‘The most important thing that a parent can do is to remain faithful themselves’
Archbishop Nichols speaks to Luke Coppen about the burden of leadership, his advice for Catholic parents, seeking God - and praying for his enemies

24 July 2009

Archbishop Nichols with the Cardinal at the installation Mass. 'My mind was focused mainly on the Diocese of Westminster,' the Archbishop recalls (Marcin Mazur/CCN)

Read the full interview in this week's Catholic Herald


On May 21 Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor handed you the crozier in Westminster Cathedral. At that moment you assumed the spiritual leadership of the estimated four million Catholics in England and Wales. Did you suddenly feel the great weight of that responsibility?

The Mass of installation was without a doubt a remarkable event. Even today I've been meeting people who told me they were there and told me that even the memory of it gives them goose pimples still. It was Westminster Cathedral at its best. And it was the liturgy of the Church at its best. There were quite a number of moments that struck me very profoundly.

Probably the most moving moment for me was actually when I knelt in the porch at the threshold of the church, because there I had a very profound sense that this was the point at which all the business of this great city of London ebbs and flows in its contact with the things of God that are physically expressed in the Church and in the Cathedral. It struck me very deeply at that point that the threshold of a church is a very holy place. Some people never get beyond the threshold.

But I knelt in the threshold of the church and one of my hopes would be that parishes become places of real welcome and great sensitivity to how difficult it is for people to make that journey into church or back into the community of the Church.

So that was an important moment... and certainly the moment of receiving the crozier from the Cardinal.

I must admit my mind was focused mainly on the Diocese of Westminster, because at that point I was receiving one of the symbols of the office of the Archbishop of Westminster. So my thoughts were largely to do with this Church of Westminster, of which I'm now the chief shepherd.

And, you know, phrases like "the spiritual leader of all the Catholics", they're not exactly correct. It's a shorthand. Archbishop Rowan Williams put it very helpfully to me. He said: "Whether you like it or not, your voice is now one of the main voices of religious leaders in this country." And that I accept. That's very clear and unambiguous. But every Catholic has their spiritual leader in their own bishop. And that's the most important thing for them.

In your installation homily you spoke of St Paul's conversion. You said that his conversion was "not to belief in God but to belief in God's full presence in Jesus Christ". You were born into a family with a strong belief in God. Was there a moment when you discovered personally that God's full presence could be found in Jesus Christ?

That was quite an important distinction in the homily because the point I wanted to get to was that belief in God does not close down our minds. It's not a limiting of human inquiry, curiosity and openness. In fact, rather, it's something that prepares us to be open to receive all sorts of surprises in life. And this, for Paul, clearly was a great shock: that the very group of people he was intent on persecuting were being shown to him by God to be God's own presence in the Body of Christ in his world at that time.

Now, for me, I grew up in a family that believed in Jesus, that believed in Christ as the Incarnate Word of God and in the Church as the visible and tangible expression of that presence of the Lord in our world today. So the question is slightly different for me. There are probably two or three moments that I can recall to do with that sense of vocation, that sense of what the Lord wanted me to do with my life.

I think there was one moment when I was going from what we used to call going from the fifth form to the sixth form - Year 11 and Year 12 today. At that point I remember vividly walking along the street thinking: "I can leave school now. I can go and do anything now." And yet there was a real sense that, no, God wanted something different from me. And so I went back into the sixth form in the local school and carried on with those studies because I had spoken to one of the priests in the parish and said: "I think what the Lord wants of me is to be a priest." And he said: "Well, go back to school and go through to your A-levels, and then we'll have another talk."

Another moment was when I was in the seminary. I had more or less made up my mind that I wasn't going to be able to go through with all of this. I think I was quite confused. And I remember receiving a letter. It was from a priest in Japan and China. I had no idea who this man was.

But this letter arrived and it said: "I understand that you're in some confusion within yourself at this time. And I just want to assure you that you should trust in the Lord and not be hesitant. Have the courage to go on."

That letter crystallised for me that the Lord has ways of guiding and sheltering us so that we can stay faithful to what seems deep down to be the important thing that he wants of us, even in times of confusion and mistiness.

But there's another time as well. It actually came up later in that homily. A very important conversion moment for me - and that's what we're talking about - was to a radical understanding that Jesus is, in the words of my homily, the manifesto of humanity. It was realising deep down that who Christ is, and what Christ wants of me, is for the best of my humanity. That resolved a very profound tension, that somehow following the Lord was going to be a denial of my humanity. Maybe that had to do with celibacy. Maybe it had to do with not choosing careers. I moved from the position of seemingly giving everything up for the Lord to realising what I was going to do was to go down a path of fulfilment.

