Smile for the newest Saint

This is the text of an article written for publication in the Staffordshire Evening Sentinel on Wednesday 29th September 2010.

On September 19th I was privileged to be present (with 50,000 others) when Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman. Or to put it more simply, he named Newman as Britain’s newest Saint.
You may have been surprised by this news. Newman - a Victorian clergyman and academic who converted to Catholicism in1845, half way through his life - is not especially well known, even by many Catholics.
Why? Well, while students of his writings greatly admire them, it has not always been easy for people to warm to the man himself. He seems a bookish figure - a fellow of Oxford university, who wrote learned works on education, philosophy and theology. He lived for most of his life in a community of priests, and appears to some to be rather dour and dull. In the many photographs of him which survive, he is studious and serious. There are no images of him smiling.
But this understanding of Newman misses out so much. He was indeed a great thinker and educator - but he was also a man of great tenderness and compassion, who saw the image of God in all people. Don’t be misled by the photographs. You will search long and hard for any Victorian photograph in which the subjects are smiling - exposure times were too long, and teeth, I suppose, too bad.
No, when he became a Cardinal, he took the motto “Heart speaks to Heart”, for he, the academic from a privileged background, could see very well that God’s heart speaks to the Heart of every single person, rich or poor, educated or illiterate. As an Anglican he moved from the centre of Oxford out to Littlemore to care for the poor in a rural area which was rapidly industrialising. When he came to Birmingham, the already famous Dr Newman set up his new community not in the plush and affluent suburbs, but in a former gin warehouse, amongst the poorest and most deprived of the rapidly growing city. He was deeply loved by the ordinary parishioners who he consoled, encouraged and educated through the schools he founded. When nearby Bilston was overcome with an epidemic of cholera, the local priests unable to cope and others afraid to help in case they too became ill, he went there, oblivious to his own safety, to console the sick and bury the dead.
And though he was no Oscar Wilde (another Victorian convert to Catholicism), neither was he without wit. When a pompous English priest in Rome invited him to address his intelligent and well-to-do English congregation - who would be a much more cultured audience than any in England, he claimed - Newman pointedly but firmly declined “because people in Birmingham have souls too”!
His concern for the ordinary people, and their love of him was most apparent at the end his life. Well into his eighties he walked the several miles from his parish to the Cadbury factory to plead the case of workers there. And just a few years later when his funeral cortege passed through the the city to his grave in Rednal, the streets were lined with more than 20,000 people who had loved this kind and holy man.
Perhaps the course of time, and the many academics who still read and study Newman, have clouded the memory of someone who was not just an intelligent man, but also a warm and saintly one.
His first ever Feast Day is on October 9th. If you wish, join Catholics all over the world and in saying “Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us.”

How not to be interviewed on the Radio.

Two simple tips: 

1. Do not have a coughing fit

2. Do not allow your phone to play "Swampsnake" by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band in the middle of the interview. 

For an example of what happens when such advice is not taken, listen here

Hard Times - Dark Clouds

The following article is written for inclusion in the Staffordshire Sentinel on April 21st 2010

It is a difficult time to be a Catholic.
It shouldn’t be. We’ve just celebrated Easter, the most colourful and hopeful festival of the Christian year. We also preparing for the visit of the Pope in September. Parishioners are signing up for a great choir for the Mass in Coventry, and rehearsals are soon to begin. It should all be very exciting.
But there are menacing clouds overshadowing our causes for joy, and I don’t mean those drifting over from an Icelandic volcano. There is a darkness which is obscuring the sunshine of our faith and Christian life.
I mean the continuing scandal over the abuse of children - those most vulnerable and beloved by God - which has been perpetrated within what were supposed to be the protective wings of the Church. It is a matter of disgust and shame for all who claim the name Christian, and of utter horror for those who cherish the Catholic Church.
The terrible crimes have of course given great material to those who want to paint religion as a force for evil and not good, who describe faith as something which damages people rather than frees them, and who have a fervent anti-Catholicism, fuelled by the kind of hatred of ‘papists’ long since abandoned by non-catholic Christians.
And it is hard for us to answer. We feel the pain of crimes wickedly committed and the shame of criminals protected out of a desire to avoid scandal for the Church.
And it is not enough for us to point out that the most terrible crimes happened many decades ago. It is not enough to argue that every organisation involved in the care of children has had to face similar scandal. It is not enough for us to list the many caring activities of the Catholic Church throughout the world, often in places where others are afraid or unable to venture. It does little good to point the finger to other institutions, where abuse has been as bad and often much worse. None of it is enough, because the wickedness has taken place. Lives have been damaged, and we do not want to appear to be putting a ‘spin’ on the bad news. We are wounded, disgusted and ashamed.
And the attacks have gone beyond the perpetrators now; they are at the doors of Church itself. A national newspaper promotes a proposal to arrest the Pope during his UK visit - something which would normally be called “crackpot”. They claim that it is Catholicism itself: the priesthood, holy Church, which is the cause of the abuse. Tear it all down - they say - it is rotten to the core.
For the Church receives special treatment: no one blames the BBC because a senior producer was charged with child pornography; nor even today’s Swedish government because in the 50s and 60s more than half the children in their orphanages were sexually abused. The Church is held to a different standard. Child abuse in the Church is perhaps the most reported crime in the world, but elsewhere perhaps not so.
And so perhaps that is right, because Catholics find no comfort in knowing abuse was so widespread. Multiple wrongs put nothing right, and our pain and sadness is not only that these things happen, but also that we were not better, that the Church’s good work was used to do bad, wicked, evil things.
And we carry this as a heavy burden. Explanations might look like an attempt at evasion or excuse. But it is the victims who most of all deserve our prayers and compassion.