A crisis in religious teaching

St Honorius of Amiens       d.653

 

 

 

Last Sunday in the parish of Notre Dame des Etangs in northern France saw the return of the Catechism for a new year. Under the 1905 separation of Church and State in this country, religious teaching was excluded from the school curriculum but schools were closed on Wednesdays so that children might attend their Catechism  classes. For five years children attend a weekly or fortnightly class, as they prepare for First Confession, then First Communion, and finally something called ‘Profession of  Faith’ (which is not Confirmation, which follows during teenage years).

In recent years the numbers for Catechism have dropped off dramatically. One priest told me that when he was first ordained fifty years ago nearly half the  children in France were in a Catechism class. In a parish like ours the numbers are very small, and often neither parents nor children come regularly to Sunday Mass.

In my first few weeks in the parish I have had the opportunity to talk and work with three enthusiastic teachers and with some of the children. The Catechism books are beautifully produced, and later on I did some practical work with them, preparing for the celebration of All Saints’ Day – a public holiday in France, though this year it falls on a Sunday.

For some families – maybe an increasing number – the Catechism is part of the ‘Rite of Passage’. The children are baptised and make their first Communion. Then they lapse completely, not even making it to Confirmation. Indeed, I do wonder if Confirmation has become here the Sacrament without a reason. Would it be better to replace the ‘Profession de Foi’ with Confirmation, and to reverse the curious progression which has prevailed since the time of Pope St Pius X, of baptism, first Communion – and then Confirmation?

The late Bishop Gery Leuliet, formerly Bishop of Amiens

Already I sense that the Catholic Church in France – in spite of separation of Church and State – has some of the same problems with ‘establishment’ as does the Church of England. In an attempt to appear warm and welcoming, the Church is fearful of challenging – and becomes perhaps too accommodating. As someone is once supposed to have said of the C of E. “The Church of England is what the people of England want her to be.” But this Sunday’s Gospel (the Rich Young Man) reminds us that Jesus makes demands on people (on us) and demands nothing less than our all. Yes he does so as one who lives by his own demands, giving all for the world. Somehow when Jesus calls us to give our all, what comes over is his utter love for us. How often this is in contrast to the ‘rules’ of the Church which seem to be nagging and narrow. Or would people nowadays have perceived Jesus like that?

As young Muslims respond with vigour to the practise of their  faith, perhaps it is time for us Christians to throw off comfortable and undemanding religion and to embrace a renewed  Christianity where the Saviour in his love makes powerful, and sometimes painful, demands over our lives.

A not-so-subtle attack on the confessional

18th century funerals conducted in the latest historical drama on the TV by a clergyman in a lacy surplice and green chasuble – but does it matter? Not as much as when a popular series deliberately alters the facts in order to question the confidentiality of the confessional, and to attack the Catholic opposition to abortion. Surely not?

I have been watching again on DVD the “A Touch of Frost” series with Inspector Frost played by David Jason, and made between 1992 – 2010  . A horrific murder is apparently discovered by a Catholic priest. Jack Frost visits him late evening at his church (actually the magnificent Anglican Church of St Wilfrid Harrogate). The priest (in cassock – not usual for Catholic priests in England) is praying before the Lady Altar (where all the candles are alight, including the standards from the funeral catafalque – thank you, Harry, for your last comment !!!) Frost has discovered that the murdered woman had been ‘excommunicated’ after having an abortion. The priest admits that he went to the Bishop after hearing her confession because he had no choice! Now the confidentiality of the confessional is absolute, and any priest telling anyone (bishop included) what he had heard there would himself be excommunicate. But Frost ploughs on: the woman had a condition which made it dangerous for her to conceive – the implication being that the Church’s teaching on abortion is itself wrong. What is passed over in the story-line is that the woman concerned had become pregnant after an affair with a another character, which she then broke off.  Lastly, and very oddly, the ‘excommunication’ is not known by the women’s sister, with whom she presumably went regularly to Mass. So her sister never wondered why she was no longer going to communion? More likely, I think, that the author/producer/director had no real idea what excommunication means!

But three points are insinuated into the minds of the ordinary viewer. (1) that Catholic position on abortion is cruel, inflexible, and incomprehensible  (2) that it is quite reasonable to resort to abortion over a ‘mistake’ for which I may disclaim all responsibility (3) that the ‘secrecy’ of the confessional has more to do with the power of priests (celibate, of course, and unable to understand ‘ordinary’ people and their lives) and does not serve ‘justice’. I.e. priests ought to be ‘forced’ to tell what they have heard when the police/parliament/courts require it!  A position which the current Home Secretary comes close to endorsing from time to time.

And after all, these views are being expressed by the decent, honest, down-to-earth copper who is Inspector Jack Frost.

