Aspiring British PMs all say
they welcome Pope's visit but...
23 Apr 2010
The leaders of Britain's three largest political parties last night united in welcoming the visit of Pope Benedict to Britain in September, but said that his views on a range of issues - including contraception and homosexuality - needed to be discussed and challenged.
The exchange occurred during the second TV Leaders' Debate - which excluded Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru - on Sky and the BBC.
Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all said they welcomed a positive role for faith in public life, recognised the importance of the Pope's impending visit for Catholics and others, but made it clear that they disagreed with some of his doctrines.
Pope Benedict XVI is the spiritual and temporal head of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
The issue of the cost of the impending visit and how it should be paid for was not discussed, although the questioner, Michael Johns - who highlighted what he saw as the disastrous consequences of the Church's stance against condom use for the HIV-AIDS crisis, and its anti-gay equality positions - had clearly wished that they would.
However the response of the three party leaders, who will between them produce the next UK Prime Minister, clearly poses a significant challenge for the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, in Scotland, and in the north of Ireland.
In addition to touching on the child abuse crisis for the Church, which produced an unprecedented public apology from the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, yesterday (22 April 2010), the three men showed great respect for the Pope and for faith - but said that this should in no way mean that vital issues raised by his public statements should not be debated openly.
Gordon Brown, who described himself as of "the Presbyterian faith" made an impassioned plea for more work on bringing the faiths together and discovering common values in a conflicted world.
The full statements on the issues of the Pope's visit were as follows, in order of presentation:
David Cameron (Conservatives)
I do think it’s welcome that the Pope is coming to Britain and if were your Prime Minister I would want to support that visit and make sure I could do everything in my power to make it a success. There are millions of people in our country who would welcome that, who share the Pope’s Catholic faith and I think we should try and make a success of it but do I agree with everything the Pope says? No.
I don’t agree with him about contraception, I don’t agree with him about homosexuality and I think the Catholic church has got some very, very serious work to do to unearth and come to terms with some of the appalling things that have happened and they need to do that but I do think that we should respect people of faith, I think faith is important in our country.
I think faith-based organisations, whether they are Christian or Jewish or Muslim or Hindu do amazing things in our country, whether it is working in our prisons or providing good schools or actually helping some of those vulnerable people in our country, so a country where faith is welcome, yes. A good visit from the Pope, yes, but does that mean we have to agree with everything he says? No.
Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats)
My wife – I’m not a man of faith – my wife, Miriam, is Catholic, my children are being brought up in her faith so I have a little bit of an insight into the immense feelings of anguish in the Catholic community here and elsewhere and I think many Catholics themselves feel really extremely torn apart by what’s happened and I think they do want to see the Catholic church express greater openness and repentance. You can’t keep a lid on sin and of course you need to move with the times.
I do welcome the Pope’s visit but I hope by the time he does visit there is a greater recognition that there has been terrible, terrible suffering, there has been abusive relationships which have left immeasurable scars on individual people’s lives and we need a process of openness and then healing. You can’t undo the tragedies of the past but you can be open about them so people can start to move on.
Gordon Brown (Labour)
I’ve met some of the people who have rightly complained about the abuse that they were subject to when young and it never leaves them, it’s something that is with them always and no matter what you can try to do to help, there is always this problem that they have to face up to every day that they were abused, cruelly abused, by people in whom they placed their faith and trust.
So the Church has got to deal with these problems and it has got to make sure there is an open and clean confession about what has happened and that we help those people that have been put into difficulty by this abuse.
But you know, I welcome the Pope’s visit to Britain and I want him to come to Britain for two reasons. One is the Catholic church is a great part of our society and we should recognise it as such and I hope every British citizen wants to see this visit by the Pope take place, and secondly, we must break down the barriers of religion that exist in our world.
The faiths must come together and recognise that they have common values and common interests. We all believe that we should be good neighbours to each other, I’m from the Presbyterian religion but I support the visit. I not only support it, I want religious faiths to work more closely together in society.
Unfortunately, all three have bought completely into the media narrative on sex abuses by some priests - and speak as though the church and the Pope have done nothing at all to be open about it, much less to have carried out reforms of the kind that have produced dramatic results in the USA in the past decade.
One expects politicians hoping to be the next Prime Minister of Britain - a post once occupied by the likes of Winston Churchill - to be better informed and to convey their 'better information' to the people, not pander to their worst prejudices and preach 'shoulda, woulda, coulda' to the Church, as all three politicians do.
Motto for UK visit is
Cardinal Newman's
'Cor ad cor loqutur'
(heart speaks to heart)
The theme for Pope Benedict XVI's 2010 visit to the UK is
Cor ad cor loquitur - Heart speaks to heart. Cardinal John Henry Newman chose the words as the motto to go on his coat of arms.
Heart speaks to heart is a fitting choice for this papal visit as, on the final day of his Apostolic Journey, the Holy Father will beatify Cardinal Newman - the much-loved Victorian theologian.
When Newman became a Cardinal in 1879, he had to choose a motto to go on his coat of arms. He chose the Latin words Cor ad Cor loquitur – heart speaks to heart. Where did these words come from? At the time, Newman thought they came from the Imitation of Christ (written in the 1400s), but in fact he was mistaken – they're from St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) a French Bishop and great spiritual writer whom Newman revered.
In fact, Newman chose to put a painting of St Francis above the altar in his own Chapel at the Birmingham Oratory.
'Heart speaks to Heart' – who is speaking to who? The phrase has different levels, which together tell us a lot about Newman, his understanding of what it is to be human, and his vision of a humanity redeemed by Christ.
Newman thought that true communication between us speaks from our heart to the heart of others around us – much more than just clever talking.
He wrote in an Anglican sermon: "Eloquence and wit, shrewdness and dexterity, these plead a cause well and propagate it quickly, but it dies with them. It has no root in the hearts of men, and lives not out a generation....By a heart awake from the dead, and by affections set on heaven, we can... truly and without figure witness that Christ liveth".
Truth speaks from the centre of the person, from their heart, In the age of the Internet, Newman tells us that however we communicate, what we say should come from the heart, the fruits of a moral life lived in communion with Christ.
In fact, Christ speaks to us from his own Heart. 'Thou art the living Flame, and ever burnest with love of man' – he is 'the Word, the Light, the Life, the Truth, Wisdom, the Divine Glory.'
So, in the end, it's the Heart of God himself which speaks to us – in prayer, in the Mass, through the Scriptures. But also through other faithful Christians, and in the teachings of the Church.
As Newman says, 'when the Church speaks Thou dost speak.' The Church has no other heart than the Heart of Christ himself.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/04/2010 22:57]