Disappearing 'Catholic Guilt' or disappearing Catholics?

Reposted from March 2013. This reflects the ecclesial situation before Pope Francis, but the observations about the nature of the 'Catholic population' identified in surveys is still relevant.
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Venerating Our Lady of Walsingham at the conclusion of the LMS Pilgrimage

The Sensible Bond draws attention to a little-reported survey of attitudes which claims that Catholics feel little or no more compunction about immoral behaviour than the general population. He links that to the recent scandal about Cardinal O'Brien - which is very interesting, but here I'm just going to focus on the survey.

The Religion and Society Programme of the University of Lancaster has a helpful page with details of a long list of 'research findings'. The stuff about Catholic guilt is not to be found there, however, but in a press release. It is based, not on a study by sociologists, but an opinion poll by YouGov. The sample size of more than 4,400 sounds impressive, but it was conducted over the internet, and they only reached 391 self-described Catholics. This self-description, translated, in the Press Release, into the term 'practicing Catholic', comes down to whether they 'currently engage in religious or spiritual practices with other people, for example attending services in a place of worship or elsewhere, or taking part in a more informal group', where the 'group' etc. is Catholic for 'Catholics', or Anglican for 'Anglicans'. There is no reference to frequency of this vague spiritual interaction, so it would presumably include non-baptised people who go to their late work-colleagues' Catholic funerals once a decade. And if readers don't know a lot of serious-minded Catholics who'd never find themselves filling in an on-line poll, they need to get out more.

A Rabbit's Lament

Today I am reposting this response of mine from January 2015 to the Pope's notorious aeroplane quip that Catholics need not breed like rabbits. Since this is one of the few times (the only time?) that something looking a bit like a public peddling-back by the Holy Father followed such an airborne remark, I don't want to make a meal of it. But it does serve to illustrate an important point about the presentation of the Faith to outsiders.

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Update: at today's (Wednesday 21/1/15) Pope Francis said this at the General Audience: 'It gives comfort and hope to see many families that welcome children as a true gift of God. They know that every child is a blessing.' 

The Pope's remarks on contraception on the aeroplane back from the Philippines were an extreme example of what has become a characteristic of this papacy. Without his words moving one iota from the teaching of the Church, and indeed reaffirming it, what came across was something appearing to undermine the actual living out of that teaching. Contraception is not just bad, it is - says the Holy Father - reminiscent of the ideological endeavours of the Hitler Youth. The example of a mother for whom some kind of ethical avoidance of pregnancy would be sensible is so extreme that it is impossible to argue with it. And yet somehow the take-home message is that large families are a bad thing. 'Catholics need not breed like rabbits.'

It is always good to put things in their context, so let me attempt to do so. For the last half a century or more the rhetoric of many of those charged with proclaiming the Gospel has been directed to the task of distancing the Church from the pious ideal, in order to make the Church more acceptable to those who reject the pious ideal. 'Oh, we don't spend all our time on our knees!' 'We don't believe all that nonsense any more!' You know the kind of thing. This strategy was based on two truths and one falsehood. The two truths are, first, that the pious ideal in the minds of those who reject the Church is generally an amalgam of misunderstandings and anti-Catholic propaganda, and second that the the pious ideal in the minds of those actually trying to lead good lives can itself be immature or unbalanced. The falsehood involved in this strategy is the idea that it is better to join in the attack on the ideal from an anti-Catholic perspective, than to correct, if necessary, and explain and defend the value of the ideal.

The Pope and Nuns in the Congo

The Annunciation. From the Rosary Walk at Aylesford Priory.

Here is a post of some rather technical ethical reasoning. But if you want to understand the debate on the 'Nuns in the Congo' case, read on.

The Pope referred to the famous case of the 'Nuns in the Congo' in the latest aeroplane interview. The case is about nuns who, fearing rape, take some kind of contraceptive pill. Pope Francis' exact purpose in making the reference was unclear, but not nearly unclear enough for the Vatican spokesman Fr Lombardi, who relived his triumphs in obscuring the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI on the dangers of condoms for people with AIDS, and in throwing sand into the eyes of everyone trying to make sense of Pope Benedict's remarks about male prostitutes using condoms.