Please don’t try and wear the burse on your head

Period drama nowadays goes to extreme lengths to ensure accuracy. In every area, that is, save the ecclesiastical. There, I’m afraid, one is still likely to see a scene from a Jane Austen novel with the clergyman conducting a funeral wearing a green chasuble over a lace-trimmed surplice! Such inaccuracy is born of two things: first, that the producer (probably middle-aged and with some vague memory of his public school religion) thinks he knows what is and what is not; and secondly, that he doesn’t really care because its only ‘religion’ and no-one else will make a fuss any way. So we are back (for the ‘religious’ scenes anyway) with the 1950 films of Robin Hood, with the hero in green crimplene, and the heroine with bouffant hair-do and too much lipstick!

In the late 80’s I was for a few weeks unofficial (and unpaid) adviser to a film company making a film in Docklands. I helped them gather together the furnishings to create the sets within a redundant church. They were to film several scenes of clandestine meetings of the terrorists in a back-street Catholic church. The artistic director was quite happy with the flickering pricket stands and the  statues. The following day, he said, he would get the florists in to do the flower displays …  I interrupted, saying that this would be quite inappropriate and that we just needed four large rubber plants. He went up the wall, telling me that this was not what he wanted at all!  What price historical accuracy?

I suppose what gets me is the assumption that in the area of ‘religion’ it doesn’t matter, and that no-one will notice anyway. It’s not so much that the several million Christians in the UK will take to the streets at the sight of Tudor bishops eating their lunch wearing copes and baroque mitres. It’s that the media establishment just doesn’t know and doesn’t care that there is such a thing as the Church, and that millions of people belong and believe. They ‘don’t do religion’. And because of that their productions are not as good as they could (and should) be. But on the other hand they also produce moments of real hilarity for countless Christian viewers. Not that they ever meant to, of course.

A Saturday Farewell & a Sunday Celebration

On the last Sunday of September the Diocese of Amiens in northern France celebrates in honour of its first Bishop, St Firmin, whose relics are kept in the cathedral (which is, I think, the largest Gothic cathedral in France). In the parishes Mass is celebrated on Saturday evening and the priests and people assemble in Amiens for Mass on Sunday afternoon.

The Saturday evening Mass at Pont Remy gave us the opportunity to say farewell to Fr Bernard, who has been priest in our parish of Notre Dame des Etangs (the étangs are the ponds or pools which link the river along this part of the Somme valley) for the past eight years. I concelebrated the Mass with Fr Bernard and Fr Dominique-Marie (the parish priest of Abbeville), and at the end a tribute to Father was made by the mayor of Pont Remy, who spoke movingly of his care for the people of the parish. After Mass we gathered at the back of the church for a glass of wine and a slice of Gateau Battu, a type of Picard cake.

On Sunday – weatherwise a glorious day – the Bishop of Amiens concelebrated Mass in the Cathedral with his clergy and a congregation of about 1,000. From 10.30 in the morning there had been music, drama and dancing in the square at the west end of the Cathedral, and a shared lunch.

The participation of the congregation was devout and enthusiastic, aided by the French custom of the ‘animateur’ who leads the singing indicating the notes to the people and where they should join in. I find though, that I miss the hymn singing tradition of the English. Most French liturgical music comes from the period after the Council, and there is a certain ‘sameness’ about it. I recall attending the Grande Messe at Notre Dame de Paris in 1969, when the Ordinary of the Mass was still the Latin de Angelis setting, once so well-known in France. A small choir in the west gallery sang the Gloria and the Creed alternate verses with the people. The mighty Cavaille-Coll organ shook the building as it accompanied the singing of the vast congregation. I wished we had heard more of the Amiens organ, and rather less of the electric piano. Still, it was quite an occasion and Mgr Leborgne presided and preached with his usual enthusiasm and verve.

 

Ordinariate pilgrim in France

At the beginning of September I was appointed Administrator of a small parish in northern France, as a result of an agreement between Mgr Newton, my Ordinary, and the Bishop of Amiens, Mgr Olivier Leborgne. The appointment is for a year, and comes about because of the retirement of the present Parish Priest.

Some of my friends have asked if I will write a sort of diary, events, people and parish life, and perhaps make some observations from the point of view of an Ordinariate priest working abroad, albeit just across the Channel.

So, no, Matthew the Wayfarer, I am not dead, just rather busy at the moment!

Studies in Holiness: Lincoln Stanhope Wainwright

Father Wainwright (1847-1929) lived and died a member of the Church of England. Had it been otherwise, he would perhaps have been canonised and known as ‘The English Cure d’Ars’. He ministered as curate and then vicar of St Peter’s, Wapping, when the Docks of East London were at their height – and the living conditions of the dockers and their families at their most fearsome.
Evelyn Underhill, herself one of the most remarkable Anglican spiritual guides of the 20th century, wrote this appreciation of Fr Wainwright, in the Spectator.

