Ministry Team Letter
October 2010
Dear Friends,
As I write, the Pope has just completed his visit to Britain. I was astonished and delighted to be invited to join in the service he attended at Westminster Abbey with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Immediately beforehand he addressed both houses of Parliament across the road in Westminster Hall, and those of us already seated in the abbey saw the televised speech on large screens in the nave. Never before has a Pope spoken to the legislature of this country, or worshipped in its national shrine. It was profoundly moving to witness him and the Archbishop at prayer before the tomb of Edward the Confessor, King and Saint, who founded the abbey in 1065. This meeting took us back to a point long before the sad division of Catholic and Protestant.
Some, of course, are determined that those divisions should remain. As I was queuing for the security checks outside the abbey, a well-dressed, well-spoken man coming the other way told me to ‘trust in the Lord Jesus, not in Popery.’ I replied that I did indeed trust in the Lord Jesus and not in Popery, but did not have time to add that so did all Catholics, Popery being an abusive term to which no Catholic would lay claim. The man then crossed the road to join the inevitable band of like-minded people who were waving ‘No Pope’ banners and singing hymns as if they were football chants. They were surrounded and vastly outnumbered by the many people who were there to give the Pope a noisy and cheerful welcome.
I have to confess that my view of Benedict XVI has shifted as a result of his visit – and not simply because I was privileged to join in with one part of it. Benedict does not enjoy a good press, even among those who are not permanently hostile to the Papacy. There are reasons for this, of course, but mostly they are not entirely his fault – he is certainly not always well served by those responsible for Vatican communications. I sense that during this visit much of the country found itself, to its own surprise, actually trying to listen to what this quiet, scholarly and humble man had to say. He is not ‘God’s rottweiler’, insisting on the supremacy of Catholic dogma to the exclusion of all other points of view. He does want Christians, and his own church in particular, to be willing to put matters that faith asserts to be important – human dignity, freedom of conscience, a deep moral grounding for politics and economics - into the public realm once again. He also wants that realm, and the secular powers, to be willing to debate courteously and seriously with the community of faith. I don’t see how any Christian could disagree with that. For reminding us all of the right and duty of faith to have a public voice, I believe we should be grateful to Benedict for his historic visit.
With love,
David
We believe that the Parish Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Godmanchester, exists to build up the individual and corporate spiritual life of our Church and to spread the love of Christ through word and deed, by enabling those who live and work within our town to come into contact with God’s love and come to faith in Christ.