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"I had an abortion for the same reason - bad timing, partner didn't want the baby"

March 8, 2013, 3:28 pm
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Vicky Pryce, charged with perversion of justice
Vicky Pryce has been found guilty of perversion of justice, and could have been sentenced to life (the biggest sentence anyone can get for this crime), but has got eight months in prison. She had made herself a whistle-blower, wanting to drag her journalist turned Lib-Dem-politician husband through the courts because she claimed he had made her take his speeding points, so that he would avoid a driving ban. Her defence for why she took the points was 'marital coercion'.  To prove her case, she gave supporting evidence in the from of her revelation in court to having aborted a 'healthy' baby, following what she described as relentless pressure from her then-husband Huhne. Vicky Pryce described herself as 'accidentally pregnant' and said,'despite my protestations, he got me to have an abortion, which I have regretted ever since.” Heart-breaking as this may be, the jury refused to believe it or did not think it relevant. Pryce was not suing her husband because he pushed her into an abortion against her will. Had this been her reason for taking her former-husband to court - there may have been an entirely different outcome.

Instead, during a court battle when Dr Pryce was caught out in many lies, the jury decided to believe that both Pryce and Huhne had connived in lying, and that they both had known that they were breaking the law when she took his speeding points. Doubt hangs over Pryce because it is widely assumed her motives were inspired by revenge - Huhne left her for another woman in 2010 and the speeding points incident happened in 2003. 

Vicky Pryce's tear stained testimony of her reluctant abortion has prompted small pockets of debate concerning whether or not it is legal for pregnant women to be put under pressure/harassed into abortion. To use a counter example, there are sexual harassment cases, where someone sues on the basis that they were harassed into sexual relations that they would not have done, had they not been harassed. Would it be comparable to have abortion harassment cases where someone asserts they were bullied into a medical procedure? Perhaps, it isn't as simple as putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of an abusive partner who drives a woman to abortion.

Fr Lucie-Smith blogged about Vicky Pryce's abortion, and an anonymous reader left the following comment where she outlines in stark terms the pressure she felt, not only because of her partner, but because of her job, the way the abortion clinic withheld information about the abortion - until she was actually undergoing it, and society.

"I had an abortion for the same reason - bad timing, partner didn't want the baby and I was on a temporary contract, which would not have been renewed.
They don't tell you what will happen either. Only once I had taken the requisite pill to induce the abortion, did they then tell me that I would experience labour pains. Nor do they tell you that you will deliver a tiny foetus into a kidney dish which they put in a paper lunchbag for you to give to the doctor to examine.

Coercion, especially when it is from a combination of people, added to the lies told to you by the abortion clinics and chuck in a measure of despair and hopelessness can drive you to rationalise and justify evil.

Vicky Pryce is not the first, she won't be the last and neither should she be condemned for what she did, even though it was an abhorrent act.

This type of coercion happens every single day, a coercion that is added to by a society that mandates and encourages abortion as being a responsible choice and leaves devastated women and dead babies in its wake.

So long as one 'wants' an abortion it is legal in the UK.

One has to feel even more sorry for Vicky Pryce as she probably hasn't had the chance to embrace the Sacrament of Confession or find any healing in the severest mercy of The Lord.

If she was prepared to abort her baby under pressure, then speeding points would have seemed like small fry. Poor woman."
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Somebody who should have been born is gone

March 10, 2013, 6:14 pm
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 The Abortion by Anne Sexton

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,


Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.

The poet - Anne Sexton

(Some bloggers are posting poems about abortion - in tandem with the 40 Days for Life campaign in London led by Robert Colquhoun).
See Richard's blog for The Mother. And a big thanks to Countercultural Father who had the idea of posting poetry such as By The Babe Unborn to coincide with 40 Days.
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The case for Cardinal Zen to be elected Pope

March 11, 2013, 1:59 pm
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‘The Communists have always one policy that is to control the Church, and since they cannot accept double loyalty: loyalty to the country and loyalty to one’s religion. They want to separate Chinese Catholics from Rome: that is their only goal.” This is Chinese CardinalZen’s terse but on-the-ball assessment of the Chinese Communist government’s relationship with Catholicism. There are up to 12 million Catholics in China, but half the Catholic population attend government-run Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association churches. But this structure does not pledge unambiguous allegiance to the Pope. 

A cardinal since 2006, CardinalZen has always insisted loudly that the Patriotic Church merely imitates the Catholic Church with the aim of deluding Catholics into joining it, when in reality, it is expected to follow the Chinese government and not the Pope. The irony is that many of the members of the Patriotic Church, set up in 1957, love the Holy Father and privately promise faithfulness to Rome. Thus, CardinalZen says, “we really only have one Church”, comprised of Catholics, who either attend Patriotic Association churches or underground churches, but who all want to do the Pope’s will.
Pope Benedict defined the Church’s role in China in a public letter to Chinese Catholics in May 2007. Benedict XVI bemoaned “the grave limitations” that the Chinese government puts in place to sideline the true Catholic Church and “suffocate pastoral activity”. In July 2011 and July 2012, the Holy See excommunicated three Chinese bishops because they had undergone consecration as bishops without first getting the Pope’s approval. 

On his blog and in the public sphere, CardinalZen openly urges the Vatican to excommunicate more bishops who are illicitly ordained. Few cardinals would have fought so vocally and against such opposition for the supremacy of the Holy See, as CardinalZen has done in the last few decades. Concerning even bishops who were validly ordained, he says they can be “more on the side of the [Chinese] government than of the Holy See, more servants of the government than shepherds of the flock”. He also does not mince his words when talking about senior curial officials at the Vatican. CardinalZen has been quick to say that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples has wanted “appeasement” with the Chinese government. He says its policies do not always help the persecuted Chinese Catholics and the bishops who have been jailed. 

This candid Prince of the Church was born on January 13 1932 in Shanghai to very pious parents. He entered the Salesians in the Hong Kong novitiate. He was ordained at the age of 29 on February 11 1961. On the day that Pope Benedict announced his abdication CardinalZen was celebrating 52 years of priesthood. 

He holds a licentiate in theology and a doctorate in philosophy, both earned at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. He has had a variety of teaching assignments in China. He is first and foremost a son of Don Bosco and is very proud that he is a schoolteacher. Even in his 70s he wanted to go to Africa to teach in areas where there was a shortage of schoolteachers. Throughout his life, no matter how many pressing duties he had as a bishop, he would meet his former pupils. Interestingly, he taught in seminaries recognised by the Communist Party between 1989 and 1996. Then, he was appointed coadjutor Bishop of Hong Kong in 1996 by Pope John Paul II. 

CardinalZen bravely confronts politicians not just in China but also in America. In 2011, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party received a rapturous welcome in Washington DC, in spite of the grave human rights abuses in China. After the visit, CardinalZen went to Capitol Hill and reminded the political class that they didn’t have any reason to be “so optimistic”. It is his tireless mission to alert people to a situation in China that needs to change. This has led to him being hailed as “the conscience of China”. 

CardinalZen has a great love of the Extraordinary Form Mass and celebrated a Pontifical High Mass in May 2006, earning the esteem of many Latin Mass groups. 

While he may be 81, he looks not much older than 60. Vigorous and lively, even in retirement he has a schedule that would tire someone just to read it. No matter where he travels in the world, he makes a point of seeking out Chinese Catholics and telling them about the state of the Church in their native land. When he is asked if this is not a very exhausting existence, he strenuously rejects the notion, saying that he is a shepherd “for all Chinese Catholics” and that this means meeting with as many of them as possible anywhere in the world.
 
