Comic Relief — what we must remember next year

From Mr James Caffery Sir, In regard to the ongoing controversy as to whether Catholics and Catholic Schools should in future support Red Nose Day I can confirm that remarks made about me in recent weeks by various representatives of the Bishops' Conference have been both offensive and hurtful.
Whilst I do not expect an apology from those concerned I hope that they will have the decency, humility and honesty to accept that grants very recently awarded by Comic Relief to The Family Planning Association once again reveal that this so called charity supports contraception and abortion in contradiction to its own pronouncements and those of the bishops themselves.
As a Catholic headteacher I simply ask again: are the bishops going to lead us unequivocally in teaching "the Gospel of Life" thereby disassociating us from the likes of Comic Relief or are we to continue fudging the issue (disobeying Church teaching) as we have been doing for the past 30 years?
I would suggest that now the introduction of the abortifacient morning after pill into schools is imminent this is not just a matter of life or death for unborn children. It is a matter of life or death for the Catholic education system.
Yours faithfully, JAMES CAH-ERY Head teacher The Rosary RC Primary School
Divine retribution?
From Ms S McCullough Sir, The last outbreak of foot and mouth was in 1967, the same year that abortion became legal in England and Wales. This year we have cloning made legal in England and Wales and we have another outbreak of foot and mouth...
Yours faithfully, S.McCULLOUGH Kingsbury, London
From Ms May Tripp
Sir, In the midst of this heartbreaking foot and mouth tragedy, it seems to us that the Christian media is paying too little attention to the sufferings of the animals themselves in all of this. Particularly we think of the mass slaughter of healthy animals — some of them pregnant ewes or newly born lambs.
Would the Lamb of God and His Mother not care?
Yours faithfully, MAY TRIPP Animal Christian Concern, Horsforth, Leeds
Pamphlet sought
From Mr James Hoey
Sir, I have been trying for some time to obtain a copy of a Catholic Truth Society pamphlet entitled Letter to a Lapsed Catholic. The booklet was written by Canon Francis J Ripley and was published some years ago.
Unfortunately. the pamphlet is now out of print and there are no plans to reprint it.
I should be most grateful if one of your readers could lend me a copy of this publication for a few days.
Yours faithfully, JAMES HOEY Middleton, Manchester
Denying the devil
From Mr John Tawnsend Sir, Further to correspondence concerning the folly of denying the devil's existence, I should like to highlight Stewart Sutherland's work God, Jesus, and Belief (Blackwell. 1984).
In his book, Sutherland noted that the modern explanation of Christ's temptation in the desert sees Jesus as wrestling with himself about how his life was to be lived. In this light, "the devil" becomes an allegory for selfish human weakness and an inner struggle to deny his vocation.
Crucially, however. Sutherland noted that the temptations of Christ can be explained without the existence of a personal God. There, after reassuring himself with the father figure "transposed on eternity" (Freud), he did not allow fear of death to trivialise his life, and overcame the urge to nin away from the consequence of his actions.
Many today, of course, would deny that this was so. Yet it is revealing that falling Mass and confession attendance have gone hand in hand with the increasing perception that the devil does not exist, and marked apathy in belief of
God's existence. Perhaps this is because of an increased self-assurance that in going against our consciences we are not submitting to temptation but rather indulging ourselves.
At this point, it is important to note that the central tenet of Satanism is not that we should worship the devil, but that we should worship ourselves as God.
I would argue that there is a great deal of truth irk the aphorism (noted in the last edition) that "the greatest stunt the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist".
Yours faithfully, JOHN TOWNSEND York
Leaving out the enviromnent
From Ms Judy Porter
Sir, I was surprised to read (23 March) that the bishops have seen fit to omit the "lengthy" section on the environment which was in The COMM'? Good (199) from its newly published successor, Vote for the Common Good. The "lengthy" section was in fact half a page (sections 106-108 inclusive) and caused Dr Edward Echlin to refer to it in The Catholic Herald as an "ecological blip" (Nov 1 1996).