In the meantime, Sandro Magister seems to have uncovered the history of the 'Nuns in the Congo' discussion, which wasn't what pretty well everyone had assumed up to now, claiming that Pope Paul VI said nothing on the subject. Rahter, it had simply been discussed by some theologians under Pope John XXIII.

Being a moral philosopher rather than a historian or, for that matter, a mind-reader, I think the contribution I can best make here is to explain why the Nuns in the Congo case is important, regardless of whether Pope Paul VI or any other pope authorised any ruling about it.

What is a 'contraceptive mentality'?

A recent article in The Telegraph shines a new light on Natural Family Planning ('NFP'): a smart-phone application means couples can replace periodic abstinence with periodic use of a condom, which will have no effect on the accuracy of the method, since this is based entirely on temperature. (This is not the case for the currently standard 'Billings' version of NFP.)

Couples adopting this approach will avoid the many hideous, and occasionally life-threatening (yes, thrombosis can kill you) side-effects of other methods of contraception. Since many methods can (and some invariably do) cause early abortions, it may be morally preferable as well, though this consideration won't be a motivating one for many secular couples.

I think that proponents of NFP would agree, however, that, if you take away the element of self-restraint and abstinence, a lot of what they say about the spiritual and relationship benefits of NFP would no longer apply. The stuff about being in tune with your body is still there, but while this is an appealing idea, it doesn't have any very obvious connection with Catholic spirituality. You're not a better person because you are 'in touch with your body'.

I don't know if this NFP app will take off, but it raises the question of the 'contraceptive mentality', to which, as a Catholic ethicist, I'd dearly love to give a proper definition. If this phrase means anything, it must apply to the couples supplementing fertility awareness with condoms.

An article here argues that the 'contraceptive mentality' idea is a 'myth'. It points out correctly (more or less) that the intrinsically wrong contraceptive act identified by Catholic ethics has two components: an intention to perform a complete sexual act, and an intention to frustrate that act's potential for procreation. Used in the normal way, without condoms, NFP doesn't make room for this: there are no sexual acts whose fertility is impeded, only ones which weren't fertile in the first place. But that is exactly why we need a vaguer phrase like 'contraceptive mentality' to cover the clearly wrongful use of NFP to implement an intention, for example, not to have any children at all within marriage. This intention, if present at the time of the marriage ceremony, invalidates the marriage itself. It is rather different if the couple choose not to consummate the marriage; but if there are sexual acts, there is a need for them to be 'open to life' in a sense which goes beyond the requirement not to engage in contraceptive acts. The question is, what does this mean?

What is wrong with a married couple's intention, however implemented, not to have any children (while still having sex) is that it is contrary to the vocation of marriage. It would be like a priest who decides never to celebrate Mass. Married couples are called to have children. It may be that they can't have any, physically; it may be that they discover that pregnancy would be dangerous to the wife's health after marriage. But it remains the nature of the marital state that it is ordered to procreation.

The same would go for couples who use NFP to limit their family size in an unreasonable way. I'm not going to define what would be unreasonable, but just to take it for granted that there is such a thing, since everyone agrees (or should) that the just use of NFP requires 'reasons'. If couples limit the number of children unreasonably, then they are offending against the nature of their vocation.

This, I would suggest, is what it is to have a 'contraceptive mentality'. It is a mentality which is typically accompanied by contraceptive acts, but can also be put into practice using NFP. It is an attitude not open to life in accordance with the marital vocation, excluding children altogether or to an unreasonable degree.

It would follow from what I have said that it would not apply to non-married couples. Although contracepted fornication or adultery is worse than non-contracepted fornication or adultery, since the act has been deformed in an additional way, a blanket use of NFP would not be wrong, since the couple are not under an obligation to partake of the marital vocation in this way. On the other hand, they are attacking marriage in another way: from the outside, at it were.

Something I've skirted round here is continence in marriage: a decision not to engage in sex at all, either from the start, or at some time later, or temporarily, for a longer or shorter period of time. This finds a place in the history of Catholic spirituality. The logical conclusion of the practice is when a married couple agree to give up their marital rights in order to join monasteries. I think this case makes sense of the whole practice: it is the exchange of one vocation for another. Since the vocation to the religious life is the higher vocation, the exchange is a reasonable one, even if not formalised by public vows, and even if just a temporary arrangement to 'make time for prayer'.

