ANOTHER BLAST FOR NORMAN

IT is astonishing that a man IT is astonishing that a man of the undoubted abilities and talents of Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas should contrive to combine in his article of August 15 so much sense and nonsense. His article brings to my mind what the late G. K. Chesterton said about George Bernard Shaw—that very often one half of his sentence contained penetrating wisdom and the other sheer nonsense.
The third paragraph in the article asks the question: "What is a priest for?" and rightly continues to say that he is not a social worker, psychiatrist or political revolutionary, but then ruins all this admirable sense by adding the rider "any more than it is a calling to a higher form of spirituality." A little later he says that a priest is called upon to do two things—"to lead the people in offering the Eucharistic sacrifice, and preach the Word." Surely the function of leading the people in matters of religion implies the call to a higher spirituality.
From this point the article, as it seems to me. contains more unwisdom than wisdom. He says that the pre-Conciliar Church presented the Mass as an "obligation." I am not aware that the obligation to hear Mass on Sundays, with all due respect to Mr. St. JohnStevas, has been abrogated.
Everybody knows — and I imagine that Mr. St. JohnStevas must know — that an element of rule and regulation is needed to keep all of us up to scratch.
I have worked for the best part of 40 years in various parishes, and have actually been a parish priest for a quarter of a century, and while can discern stray elements of sense in what Mr. Norman St.
John-Stevas writes, 1 am disturbed at the half-truths or inaccuracies to which he gives expression.
It is curious that he should
wish to tell us priests how to do our job and that he should have the audacity to say that "if the Word is to be preached effectively, the priest needs four or five hours every day devoted to study or meditation."
I suppose he is aware that the priest cannot avoid dealing with marriage cases, visiting the sick, trying to visit the ordinary folk in their homes, attending meetings of confraternities.
It may come as news to many that in most dioceses a mixed marriage demands four successive meetings — an hour each duping four successive weeks — and, incidentally, if this is done effectively it earns good dividends, by which I mean that the non-Catholic party may become friendly with the Catholic priest and at least respect Catholic convictions.
I am surprised that aman of real intelligence should assume that a host of activities which involve raising funds not merely for church building but for school building can be done ultimately by anyone but the parish priest, even though he is aided to a very great extent by his parishioners.
It is good to read the sentence: "These reflections of mind can make no claim to he definitive. I offer them as a humble truth . ."
For the information of Mr. St. John-Stevas I was ten years in the world before I went away to study for the priesthood, and so 1 know a thing or two which the average priest cannot in the nature of things know.
I hope I do not sound unkind to your star contributor. It may be that he does a large number of things not so well instead of doing a smaller number of things with an excellency approaching perfection.
Fr. Raphael Velarde
Northwich, Cheshire