CardinalZen is proficient in English, speaking in pithy sentences and getting to the heart of the matter in seconds. Secularists moan that he’s brusque and discourteous, but the faithful feel he gets to the point and has the guts to say things that others would leave out for the sake of diplomacy. It is this perseverance in serving Chinese Catholics in different parts of the globe, and his stamina in fulfilling gruelling schedules and his defence of persecuted Christians, that lead many to think that he has what it takes to be pope. If he does it will be China’s loss, but Rome’s gain. 
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Benedict, Francis and John Paul II enjoy meeting-up...

March 16, 2013, 4:57 am
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Happy All Saints' Day... Did you know that All Saints' Day used to be celebrated on May 13th?

November 1, 2012, 3:56 pm
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This video comes from New Jersey's Pat and Mary, a married couple who 'love history'. The dancing brain at the start of their videos shows that they do not take themselves so seriously as to be insufferable. And there is quite a lot of details - and humour - in such a tiny video.

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Francis: Portrait of the Pope as a young man and as young Jesuit tested in the Dirty War

March 22, 2013, 9:01 am
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Just before Christmas 1936, Regina Bergoglio gave birth to her first child, who she named Jorge, which is Spanish for George. As she held her baby boy in the intense sunshine of an Argentinean summer, little did she know that she was nurturing a future Pope.
In 1929 Regina and her husband Mario had emigrated from Piedmont in northern Italy and had started their family in the Americas. Mario toiled on the railway, while Regina became a full-time housewife and devoted her life to her five children. They had a modest existence, being so thrifty that new clothes were seen as dangerously lavish, not once going on holidays and never owning a car.
They were not poor, but were unassuming upper-working-class Italians who considered themselves very fortunate to have secure housing in Flores, an ordinary suburb of Buenos Aires, a city that had its share of squatter settlements and slums. Many of Mario Bergog-lio’s fellow workers on the railroads would have lived in shanty towns.

At the time, migrants from different parts of Argentina and from Europe were trying to eke out an existence in Buenos Aires – or at least get a menial job. Society in Buenos Aires in the 1930s was stubbornly Victorian and priggish. High Victorian fashions were still de rigeur. Even the slightest bad etiquette was frowned upon. People were not easily forgiven for having come from a lower class, and the rich and poor classes painfully chafed against each other. The Bergoglios were different: unlike many of their contemporaries, they were cultured but not obsessed with social climbing.
Regina and Mario could not abide wasting food and ensured that their children cleaned their plates at meal times. Regina was an excellent cook and diligently taught Jorge how to cook all manner of Italian dishes. When he was growing up, on Saturdays Jorge would sit with his mother and listen to opera on the radio. Reminiscing about this he has said: “It was just the most lovely thing.” The Bergoglios were keen to assimilate and did not mix exclusively with other Italians. Also, snubbing the poor and resenting the penurious because they cast shadows of misfortune on the great city of Buenos Aires was not their approach. It was here, in 1940s Buenos Aires, seeing emaciated children go hungry while richer people in furs scorned them for their lowliness, that the future Pope began to abhor snobbery. 

The young Jorge was bookish, busy cultivating his love for literature and dazzled by the colourful local Jewish community, which put on plays. Known for his literary leanings, his chief field of study, however, was chemistry, a subject in which he earned a Master’s degree.
As a young man, he had a wide circle of friends and a girlfriend with whom he danced the tango, until the stirrings of a vocation caused him to break from his sweetheart and give up dancing. He told Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin, the authors of his 2010 biography, that his ex-girlfriend “was one of the group of friends I went dancing with. But then I discovered my religious vocation.” He entered the Society of Jesus as a 21-year-old, which was then considered a slightly late vocation. In his early 20s, an unshakable lung infection and lack of the right treatment meant that he lost a lung. He was ordained in December 1969, a few days before he turned 33.

Having impressed his superiors when he was novice master of the San Miguel seminary, he was only 37 when he was elected superior of the Jesuit province of Argentina. His decision-making during this time is the most highly contested period of his biography. Present-day Argentina is still grappling with the memories of the military’s violent rule from 1976 to 1983. Allegations persist that Pope Francis was complicit in the regime of Jorge Rafael Videla. The then Fr Bergoglio was the highest-ranking Jesuit in Buenos Aires and has since been pilloried for not speaking out against the junta’s abuse of power. At the time, army generals were attempting to rid society of people who they suspected were Left-wing subversives. 

What is certain is that during the “Dirty War” he demanded absolute obedience and political neutrality of his priests, something that many of them greatly resented. The Jesuit order was showing cracks because of infighting, as many priests were seduced by a blend of Marxism and Liberation Theology, and rebelled against the traditional nature of a priestly vocation. 

One man who is leading the charge against Pope Francis is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, who in his 2005 book The Silence accuses him of allowing the military to use the Jesuit headquarters as a secret base. Denying this allegation, Pope Francis says he gave a home to dissidents in the Jesuits’ mother house. An even more contentious sequence of events involves two Jesuits, Fr Orlando Yorio and Fr Francisco Jalics, who in the 1970s were evangelising and starting literacy programmes in the shanty town Belén-Bethlehem. The military panicked, believing that such work could spark a rebellion in the slums. Fr Bergoglio gave Fr Yorio and Fr Jalics an order to stop going to Belén-Bethlehem. But a conflict arose between the zealous Fr Yorio and Fr Jalics, who wanted to educate the disadvantaged and their superior, Fr Bergoglio, who didn’t want them to lose their lives. Fr Yorio and Fr Jalics defied Fr Bergoglio and were arrested by the navy in May 1976. Later Fr Yorio claimed that he and Jalics and several youth workers were arrested because Fr Bergoglio “withdrew his protection” from them and this gave the army “a green light” to arrest him. But Pope Francis insisted in his biography that ordering them to stop going to the slums was the only way to ensure they wouldn’t be killed. The then Fr Bergoglio was not a member of the military and, even if he had been, he would have had little power to assuage the generals’ paranoia that there would be a proletarian uprising, aided by energetic young Jesuits who would empower the “subversives”. 

There is also controversy surrounding babies, born to captives, who were covertly adopted by pro-junta families after the mothers were killed. Some claim that in the 1970s Pope Francis was privy to information about these babies who were being taken from their mothers. In 2010, when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he appeared in a court that was uncovering what had happened to the babies. He testified that it wasn’t until 1985 that he knew that the babies of “subversives” were being given to supporters of Videla. 

Fr Bergoglio’s six years as a leader in the Jesuit community were hard on his nerves, and in 1980 he returned to the seminary in San Miguel as rector. Going from provincial superior to rector was both peculiar and seen as somewhat of a self-imposed demotion, but he remained in this post until 1986. He put his culinary talent to full use and cooked for the students. On hearing the compliment that he was a good chef, he replied: “Well, nobody has died yet from my cooking.”
A key awakening in his spiritual life happened in 1985, when he attended a rosary that was being led by Blessed Pope John Paul II. He described it in these words: “In the middle of the prayer I became distracted, looking at the figure of the Pope: his piety, his devotion was a witness… and the time drifted away, and I began to imagine the young priest, the seminarian, the poet, the worker, the child from Wadowice… in the same position in which knelt at that moment, reciting Ave Maria after Ave Maria. His witness struck me… I felt that this man, chosen to lead the Church, was following a path up to his Mother in the sky, a path set out on from his childhood. And I became aware of the density of the words of the Mother of Guadalupe to St Juan Diego: ‘Don’t be afraid, am I not perhaps your mother?’ I understood the presence of Mary in the life of the Pope.”
From that day onwards, Pope Francis has recited the 15 mysteries of the rosary every day. That moment, when he was struck by John Paul II’s example, may have renewed his vim and vigour as a leader, something that had been sorely tested in the 1970s.
In 1992 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. In contrast to the Jesuits of the 1970s, the ordinary clergy of the diocese grew fond of their bishop. He did something simple but revolutionary: setting up a phone line that was exclusively for priests who needed to call him and he would encourage them to use it, day or night. Bishop Bergoglio had a strict code of coming in person to the aid of his priests, staying with them in crises, or keeping a bedside vigil with priests who were elderly and in poor health. In contrast to his earlier reputation for being somewhat indifferent to the people subsisting in the shanty towns, he was known in the early 1990s as a bishop who would keep tabs on precisely how his priests were helping poorer parishioners. He spent his days travelling around the diocese, so that he could keep poor people company, help out in soup kitchens and visit Aids victims. His schedule was gruelling and one of his few luxuries was taking refuge in a good novel.