Loftus and the time-warp

Superb stained glass from the Comper chapel of the All Saints Convent in Cowley, Oxford,
now occupied by the Conventual Franciscans.

This weekend you'll find a feature article by me in the Catholic Universe. But here I'm going to talk about an article in its sister paper, the The Catholic Times.

Mgr Basil Loftus treats us to one of his historical paradoxes (The Catholic Times, Christmas double issue, dated '19th and 26th December'):

St Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury when William the Conqueror invaded Britain - so I don't need to tell you the date - wrote...

Well blow me, I thought it was the Saxon, Archbishop Stigand, who was governing the see of Canterbury in 1066. He was succeeded by Lanfranc in 1070, and St Anselm didn't take up the post until 1093: not only some time after the Conquest, but several years after William the Conqueror had died (in 1087).

The problem with The NFP industry

Here is a clever little promotional video about Natural Family Planning, produced by these people here.


It is supposed to illustrate the advantages of NFP. It is also, unintentionally, illustrates the problems, not so much with the technique, but with how it is generally presented.

Now I think it would be great if couples using condoms and the Pill, and the other hideous methods of contraception, were to switch to NFP. Fish would appreciate not being saturated with estrogen. I incline towards the view that condoms deform the act of sex and that the standard Pill can cause abortions, as well as cancer; NFP has moral and prudential benefits all round. However, NFP has and will continue to have little take-up outside the Church because contraception is not, mostly, about cosy little planning meetings between a couple, it is about facilitating promiscuity, and even within marriage the notion of self-restraint is regarded as intolerable. The reality is that this video is only going to make headway with Catholics.

Basil Loftus denies the infallibility of the Ordinary Magisterium

St Vincent of Lerins

Last weekend (25th May 2014) Mgr Basil Loftus presented his readers with another confection of crafty confusion. First, he assures us that he beleives in infallibility. But it would appear that this is understood as applying only to Papal definitions of doctrines ex cathedra, exercises of the 'Extraordinary Magisterium'. He ignores the question of the infallibilty, also part of the Extraordinary Magisterium, of the anathemas of General Councils; there's no telling what he thinks about that. But as far as the Papal Magisterium is concerned, without a decree like the one defining the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Our Lady, Loftus thinks there is no infallibility: as with contraception.

'Where such doubt [sc. that infallibility has been invoked] does exist, infallibility is not relevant to the argument. And it certainly exists in the case of Humanae Vitae. How else could Cardinal Walter Kaspar have said this month: "The Church is clearly not against birth-control at all"? Outwith the formulas of dogmatic definitions, such as of the Assumption, it is difficult to see where and when and how such certainty can be acquired that infallibility has been invoked.'

As is always the case with Loftus, one falsehood is hidden inside another. One is what Cardinal Kasper actually said. Loftus is quoting a radio interview, and no one has produced a full transcript (though you can listen to the whole thing here); nevertheless the key passage is this:

Kasper: “Well, the Church is not against birth control at all. … It’s about the methods of birth control. … I do not want to enter into this characteristic…how they have to do it. It’s their personal conscience and their personal responsibility.”

It is perfectly evident that, while Cardinal Kasper did not want to be drawn into a discussion of the details of the teaching, his remark 'the Church is not against birth control' means nothing more than 'the Church does not prevent people limiting their family size: certain methods of doing this are licit'. He clearly has Natural Family Planning in mind. He doesn't want to say more. In the context of an interview that is understandable; once you get onto condoms you can never get off the subject again. Perhaps there is a hint also that there can be a gap between the Church's teaching and what people actually do, in conscience: however that is a way of avoiding a denial of Church teaching, not of making a denial of it. Whatever more complicated views Cardinal Kasper may turn out to have, Loftus' selective quotation is entirely dishonest.

The other falsehood is about the nature of infallibilty. The teaching of Humanae Vitae is infallible, not because of the authority of the document in which it is contained - an encyclical, as opposed to an ex cathedra decree - but because it reiterates the constant teaching of the Church, and the constant teaching of the Church is infallible. The Pope has the gift of picking out and clarifying the constant teaching of the Church, the 'Ordinary and Universal Magisterium', and in doing so we find passages, in encyclicals, like this.