That came to quite a sharp moment when my older brother, who's a bit blunt, came out to Rome. And he said to me, the night before I was ordained a priest: "What are you getting ordained a priest for?" And I said to him: "Because I think it's what makes sense of who I am." And he said: "I'm glad you've given me that answer because if you'd said, 'Because the world needs priests' or 'Because I've got to give up all these things to do this', I would have been troubled for you, because there might not be all that much thankfulness out there."

There had been moments when I'd come to understand that if we want to be fully alive, fully human, then the best path is to follow the call of the Lord, who is the fullness of humanity, who is our manifesto of what it means to be a human being.

On June 29 Pope Benedict placed a white woollen strip, known as the pallium, around your shoulders. What did this gesture mean to you?

It's a very wonderful moment. It was particularly heightened on June 29 because the Pope was actually sitting above the tomb of St Peter. What the pallium represents is the bond of ministry and service between Peter, the Successor of Peter, and then me. So the pallium is laid overnight on the tomb of St Peter. And then during the ceremony it was brought up by deacons from the tomb and then given to the Pope who put it over my shoulders. When you think about the visible unity of the Church, and those promises of Christ to Peter about stability and truth and the rock, then the pallium becomes a symbol of that, and I find that very moving.

And then you can look a bit more deeply at the pallium itself. It's made of wool from lambs shorn on January 21, and then the wool is woven into this shape of the pallium. So there's a lot about the shepherd. And having that pallium placed on your shoulders is also a sign of the care you should show as a bishop for the flock, and particularly in that image of the Good Shepherd for the one that's gone astray. Interestingly, in his homily the Pope explored the link between the word for shepherd and the word for bishop. He showed how these come from the same root and that Christ is the Good Shepherd, the good bishop. And so he was inviting us to ponder that a bit more deeply.

There's also a third element to the pallium that's very telling. And that is that it has these crosses woven into it. There are six crosses and I've always taken it that they represent the wounds of our Lord's body: two hands, two feet, a side and his head. Those six crosses you put over your shoulders, so you are accepting the cross, accepting that in any discipleship of the Lord you are not there for the fun. There is lots of fun but you are there for fidelity and that will involve tough times. And then, just to embellish the pallium, there are these three jewelled pins that can be worn and they represent the three nails of the Lord's crucifixion. The pallium is a very, very rich symbol of our unity in the Church, the mission of shepherding the flock and the share in the cross of Christ.

And the pallium is so important that you have to be buried in it.

Yes, it's to be buried with me. I remember preparing Cardinal Hume's body for burial and the pallium was duly put on his shoulders. Now, I'm in the slightly unusual position of having two because one comes with me from Birmingham. I was told that, if this is the case, then the pallium that comes with you which is no longer relevant to the ministry which you're exercising is folded up and used as a cushion under your head.

So I said to the priests of the Archdiocese of Birmingham at the last Mass I celebrated with them: "Well, this is the last time I will wear this pallium. Its next use will be as a pillow for my head in my coffin. So, you see, you'll be an everlasting comfort to me." The gracious ones laughed.

It's quite common to hear even aggressive atheists expressing a kind of envy of believers. They say they wish they had the assurance that comes from belief in God. Where should people who have this hunger for God look for him?

It's hard to be predictive about that because God has all sorts of ways of getting through to us. I suppose it just requires a basic openness, which is a kind of humility, a readiness to be surprised. A person who's searching for God has to be prepared to look both within themselves and outside of themselves.

Within a person's life there will be prompts and nudges and little movements and moments when something of God breaks through. The classic things are that it might be an experience of great beauty or of love or of pain and sorrow and loneliness. It'll be all of that which makes up our spiritual self.

I say that because every human being is a spiritual being. It's not very popular in our technological age, but it's true because we have this capacity to wonder and to long for truth and to agonise over pain - all these spiritual, abstract things which aren't just to do with the material world which we use and control and respond to. A person's got to be prepared to look within. That means creating time and space and dwelling on experience and pondering what this means.

But then too they can look around them. I suppose classically there's the story of Edith Stein, who as a great European philosopher became a Catholic because she saw a woman in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament. She just observed and knew that there was a quality in that woman's life that she didn't have. You can find that in all sorts of places. You can find it in the way that a neighbour cares for another lonely neighbour. You can find it in the life of every saint, whether they are proclaimed or just esteemed. You can find it in poetry, in somebody's writings. They are prompts. They are invitations from God.

