Read vs Parris
Sir: I found it difficult to contain my derisive laughter at the ludicrous vapourings of Piers Paul Read in your Easter issue debate. The idea of the Roman Catholic Church and its teachings as the bulwark against the forces of evil set to overwhelm us is too risible to be borne.
Given its history of murder, cruelty, hypo-crisy, dishonesty, sexual depravity and corruption, to name but a few (and that’s only the morally infallible popes for God’s sake), and the utter nonsense of its doctrines on transubstantiation, Mary’s assumption into heaven, the sinfulness of ‘artificial’ contraception (if you intend contraception, what does it matter if you use a thermometer, a calendar, a chemical or chance your arm, so to speak, with coitus interruptus), etc, I just cannot see that this authoritarian, soulless institution has anything to teach us about morality, decency or anything else.
Richard Wyndham
by email
Sir: Having read (twice) the article on the Catholic Church by Matthew Parris, I cannot quite see anything more here than a moderately entertaining but reheated dish of clichéd accusations and some factual inaccuracies. Suffice it to say that the Jesus so loved by Matthew Parris is the Jesus found in the Gospels; and yes the Gospels stand as a reprimand to all Christians who are caught up in seeking power and creating false gods, but without the Catholic Church there would be no Gospels. Indeed, all theological and pastoral developments are rooted in Scripture, developed in Sacred Tradition and guided by the living Magisterium: to read Scripture from outside the worshipping community is akin to listening to the radio with the sound turned down but not quite off.
I welcome Mr Parris’s interest in the Gospels and invite him to look again at the Catholic Church whose own writers composed these Gospels because of their belief that Jesus was indeed divine.
L. Franchi
Burnbrae, Alexandria, Scotland
Sir: As an ex-Catholic (although still a theist), I agree with practically everything Matthew Parris says about Jesus’s attitude to the Church. But I would like to take issue with what he says about the Virgin Mary. The Church has never ‘commanded the laity to approach the Almighty through (her) mediation’. Catholics are entirely free to do so, or through any of the saints if they wish, but the Church has never discouraged people from a direct approach to God, whether the Father (‘Our father’), the Son or the Holy Spirit. Repetition of this hoary myth diminishes Mr Parris’s otherwise powerful arguments.
Jerry Emery
Steyning, West Sussex
Sir: Matthew Parris makes a fundamental error that has been made before, and well answered (by Chesterton, for example). Parris presents the Church in a light that is, quite simply, incredible. In saying, ‘if Jesus had not existed, the Catholic Church would not have invented him’, he fails to ask why on earth the Church would have chosen as its figurehead a man so at odds with its own outlook and purposes — assuming Parris’s portrait of Jesus (and of the Church) to be wholly accurate. What possible motive could anyone have for doing such a thing? But like so many before him, Parris is somewhat glib in his description of Jesus (ignoring, for instance, the incident of the woman who poured expensive oil over Jesus’s feet, without receiving any rebuke from the latter), and generally oversimplifying the intricacies of the Gospel narratives. The question is obviously much more complex than Parris makes it out to be.
On the matter of the Virgin Mary, Parris becomes jaw-droppingly bizarre. ‘The Roman Catholic Church,’ he would have us believe, ‘has clothed Mary — for she is its own creature and almost mythical — in the powers and authority its priesthood needs for the sanctification of its own powers and authority.’ Through what strange mental alchemies has Parris gone to arrive at that? Maybe the title ‘Queen of Heaven’ has raised up in Parris’s mind a picture of her as an absolute monarch; but, if so, the image is his, not the Church’s. The latter, it need hardly be said, presents her as a Queen Mother, who no more represents power and authority than did the much-loved lady who recently carried that title.
Doubtless Parris’s flawed and fanciful diatribe will receive more applause than will the common sense of Piers Paul Read. But I know which one I find more convincing.
Peter Homer
Highworth, Wiltshire
Defending the indefensible
Sir: I understand that the Spectator employs a portion of staff for whom the traditions of the Christian, white Anglo-Saxon British conservative (or Conservative) movement defines their world view, but comments in your leading article and in Charles Moore’s notes in the past two weeks have been truly shocking. I have not yet read a comment in the Spectator relating to the systemic abuse of children by priests within the Catholic Church which could not be paraphrased as either ‘Yes, we know there were/are paedophiles among the priests, but…’ or ‘One bad apple shouldn’t spoil the whole barrel.’ This is what is referred to in cognitive science as ‘confirmation bias’. I suggest the editor of your supposedly elite magazine tries letting facts dictate the magazine’s position instead of defending the indefensible.
Alex Cockburn
London SW17
Sir: I find your assertion in this week’s editorial that ‘The Spectator holds no brief for the Catholic Church’ surprising.
Charles Moore is an apologist for the Roman church with all the zeal of the convert, and your debate on the possible benefits of Catholicism missed the point that Anglicans are part of the Catholic church.
The magazine is to be praised for acknowledging the spiritual dimension in current affairs, but why do we have no regular columnist writing as a professed Anglican?