Paul VI, Humanae Vitae 14, on abortion and contraception:
Therefore We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. 
Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation—whether as an end or as a means.

St John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 62, on abortion:
Given such unanimity in the doctrinal and disciplinary tradition of the Church, Paul VI was able to declare that this tradition is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops—who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation, albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine—I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

St John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis 4, on the ordination of women:
Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

These are infallible statements, as St John Paul makes particularly clear, on the basis not of the Extraordinary Magisterium but the Ordinary Magisterium. Since the last of these statements continued to be contradicted on the basis that it was not clearly infallible, its status was clarified by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Cardinal Ratzinger, as follows.

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

What Loftus does not want his readers to understand is that it is above all the Church which is infallible. The Pope and the Councils exercise 'extraordinary' acts of infallibility from time to time, but it not necessary for them to reaffirm in this way every single thing which the Church teaches. It becomes necessary, generally speaking, only when heresy has disturbed the Faithful and the teaching is being denied, or, less often, when, as with the Immaculate Conception, the necessary connection between what was understood by all since forever and the theological consequences of that, need to be made explicit and clear to everyone. The fact that the Church has never, ever, allowed contraception, abortion, or the ordination of women, and that these things have been condemned every time they have been proposed, by every kind of council and by innumerable Popes, tells us enough. The Church has spoken. If it needs reiterating, the Pope can do so, by his special gift and duty of 'confirming the brethren', through an ordinary encyclical letter.

The idea that, unless nailed down by the Extraordinary Magisterium, no theological proposition can be regarded as beyond doubt by Catholics, is dizzying. As Loftus would be the first to point out, the number of propositions nailed down in this way is very limited, even if you include (what he ignores), the anathemas of General Councils. No: we don't have to back up every assertion that 'the Church teaches X' with a reference to the Canons of the Council of Trent or of Lateran IV. We can just say: this is the constant teaching of the Church. To deny it is to put yourself outside the Church. St Vincent of Lerins (d.445) expressed it in a way which has ever since been regarded as definitive:

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess that one faith to be true, which the whole Church throughout the world confesses; antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors.

Letter of the week

This letter in the Catholic Times (13 Oct 2013) really deserves a wider audience. Well, it made me laugh!

Can it be possible that the Catholic Church in this country has pre-empted Pope Francis' blueprint for Church reform?

If discourse on sexual morality is to be abandoned in favour of pastoral care, we in these parts abandoned it years ago. The last recorded sermons on sexual morals given locally were from our church pulpits in the early 1960s, and ever since pulpits were dismantled there has been little said on the subject.

Contraception, adultery, sodomy, abortion, masturbation, although very prevalent and openly accepted in today's society, appear to be not for mention within the precincts of our churches. But for the persistent complaints of one of your columnists and your regular correspondents objecting to the Church's teaching, sexual immorality would be out of the public eye and a thing of the past.

If the Catholic Church is identified solely by its sexual moral precepts, it is largely due to those within the Church who persistently raise objections and maintain the the Church has got it wrong. It is a paradox that the ones who object are the ones who are doing the preaching, and perhaps we should be thankful to them for keeping the matter before our attention.

Jeff Thompson,

Chorley, Lancashire.

Dr Tina Beattie in Wimbledon

My own comment on Dr Beattie's roving apostolate of apostasy, and the pathetic argument about academic freedom, can be read here.

From 'Protect the Pope':

The parish newsletter of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Hear, Wimbledon:
“NEWMAN CIRCLE WEDNESDAY 23 JANUARY at 7.30 pm in the Lounge. Dr Tina Beattie will be speaking on ‘As Mary goes, so goes the Church’. All are welcome.”