Then you can look to, for me, the attractiveness of the teaching of the Church, which is a synthesis. It brings human striving and wisdom to a togetherness because it's guided by a light that is a gift of God, the light of faith. Some people come to faith because they just suddenly realise that in this teaching, properly listened to and pondered, there's a kind of opening of a book, and it's a book that shows where we stand, how we are at home and who God has made us to be in this created world.

One of the key ways in which Catholics encounter Jesus is in receiving him, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, at Mass. Jesus's presence in the Eucharist is utterly wondrous. Does it really matter therefore whether we receive him in a Mass celebrated in the ordinary form or in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite?

Well, you're right: the gift of the Eucharist is the most remarkable gift of all. It's expressed that we bring the fabric of this earth, the bread and the wine, and we make an offering of that with ourselves and in return we receive the real flesh and blood of our Saviour.

And that's a miracle beyond all others. It's so remarkable and so compelling that often it's the realisation that that's what's going on on the altar that brings a whole church to silence and a reverence. That, of course, only happens through the instrument of the priest. There are lots of ways of thinking about priests, but my favourite is to think of myself as no more than a Biro in the Lord's hands. He can pick me up. He can put me down. But what he uses me for is to say his words, to make his presence there wherever I celebrate Mass.

So the Eucharist only comes to us through the ministry of the Church and the ministry of the priest. And it's perfectly clear in the teaching of the Church that there is one Roman Rite, there is one gift of the Eucharist, one sacred order by which that gift is actualised and made present in every corner of the world. And frankly the form of the Mass doesn't matter in comparison to that mystery which it provides.

One of the troubling things at the moment is that some people want to create too much of a tension between those two. And most troubling of all to my mind is the mindset that somebody might get caught into, because perhaps they don't like some aspect of how the Mass is being celebrated or the music that's been chosen or something, that they begin to turn their back on the Church's ordinary pattern of prayer, the ordinary form of the Mass and say: "I can't accept that."

That's really quite serious, because if they can't accept that then they are inexorably distancing themselves from the Church. And as the Pope said in the documents which he issued at the time in which he opened up a wider use of the extraordinary form, this all depends on the person's faithfulness to the Church. It's our concentration on what's essential. And what is essential is that I put myself there in the presence of the priest, whichever form the Mass is said in, and I recognise with wonder that this is the mystery of the Lord's Body and Blood given for me.

When I was a boy we had as our parish priest a sick and retired bishop who'd had a stroke. Bishop Joseph Halsall was his name. One of the things that I learned and all the parishioners learned was that when we received Holy Communion from the bishop he would come along and first of all he would offer us his ring, which we had to kiss, and then we would receive Holy Communion.

I never understood that gesture. We just did it. But if you think of it, it's very clear. It says: "I accept the presence and the authority of the bishop and therefore I may receive Holy Communion." And sometimes today people want to separate the two, and it can't be done because the gift is one, whole and entire: sacred orders, the Eucharist and the authority of the Church.

A priest recently wrote that he was "delighted that our confessionals are empty because it means that people know they receive forgiveness at Mass". But by avoiding personal Confession do Catholics miss out on a unique encounter with Jesus himself?

Of course they do. Places like Westminster Cathedral and many other churches up and down the country where people go to Confession give plenty of testimony that the practice of going to Confession - even if it's dipped in many local parishes - is strong in particular places.

I've been assured that when the relics of St Thérèse come then one of the things we must be prepared for is a huge increase in personal Confession. There were a couple of hundred youngsters up at the Brightlights festival in north London last weekend. At one time there were 15 priests there hearing Confessions on and off during the Saturday.

So there is something very precious about Confession and I think Catholics realise that. One of the things it is is a profound human truth, because all sacraments bring together the human realities and the divine intervention. It's a profound truth that we have to confess, that we have to face and name what we have done that is wrong. Otherwise the human process of healing, which grace builds on, doesn't begin. Sooner or later we have to do that.

Dostoyevsky explored this in great depth in the book Crime and Punishment. If you remember, the man who murdered the old woman attempts to confess and the police don't believe him, and he's still in torment. And it's only when he grows in love with a woman who understands him from the inside that his confession of his crime begins to make sense. And that's why the confession of sin is a crucial part of the process of reconciliation and the work of grace within us.

I think most people understand that sooner or later they are going to have to face themselves, in the context of love, in the context of the embrace of the Lord, and say: "This is me." And then it's the parable of the Prodigal Son played out - that once it's said the Lord is beyond it already. He's saying "Get up! Come to my feast. Be restored." That's a wonderful experience.

Many Catholics who regularly receive the sacraments nevertheless struggle to find time for personal prayer. And when they do it is often a frustrating experience because they do not know what to say or do. How can we make more time for prayer and use that time more effectively?