The poverty-stricken children who were his peers when he was a youngster in the 1940s were in his thoughts and he was determined to use his prominence as a bishop to better the lot of the impoverished, as opposed to rubbing shoulders with the Argentinean elite. He eschewed ostentation, showiness and glamour. Journalists dogged his heels, wanting exclusive interviews, and social climbers sought photo opportunities, but with a famously understated smile, and a reserved manner, he refused interviews and walked away from them. This man for all seasons would never be their man. 
I wrote this biography of the Pope's early life for the March 22nd Catholic Herald

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Margaret Thatcher: the first time she ever saw the Northern Irish Parties unite was when they fought abortion legislation in 1990

April 8, 2013, 8:15 am
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Phyllis Bowman wrote the following:
"The only time in the past that a Conservative Government whipped on an abortion amendment was in 1990. A group of Labour MPs sought to introduce an amendment to the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill (now Act) to extend the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland.  Consequently, the Northern Ireland MPs of all parties asked for a joint meeting with Lady (then Mrs.) Thatcher when they stressed that all the political groups, the churches and a huge majority of the people in Northern Ireland, were opposed to the current abortion law. They urged that it should be left to the people of the Province to decide whether they wanted to change the law or not.

Lady Thatcher said it was the first occasion on which she had known the NI Parties to unite on any issue. Consequently, out of deference to the democratic rights of the people of the Province, the Government adopted an official policy opposing the Labour amendment and Conservative MPs were whipped...

Moreover, she certainly was not sympathetic to the pro-life cause. She voted for the Abortion Act in 1967 and subsequently always supported it. However, to be just, she had a great respect for the conscience vote of her MPs... In addition, although she was straightforward about her views, at no time did she ever seek to influence her MPs by announcing how she would vote on an amendment. (As a footnote, I would add that in her memoirs and in speaking publicly, Lady Thatcher has said that she considers she made a tragic mistake in supporting liberal abortion.)"
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Cardinal O’Malley urges Ireland to stand up to abortion lobby

May 10, 2013, 6:03 am
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Cardinal Seán O’Malley has urged Ireland to stand up to the “great pressure” it faces to legislate on abortion, saying it should be proud of its pro-life heritage.

His comments came as Irish MPs prepared to vote on legislation that would allow abortion in cases where the mother is deemed at risk of suicide.

The government claims that the legislation will merely provide “legal clarity” for doctors and codify a Supreme Court ruling that allowed abortion in such cases anyway.
But the country’s bishops’ conference have described the proposal as a “dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law” that would “make the direct and intentional killing of unborn children lawful in Ireland”.

In an exclusive interview with Mary O’Regan in this week’s Catholic Herald Cardinal O’Malley said that changing the law would “encourage” and “condone” abortion.

Cardinal O’Malley said: “Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life; everyone should resist abortion. Ireland has the good fortune, in part thanks to Catholic sensibilities, that her people have been opposed to abortion despite the great pressure that they have come under from secularising forces.”

He continued: “Ireland should be very proud of its pro-life heritage and how traditionally there has been great importance given to human life. Every life counts, and I am very proud that in Ireland protection is given to life that is as vulnerable as the unborn. I hope that Ireland will continue to stand up against the pressures – I know the pressures are there. Pressure to legislate for abortion is a dehumanising force in our world.”

The cardinal, asked if the change in the law would make such a difference as many Irish women travel to Britain for an abortion, said: “The laws have a function of teaching what is right and wrong. And simply because someone is going to do something, does not mean that we have to facilitate it, condone it, or encourage it.”

The Irish bishops’ conference last week condemned the idea that abortion could be a remedy for suicidal depression.

Its statement said: “It is a tragic moment for Irish society when we regard the deliberate destruction of a completely innocent person as an acceptable response to the threat of the preventable death of another person.”

Cardinal O’Malley meanwhile said: “If any woman is suicidal, she must be given treatment for depression. If she has an abortion, there are greater chances that she will be depressed and suicidal as a result of having had an abortion.”

The cardinal also said the Church should do more to promote adoption. “I am realising how negative the attitude is towards adoption… When a woman is in a difficult pregnancy, she sees adoption as a continuation of her problems… We need to change that attitude, because otherwise we will never be able to counter abortion,” he said.

The full interview with Cardinal O’Malley is available in the May 10 print edition of The Catholic Herald.
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BREAKING NEWS: Cardinal O'Malley will not attend the Boston College graduation because they have not withdrawn the invitation to Enda Kenny who is 'aggressively promoting abortion legislation'

May 10, 2013, 12:52 pm
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Cardinal O'Malley: "Because the Gospel of Life is the centerpiece of the Church’s social doctrine and because we consider abortion a crime against humanity, the Catholic Bishops of the United States have asked that Catholic institutions not honor government officials or politicians who promote abortion with their laws and policies.

Recently I learned that the Prime Minister of Ireland, the Hon. Mr. Enda Kenny was slated to receive an honorary degree at Boston College’s graduation this year. I am sure that the invitation was made in good faith, long before it came to the attention of the leadership of Boston College that Mr. Kenny is aggressively promoting abortion legislation.  The Irish Bishops have responded to that development by affirming the Church’s teaching that  “the deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of life is always morally wrong” and expressed serious concern that the proposed legislation “represents a dramatic and morally unacceptable change to Irish law.” 

Since the university has not withdrawn the invitation and because the Taoiseach has not seen fit to decline, I shall not attend the graduation. It is my ardent hope that Boston College will work to redress the confusion, disappointment and harm caused by not adhering to the Bishops’ directives.  Although I shall not be present to impart the final benediction, I assure the graduates that they are in my prayers on this important day in their lives, and I pray that their studies will prepare them to be heralds of the Church’s Social Gospel and “men and women for others,” especially for the most vulnerable in our midst."
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Cardinal O'Malley speaks out against abortions for baby girls, advocates adoption and talks about the practical help he has given pregnant women, "My heart is always with women in difficult pregnancies"

