May • Jun 2005 Volume 37, Number 3 John Paul II: A Response to The Tablet Editorial The Evangelical Counsels in the Life of the Diocesan Priest Dylan James John Paul II and the Theology of the Body Scott Deeley Family Values Versus Safe Sex Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo The Church and Homosexual Marriage Stratford Caldecott letters . book reviews . sunday by sunday faith online . cutting edge . notes from across the Atlantic (by Richard Neuhaus) Price £2.5 0 annual faith summer session Catholicism 1st to 5th August a new synthesis by Edward Holloway Pope John Paul II has given the blueprint for catechetical renewal with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Catholicism: A New Synthesis seeks to show why such teaching makes perfect sense in a world which has come of age at Woldingham School, Surrey. in scientific understanding. It offers a way check online for details at www.faith.org.uk out of the current intellectual crisis, a way which is both modern and orthodox. Five days of lectures, discussion and seminars around a particular theme, in a relaxed holiday environment, with daily Mass and prayer. 503 pages £13.95 inc. p&p contact: Ann McCallion Tel: 0141 945 0393 FREEPOST Faith Magazine email: [email protected] REIGATE RH2 0BR fuller details on www.faith.org.uk no need for a stamp if posted in the UK a ffaithithMAY/JUN 2005 Editor volume 37 number 3 Patrick Burke Our Lady & St. Ninian’s 52 Quakerfield, Bannockburn STIRLING FK7 8HZ John Paul II: A Response to The Tablet 2 01786 812249 Editorial fax 01786 489531 [email protected] The Evangelical Counsels in the Life of the Diocesan Priest 8 Editorial Board Dylan James David Barrett, Timothy John Paul II and the Theology of the Body 16 Finigan, Hugh MacKenzie, Roger Nesbitt, Christina Scott Deeley Read, Dominic Rolls, Luiz Ruscillo Family Values Versus Safe Sex 24 Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo Book Reviews William Massie St. Joseph’s The Church and Homosexual Marriage 27 187 Pickering Road, Stratford Caldecott HULL HU4 6TD [email protected] Letters 31 Advertising Manager to the Editor Luiz Ruscillo Sunday by Sunday 34 St.Bernadette’s 26 All Hallows Road, Our regular guide to the Word of God in the Sunday Liturgy Bispham Book Reviews 38 BLACKPOOL FY2 0AS 01253 352587 Adrian Read enjoys some thought provoking speculation into the cosmic working of prayer and the Rosary in particular; Chris Massey recommends a Subscriptions Office Catholic teaching on marriage for the young. Paul Butcher 16a off Coniston Way Notes From Across The Atlantic 40 REIGATE RH2 0LN A survey of religious and public life in America by Richard Neuhaus 01737 770016 fax 01737 766907 [email protected] Cutting Edge 43 A special feature keeping us up to date with issues of science and religion Faith-Keyway publications 16a off Coniston Way Faith Online 44 REIGATE RH2 0LN A guide to Catholic resoiurces on the World Wide web 01737 770016 fax 01737 766907 UK £19/year, Europe [inc.Eire] £22/year Surface Mail overseas £21/year Air Mail overseas £26/year Single copies £4 inc. p&p, Bulk orders £2.75 plus p&p Student rate £15/year JESUS CHRIST IS THE MASTER KEY TO THE MEANING OF THE UNIVERSE http://www.faith.org.uk Published by the Faith-Keyway Trust registered charity No. 278314 Printed by Compact Litho 01622-719205 ISSN 1356-126X faith John Paul II: A Response to The Tablet John Paul II, A Response to The Tablet fter the death of Pope John Paul II, the editor of The Tablet, Catherine Pepinster, "You are Peter and on this Adecided that the Cardinal electors would benefit from heeding her incisive Rock I will build my advice. Referring to John Paul, she declared, “The task of the conclave of cardinals Church.” (Matthew 16,18). will be to distinguish the man from the message.” Strangely enough, it is a sentiment with which Pope John Paul would have agreed. Writing in his spiritual testament, he seemed to be keenly aware of the lowliness of his own person: “Of everyone I ask forgiveness. I also ask for prayer, that the Mercy of God may appear greater than my weakness and unworthiness.” He realised that he was a servant of the Word, a proclaimer of a Message which came not from him but from the Lord he served. He knew he was not worthy – which of us is? - but he prayed that he would be faithful, a fidelity that would even include his death: “Accepting that death, even now, I hope that Christ will give me the grace for the final passage, in other words my Easter. I also hope that He makes that death useful for this