At a press conference in Belgium in 1985 someone asked Cardinal Hume what he considered the foremost task facing the Church today. He said simply :"to save planet."
Pope John Paul has written extensively on the environment throughout the nineties both in encyclicals and letters, and in particular his World Day of Peace address in 1990, Peace with God the Creator: peace with all creation.
The environment is a pro-life issue — one example: Ecologists and technicians, both foreign and Salvadorean, warned of the dangers of deforestation in the Balsamo mountains. But, turning a deaf ear, business built hundreds of houses, and the inevitable happened. With the earthquake came the landslide, and 270 houses were buried under four metres of earth" (Jon Sobrino, The Tablet, Feb 3, 2001).
At their Low Week meeting in 1998, the bishops of England and Wales agreed to establish a new Committee on Environmental Issues within the Department of International Affairs (Briefing, Oct 13 1999). This was indeed good news, but how is it, then, that the environment is excluded from the bishops' list of "key issues for Catholic voters"?
Yours faithfully, JUDY PORTER Thames Ditton, Surrey
Safety in hospital
From Mr C McCabe Sir, Professor Scarisbrick's call for a pro-life hospital echoed something I have been thinking about for some time.
I have been thinking that the Bishops' Conference should meet with the heads of religious orders which are engaged in nursing and medical work, to consider setting up hospitals where everybody would feel safe. At first the aim could be one general hospital in each archdiocese, working towards one in every diocese.
realise that this would be an enormous undertaking but it is one that is sorely needed at this time. I know that the religious orders have not sufficient members, at this time, to staff the hospitals but they have the expertise to manage them and the Christian love to inspire all those who would be willing to work with them. The staff would have to be paid the appropriate rate for the job but I am sure there are enough caring doctors, nurses and ancillary staff who would be willing to work in pro-life hospitals.
Financing these hospitals would be a major problem but we in the Church should be considering our priorities in our mission and maybe put our pro-life activities on a par with our schools. Perhaps we could levy parishes as we do for schools and each diocesan chapter could find some extra funds, as well as having national fund-raising events. Prayer and reliance on the Holy Spirit could also play a big part in such an endeavour.
Yours faithfully, C McCABE Manchester
Church school status
From Mr Alan Whelan Sir, Labour's crusade for the religious vote would be meaningful if it grasped the opportunity to match rhetoric with reality.
The Government could grant specialist status to church schools. Here in Essex, failure to do so puts faith secondary schools at a considerable financial disadvan
tage when compared with the 30 per cent in our area who receive this significant extra funding. I suspect that the same anomaly exists elsewhere in the country.
It seems absurd that extra funding can be provided for enhanced sports, languages, arts and business education but nothing for enhanced religious education. Labour should promise to end this blatant discrimination.
Yours faithfully, ALAN WHELAN Principal St Benedict's College, Colchester
Kenny on animal rights
From Mrs John Pothecary
Sir, Mary Kenny in her article (March 2) "A Sense of Balance on Animal Rights", did little to mollify the natural anger of people like myself who genuinely believe in justice and compassion for all of God's creation.
She is right to write against feeding meat to herbivores, she is right to speak out against factory farming, but she is so terribly wrong to praise the fur trade. Enough publicity has been given to the evils of fur production, and Miss Kenny as a journalist must surely have read a great deal of the literature on this subject. Miss Kenny should not equate the wearing of leather with the wearing of
fur the are many of us who do not wear leather either. Furthermore is it natural to eat meat? As she says: many of us vegans/vegetarians enjoy extremely good health. A quick telephone call to one of the animal welfare organisations such as VIVA, Animal Aid or PETA will bring plenty of information on the health to be gained from a diet free of animal products.
Finally I do object to being called dangerous and disturbed (maybe I am one of those she left out of the equation). I try to respect animals, show compassion and acknowledge that I am made by the same God who made the rest of creation.
Maybe Miss Kenny should join the ARK — the Catholic Study Group for animals; she would find the membership list very interesting — from archbishops, priests and nuns to the faithful laity.
Yours faithfully, JENNIFER POTHECARY Salisbury