May 16, 2013, 5:42 am
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The rectory behind Boston Cathedral has scaffolding and is in the process of
being partially re-built. As I walk towards it, the interior locution given
to St Francis from God rings in my ears, “Francis, re-build my church”. This
is the home of Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley, the only Franciscan in the
College of Cardinals.
 Ushered in by his secretary, Fr Kickham, I set up for the interview in a
plush drawing room that has a very energetic cat jumping around. Cardinal
O’Malley, dressed in his trademark brown habit with Rosary beads around his
waist strolls slowly in.
“It’s so good to see you!” I gush, overflowing with sincere verve.
“Really?” Cardinal Seán asks unassumingly, as he sits down with a mug of
cocoa.
“Yes!” I exclaim, and resist the temptation to spout that it’s an honour to
interview the cardinal who was Papabile in the 2013 Conclave and has just
been made an advisor on curial reform.
Our first order of business is to discuss our shared Irishness, and people
that we know from West Cork. But that’s where our similarities end. From the
minute that I plonk my Dictaphone on the table, it’s clear that Cardinal
O’Malley and I are polar-opposite personalities. I am a restless,
can’t-stop-moving person and run on nervous energy. Cardinal O’Malley is
still, calm and radiates a real and palpable peacefulness. He’s much more
easy-going Irish than me. A man of such high standing could be haughty, but
he insists on being called Cardinal Seán. A west of Ireland man, he says “my
mother’s family is from Mayo, and my father’s family is from Clare”. He has
that pale, almost translucent Irish skin and freckles dot his broad
forehead. And by doing this interview, this “super cardinal” is joining the
struggle to keep abortion out of Ireland. During the days before Cardinal
Seán and I agreed that this interview would be a discussion on rebutting the
pro-abortion bombast that is being used to patronise and silence the Irish
pro-life voice.
His cool demeanour disappears on being asked why Ireland, a small island,
should resist abortion legislation that the rest of the world has largely
implemented. “Abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, everyone
should resist abortion! Ireland has the good fortune, in part thanks to
Catholic sensibilities, that her people have been opposed to abortion
despite the great pressure that they have come under from secularising
forces,” he says with fervour.
Taking his lead on the subject of “great pressure” from “secularising
forces”, I suggest that since the X Case was going through the Irish courts in
1992, one manipulative scheme used by pro-abortion factions is to belittle
Ireland’s ban on abortion as primitive and archaic. Cardinal O´Malley does
not entertain the idea that Ireland is “archaic”, and states firmly,
“Ireland should be very proud of its pro-life heritage and how traditionally
there has been great importance given to human life.” Tapping himself on the
chest, he emphasises, “I am very proud that in Ireland every life counts,
even when it is so vulnerable like the unborn. I hope that Ireland will
continue to stand up against the pressures – I know the pressures are there.
Pressure to legislate for abortion is a dehumanising force in our world.”
The tactic of portraying Ireland and pro-lifers as old-fashioned prompts
Cardinal O’Malley to reminisce that at the time of abortion legislation in
America, there was a popular opinion that “people opposed to abortion will
die off, they’ll go away. But, of course, 40 years later the pro-abortion
movement is on the run, they see that the number of pro-life people has
increased and is getting younger.”
But just because abortions are not performed in Ireland, does not mean that
Irish girls are not having abortions. What does he think of the thousands of
girls who go across the Irish Sea to England for abortions? One argument
used by pro-choice campaigners in Ireland is that women will have abortions
anyway, and that it is anti-woman that they are ‘forced’ to travel. Speaking
very gently, he counters this: “the fact that they actually have to leave
Ireland to have an abortion, is a deterrent and it also teaches people that
it is wrong. The laws have a function of teaching what is right and wrong.
And simply because someone is going to do something, does not mean that we
have to facilitate it, condone it, or encourage it. Changing the laws would
facilitate, condone and encourage abortion in Ireland.” And for wider Irish
society, why would it be good for abortion to remain illegal?  Cardinal Seán
answers in his deep voice: “Abortion undermines people’s humanity and makes
us insensitive to the suffering of others.” I tell Cardinal Seán that Irish
women are being challenged that they are not in control of their bodies,
because abortion is not available on request. He raises his voice: “It is a
justification that a woman can do what she wants with her body, but what
about the baby’s body? And how about the gender selection of abortions that
take place? Where are the feminists arguing against abortion for baby girls?
Here in America, we have not been able to put in place legislation that
would prevent abortions that are done because the baby is a girl.”
The most pressing issue is the mendacious-sounding name, “The Protection of
Life During Pregnancy”, a piece of legislation that, if enacted, would allow
for suicidal women to be given an abortion. There is no time limit
stipulation in the Bill, so theoretically a woman who is in the latest
stages of pregnancy, but who has demonstrated suicidal tendencies to three
doctors, may get an abortion. The syllogism being that a woman who may be
suicidal because of her pregnancy must be rid of the baby in order to get
better. He rejects the idea that abortion is the necessary solution: “If any
woman is suicidal, she must be given treatment for depression. If she has an
abortion, there are greater chances that she will be depressed and suicidal
as a result of having had an abortion.
“There are many cases of women who have had abortions, then nine months
after the child was conceived, around the time that the child would have
been born, the woman goes into a false labour. Biologically she is aware
that she would have been having a child at that time.”
It’s all well and good to condemn abortion when the mother is depressed at
the thought of raising a baby, but does Cardinal Seán have an alternative? I
expect an answer based on better childcare possibilities and monetary
support for single mothers. But he responds quickly with, “one thing that
I’m very focused on right now is how we might market adoption better. I am
realising how negative the attitude is towards adoption. We can say very
glibly, ‘adoption, not abortion’. But when a woman is in a difficult
pregnancy, she doesn’t want to hear that, and she sees adoption as a
continuation of her problems, and that she will be a bad mother by giving
her child away, where the child might be abused or discriminated against. We
need to change that attitude, because otherwise we will never be able to
counter abortion.”
This answer stumps me, because I grew up not knowing any person my own age
who was adopted, and I was told it was a practice of the past. I want to
know why he has such a positive view of adoption. “Growing up here in the
States, we all had friends who were adopted children. In today’s world, many
Americans do not know anyone who was adopted. This is no longer something
that American women do – give a child up for adoption.
“There is one adoption for every hundred abortions, and at the same time you
have all these childless couples who are so anxious for a baby, and many of
them do IVF, where human life is being destroyed in ‘extra embryos’.” How
does he plan to encourage adoption?  “We have to do a better job of showing
the positive side of adoption and making it more user-friendly for the
mother.”
But Cardinal Seán is not a textbook ideology-only pro-lifer, but has vast
experience in the one-to-one care of pregnant women. “My heart is always
with women in difficult pregnancies. Sometimes they are in dire straits.
When I was in Washington, I ran a social service agency where we had a
medical clinic and the people that we served were undocumented, and did not
have access to insurance, and so they were under a lot of pressure to have
abortions. If an illegal immigrant has no insurance, the medical bills cost
thousands of dollars. We arranged for their medical expenses to be taken
care of, and for their pre-natal care to be provided.
“When I was bishop of the West Indies, we started a pre-natal care programme
there to help teenage girls. Before the programme, the West Indies had one
of the highest infant mortality rates, and so over the years, we reduced the
infant mortality rate to zero”.