more important cause that I seek to serve: the salvation of men and women, the safeguarding of the human family and, in that, of all nations and all peoples.” How his prayer was answered! Unfortunately, the editor of The Tablet was not thinking along the same lines when she urged the Cardinals to bear in mind the difference of man and message. She urges the cardinals “not to let their immense admiration for the former, commit them uncritically to the latter.” Strangely, but not unexpectedly, she inverts the distinction of man and message that the previous Pope made. The real problem with Pope John “The Tablet’s whole Paul, she thinks, was not his person but his teaching, the message he proclaimed. response to the pontificate It was this that was wrong. “He wanted a Church of one mind, his mind,” the editor of John Paul II has been one declared. The message that John Paul taught was not the Truth of Christ but a set long reaction against him. of what Pepinster calls “positions and policies”. Editorial after editorial has pursued a systematic A Political Perception of the Papacy dissent from his teaching, er inversion and position betray the nature of the real theological rift in the from the Church’s teaching. HCatholic Church. “He wanted a Church of one mind.” The question is, “Whose It is the Tablet that has mind?” The mind of The Tablet? If there was a Pope who heeded the stance of been reactionary. We need Pepinster and co. (the issue of The Tablet commemorating John Paul involved the no lectures from an editor participation of people like Michael Walsh, Clifford Longley, Richard A. McCormick whose distaste for Pope and Charles Curran!), I am sure they would be the first to tell the rest of us to John Paul was evidenced in conform. There is a certain hypocrisy in this; they urge the need for a decentralized an article in The papacy, but they would want a papacy that would enforce the changes in Church Independent deploring the teaching that they deem necessary. They reserve the right to dissent under a papacy “spectacle” of the very that does not follow their approach (and, thankfully, which Papacy ever has?), but public death of Pope John they would want to use the office of the same papacy to undermine the essential Paul. That in itself was a nature of that office. One almost has a sense that they interpret a papal election to very telling reaction.” be the same as a party political election: a new Pope will reverse and change the previous Pope’s “policies” (i.e. teachings of the Church) in much the same way that a new Prime Minister does with his predecessor’s policies. This is a Church reduced |2| MAY/JUNE 2005 faith from the magnificent vision of Vatican II, a vision so to salvation, declaring that certain ways of behaving can clearly espoused by Pope John Paul II, to one of a merely separate us definitely from the Lord (for example, human institution, whose teachings are revisable, indeed contraception, abortion, and divorce and re-marriage), capable of reversal, and whose mind is the result of a then we can not pretend that the Lord is with the Church, competing set of views and opinions. that the Church has inherited the apostolic charism of truth, that the apostolic office of the college of bishops Who Has “The Mind of the Church”? united to the Pope has had the guarantee and assurance hose mind therefore? The truly Catholic answer is of the Lord’s own guiding presence. If that is so, then the Wto point to the Mind of Christ. Indeed, the idea of claims of the Church are empty – and the witness to the there being one mind for the Church is not as repulsive as Resurrection is forever vitiated. This is no exaggeration: at Catherine Pepinster implies. The Acts of the Apostles tell stake is the ability of the believer to maintain a credible us that the believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ faith in the witness and message of the Church. teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (2:42) “The company of those who believed A Reactionary Pope or A Faithful One? were of one heart and soul.” (4:32) The Apostles very n view of this, it becomes clear why the stance of The early on resolve disputes for the believers and they do so ITablet is so intellectually and spiritually impoverished. At because they claim that it is their office to do this. “It has the same time the greatness of John Paul II is revealed seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us,” they declare precisely in his fidelity to the Mind of Christ, to what we (Acts 15:28).