioned in the Vatican II papers and is certainly not a requirement, the only possible explanation for this great turn around is that Mass facing the people is more in tune with the modernist style. The modernist style irtrWr altharctecture of relativist space, space that has no place for the sacred or the holy because everywhere has equal value. In the relativist universe, there's no particular place to go and nowhere special to look. The response is to look inwards, as so many new age spiritualities do.
Reclaiming sacred space means reclaiming the transcendent vision. The modernist experiment in church architecture has replaced the transcendent with the Earthbound and must be brought to an end. It has given us the ugliest churches in history, the result of looking inwards. Someone should conduct a survey 'The hundred ugliest churches in Britain'. Readers might like to make their nominations.
Yours faithfully, MOYRA DOORLY, OUCH!, 28 Bincess May SW1P4HL