Offering my congratulations to Cardinal Seán for this great achievement,
which showed great willpower and perseverance, we take a reprieve from
talking about pro-life, we turn our attention to Padre Pio, and compare our
devotion to his fellow Franciscan, the mystic who used to describe himself
as “a simple friar who prays”. He never met Padre Pio, but has celebrated
Mass at his tomb, and visited San Giovanna di Rotondo many times. His
favourite account of St Pio’s intercession goes back to the time that
Blessed John Paul II was Archbishop of Krakow and he wrote a letter to Padre
Pio, asking his prayers for his dear friend Wanda Półtawska. Wanda was a
professor at Krakow University, and was dying of throat cancer. Apparently,
Padre Pio held up the letter from the then Archbishop Wojtyła and said that
the Polish archbishop was destined for great things, and that he would do
his utmost to win a miraculous cure for Wanda. Wanda made a full recovery.
The reason that Cardinal Seán likes this account so much is because, “it’s
about John Paul II in contact with Padre Pio, the two saints coming
together”.
What is it about Padre Pio, the priest, that impresses Cardinal Seán?  “I am
in awe of Padre Pio’s ministry in the Confessional. Much like the Devine
Mercy devotion there is a hunger for mercy in the world. Padre Pio, in the
Confessional, was a manifestation of the merciful Christ. His whole ministry
was healing people’s souls in the Confessional and his concern for the sick
when he arranged for the Hospital for the Relief of Suffering to be built.”
This generation of Catholics will know a re-awakening of Franciscan
spirituality, thanks to Pope Francis. They met four years ago in Buenos
Aires, and have always spoken in Spanish. Cardinal Seán writes to Pope
Francis as often as possible and mentions that since he has been made an
advisor on curial reform: “I feel a certain obligation to keep in constant
contact with the Pope”. But he concedes that “there just hasn’t been much
time” and he is still getting to grips with his new appointment as a super
cardinal. When I suggest that it’s been an exhausting, emotionally-draining
time, he says, “It’s been like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant!”
April has been an exceptionally testing time for Boston, and he has spent
much time in the company of the victims, and tells me that he visited the
little sister of Martin Richard. At the tender age of six, she has lost her
foot and has severe burns.
Throughout these busy weeks, Cardinal Seán has continued to update his blog,
a platform where he showcases positive events in the Church. He dictates his
blog to his secretary, but I want to know why he gives his blog priority,
even during the most demanding of times.
“Everyone talks about the bad things that happen in Boston. My blog gives me
the opportunity to talk about the good things that are happening in Boston.”
We discuss the pros and cons of blogs, that they can be used as tools to
smear others but they can also be places where people can have life-changing
encounters with the Catholic faith. Cardinal O’Malley comes down on the side
that blogs are a good thing, and concludes, “there is so much good to be
accomplished with blogs. Some blogs can be great a great instrument of
Catholic evangelisation.”
We finish our conversation, and walk out to the entrance of the rectory. On
saying our goodbyes, I have an instinct to ask Cardinal O’Malley’s prayers
for a friend of mine who is suffering after an abortion and gets distressed
every week when the day that she had her abortion comes round. “I will, of
course, pray for her. You can be sure that my prayers are with her,” he says
earnestly.
It is a great boon for the pro-lifers of the world, and not just in Ireland,
that Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal O’Malley one of the “super
Cardinals”, or the “G8”. Not just because he has hands on experience in
coming to the aid of pregnant mothers, but because he has resolute
determination to speak out on behalf of small Catholic countries like
Ireland. We can take comfort that with an advisor like Cardinal O’Malley,
pro-life matters will be top of the agenda during Pope Francis’s
pontificate.
This interview appears in the 10th May edition of The Catholic Herald


Mary O’Regan is a journalist based in London and a TV producer on a forthcoming show Extraordinary Faith.
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"Women wore huge hats - the reason was that they could hide behind their hats, make eyes at their boyfriends and their chaperone wouldn't be able to see them!"

May 23, 2013, 11:10 am
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Over 15 years ago Gretchen Potter started gathering hats as a way to entertain her granddaughters. Now, she has quite the collection of hats that she puts to good use.
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I contributed a few lines to Bob Moynihan's new biography of Pope Francis

May 27, 2013, 6:18 am
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Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican has just published a biography of Pope Francis entitled, Pray For Me. When he was writing the book, Robert Moynihan got in touch with The Catholic Herald to request if he could site some lines from the mini-bio that I wrote, the week that Pope Francis became Pope.

The two pieces from the mini-bio that were put into the official biography were: “They had a modest existence, being so thrifty that new clothes were seen as dangerously lavish, not once going on holidays and never owning a car,” writes Mary O’Regan, author of a thoughtful account of the pope’s early life, which appeared in the Catholic Herald on March 22. “They were not poor, but were unassuming upper-working-class Italians who considered themselves very fortunate to have secure housing in Flores, an ordinary suburb of Buenos Aires. Many of Mario Bergoglio’s fellow workers on the railroads would have lived in shantytowns.”

"Father Bergoglio’s six years as a leader in the Jesuit community were hard on his nerves, and in 1980 he returned to the seminary in San Miguel as rector. Going from provincial superior to rector was seen as a self-imposed demotion, but he remained in this post until 1986 . He put his culinary talent to use cooking for the students. On hearing the compliment that he was a good chef, he replied: “Well, nobody has died yet from my cooking.”





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Three blogs by three young Catholics just added to my blog list

June 4, 2013, 4:41 pm
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A friend asked me why I say, 'there are young Catholic bloggers blogging around Britain', but then don't have more links on my blog to young Catholics writing on the walls of the blogosphere.  Mea culpa: I have been negligent in updating my blog list with fellow young'uns (or 'yoof' as Eccles calls uz).  My conscience about including more bloggers on my blog roll was again pricked when I saw my blog address on Luke O'Sullivan's blog, and I remembered to include his blog on my list.
To remedy the lack of 'Yoof', I have put three blogs by three Catholic bloggers on my list. Drum-roll please...ladies first....

The Whistling Sentinel. The origin of the blog title comes from Chesterton, who wrote, 'it's not a question of theology, it's a question of whether, placed as a sentinel of an unknown watch, you will whistle or not.'  I derive the meaning of the blog title to be that the Catholic state-of-being is to whistle whilst in a place that is inhospitable, strange and cold, because we are offering up our stint as sentintel. A very erudite lady-blogger, Megan wrote about her conversion, and how she was converted by reading the enemies of the New Atheists, i.e. Thomas Aquinas and Pope Benedict. Recently, Megan became Catholic, at the London Oratory, and the next blogger is her God-father. 


The Thirsty Gargoyle is written by an academic who bounces from Ireland to England and back again. His stamina in travelling is matched by his intellectual stamina. His most recent post, 'He who controls the past, controls the future' is his best post to date (IMHO). It would make eye-watering reading for Pete-the-treat Boylan who was an expert witness at the inquest into Savita Halappanavar's death.

Lucas Cambrensis is written by Luke O'Sullivan, whose ancestors fled Ireland during The Potato Famine. I think Luke's contribution is as a Catholic male, will be a witness to withstanding the pressure to partake in so-called social norms for males such as peeking at Page 3 and evaluating women in terms of physical characteristics.  Luke's most recent post is entitled, 'On the quality of paving slabs in the Red Light District of Amsterdam', includes sub-headings such as 'sex bomb' and 'a failure to communicate'.

If you've read this far in my post, you may have come to agree with me that there are some enthusiastic young Catholic bloggers here in Britain. Of course, in thirty years time, Whistling Sentinel, Thirsty Gargoyle, Luke-the-Welshman and yours truly might be comparing pension plans and looking at the Catholic blogosphere and moaning, 'look at those youngsters, don't they know that we were some of the first young'uns on there? Why don't they have our blogs on their blog-lists? A little respect, please!'
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Spiritual Simplicity

June 8, 2013, 8:05 am
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A Miraculous Medal graces the side of my vintage tea-pot

Adding a small giver-of-grace which is unobtrusive can be quite easy. I put a miraculous medal onto a vintage tea pot that I'm very fond of. The medal is gold, which colour-coordinates with the dark mustard coloured tea pot and the yellow orchid. So, instead of languishing in a cupboard or a box, the medal is pride of place on the ornament that acts as a nice background and highlights the medal. Not a good luck charm, the Miraculous Medal was designed according to Our Lady's instructions, and she promised St Catherine Labouré that 'great graces' would be given to those, 'who wear the medal with confidence'. Perhaps that not only applies to wearing the Miraculous Medal on a chain around the neck, but also to displaying the medal on an ornament 'with confidence'.
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The best explication of abortion that I have ever read

June 9, 2013, 10:08 am
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Blessed Mother Teresa:  “The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society.

It has portrayed the greatest of gifts--a child--as a competitor, an intrusion and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the dependent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.”