 

In 1873, a dapper young clergyman, very correctly dressed, with well-brushed hat and black kid gloves, arrived at the Clergy House of St Peter’s London Docks. Fifty-six years later, on a bed as poor and comfortless as any ascetic could desire, a little old man lay dead in his bare and carpetless room; and in the words of one of his children, “Dockland was washed with tears,” because this tiny but indomitable figure, shabby, untiring, spendthrift of love, would not serve them on earth any more.
There are two ruling factors in all the varied types of Christian holiness. One is the great stream of tradition which rises in the New Testament, and in which all these lives are bathed. To that tradition, each adds something; and from it each takes inspiration, formation, power. The other factor is the social life within which the saint emerges; with its special incitements to heroic virtue, its special demands and needs. Thus the world of the sixth century asked for just what St Benedict gave it; it was to the intellectual turmoil of the thirteenth that St Thomas sacrificed his career; the world of the Counter-Reformation gave St Ignatius his peculiar call. But the demand and the response may also be found in their perfection within a narrower sphere. St Vincent de Paul is nowhere closer to his pattern that in the slums of Paris; hunting the rubbish heaps for abandoned babies, and serving poverty in its most repulsive disguises with reverent love. The Cure d’Ars fulfils his vocation in an obscure French village and among the simplest souls. Perhaps it was the inspiring force of these two lives, with their self-spending passion for the sinful and the abject which – more than any other factor – determined Father Wainwright’s particular place in the communion of saints. For in them he saw radiant charity triumphing in an environment very like his own.

Nineteenth century Dockland was not conspicuously above the standards of seventeenth century Paris; nor were its inhabitants much more promising material than the peasants of Ars. It was for this very reason that they made their overwhelming appeal. He served them for over half a century, without holidays and always in a poverty of life very near their own. The blankets from his bed had a way of disappearing; several times he gave away the shirt he was wearing … Yet his life was not so deliberately, as inevitably austere….
Every day developed naturally from its invariable beginning; a long period of rapt devotion before the altar, which nothing but an urgent summons to the dying was allowed to interrupt. The morning was usually absorbed by letters and interviews with the growing crowd who brought him their difficulties and sorrows. The afternoon was given to the visiting of the sick, always one of his chief cares. He went with an untiring zest from house to house and hospital to hospital, often those in distant parts of London which had patients from among his flock; and slept in the train between his visits to make up for the shortness of his nights … the sick, the destitute, the outcasts and the sinful had always the first claim on his time and love; direct personal contacts with individuals, unlimited self-spending in their interests, was pastoral methods he thoroughly understood. He was always ready to leave the ninety-nine good churchgoers and start single-handed to rescue one lost sheep.
There was much that was mediaeval in his outlook and the realistic temper of his religious life; and he would have been completely at home among those English mystics who wore printed above their hearts the Holy Name … But a sweet little smile and gentle manner hid an iron will where the essentials of the faith and practice were concerned, for he remained loyal to the strict Tractarian tradition within which his vocation had developed and made few concessions to modern ideas… his character and his presence did more for the true social salvation of Dockland than all the forces of law and order and social reform. He found an all-lit, insanitary, largely lawless area; where policemen went in couples and no-one’s property was safe. With the entire fearlessness of a person whose life in not his own, he went at all hours through its worst alleys, intervened in street rows, fraternized with the roughest inhabitants, and attracted children who formed his constant bodyguard. At first he was ridiculed, then tolerate, then liked; at last, universally loved and revered.
And this was achieved by a person without striking qualities of intellect or manner, and with none of the “extraordinary” gifts so commonly attributed to saints. He was an inarticulate preacher; people came to his sermons not so much to listen as to look at his face and be in his atmosphere. In practical matters his judgement, from a worldly point of view, was not always sound. But a compassion that was more than human seemed to reach out through his spirit from beyond the world, and move among derelict men as one that serveth.
For there is a kind of sanctity in which human love and pity are transfused and transmuted into a channel of the Celestial Charity itself: and it was Fr. Wainwright’s entire self-giving to that holy Energy which sent him out as its agent to the hospital and the slum. In his old age it was said of that fiery little soldier, St Ignatius, that “he seemed to have become all love.” The power which operated that transformation is still at work within the world of men.

‘Songs of Praise’ does it again!

Surely a trailer for ‘The Moral Maze’? But no – there it was in the ‘Sunday Telegraph’ guide to Radio and Television (Sunday 2 August 2015):

Songs of Praise A woman who acted as a surrogate
mother for her sister

I almost wish I had been in time to watch the programme just to see what hymns go with such a theme!