These invitations to Prof. Beattie to speak in Catholic parishes follow her being banned from delivering a lecture in her own diocese of Clifton, and her fellowship being withdrawn from San Diego university because of her public support as a Catholic theologian of same-sex marriage in open defiance of the position taken by the Bishops Conference of England and Wales, and the Holy See.
Prof. Beattie, along with others, wrote to The Times on 13 August to state that “it is perfectly proper for Catholics, using fully informed consciences, to support the legal extension of civil marriage to same-sex couples”, and who equally scandalously quoted Cardinal Basil Hume, the late Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, in a way which suggested he might have supported their case. They used words from his 1997 document, ‘A Note on the Teaching of the Catholic Church Concerning Homosexuality’: “love between two persons, whether of the same sex, or of a different sex, is to be treasured and respected” whilst omitting to mention that he went on to say that “the Church does not approve of homosexual genital acts” and “homosexual genital acts … are morally wrong”.
The catalogue of Prof. Beattie’s dissent includes:

• In an examination of the morality of abortion Prof. Beattie justifies  the argument that the embryo is not a person by using the doctrine of the Trinity. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/14789
• Prof. Beattie uses the doctrine of the marriage between Christ and His Church to support gay marriage. http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/162433
• Prof Beattie condemns as ‘perverted’ a CTS booklet defending the Church’s doctrine on divorce and contraception.
• http://www.thetablet.co.uk/blogs/355/17
• Prof. Beattie describes the Mass as an ‘an act of (homo) sexual intercourse…’. ‘God’s Mother, Eve’s Advocate’, p.80.
• Prof. Beattie supports government plans for same-sex marriage http://quehttp://www.thetablet.co.uk/latest-news/4459eringthechurch.com/2012/08/13/gay-marriage-catholic-diversity-expressed-in-england-and-wales/
• Prof. Tina Beattie imagines the apostles and women disciples having sex in her meditation The Last Supper According to Martha and Mary (2001) which the publishers describe as ‘part fiction, part Biblical reflection’.

Dr Tina Beattie is a director of and regular contributor to The Tablet which in its issue for Saturday 12 January published a version of Dr Beattie’s lecture on Mary.
Protect the Pope comment:  It is significant that in the week after the announcement that the Soho Masses are being transferred to the Jesuit church of Farm Street, that members of the same Jesuit community have invited such a notorious supporters of same-sex marriage to speak at their parish in Wimbledon.

We should recall the words of Pope Benedict XVI to the English and Welsh bishops during their ad limina visit to Rome in February 2010: “it is important to recognise dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate. It is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free.” Very few doubt that Pope Benedict had The Tablet and many of its contributors in mind when he uttered those words.

The Church in England and Wales is now entering a period of intense public conflict with David Cameron’s coalition government over its  intention to legislate for “gay marriage”. And yet, a renowned parish run by the Jesuits (whose special charism is a vow of obedience to the Holy Father) has chosen to host a public lecture by a Catholic theologian who publicly supports same-sex marriage.

Please pray to Blessed John Henry Newman so that this lecture may be cancelled and that no further invitations to speak are extended to Prof. Beattie by the dioceses and parishes of the Catholic Church.
Protect the Pope asks anyone who is a parishioner of Sacred Heart Church, Wimbledon or lives within the Archdiocese of Southwark to write and/or e mail urgently with a respectful request that the lecture be cancelled to :

Dr Bill Russell, Secretary, Wimbledon Newman Circle. E mail: William_russell@talktalk.net

Stuart McCullough at the LMS Conference

You now can listen to Stuart McCullough's talk, 'Spiritual Warfare and the End of Abortion' here (MP3).

Stuart McCullough is a blogger himself, with the Ecumenical Diablog; the Good Counsel Network, for whom he is a fundraiser and counselor, has another blog, Maria Stops Abortion.

It was Stuart's wife, Clare McCullough, who founded the Good Counsel Network in London in 1997, inspired by the work of the Chicago Women's Centre in the USA.

Stuart protested his lack of experience as a speaker, but his talk was both very interesting and moving. It describes the way the basic approach of the Good Counsel Network was developed, first in Hawaii and then elsewhere in the United States, and how it works in practice in England. He discusses the difficulties pro-life counselors and the women they talk to face, and the causes of abortion. Among other fascinating points, he said that the great majority of women they see, who are usually convinced that abortion is their only way out when they first arrive, are taking some kind of contraception. One woman who got pregnant was using no fewer than 3 forms of contraception simultaneously. All contraception has a failure rate, and in the context of hundreds of thousands of people using it hundreds of times, this translates into a very large number of 'unplanned pregnancies'. Offering young girls contraception with the suggestion that they can have problem-free sex with their boyfriends is a really, really, stupid idea. But that is exactly what our schools are doing.