Mother Teresa was a young Loreto nun when she received “a call within a call” to found the Missionaries of Charity to serve “the poorest of the poor”.
After obtaining Indian citizenship she did basic medical training, which prepared her for working in the slums. So difficult was the first year that she resorted to begging. But it wasn’t long before more young women joined her. She came to prominence after Malcolm Muggeridge’s 1969 documentary Something Beautiful for God.
For over 45 years Mother Teresa served the poor, the sick, the dying and the orphaned. When she met Hillary Clinton in 1994 they didn’t agree on abortion, but Mother Teresa assiduously sought Clinton’s help in setting up a centre in Washington DC where orphaned babies could be cared for. Clinton and Mother Teresa were good collaborators and in 1995 the Mother Teresa Home for Infant Children was founded.
Gifted with keen intelligence, Mother Teresa led the expansion of her order until shortly before her death in 1997. Today the order has over 4,500 Sisters and is active in 133 countries.
Since her death, Mother Teresa has become a role model for people enduring the dark night of the soul. For over 40 years she felt isolated from God’s presence, but her doubts never overwhelmed her.
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My evening at the Oratory to hear Charles Moore’s talk on Thatcher

June 13, 2013, 6:16 pm
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I’ve just attended a very stirring talk at the Oratory, given by Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph and the official biographer of Margaret Thatcher. The talk was organised by the Friends of the Ordinariate.  The hall was heaving with people, and it was standing room only.  

The defining characteristic of the talk was Charles Moore’s memories of Thatcher and the factors that coloured her religious beliefs. Thatcher’s father denounced Catholicism as ‘spiritual totalitarianism’, but Moore insisted that, ‘she had none of her father’s animosity to Roman Catholicism’.   

Moore reminisced about a ‘perplexing’ time when he and Thatcher were both Godparents to the same child. Moore asked Thatcher if her twins had been Christened, and she replied, ‘oh, yes, but without the water’. Moore concluded, ‘she had no interest in sacraments’. 

Moore and Thatcher did make a journey together to Rome for a meeting with Pope Benedict. Moore pointed to the fact that Thatcher was, at the time, losing her mental faculties, and that he said to her, ‘isn’t it marvellous that we are going to see Pope Benedict?’ which he said, ‘was more to remind her that this would be happening’. Thatcher asked him, ‘what does one say to a Pope?’

In a crowd that big, there were probably a few who did not revere Thatcher, but the first female prime minister is dead, and while Charles Moore was clearly very fond of Mrs T, there was not one boo, hiss or sigh from the audience.  In this company, it would have been seen as downright rude to make a snide remake about the first female prime minister who passed away recently.

At the Oratory talk, the audience was mainly comprised of former Anglicans who are still drying themselves off from swimming across the Tiber.  There was a lot of date comparing, ‘I became Catholic on this date. Cheers!’  It was an atmosphere of celebration as fizzy wine was pouring into glasses and the tingle of chinking glasses filled the air.

I confess that I like former Anglicans (and Anglicans) because, in my experience, they hold true to certain values of Englishness such as good manners, minding-their-own-business, integrity, tact and honour.

Charles Moore, who himself is a convert from the Church of England, spoke frankly on the Ordinariate: “wholly Catholic, but representative of a different tradition”

“The Ordinariate is not just a case of bishops making a lot of former Anglican priests work jolly hard”

Reflecting on the fact that the Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby, has a Roman Catholic spiritual director, Moore said, ‘previously that would have prevented him from being Archbishop of Canterbury’. 

At the Q and A, I put my hand up a few times, and had quite a challenging (maybe even obnoxious) question: did Thatcher’s tempestuous relations with Northern Irish Catholics shake her relationship with the Catholic Church? 

I’ll have to read Charles Moore’s account of Thatcher's life to find out if he answers this question. 
Charles Moore signing copies of his biography of Thatcher in St Wilfrid's Hall. June 13 2013
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Raymond Arroyo on how Mother Angelica founded a TV network against all odds

June 21, 2013, 6:54 am
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Last night, near London Bridge, in the Church of the Most Precious Blood, Raymond Arroyo gave a scintillating talk about Mother Angelica’s trials and graces in setting up a TV studio. 

She decided to set it up in an old garage on the grounds of her monastery. But, in order to broadcast television, she needed enormous satellite dishes, and the cost was six hundred thousand dollars.  There was a slight hindrance – Mother Angelica only had two hundred dollars. 

Mother Angelica, who is of Italian blood, began looking for an Italian satellite dish provider, because she knew how to negotiate with one of her own. Having found one satellite dish retailer in Atlanta, Mother Angelica began bargaining.  
‘The dish will cost six hundred thousand dollars,’ he told her.  
‘Well, what if I pay you a little now, and more money as time goes on,’ Mother Angelica said.
‘That’s not how we do business,’ he said plainly.
‘That’s because you lack faith,’ Mother Angelica gently admonished him.
The conversation ended with him saying, ‘not one piece of equipment will come off the truck unless you have all the money to pay for it’.

On the day of delivery, two trucks with satellite dishes pulled up outside Mother’s monastery.Mother Angelica decided to show them the monastery – an effort to stall them because she didn’t have a penny. She told them to wait while she went into the chapel to pray.  Kneeling down in the pew she said to the Lord, ‘well, your delivery is outside. It’s your satellite. You’ve got to go and pay the man now. He wants six hundred thousand dollars and I don’t have it.’ 

Reconciling herself to the fact that six hundred thousand dollars was not going to tumble from the sky, and questioning if the satellite dishes were really God’s plan, Mother Angelica went back out to the delivery man, and told him that she had no money. But just then, at that exact moment, one of the sisters rushed up to her, ‘Mother, there has been a man calling and calling on the phone and he won’t stop until he talks to you.  This man says it’s an emergency!’

A little bit reluctantly, Mother Angelica picked up the phone, and the caller was a wealthy businessman who was calling from his yacht in the Bahamas. He had been very moved after reading one of Mother’s pamphlets on suffering and family life.  The business man had got embroiled in a life of drugs, but Mother’s counsel had caused him to stop drug-taking and reunite with his wife and kids. The reason that he was ringing her was to give her a token of his gratitude, a sum of six hundred thousand dollars.
‘Can you send it right now?’ Mother Angelica asked eagerly. 

Those satellite dishes, to this day, transmits EWTN to most of North America and most of Latin America.

Raymond’s biography of Mother Angelica (which was published by Double Day and became a New York Times bestseller) is bursting with stories just like the one above, as well as giving a very real, uncompromising picture of Mother Angelica’s childhood of hard knocks when her father abandoned the family when she was five and she was left alone to cope with a suicidal mother. Mother did not lecture on suffering: she knew pain and it knew her.

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a dramatic quirk of fate because Mother’s father and the wealthy businessman had something in common: both men had deserted their kids.   Mother Angelica wrote a tract on suffering and family life that was informed by her bitter experience of having an abusive father. And her writings inspired one father to return to his children, and in appreciation, he gave Mother six hundred thousand dollars.   

Had Mother never had such childhood agony, which inspired her lessons on suffering, she would never have genuinely melted the heart of the wealthy businessman, and he would never have given her six hundred thousand dollars. 
After the talk on June 20th, Raymond was greeted by EWTN viewers
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The histrionic reaction to the Pope missing the concert is unfair

June 25, 2013, 12:18 pm
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I seem to be in a very lonely position as someone who is not criticising Papa Francesco for missing the concert on Saturday night, June 22nd. Some more conservative Catholics are up in arms that Francis suddenly scarpered before a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  

In a blog for The Catholic Herald, I sympathise with the musicians who prepared for the honour of performing for the Pope, but were disappointed.

 But I also argue that passing up an evening of sublime music, and fulfilling his 'urgent' commitments is in line with Pope Francis' character and his life choices.  As a bishop in Argentina, he could have gone to glittering parties, but chose to visit AIDS victims and keep them company, or help in a soup kitchen.
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Journalists have a duty to ‘point the finger’ when there is scandal

June 28, 2013, 8:33 am
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Raymond Arroyo has given some of his best years to being an anchor on a Catholic television network. And when you meet him it becomes clear that he has made a choice to prioritise Catholic television when he could have had his pick of jobs on secular television, as anything from producer, director, presenter or even actor.  

