The Ardship of Cambry

In Riddley Walker  (Russell Hoban’s masterpiece which defies description but certainly deserves to be read) language has been degraded, along with the rest of civilisation, in the aftermath of an atomic catastrophe.  

It’s a bit like reading A Clockwork Orange, in that you have to learn the argot as you go - only more so.  A particularly felicitous turn of phrase is the Ardship of Cambry.

Whoever takes on the job that Rowan Williams is leaving will discover the prophetic truth of that title, I fear.

(NB Archdruid Eileen’s prophecy is also worth a read: H/t Stuart at Echurch Blog) 

About Adoption: in which I am profoundly stupid and a ********* liability

There has been a bit of noise on Twitter about adoption and abortion.


According to one contributor I am profoundly stupid and a (expletive deleted) liability to the pro-life cause, because I insist (her word, not mine) that ‘adoption is a pro-life option.’

She has been very vociferous about this over the last few days, but not given much reason for it.  

However yesterday, she has explained herself a bit: “Where to begin? It's not an option anyone would freely choose with an intended pregnancy. The idea would be unthinkable.” she tweeted, and then: “I can't begin to imagine the agony of a woman who gives her child up for adoption.” and finally: “I am pro life. I am not pro suffering.”  Another commentator wrote: 'Offering adoption for unwtd pregnancy, in reality, does not buy time, but reinforce need for abortion. IMNSHO .'  Another comment offered was : Pushing adoption to those that who do not see abortion as a moral evil, with hope future hope that it will buy time for mother to change mind is, it flawed reasoning and lends weight to abortion option. IMO. (sic). Note the jump: Nobody was claiming that adoption should be pushed: merely that it should not be ruled out a priori as 'not an option.'  But that's Twitter...

If anything is profoundly stupid, I think it is comments of this nature.  I am always wary of people making absolute statements, unless we are really dealing with absolutes (as I posted here).  Good for rhetorical effect, perhaps, but poor as intellectual arguments.

So why do I differ from these people?

Because clearly, both as a matter of theoretical analysis, and as a matter of historic fact, adoption is a pro-life option. Many children who might otherwise have been aborted have in fact been given up for adoption.  I know a number of people who have been adopted and a number who have adopted.  So those claiming it is not an option are, quite simply, wrong.

I suspect what they mean is that it is not helpful to mention adoption as an option to someone facing a crisis pregnancy (or possibly it is not helpful to mention it in the course of debates about abortion).  I have more sympathy with those views; but I revolt when it is expressed in absolutes: ‘adoption is not an option.’


It is not an easy option, nor a quick fix: but nobody is saying that it is.

It may be that in many situations, mentioning adoption might be unhelpful.  But to have it as a mantra, an iron law, strikes me as stupid. In some cases it may be a helpful thing to discuss.

In my initial counselling training (some 30 years ago, now, for voluntary work in another context), we were taught that helping people in a crisis to identify a number of options is generally helpful: people feel  powerless when they believe they have no choices.  That made sense to me.


I have since counselled literally hundreds of people and undergone further training in a range of counselling and therapeutic techniques, and that experience bears this view out.  I have also been closely involved in the pro-life movement for decades, founding a branch of one pro-life group in London, working at a national level, and supporting my wife in establishing another pro-life group where we now live. I have spent a lot of time with pro-life counsellors: so one commentator's view that my position is purely academic was way off the mark.  But that's Twitter...

One of the pressures women are under when contemplating an abortion is the terrible time pressure that can lead to a quick decision which is regretted for life.  If at the moment of crisis, they see their choice as: abort now, or be burdened with a child for life, that is pretty stark.  If they see that there is a third option, however difficult to contemplate, which removes the immediate time pressure, that could, in some cases, be helpful.  Indeed I know of cases in which it has been. I think the counsellor with the woman is best placed to judge that, not commentators on Twitter.

Further, I was called patronising for mentioning it, but sometimes women have decided not to have an abortion, with the intention of pursuing the adoption route, but then ended up deciding to raise their baby themselves.  Given that it has happened, I cannot see why it is patronising to mention it in the context of this discussion.

Of course, I am not advocating counselling a woman with a problem pregnancy along those lines, but that does not mean the issue is not discussable in principle.