Michael McEvoy
Thornthwaite, North Yorkshire
Ukip not the answer
Sir: Your correspondent Mark Taha objects to ‘the EU, immigration, multiculturalism, political correctness, petty bureaucracy and the health and safety obsession’. Well, chapeaux! I am sure most of us agree. Mr Taha’s solution: vote Ukip. This is like having a profound desire to fly and resolving the problem by standing on the lawn flapping one’s arms.
In 2005 the staunch EU-sceptic Conor Burns (Tory) stood for Eastleigh. Ukip stood against him. The seat went on a plate to EU-fanatic Chris Huhne (Lib Dem). In Harlow the robust EU-sceptic Robert Halfon stood for the Tories. Ukip horned in. The seat went to EU-passionate Bert Rammell (Labour) by 95 votes.
In all, Ukip provably cost the Conservatives 25 seats, handing Tony Blair a 66-seat majority instead of 16 and guaranteeing the easy passage of the Lisbon Treaty. Contrary to the silly propaganda, Ukip only splits the Tory vote, and nothing else. With patriots this dim, Old Blighty really doesn’t need enemies. They win by default anyway.
The only stratagem worth a light is to put the Tories in office, where they could actually do something, and then make the leadership aware it will face the father and mother of all grass-root insurrections unless we are listened to at last. Handing the country to Brown and Clegg just to score a point is why Labour and Lib Dems adore Ukip.
Frederick Forsyth
Hertford
The Master of Venice
Sir: Philip Hensher’s review of Shapiro’s Contested Will (books, 3 April) is ‘demonstrably’ nonsense. There is no evidence that any of the plays (or the parts of them by the bard) were written after 1604.
The author of The Merchant of Venice’s knowledge of Venice — its customs and laws and Jewish ghetto, as it was in 1575 — is that of an eyewitness. Who else would refer to the Sagittary burnt down in 1575? Who else would distinguish between the traghetto (miscopied as ‘tranect’), the ferry across the Grand Canal in Venice, and ‘the common ferry’ between Padua and Venice, which twice in one day in The Merchant of Venice takes the five-mile trip up and back the River Brenta, to Belmont, identifiable from ‘Shakespeare’s’ description as the Villa Foscari?
Could we now dispose of the ‘snob’ slur, disguised by Shapiro as ‘in need of psycho-analysis’? My argument (unlike that for creative design) that the Earl of Oxford (who stayed in Venice in 1575-76) was the principal author is either right or wrong, defensible or indefensible: my character defects, or even my innocent predispositions are entirely irrelevant, as any professor of logic (like Professor Madsen in your recent issue) will tell Shapiro and Hensher.
Finally there was no ‘conspiracy’, and no need for conspiracy theory. Could you invite your reviewer to read our stuff first, before shooting off his mouth in ignorant idiocy?
Richard Malim
Secretary, De Vere Society, Bristol
Shocking systems
Sir: ‘Thank God for the NHS’? (27 March) Did Ross Clark forget to take his risperdal? (Sorry, that’s an expensive anti-psychotic; the NHS would be using chlorpromazine.) Of course the American system is terrible but it doesn’t therefore follow that universal public healthcare systems are better. They are both shocking — in different ways. A bit like choosing between an Edsel or a Trabant. To suggest, as Mr Clark does, that health care should be funded by the state simply because it is ‘different’ is to give in to the morally and intellectually bankrupt socialist politicians of the mother country and the colonies. You really should be ashamed of yourselves for publishing such unintelligent drivel.
Dr Michael Reid
Adelaide, South Australia
Preserve GMT
Sir: Lord Tanlaw’s desire (Letters, 3 April) to see the scrapping of Greenwich Mean Time is as depressing as it is pointless. There is no proof whatsoever that a permanent switch to British Summer Time would save one watt, calorie or erg of energy, but even if it did, it is disgraceful (and sadly predictable) that social engineers like him can be so cavalier with their nation’s history and geography. Does he have no sense of pride in the British origins of the pioneering concept that is GMT, recognised world-wide as the starting point and inspiration of global time-keeping? Is there nothing about Britain’s heritage that these people do not wish to destroy?
Tim Rice
London SW13
Sir: Lord Tanlaw is nothing if not a tryer. His proposed legislation for GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer was voted down four years ago and here he is back with the same stuff.
Tanlaw’s Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill shared with the existing Daylight Saving legislation the fact of being a misnomer. The evenings would be exactly as light or dark as before and there is exactly the same amount of daylight as before. It is just that the state tells us the time is different to what it actually is. Of course no electricity is saved by state diktat per se; it might be saved by people not using electrical equipment.
As with most state interventions into the lives of the people, imposed time changes underestimate their intelligence and self-reliance. Parents and head teachers are quite capable of organising the hours spent at school in various seasons to the benefit of children. Farmers are quite capable of observing the seasons and starting work earlier or later, as are bankers and factory workers. People in Scotland, having different conditions to those in the south, are quite capable of adjusting.
Leave it to the people, my Lord.
Tim Hedges
Rome
Evils of imperialism
Sir: Before independence, the massacre at Kuru Karama described by Peter Oborne (‘They were chanting kill, kill, kill’, 3 April) would probably have been prevented, or at least been brought under control, by a single British official and a handful of properly trained and disciplined local policemen. Oh, the evils of imperialism.
Henry Keown-Boyd
Herefordshire
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