Not many people realise that Arroyo, the lead anchor of EWTN News, is also a gifted actor, tried and tested during four gruelling years studying under Stella Adler at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. When I ask what it was like to be one of Adler’s pupils (others include Marlon Brando, Judy Garland and Robert De Niro), he sighs and says: “There were originally 30 people in the class, and at the end, there were four left, because you had to audition to get in each year, and Stella would routinely send people away. On a day-to-day basis, when you came into class to perform a scene, she would stop you and say: ‘Get out, you’re lying. Get out!’” 


Arroyo goes into role as Stella, wagging a sharp finger and talking in a flinty voice. “You’re not walking into a bar, you’re walking into an acting studio,” he mimics. “Stella sat on a type of throne, with a microphone and she critiqued you constantly as you rehearsed.”
Adler was trying to get the actor to identify how he was inserting himself into the character and failing to serve the play. “We were taught to serve the play,” Arroyo says. “It wasn’t about self-aggrandisement or an ego trip.” 

Arroyo reminisces that on one occasion when he was playing Biff Lowman in Death of a Salesman, Adler made him leave the stage and come back in seven times. He was only granted entry when he entered as if it was a real bedroom in the Lowman home. 

Did Adler believe that being a practising Catholic was an impediment to training as an actor? “Stella was very insistent that we understand religious faith and that religious practice was important because it shaped the soul of an actor,” Arroyo says. “Without a huge spiritual reservoir, you really can’t play the big roles like Hamlet or Lear.”

After studying so hard to be an actor, he graduated and got high-paying work. His favourite role was Richard III. But he eventually gave acting up for journalism. “I found the repetition of playing the same character for a long run to be very boring,” he explains. “Saying someone else’s lines for many weeks: it became like painting a wall. I’m probably a better director than actor, because I like to inhabit all the roles.”
Arroyo worked with the Associated Press and on the New York Observer. When I invite him to talk about journalism, he switches from being the chameleon actor who can jump into any role to being serious and reflective. With a grave expression he says: “I’m not a Catholic journalist.
I am a journalist who is Catholic. There is a big distinction. I have to write the truth.” 

What is the fall-out for a journalist who has PR and spin as their priority?  “When a journalist fudges the truth or suppresses it, they do it to their own detriment, because you are not only hurting yourself and your credibility, but you also hurt your audience as well.” 

Does this mean that Arroyo believes in telling the truth even if it seems he’s letting down the Catholic side? “People who claim to love the Church must ask if they are doing their best for the institution, because had the sex abuse crimes come to light sooner it would not have metastasised into the present situation. Part of the reason that it happened was because people did not want to be the truth-teller, the one pointing the finger.”

This mention of the sex abuse crisis prompts me to ask if we have really learned the lessons of the crisis. Do we still think it’s better to cover up crimes so that we preserve reputation at the expense of justice? “You don’t keep the house standing by protecting the bad,” Arroyo says. “Our job as journalists is to challenge people to defend their positions and to dig out the uncomfortable truths.”  

At the same time, Arroyo is quick to dismiss “hit journalism”, where “it has become a hobby to destroy people in the public sphere, a cottage industry which is not in the interest of the public good”.
We discuss a disquieting trend, the confusion following Pope Francis’s warnings about gossip. Many journalists are doing their best to report news honestly, but sometimes that news is bad, and journalists are being emotionally blackmailed with the claim that they are “gossiping”. Arroyo comments: “What Pope Francis is talking about is idle gossip that is not done with the good of the public in mind.” 


One high-profile example of a public figure who did not live up to expectations is Fr John Corapi, an American priest of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) who was removed from public ministry following allegations of misconduct, though he maintained his innocence. Many people converted or reverted to the  faith after hearing Fr Corapi’s stirring addresses on EWTN. But his followers were perplexed in 2011 when the superior general of SOLT accused Fr Corapi of a variety of offences. 

In the wake of Fr Corapi’s troubles, his followers protested his innocence and were angry at journalists who quoted the superior general’s words. EWTN promptly stopped broadcasting shows featuring Fr Corapi. I ask Arroyo if he knows why Fr Corapi’s supporters were so enraged.
“I knew Fr Corapi for years,” he says. “Many people, especially men, had a conversion because Corapi was a tough, blunt speaker who spoke the truth without using gilded language. That arrested their attention. Now, when you tell them that a man who converted them, who awakened their conscience, was not who they thought he was, you will naturally draw their anger. Their reaction is: ‘How dare you reveal this about a good man?’”

Arroyo is not content simply to write non-fiction. He is deep in the throes of writing a seven-book children’s series. He is very widely read, but the children’s authors who are his role models are G K Chesterton, Tolkien and J K Rowling.  


What does he think about Catholics who think that J K Rowling promotes witchcraft? “That’s an opinion, but in the works of J K Rowling there is a battle between good and evil, and Harry fights on the side of good, and is sustained by his mother’s love. I’m not a theologian or a churchman, so I don’t know for definitive if part of the Harry Potter series is bad for souls, but if the moral universe is contiguous in a work of fiction and reflects the world that we live in, then it’s good because it’s true. There are a number of children’s books which disturb me. They distort and invert good and evil, so that evil becomes the good. What is the purpose of confusing a child’s inner moral compass? Is that the intention of the writer?” 

Arroyo has certain literary and cinematic tastes that some other Catholics might find unpalatable. His favourite film is The Godfather and a favourite television series is The Sopranos because “it shows unflinchingly that the wages of sin are death”. 


He says that one of his favourite novelists is Graham Greene because his characters are real people, often at a moral crossroads. “The priest in The Power and The Glory, is a drunkard and has a child out of wedlock. He’s not a pious hero yet he becomes a martyr. But so many people relate to him. They see themselves in the priest’s imperfections. It is one of our greatest Catholic novels.”

 
He also mentions the novelist William Peter Blatty’s work in glowing terms. “The Exorcist is an apostolic work. By highlighting the power of darkness inevitably you highlight the power of good. The Church does triumph, in the form of a priest who exorcises and frees a child from a demon, but there is a cost.” 

But is it really necessary for Catholic writers to concentrate on evil and darkness? 

Can’t we just write about the lives of the saints and exclusively cheerful topics?
Arroyo’s answer is stark: “The world is littered with pious, sentimental works that no one reads. You can’t show the light without showing the darkness. If you try to remove all the profane, you are left with the saccharine. The sacred will seem saccharine because you need something to offset it, because that’s the way the world is.  Fiction has to conform to the perceptions of the reader. If it doesn’t, you are telling a lie.”

Arroyo was born in New Orleans in the early 1970s. “As a young boy,” he recalls, “my grandfather would take me to the French Quarter in the mornings. They would be hosing down Bourbon Street. There would be prostitutes on the corner, women who worked in strip joints, the hawkers hanging around and the drunks stumbling out onto the street. Then we would walk past the cathedral and hear the choir singing the opening hymn of the Mass. So the sacred and the profane have always marched closely together in my mind. You can’t have one without the other.” 

While Arroyo is steeped in writing fiction at the moment, his most successful piece of writing is the uncompromising biography of Mother Angelica that became a New York Times bestseller. He is, as a result, an authority on Mother Angelica. They were close collaborators at EWTN in the 1990s and Arroyo has the utmost regard for her. But he encountered objections when he wanted to write a true-to-life portrayal of Mother Angelica’s dysfunctional family home and of her character.
“Some people didn’t like that I wrote about Mother’s capricious nature, her stubbornness or the mistakes she made,” he says. 
“Or the fact that her suicidal mother wanted to kill her father. But presenting her as human and flawed was the only way that people would relate to her. Mother understood this from the very first interview we did for the book.” 