Another problem with the way the  'not an option' argument has been proffered has been the offence and upset it causes to those who have been adopted, or have given children for adoption. I know at least one person who was understandably extremely upset about this; and I see no good reason for causing such upset.

I don't particularly mind being referred to as a ******* liability, but I do think that Tweeters of good will have a responsibility not needlessly to cause distress to others.


And there's something else.  At the heart of the abortion industry is a series of lies. Two of the worst are: it's not really a human being, and an abortion will make it as though you were never pregnant.  By discussing adoption, both of these lies are implicitly, or even explicitly, confronted.  The expectant mother is able to contemplate what it might be like to give her child away: a terrible prospect.  Implicit in that is, how much worse to kill it...  


I think we owe it to expectant mothers to confront these lies before they make the fateful decision to kill their child.  Because someday they will wake up to them, and that will be terrible indeed.  And even more terrible if they have spoken to pro-life people and fling at us the accusing question: 'Why did you never tell me...?'

As I have had cause to mention before, I think Twitter is a very poor medium for any intelligent debate, (which is why I have chosen to take up the discussion here) which may mean I have misunderstood or misrepresented others.  As ever, I am open to correction.

But for me, the bottom line is that anything which:
a) does not contradict charity or truth and
b) which may help save the life of an unborn child, and 
c) save the expectant mother from living with the reality of having had her own child killed...


should be available as an option: and setting up absolute rules that limit the scope of counsellors in this vital work is profoundly unhelpful and misguided.


Feel free to tell me where I've got it wrong: but this is my blog and I will not publish profane language on it.

A Bogus Consultation

The Government's Consultation on Same Sex Marriages is clearly bogus.

They have already decided what they intend to do, and the consultation is a cynical attempt to make it look as though they have some sort of mandate to do it.  They have not. Nor do they have the power, the competence nor the right to abolish marriage and replace it with a meaningless romantic construct.

I was going to analyse the Consultation document, but awoke to find that The Thirsty Gargoyle has done a far better job that I would have done, here.

It is also worthy of note that the survey can only be completed once from one computer: so those of us married couples with only one computer will find that one of us is excluded.  Likewise, those who have access to several, or to iPads etc, have multiple votes.

Laurence 'The Bones' England has produced another fascinating bit of analysis, showing who is actually funding the LGBT lobby, here. Does that explain why it is such a priority for a government which (one might imagine) has more pressing concerns to address?

Finally, the assurance offered to pacify religious people that they will not be required to conduct Same Sex Marriages are worth precisely the same as the assurances we were given in '67/68 that nobody would be forced to participate in abortions against their will - that is absolutely nothing.

For the agenda here is not about equal legal rights -that has already been achieved with Civil Partnerships - it is about culture change: legislating for equal esteem and approval.  And while the Church (and the other Christian denominations, and religions) continues to witness to the truth, the battle will continue.

UPDATE: An important, if rather unpleasant, question that has not been addressed is that of consummation of so-called same sex marriages.  Cranmer has blogged on it: unpleasant reading but a very important subject.

Hands off the Altar!

An excellent post from Fr Bede Rowe on why we should not treat the altar as a table, casually resting our hands on it, putting things on it for convenience's sake and so on.

This relates very much to my previous posts (here, and here, and here, for example) on the sanctuary as a holy space.  The altar is a sacred object.  Unless we behave accordingly, we undermine our belief that it is in fact so.

Protesting too much

Readers will remember that article in the Journal of Medical Ethics which pointed out, (correctly), that the moral status of a new-born infant was the same as that of the same infant immediately prior to birth, and argued (incorrectly) that as we now accept abortion, we should likewise accept ‘post birth abortion.’

I blogged about it here.

Thanks to the indefatigable and always interesting Stuart at Echurch blog  I have been enjoying (?) the authors’ open letter.

Clearly, it is quite wrong of anyone personally to abuse the authors and threaten them.

It is true that it is hard to know precisely the correct response to someone advancing an ethical argument for infanticide; outrage and anger are both appropriate, I think, but they should be directed at the arguments and the culture which produces them (modern ethics) rather than the individuals.  Hate the sin, love the sinner, remember? 

However if the response was, in some quarters, intemperate (to put it mildly) I do think the authors  protest too much.

