REViEW OF 198i

The Pilgrim's progress
Jack O'Sullivan on the Church in England and Wales
AS 1984 progressed, the Church seemed drawn inexorably onto the political stage. Ethiopia and the coal dispute were the burning issues of the day which prompted the Church to focus its spiritual abstracts ,nto specific issues.
The development was, for many, a symbol of the collapse of post-war "concensus politics". The consequences have yet to run their full course and the term "Church Militant", with its increasingly contemporary ring, is bound to be the subject of much debate in the coming year.
At the same time, the Warnock Report, Mrs Victoria Gillick, the new limited toleration of the Tridentine Mass and ever tentative steps towards ecumenism with an increasingly liberal Anglican Church continued to thrust Catholicism into the public eye.
Nuclear threat
The question as to whether Or not God is a monetarist did not arise until later in the year. Rather, Cardinal Hume opened the batting in February with a letter to the Prime Minister communicating the hierarchy's "deep concern and anxiety" about the "modernisation of appalling armaments".
The Cardinal, speaking as President of the Bishops' Conference, did not endorse the unilateralist message of Mgr Bruce Kent and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I-le accepted "that at present a basic strategy of nuclear deterrence can be considered morally acceptable as a stage towards arms control and progressive and multi-lateral disarmament". But he questioned the will of Western nations to reduce "the hostility, friction and mistrust" between them, which he saw as the crucial underlying factors in the arms race.
By the end of the year, Mgr Kent appeared convinced that the Church didn't have a great deal of will in this area either. "I have always felt abandoned by the Church", complained Mgr Kent who said there were "too many people sitting on the sidelines and applauding from a distance."
Ethiopia
Cardinal Flume's six-day trip to Ethiopia in November epitomised a mood of deep concern throughout the country at the famine. Cardinal Hume, despite his fears of mirroring Robert Maxwell's "mercy flights", set out on the hurriedly arranged trip and returned, visibly moved, with the authority of "an ambassador of the poor . . . able to speak on their behalf".
He spoke out loud and clear, had talks with Mrs Thatcher and joined a chorus of public opposition to proposed cuts in overseas aid. He lobbied the EEC to use its huge surpluses of grain for the hungry of Ethiopia. But bureaucracy in the Community continued to make mountains out of mole hills. The required aid has not been forthcoming.
Next year, the Church may play a still more significant role in keeping interest in the famine alive, once media coverage flags. A national collection for Cafod is to be taken at all Masses this Sunday and another is planned for Palm Sunday.
Coal dispute
Closer to home, the pit dispute drew the Church's attention in only the later part of the year when the deteriorating
circumstances of miners' families became clear, and hopes even of new negotiations grew dim. As late as mid-September, the National Conference of Priests was too divided to agree upon a response to the strike. Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool led the Catholic initiatives from late September and called the strike "a symptom of the failure of our society to come to terms with the post-industrial age".
Ecumenism was the order of the day in all interventions in the strike. With the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool, Dr David Sheppard and other Christian leaders, Archbishop Worlock became a trustee of a TUCsponsored national miners' hardship fund.
Then, in the November talks with miners' leaders, Archbishop Worlock accepted the invitation of the Anglican Archbishop of York, Dr John Habgood, to hear the NUM case. They were not, they emphasised, "a spiritual ACAS", but rather sought to facilitate the reopening of talks between the two estranged parties.
But it was Archbishop John Ward of Cardiff, the son of a miner, who summed up the feelings of many parish priests up and down the country. While deploring violence on the picket line, he asked: "Why must we experience violence before the voices of decent hardworking people are heard?"
Ecumenism
Ecumenism in the industrial sphere was not so remarkable in other areas. The early hope of a break-through in unity discussions which might bring the Catholic Church into the British Council of Churches or another new body seemed dimmer by the end of the year. Progress at the British level must await the 1987 ecumenical conference, announced at the Bishops' Low week meeting. An inter-church body was established in July to decide the agenda.
On an international level, real progress from the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission awaits the 1987 Lambeth Conference, at which representatives of the Anglican communion from throughout the world will respond to the final report of ARCIC 1.
"An obstacle to unity" was, said Archbishop Worlock, the call for ordination of women, made by the General Synod of the Church of England in November.
The establishment this year of guidelines for the receiving of married Anglican clergy into the Catholic priesthood is thought to be significant in its timing. Many Anglo-Catholic Anglicans may see the ordination of women as the issue which will push them over to Catholicism.
Gillick
Of course, no review of 1984 could be complete without mention of Mrs Victoria Gillick's extraordinary singlehanded campaign to secure in law the principle that parents must be consulted before a doctor prescribes contraceptives to a child under 16 years of age.
Her case steamrollered into the Appeal Court last month. It drew only the qualified support of the bishops, who were worried about undermining the doctor-patient quasiconfessional relationship. Cardinal Hume signed a petition addressed to the Queen on the subject and 2000 doctors backed proposals along similar lines to those suggested by Mrs Gillick. The court's decision is expected soon.
Of monumental significance to one particular couple was the eventual overturning in January of a ruling which had prevented the marriage of a paralysed exsoldier, Stephen Rigby, and his fiance, Mrs Ilona Eradhun on the grounds that their marriage could not be consummated. A sad affair for all concerned. The couple eventually married in a Catholic church in March.
Warnock
Finally as the fears of that long awaited year 1984 were quelled by its slipping into history, the question of' the future of the human race, as examined in Warnock Committee report was only beginning to dawn on us all. The July report on human fertilisation and embryology supported experimentation on the human embryo until it is 14 days old.
The Church, in its report from the Bishops' joint bio-ethics committee, came out firmly against such licence and called for a ban on all experimentation which would endanger or destroy the human embryo. It accepted in vitro fertilisation (test tube babies) in only very limited circumstances. For many in the Church, 1985 is full of dangers which were not even envisaged when 1984 was written.