Traditionally there are some very straightforward rules about prayer. One is pray as you find it easy to pray. So don't necessarily be too preoccupied with different theories about prayer. Pray as you can pray. And if it's simple prayer, if it's the rosary, if it's the repetition of one prayer, if it's just, as the Curé of Ars says: "Me looking at him and Him looking at me" it doesn't matter. The first rule is pray as you can.

The second rule is pray where you can. And that can be anywhere. I remember my mother teaching me that she prayed when she was washing the dishes. It can be on the Tube. It can be on the top of the bus. It can be anywhere.

And the third general rule is be faithful to what you find works for you. Make a little resolution. Have a pattern of prayer and stick to it.

The Catechism describes prayer as the raising of one's heart and mind to God. Cardinal Hume used to express dissatisfaction with that answer. He said the answer really should be "trying to raise our hearts and minds to God".

One of the things I was doing in Birmingham and I intend to continue was to prepare and publish these little books that were called Walk with Me. They were to help people to pray. They were very personal. They were just for an individual, though some people shared, a husband or wife or friends or whatever. And I think they were an important contribution. So during Lent we would distribute and sell 300,000 of them. Now, you don't create a publication that has that kind of circulation unless it's meeting a need. I think people are hungry for that little bit of help in personal prayer in the place that suits them, at the time that suits them and in the way that suits them.

You mention Cardinal Hume's emphasis on "trying" to pray. Is prayer hard even for an Archbishop of Westminster?

It's no easier for me than for you. In fact I'm a bit privileged because people expect there to be time in my day when I pray. I'm not sure they expect that of your timetable. I'm a bit privileged, but the personal thing is no easier, no different.

The Church helps to sustain our faith by the rhythms of the liturgical season. A number of Catholics have complained that changes to the Holy Days of Obligation in England and Wales in 2006 upset their "liturgical body clocks". Do you have sympathy for this complaint and would you consider reversing the changes?

I know these have been difficult and sensitive things. People do indeed express the hope that somehow some of the Holy Days will be put back to their traditional days. It's certainly not up to me individually. It is something that we have to do in the context of the universal Church and there are rules about it too.

So, for example, the Holy See requires that we consider the timing of the Holy Days and if, for pastoral reasons, it would appear appropriate that those feasts of the Lord, those key feasts that celebrate central mysteries of Our Lord's life and of our faith, have to be moved to the nearest Sunday. So the rhythm is upset a bit, but not a lot. I mean, it goes from Thursday to Sunday. It's probably less of a change to the body clock than the change of the hours for the spring and the winter.

I think on the whole, with the right preparation, this can be a change that can advantage many people, because the parish should be the central place where the mysteries of the faith are celebrated. There's no doubt that more people are able to go to Mass on a Sunday than on a working Thursday.

And there's no doubt that if a school routine is properly organised that the mystery to be celebrated on the Sunday can be explored through the assemblies and the RE in the days leading up to that great celebration. Blessed Sacrament processions can be held during the week with the children in the school. We can sense and live that here this Sunday we are going to celebrate one of our major feasts. We are just beginning to explore some of those things. And I think in the long run the fact that we have these major feasts on Sundays can be an enhancement of their celebration in our churches.

Many Catholic parents long to pass the faith on to their children. But very often today their children leave the Church as soon as they reach adulthood. What would your advice be to these parents, who sometimes bear a great deal of sadness and even a sense of failure?

It is difficult. I don't suppose there are many families in which that doesn't happen to a greater or lesser extent. There are all sorts of reasons. Social pressure is much less supportive of the practice of the faith today than it was when I was a youngster. As a youngster we lived in a fairly Catholic world actually. Not everybody was Catholic but the Catholic community around the parish was strong and there were lots of activities that kind of made up the whole of life. That's still to be found today and there are parishes which are full of young families. And then, as you say, they move into their teens and maybe leave home and begin to make their own way. I think the most important thing a parent can do is remain faithful themselves.

Often teenage years are years of testing boundaries, seeing what you can get away with. But the backcloth remains constant. Parents, and the faith of parents, are an essential part of that backcloth. And my experience as a sixth-form college chaplain in the early 1970s is that some of those students of those years still get in touch with me. They have come to the practice of the faith, maybe when they intend to marry, maybe when they have children, maybe when their parents die. But that steady backcloth and foundation of faith is often a real summons later in life.

So I would say to parents: don't panic, read the parable of the Prodigal Son and see that it is actually a parable about a loving father. So be a loving father, be a loving mother. Be patient. But don't waver in your own living of the faith and cherishing of it. And that will pay dividends.