Another interesting point which struck me was that, while many fathers push their partners into abortion, the majority say 'I will support you whatever you do'. This sounds nice but in fact places the whole responsibility on the shoulders of the mother. If she has an abortion, and regrets it, that is her fault: she chose that. If she keeps the baby, and needs help, that's her problem too: she could always have chosen an abortion, the father never asked her not to.

The theme he kept returning to, however, was the importance of prayer, the Mass, which is offered in the private chapel near their counseling room, and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The Good Counsel Network puts out urgent prayer requests on occasion by text message; you can also sign up to say five decades of the Rosary once a month for their intentions, so they have as many as possible every single day. I am on that rota myself.

Stuart's talk was truly inspiring, and he received prolonged applause. We were very privileged to hear from someone doing such wonderful work at the front line of the pro-life cause, and I would like to reiterate his appeal for support for the Good Counsel Network: money, by all means, but above all prayer.  Go to the Good Counsel Network website to see what you can do.

Sex abuse and the permissive 1960s

There has been a lot of coverage of the new CTS booklet on the sex abuse crisis in the Church: The Sex Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church, by Dr Pravin Thevathasan. In it he describes a number of factors which contributed to the crisis; a key one was - pretty obviously - the sexual revolution of the 1960s which was not resisted successfully by the Church: as we all know, the Church's teaching against contraception was not vigorously promulgated in the years before Humanae Vitae in 1968, nor in the years after it, and something similar is true of other areas of the Church's teaching on sexuality. Generations of seminarians have been told to 'lighten up' if they have traditional views on sexual morality.

The Tablet represents, if any publication does, the views of those who did and still do not want to see the Church's teaching on sexuality properly taught to children, inculcated to seminarians, and enforced through canon law on priests and religious. Dr Thevathasan's book must make for unconfortable reading for them, and last week The Tablet's news report on the book quoted Fr Brendan Callaghan SJ making what might seem to be a good objection to it: a large proportion of the priests comitting abuse in the 1970s and 1980s were educated and ordained before the permissive 1960s could have an effect on seminary education. (The same is true, of course, of the many priests who left the priesthood in order to marry during those decades.)

Dr Thevathasan has answered this objection in a letter The Tablet has published only in the 'Letters Extra' section of their website, so here it is for a wider audience. Priests, along with Catholic catechists and school teachers did not have to be educated in the 1960s to feel its effect, since there were extensive programmes of re-education after the Second Vatican Council to bring them up to speed on the latest rubbish.

Sex abuse, bad theory and the permissive 1960s

In my forthcoming CTS booklet on "The Catholic Church and the sex abuse crisis", reported on by Christopher Lamb (News, 4 June), I suggest that while it would be wrong to claim a single cause for the crisis, the introduction of psychological theories proposed by Carl Rogers needs to be considered as a contributory factor.

William Coulson was a colleague of Rogers' who conducted Sensitivity Training workshops in numerous religious institutions in the 1960s. He later rejected humanistic psychology and claimed: "My theories have made priests feel good about being bad ... The Franciscans were so enamoured with our psychology that they introduced it to Saint Anthony's Seminary in Santa Barbara. Years later, 11 or 12 friars were accused of molesting 34 high school boys. I'm afraid that we planted the seeds and they carried the seeds to the next generation and they germinated." Seeds planted elsewhere would presumably have germinated in the same fashion.

There are many problems with humanistic psychology and this includes an absence of a moral framework. Coulson claims that Rogers himself rejected humanistic psychology by saying " I greatly underestimated the reality of evil. I hope Rogerian theory goes down the drain."

Dr Pravin Thevathasan, LondonYou can see a summary of Dr Coulson's ideas here; better still download an MP3 talk by him here. It is an eye-opener.

Pictures: Carl Rogers, whose teachings replaced those of Our Lord as the basis of thinking about sexuality for 'progressive' Catholics in the 196os.