Putting it in perspective

On Twitter, Ed Rennie has been complaining that our letter to the Herald was counter-productive, as it only had 500-odd signatures and therefore 'it creates the perception that those who oppose Kasper are a tiny minority that can be ignored.'

I disagree with him on two counts. Firstly, the letter should be judged primarily on the merits of its arguments, not the number of signatories. Of course we wanted a decent showing, but the real question is: is the argument correct?

The second point is that I disagree that 500 is a small number in the context of that letter. ACTA has been organising for years; it claims a membership with groups in every diocese. It has a dedicated website, a mailing list, and several organisers with time on their hands. For some time they have been promoting a 'Survey on the family' doubtless to try to bolster their heterodox agenda with some semblance of popular support.  So far they have just over 150 responses, and are hoping (and working hard) to try to get that up to 200, as I learn from this, which somebody sent me, having been emailed it yesterday.

(I have to admit that I was tempted to contribute to their survey, but that involved joining ACTA, which involved stating that I agreed with their aims, so I resisted the temptation. I suspect, however, that others of like mind have contributed, which would mean even their 150 are not all ACTA supporters...)

Whereas Mark and I had no database of email addresses of supporters, no organisation, and precious little time on our hands (it was the Easter holiday, and both of us prefer to spend time with our families to lobbying...). Nonetheless, thanks to the willing support of other Catholic bloggers, and the readiness of their readers to sign up, we collected over 500 signatures between the launch of the blog campaign at noon on Palm Sunday, and its close on Easter day.

That seems to me to suggest the relative weight on the side of orthodoxy is pretty substantial.

Thanks to all who signed: names are continuing to come in (we are now up to 527 - I will publish an updated list soon).

We are also planning to suggest further ways in which ordinary lay people can prepare for and contribute to a successful outcome of the Synod.  More later...

Hammering Heretics

As you can imagine, I am a fan of hammering heresy.

Hammering heretics is perhaps a slightly different matter.

I will leave that thought hanging for a bit, and digress. If I remember, I will return to it at the end of this post.

I have been distressed at the coverage on much of the Catholic blogosphere of the whole Protect the Pope saga.

There has been a quick, and I would suggest tribal, reaction: ' Bad bishops.... censorship... abuse of power... lies...'

All that started before the explanation issued by +Campbell, and that explanation was then read and interpreted through that hermeneutic.

However, the facts are limited, and the interpretations that could be placed on them are many and varied.  For that reason - in fact in simple justice - I have taken to pointing out some of the fallacies in the argument, and suggesting there could be another interpretation.

Of course, the risk in all this is that I could b seen to be 'siding with the bishop against Deacon Nick.' One commentator (Geoffrey Sales, on Jessica Hoff's blog) had the gall to suggest that I was imbued with the culture of CBCEW (though  to be fair, he later looked at my blog and I think took a different view).

I don't really want to side with anyone on this, as we don't know the facts.  If I have stood up for the bishop it is because I have seen him unjustly maligned and demonised. Nick, it seems, needs no such defender in me, as there are so many others rushing to his support. However, if in my efforts to point out that there are readings of this affair which paint the bishop in a better light, I have unjustly denigrated Nick, I truly apologise: that is not my intention.

Nonetheless, I risk doing so again, as I believe that, in justice, the point must be made: we simply do not know enough about this affair to say the bishop is as bad as he is being painted - or indeed bad at all.

The issue is complicated, but many seem to have reduced it to an idiotic simplicity. I am afraid that James Preece, for example (with whom I have a great degree of sympathy on so many issues) has done so here. 

So I would like to spend a little more time on this, and look at the story from two quite different points of view.  Of course, what follows is an imaginative exercise, merely designed to show that the same set of incidents can be seen very differently by people of good faith.  I do not presume to speak for either Deacon Nick or the Bishop, and am sure that each would write a very different account of the affair than the ones I offer.  But, as I say, my design is to  show that the same set of incidents can be seen very differently by people of good faith.

On the one hand, I can imagine from Nick's point of view it could look something like this:

He set up Protect the Pope to provide a forum for supporting the Holy Father prior to, and during, his visit to the UK, in the face of an almost unprecedented anti-Catholic media frenzy.  By presenting a Catholic view, backed up by substantive facts and the undermining of the claims of the Holy Father's detractors, he accomplished a great deal. Catholics at least, and many fair-minded observers, were able to see that most of the attacks on Pope Benedict and the Church were at best ill-informed, and often worse. 

His blog attracted a very significant following, which demonstrated that there was a real appetite for this, both in the UK and abroad.

After the papal visit, he continued to make the case for orthodox Catholicism, defending it from enemies without, and also on occasion, from those within the Church who were undermining or diluting it. 

With the arrival of Pope Francis, problems within the Church became more acute. Dissident voices, such as ACTA, were given new courage, and it seemed some in the hierarchy were turning a blind eye to their subversion, or even colluding with it. And nobody seemed to be doing anything about that.  So, whilst recognising that this would be unpopular and risky, he decided to shine a light on that too, including naming those in positions of authority who were not doing as they should. 

There were howls of outrage from the usual suspects, and a number said that they were going to complain to the bishop about the blog. 

Then, suddenly, the bishop suspends the blog temporarily.  Moreover, when a period has passed, he extends the suspension and adds that nobody else should post to it either. 

Everyone can see what's going no here, as the comments of support on the blog, twitter and other blogs make quite clear.

On the other hand, I can imagine from the Bishop's point of view, it could look something like this.

He had heard that Deacon Nick had set up a blog to defend the Pope, and that it was very successful.  He congratulated Nick. 

Some time later, he received a number of complaints from different sources, saying that Nick was over-stepping the mark, and posting unjustified attacks on named individuals, including members of the Hierarchy, as well as hosting a range of very uncharitable comments in the combox.  Examples were provided that seemed to justify these concerns. 