You mention that one of the causes is societal pressure. But do you think the Church is failing in some way to prepare young people for adult Catholic life?

Well, it's a jolly difficult task and I'm not sure if we've ever had it that right. I don't think the heartache of parents as they see their youngsters go off on their own is a new phenomenon. I remember when I was in the sixth form somebody did a survey and about half a dozen of us out of 30 were going to Mass regularly. And that's in the 1960s. So I don't think this is new. But it doesn't make it any less painful. I think what's fascinating is that there's probably as much interest in ethical and religious questions in sixth forms as there's ever been. These are popular courses now. The number of students in our schools and, I think, across the wider school population who are studying these matters is on the increase. That can only be good for the well-being of society and the project of faith.

Vatican II was a watershed moment for the Church. What do you think has changed for the better since the Council and what has changed for the worse?

Well now... I was 18, 19 when the Council took place. I ended up going to the seminary in Rome for the second, third and fourth sessions of the Council. So the Council took place a long time ago. I don't think, actually, the fruit of the Council and its process are that well remembered at the moment. It tends to be used as a bit of a flag that people wave to make a point or to make an argument. And often as not if they went back and actually looked at the documents of the Council they would find that their argument isn't as firmly entrenched or expressed in those documents as they would like to think.

And so in this I'm very firmly of the view that we have to read the Council in continuity with the long life of the Church. It's not a point of discontinuity. It's not, as you said, a kind of watershed. I think that's to misread it, actually. It was a moment of fervent development, which could be foreseen. We had, I remember, as students a talk from the Archbishop of Tasmania who said he'd been advocating the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular 20 years before the Council. All sorts of things that have come through in the rich tradition of the Church were given another polish, another angle, during the Council. But I would not take it as a dividing line. I think that's to misread the sweep of Church history.

I'm always taken by the simple summary of the Council that Bishop Christopher Butler gave. He was asked, as a theologian who, if you like, was preparing the way for the Council for many years in his own theological thought and writing, what had changed. And he said: "When I went to the Council I knew exactly where the Church was and pretty clearly where the Church wasn't. Coming back from the Council I still know exactly where the Church is, but I'm no longer quite so clear about where it isn't."

And that, I think, sums up that what the Council taught us was to have that greater openness towards all those arenas of human endeavour and other religious faiths and to see in them some of the signs and the seeds of God's presence and to begin to fashion fresh relationships with those. That, I think, is the biggest opening that the Council created in the Church and one that I still enthusiastically welcome.

At your introductory press conference as Archbishop-elect a reporter asked you to comment on the suggestion that you were personally ambitious. You replied that you were indeed ambitious but "ambitious for God". Did you ever struggle to place that ambition and drive that you have at the service of God?

At the same time I received a letter from a friend of mine and he was commenting on the same question about ambition. And he said: "Of course you're ambitious. For as long as I've known you you've been ambitious to do your best, to do what is best and to do whatever you have to do as best as you could - whether it was playing cricket, reading a book, understanding something, playing in an orchestra or whatever. Do it to the best of your ability: that was drummed into us."

But he said that what the question implies is another meaning of the word ambitious: that you would use your abilities to seek your own advantage. He said: "You've never done that." And I don't think I have. In that sense, I use my abilities as best I can for the good of the whole enterprise, to serve the cause of the Church, to try and express what I believe in, to look after the well-being of other people. They're the things in which I will do my best. And I think that's all that I mean and accept in the word "ambition".

In 1535 St Thomas More wrote a prayer for his enemies. In it, he asked God to bless those who bore him ill will. Do you ever pray for your enemies? If so, does it change how you regard them?

I'd like to think I don't have too many enemies. But I think that's probably a bit naïve. I think I do annoy people at times and I must irritate them and get them upset. There are clearly one or two times when people have tried to make things difficult for me. I struggle with that. I struggle not to let a kind of resentment find a foothold in me. I think you can only do that in an openness before God, saying: "Well, whatever that person's plan or intention might have been, it's not a lot in comparison to God's providence and God's intention for me. And if that's what I put my trust in then I don't need to worry too much about that and therefore I won't make it an issue within myself and I won't make it an issue between that person and myself."

So yes, I understand Thomas More and it's a struggle. But it's a worthy struggle because it's a struggle about retaining our peace and not getting bitter inside and resentful, which are real burdens to carry.

He was also praying for the greatest good of his enemy: that they would be together in heaven.

Yes, because God can use even the most stupid things we do. And that's the whole mystery that we sing about at the Easter Vigil. This is a happy fault of Adam. And that represents the faults of all of us. God can turn even the stupidest things we do to his good and I trust he will.

Read the full interview in this week's Catholic Herald