Much has happened since the Catholic Herald last landed on doormats, as my predecessor William Cash writes in this month’s Diary. I travelled to New York in early October and did not expect to return to London as Editor-in-Chief, but here I stand. I am grateful for the many kind messages that have arrived since the news broke.
It is very much business as usual at 8 Cromwell Place. Over the last few years William has put together the finest team imaginable for the task in hand, and we will go on providing top-quality content to help our readers navigate, as cheerfully as possible, the choppy waters of the modern Church in the modern world.
That said, there is nothing cheery about the bill to legalise assisted suicide which is about to come before Parliament in the United Kingdom. In every single jurisdiction where assisted suicide has been permitted, as Simon Caldwell notes, it has ballooned exponentially and uncontrollably. Ilora Finlay, a world-renowned expert on palliative care, speaks frankly to Melanie McDonagh about the lack of any kind of meaningful safeguards to protect vulnerable people who may feel pressurised towards choosing death should the law change.
Belgium, whose own Catholic identity has been shaken to the core in recent decades by revelations of appalling sexual abuse (and where Pope Francis had a less than warm welcome at the end of September), now allows euthanasia for angst-ridden teenagers – show me a teenager who isn’t angst-ridden, and I’ll send you a hamper. This pernicious bill must be defeated and those MPs who intend to vote against it (including, significantly, the Secretaries of State for Health and Justice) deserve our firm support.
From the United States, in the wake of Storm Helene (about whose devastation Bishop Michael Martin writes from his battered diocese in North Carolina), comes a reminder of the bleak figures, discussed by Katherine Bennett, which indicate that, when it comes to the Eucharist, 70 per cent of American Catholics no longer believe in the Real Presence.
It is a shocking statistic; the Coalition for the Real Presence has recently tried to understand why that should be, while Camilla Harrison makes a plea for better and clearer teaching. But it is not all doom and gloom; as our US Schools, Colleges and University Guide reveals, there is much to be thankful for on campuses where institutions take seriously their task of forming new generations of Catholic leaders.
Our American readers are also, of course, facing a stark choice. Very soon there will be a new President, and neither candidate is a good option if Catholics want to vote solely upon faith-based lines. But in an imperfect world, elections of this importance cannot just be a one-issue matter. Voters will have to pray for guidance and then simply do their best. We will be following developments closely on the Herald website as events unfold.
Happily, there is some good news as well. The old Warwick Street Chapel, in the heart of London’s West End, celebrated its 300th anniversary last month with a festal Mass of Thanksgiving, and invited us along to share in the celebrations. It has been a remarkable survivor – as our architectural correspondent Michael Hodges observes – of riots, bombs and liturgists. It is now the home of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and Mgr Michael Nazir-Ali reflects on the gifts that Anglican patrimony, to which Benedict XVI was so attuned, has to offer to the Catholic Church.
Meanwhile, in Rome the Synod on Synodality has ended, and John Allen’s analysis, sharp as ever, is that no one is terribly happy. After all that time and effort progressives have had their hopes for change dashed, while traditionalists have lamented the blurring of matters that properly belong to the Magisterium. The fallout is likely to define the rest of this papacy, for however long it may last.
And so November finds the world at war in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East – to say nothing of more minor but no-less-deadly conflicts elsewhere – the Church at loggerheads with itself, the Democrats and Republicans tearing strips off each other in the US, and the UK House of Commons flirting yet again with the culture of death: as I say, business as usual. Thank God for a flesh-meat Friday to start the month, then, and for the prayers of the saints.
<strong><strong>This article appears in the October 2024 edition of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent, high-calibre, counter-cultural and orthodox Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a></strong></strong>.