Arroyo has impressed feminists with the fact that EWTN was the first non-profit television network that was founded by a woman. Mother Angelica launched it in the garage of her monastery and her humour and directness drew millions of viewers from all over the world. The highest compliment that Arroyo pays her is that “she was like the Pope Francis of her day: not afraid to cut through the dross, find the truth and show it”.
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Writing about Padre Pio: how it influences real life

July 2, 2013, 6:42 pm
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“You don’t write about Padre Pio anymore…”

People have been querying me as to why it’s been some time since I wrote about Padre Pio.


One reason is because I fear offending people. My more liberal friends (who think that it’s ‘pointless’ for me to be so into religion) find Padre Pio ‘disturbing’.  Why? Mostly because they are thrown off balance by the stories of Padre Pio ‘reading souls’ and telling people their darkest sins in the Confessional or of Padre Pio’s stigmata and bleeding palms.
Friends tell me that they ask themselves: Is it real, this supernatural, Catholic stuff?  Why does it make me feel guilty – when I dismiss all things holy as hocus pocus?

It’s safer to write about the miraculous healings, obtained through Pio’s intercession, such as when someone made a complete healing from cancer after they touched a relic of Pio’s.  These phenomenal cures show Pio’s compassionate side, and make him likeable to readers.

But it gets hazardous when you write about Pio’s gruff, grim comments on sin. People start to ask themselves; if Pio said that to this man or woman, what would he say to me?!
It’s less disagreeable to cite the extreme examples such as when Padre Pio prevented a gangster from killing his wife.  No friend of mine (as far as I’m aware!) has tried to kill his wife, so they won’t see themselves in the vigilante who wanted to bump off his wife, so that he could take up with other women.

When I regularly wrote little anecdotes from the life of Pio, it used to draw out two reactions in people: love and hate. People who are striving to be openly Catholic, to believe in all that is seen and unseen, love the Padre Pio anecdotes. They felt that their faith was reinforced when they heard about Pio’s conversations with souls in Purgatory and his ability to ‘bilocate’ - be in two places at the same time. The way he could read minds, see into the future, and see who was in heaven and hell.  

By the same measure, some people would hateit that I wrote about Padre Pio’s clemency. One example is when he said that Julius Fine, a devout Jew, had died and gone to heaven. One person got in touch to reprimand me that I was turning Pio into ‘a Catholic Rasputin’.  An esteemed academic from a Catholic university sent a long memo, quoting Catholic doctrine to evidence why Pio was mistaken that Julius Fine had gone to heaven. I wanted to ask the academic how they could prove that Pio could not see heaven, but let the matter go.

There is something about Padre Pio that has a habit of stabbing consciences.

Some years ago, when I blogged about Padre Pio’s refusal to absolve a woman who had got an abortion, I got three different reactions. Firstly, one plain-spoken British girl who had an abortion, but as a result became infertile, told me that had Pio refused her absolution, she would not have felt worse because of her regret that she aborted the only child she was ever able to conceive. She also said that Padre Pio’s stubbornness in refusing absolution, ‘seemed cruel’, but, ‘a change from the casual way that people say an abortion is like having a tooth removed. I’m always told ‘get over it’ by my pro-choice friends.  They say that I am ‘nasty’ and letting women down by complaining about a hard-won right to control my body. No one told me that I’d never have another baby – no one mentioned that instead of being in control – I’d lose all control of my fertility.’

I asked her if she thought that Pio seemed too angry about abortion. ‘Well, he could not be more angry than me about it,’ was her response.

Secondly, a very hard-working priest in London said to me that it was not a good idea to publicise that Padre Pio had refused absolution because it would put people off going to Confession.

And thirdly, a man in the US got in touch with me to say that he had been outside an abortion clinic, offering financial and practical aid to women who may be having an abortion because of poverty or pressure. He had read my blog post about Padre Pio and abortion, and it was playing on his mind. One pregnant woman ignored him, when he talked to her, but he persevered and gave her details of help other than abortion. He does not know if she kept the baby, but he is sure that he would not have tried to reach her had he not heard that Padre Pio said abortion was so serious. So, one woman did get offered other options, and may not have felt trapped into one dire course of action.  

Padre Pio has been dissed as misogynistic and women-loathing. Why would I, a female journalist, write about a saint so seemingly against women?
Because looking into his life, I found many examples where he took the side of women. Once he bi-located and appeared to a young girl who was walking down a road. She had a knife on her, and was planning to kill a boyfriend who had taken advantage of her. ‘He’s not worth it’, were Padre Pio’s words and he was very gentle with her. She decided not to murder her not-worth-it boyfriend.

While he did refuse absolution to at least one woman for having an abortion, he also refused absolution to at least one man, who had used many, many different women for sex.
Perhaps it is not that Pio treated women very differently from men, but that people sadly take cruel pleasure in meditating on the harsh way Pio treated some women. It’s telling that Pio’s refusal to give some men absolution is not as well publicised.

Another reason that I have been loathe to write about Pio is that quotes and teachings attributed to Padre Pio can be used as tools of religious control freakery.   
By detailing the life of Pio am I giving sticks to religious control freaks so that they can beat other people?

I knew a devout lady who used to scold other women for wearing trousers and would say that Padre Pio was against women wearing trousers. Was he? Padre Pio told a woman in confession not to sell trousers in her shop. This was a conversation that the woman-shop-owner was at liberty to repeat – but not Padre Pio as he was bound by the seal of Confession. But we don’t know if the trousers that she planned to sell were…ordinary slacks…or hot pants!  As usual, the devil is in the detail. The Catholic Church has no official teaching against women wearing trousers. But this one anecdote is used to rebuke women, while it is ignored that Padre Pio also took issue with men who wore trousers, such as when he asked priests why they were in laymen’s clothes and not in their religious robes, such as the white Dominican habit.

It was ironic because the-devout-lady-who-told-other-women-not-to-wear-trousers used wear see-through stockings. Now, Padre Pio told his spiritual daughters not to wear see-through tights/hose. Would the-devout-lady have liked if someone had plucked at her skin-coloured tights and told her that Padre Pio wasn’t too keen on them, either?

I return to why I began writing about Pio. I was fascinated by him. I know that were I an atheist, that I would be attracted like a moth to a flame to any story about Padre Pio.  Like no other ordinary human being in history, I have found, that Padre Pio’s life stirs in me a yearning to find out more about heavenly realms. Why did Pio clean his face at night – because he would often be visited by Our Lady in the evening.

You see, I’m like the man outside the abortion clinic. I know that were it not for Pio’s insistent stance that abortion is wrong, that I would not have bothered, persevered until my own life was on the line, to give so many women help during crisis pregnancies. A time comes to mind when I was helping a teenager from a very religious Muslim background hide her pregnancy until she was 24 weeks. She had to conceal ‘it’ until such time as her family would not be able to force her to abort, because they wanted to save face and not look bad in front of their Muslim neighbours for having a pregnant, ‘sinful’ daughter. She has a baby boy now.

You see, I’m like my friends who feel guilty when they hear stories about Pio.  Were Pio alive today, I doubt that I would go to Confession to him. He would make…suggestions…that I’d find too hard to bear. My nerves could not take it. I’m not alone, there are bishops alive today who find it gut-wrenching to read stories about Padre Pio.  And Padre Pio was a severe judge of himself, always quick to say that God found fault in him as, ‘God finds fault even in the angels’.

But my effort to write about Pio is not just for my own good, but might help someone in some unknown way that I will only know when I go to God. You see, there we have it again, that belief in heaven that is inspired by the way Padre Pio saw Pius XII in paradise.
  
Here marks my new and latest attempt to write up accounts about Padre Pio.
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