DIOCESE OF MENEVIA


PASTORAL LETTER

"How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

This Letter is to be read and/or made available in printed format
on the weekend of 11-12 October 2009

My dear people

"How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?"

"We've never had it so good." In the light of recent financial events, that old slogan might now read: "We've never had it so bad." The mortgage and credit crisis has brought loss of homes, belongings, jobs, and even good health. Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people experienced the same. They were exiled to Babylon. They bemoaned the loss of their homes, their belongings, and their jobs, as well as their leaders and their institutions. Daily life and worship collapsed. Their identity as a people and as a nation was gone.

Today, we can identify with those in Babylon, who had to live in an alien environment, trying to cope with loss, with hopelessness, and with uncertainty. How could anyone sing the Lord's song of hope and joy in a foreign land? To some extent, their experience is ours today. For, once again, the world is so often deaf to the Lord's song, to his ways and values, to his call for mutual tolerance and sharing. His cry to respect the dignity of human life goes largely unheeded. When our nation was faced with financial ruin, ethics played little part.

Economic decline did not come from a foreign power or external influence. It came from within our own financial institutions. They were penetrated by a Trojan Horse of self-centred personal ambition. This promised rewards and bonuses. It guaranteed commissions even when investments failed. It brought claims that there was nothing wrong with current systems of borrowing and lending, of claiming  personal expenses and allowances. A crisis of trust was aggravated by secrecy. It affected every home and business in the land. Savings were wiped out. Leaders of the nation and its institutions seemed to lose their moral compass. We were living in a world that pulsed without a conscience. We were living again on an alien soil.

In such a situation, the Church has scarcely been more needed. It is there to help each individual to form a right conscience. It calls for a change in the law. Why should the claims of major creditors be settled before any others? Surely employees who have been laid off come first? But profit is put before people. The institutions are protected, but the people become poor. There is no preferential option for the poor, only a preferential option for major creditors. This is hostile to Catholic social teaching. Hardest hit are not the highest paid, but the lowest earners. They are the ones unprepared for the shock of unemployment and loss, especially those who are on fixed incomes. Christian principles demand recompense for the poorest, not the rich and the powerful. Low income-earners should be the first to be entitled to compensation, rather than the corporate risk-takers who are allowed to re-line their pockets. People should come before profit. This priority should be enshrined in UK law. Then will come true Benedict XVI's words, when he calls for assurances that "the whole economy is ethical" (Caritas in Veritate - Charity in Truth - #45).

Forming a right conscience has been the task of the Church for centuries. This formation begins in the home and continues in Catholic schools. Because they have brought them into the world, parents must be the primary and principal educators of their children. But they are helped by experts. These are their teachers, who have received appropriate professional training, including instruction in the Catholic faith, and are expected to obtain the Diocesan-run Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies.

Society needs a restored moral framework. To achieve this, parents have the right to choose an education that is in conformity with their religious faith. The state has an obligation to provide choice in education for all its citizens. Hence, parents have an underlying right to request schools in which Catholic education is provided. Once such schools are provided, Catholic parents have a responsibility to entrust their children to them. USE THEM OR LOSE THEM. Their aim is to be powerhouses of faith, and beacons of excellence. I commend them to you.

Our children will grow up deprived of a sense of a true personal and collective responsibility, if they do not have within their overall education a religious formation. This will help them to relate properly to others, to understand themselves, and to meet the challenges of a competitive world where ambition and success are dominant but not everything. The real test is the answer to the question: What are they able to contribute to the common good of society?

According to the last 4 years of official figures, over 14,000 Anti‑Social Behaviour Orders have been issued in Britain, mostly involving young people, and bearing some relation to criminal activity in later life. Added to this has been the abuse of power and secrecy in the financial sector. Education is the way to begin a turn-around in unacceptable behaviour, beginning in the home, and continuing at school. Inspection of behaviour in Catholic schools shows that it is typically very good. There are fewer exclusions and more parental involvement. Some, however, want to secularise the educational environment, by eliminating all that is religious and godly from our schools. Others want to remove the religious character from schools and sixth-form colleges. This leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy of a society that is unstable, selfish, and irresponsible. A truly democratic state is one in which all its citizens feel deeply a religious conviction that compels them to put themselves at the service of others. It is in the Church and in the environment of our Catholic schools that this conviction to serve and respect others is sown and developed. The quality of Catholic education allows the human person to be open to the transcendent, and to see the relevance of faith to everyday life. In this way, young people will learn to stand up and be counted for practising, in conscience, the moral values of the Gospel. They will have the courage to act morally in contrast so often to the ways of the world. Their example is so much needed.

Then we will sing again the Lord's song of hope and joy in an alien world. May God bless you and yours, today and always.
+ Tom
Bishop of Menevia