In the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF) which is the national exercise run by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England and Wales) to judge the quality of research undertaken at Universities, in order to allocate core research funding to them, there is, for the first time, to be a lot of emphasis on ‘impact.’  While the meaning of impact is somewhat unclear, it does seem to me unthinkable that academics publishing at the moment will not be giving the concept some thought.

So when Giubilini and Minerva claim: ‘we had no idea that our paper would raise such a heated debate,’ I am left scratching my head.  Part of me, if I’m honest, wonders if heated debate was precisely the impact they wanted - it just got rather more heated than they liked.

They claim their article was about logic: ‘It was meant to be a pure exercise of logic: if X, then Y.’

As the paper has since been removed from the online publicly available version of the Journal, I can’t check the precise words they used, but I seem to remember their saying ‘we prefer the term after-birth abortion’ or words to that effect.

That strikes me as rhetoric: it is not logic, which is what they claim the paper was about.  Rhetoric serves a different purpose from logic: to influence or persuade.

So their claim that ‘we never meant to suggest that after-birth abortion should become legal’ raises the question: what where you trying to persuade people of?

Their further claim: ‘Moreover, we did not suggest that after birth abortion should be permissible for months or years as the media erroneously reported,’ does seem to concede that they were in fact suggesting that after-birth abortion should be permissible for some period of time; which was clearly how many who read the article interpreted it.

They continue: ‘What people understood was that we were in favour of killing people.  This, of course, is not what we suggested.’ Yes, it was.  They can only use this arguement because they are busy re-defining ‘people’ to mean ‘people whom we deem worthy of life.’

They further write: ‘We did not recommend or suggest anything in the paper about what people should do (or about what policies should allow).’  That is clearly rubish.  Their discipline is ethics.  That is what ethics is about.  The kind of stuff published and debated in ethical journals filters through into ethics committees in hospitals, universities and professional bodies.  They then lobby in parliament.  The doctors say ‘we’re not ethicists: that’s an important debate, but it is held elsewhere.’  Where? In journals such as this.

If some sections of the public protested too much at this outrageous article, (or more precisely, protested in the wrong way) I think it is also true that the authors protest their innocence rather more than the facts sustain.

Mark Dowd Wrongs King Canute (and Archbishop Nichols)

It was, of course, entirely predictable.


Once the Archbishops wrote their letter, we knew the The Tablet would dissent - and it did.  We also knew that QUEST and its allies would have a hissy fit - and they did.


Mark Dowd is quoted as saying: “Probably the Archbishop resembles King Canute standing on the shores with the waves coming in. It’s really a question of the tide of history turning and there’s very little that can be done about it.”


Here he displays as much ignorance as he does stupidity.  If the tide had been turning, then Canute would have looked as though he was commanding the waves.  And that's the least of Dowd's stupidity.


Canute stood on the shore not to try to turn the waves back: he was far wiser than that.  He commanded the waves to turn back precisely because he knew that the would not.  He was demonstrating to his sycophantic courtiers that there are limits to what a king can do.  


Let us hope that Archbishop Nichols has also realised that there are limits to what an archbishop can do: he cannot command the truth to reverse itself.  If he resembles Canute in that way, then we can only applaud - and support him with prayers, of course.


H/t Deacon Nick at Protect the Pope

Meditating on these Mysteries - in Art

As I continue on my journey into the mysteries of the most holy Rosary, I was delighted to discover a series of articles at Crisis Magazine, on praying the Rosary through Art.  (I should give a H/t to whoever it was on Twitter who pointed them out, but carelessly, I have not kept the link and can't remember: apologies, if you are reading this: feel free to take the credit (and add any observations) in the Comms box.)

As ours is a religion of Incarnation, use of visual imagery to stimulate prayer and meditation is both apposite and valuable.

There are pictures and commentaries on:

The Joyful Mysteries

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The Glorious Mysteries

There are none on the Luminous Mysteries (and I’ll come back to that).

Many of the works of art are familiar, some are new (at least to me).

And some I like, but others are not my favourite representations of a particular mystery (Poussin’s Assumption, for example, really doesn’t do anything for me).

Which leads to a new game: collecting one’s favourite artistic representations of each mystery: and that, of course, means one can add in the Luminous Mysteries, should one wish to do so.

Anyone with particular favourite paintings of any of the mysteries, feel free to add them in the comms box.  Who knows, maybe one day I’ll list them all...