He asked one of his staff to have a quiet word with Nick about it, but the concerns remained and further examples were sent that suggested no change of approach.  It was also pointed out that the blog had a huge readership, internationally, so it was a matter of some importance to get this right. 

He therefore asked Nick to pause from blogging, and to reflect on how he used, and allowed others to use, the blog. That was a private conversation, and the hope was that Nick would take some time out, to pray and reflect, and later they could agree on how best the blog could be used. 

Whilst Nick desisted from posting on the blog, two unforeseen things happened. One was that his wife took up the mantle, and the blog carried on much as before.  The second was that Nick took to other social media, including publicising a large number of comments to the effect that the Bishop had closed down the blog because of Nick's defense of orthodoxy.  

That was scarcely the period of prayer and reflection that the Bishop had had in mind; indeed, it confirmed the bishop's view that so intense a focus on seeking out heresy and heretics had not been good for Nick's judgement.  So when Nick asked if he could resume blogging, the bishop suggested that the period of prayer and reflection should be extended. 

Nick then announced that he would stop blogging for good, and that the the Bishop had effectively closed down the blog.  The volume and hostility of the blogosphere intensified, vilifying the bishop. 

The bishop issued a statement to point out that he had not, in fact, closed down the blog. For obvious reasons, he did not include his view that Nick's judgement was temporarily a bit impaired, as such a judgement is by its nature confidential, and also because in the climate of the blogosphere, it would have been wide open to misrepresentation. That statement was interpreted in the most negative way possible by those determined to see this as yet another example of 'the bishops' colluding with liberals and persecuting the orthodox.

But the Bishop has no case, the cry goes up.  Nick has only ever blogged from an orthodox point of view, and naming those doing wrong is surely both justifiable and necessary.

To that I would reply that other orthodox bloggers had raised concerns about one or two (and only one or two) of Nick's posts before this incident. See Patricius, here, and me, here, for example.

Let me re-state: I am not saying that either account is right or wrong.  I suspect both to be right in some aspects and wrong in others, as I do not have full access to the facts, and still less to the intentions of the protagonists.  My point is simply this: neither does anyone else.  For which reason, the rush to judgement of the bishop, and in particular the imputation to him of malign motives, is quite unjust.

I promised to return to the hammer.  It has been wisely said that to a man with a hammer, every problem is a nail.  The risk is that to a man on a mission to hammer heresy, every disagreement reveals a heretic.

ACTA on the Today prgoramme

On Radio 4's Today programme this morning (here around 1:50 in) there was a discussion of the recent survey of opinions by the bishops.  Mons. Marcus Stock was on first, to explain why the findings are not being published at this stage. To be honest, I don't think that his explanation was as clear as it could have been.  But radio interviews are not easy.  However, I think he could have been better briefed and better prepared with regard to his key messages and the tack the interviewer was likely to take.

But what followed was fascinating. Jean Riordan, of ACTA was interviewed.  She wants a Listening Church; one in which the laity are more enabled to have more input around 'matters to do with sexuality and family life'.  The Church would benefit from openness to 'thoughts and theories about how teachings can be modified and err or reassessed in the light of modern psychology and the needs of the world now.'

The openness for which Pope Francis is calling could be helped if groups like ACTA had a more prominent role in informing the discussion.

She explained: 'We are not a pressure group, we are not a dissident group. We're not actually disputing the... err... much of Church teaching. What we're saying is that Church teaching should be formed by consulting.'

In my unkind way I enjoyed the fact that she stumbled between what (it seemed to me) she meant and what she thought it politic to say.  So we had the stumble after 'how teachings can be modified' and again we had: 'We're not actually disputing the... err... much of Church teaching.'

I thought she was trying strike a rather uneasy balance between the fact that ACTA really wants to modify Church teaching, and does dispute much of it, and the tendentious claim that they have to make for political purposes that 'we are not a dissident group.'

But her last line was a giveaway (it often happens thus under pressure: once the end is in sight, or the tricky question evaded, we relax a shade and the mask slips): 'What we're saying is that Church teaching should be formed by consulting.' 

That strikes me as being a long way from any Catholic understanding of how Church teaching is received from Christ and the Apostles, and handed on by the Church as a treasure of inestimable worth.

I have blogged before about ACTA (and Mons. Stock, come to that), and opined that they are pretty irrelevant.  But they do seem to be in the ascendant at present, so perhaps I dismissed them too easily.

However, one thing is clear: whatever their protestations to the contrary, they are, by their own account, a dissident group.

Laughing Stock?

The Tablet, that bastion of things of dubious orthodoxy, reports that Monsignor Marcus Stock attended the recent meeting of ACTA at Hinsley Hall.

ACTA is a fairly noxious organisation, as Mark Lambert has documented here. They agitate for all the usual causes: contraception, women priests etc.  I think, as I have observed before, that this flurry of activity is nothing more than the dying gasps of a group of sad old has-beens.

However, the attendance by Monsignor Marcus Stock, who is General Secretary of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, risks causing scandal, by lending some veil of credibility to them and their agenda.

Certainly many sensible Catholics were expressing shock last night having read the Tablet's report, and seeing the implications.  As one put it: 'What was he thinking?'

My hope and expectation is that Mgr Stock was there to observe, to judge and to report - possibly even to admonish. Were that the case, I would not expect the Tablet to mention such a fact, as they clearly have their own agenda.

But now that his presence is being used as part of the propaganda of dissent, I think it behoves Mgr Stock to answer that question: 'what was he thinking?' and to make clear whether he is with the Church laughing (albeit compassionately) at ACTA, or with ACTA, laughing (albeit bitterly) at the Church.