Second Sight

We are rightly concerned about secular attempts to lay down how we should teach our beliefs about the proper use of sexuality. The threatened Bill on children, schools and families would, on first reading, appear to do just that.

But we will be relieved to read that we will remain entirely free to teach full Catholic doctrine. And if you think that to be of no significance, take a look at the steam rising out of the ears of the secularists at what they see as a flagrant betrayal of the principle of non-discrimination.

No, the difficulty lies with the obligation to give children a fair and balanced view of the issue being discussed and to recognise that there are alternative views which others hold, and are entitled to hold, even though we may believe them to be mistaken. That is no more than straightforward Catholic teaching on the sovereignty of conscience.

But I want to go beyond that and argue that a new educational approach will bring its own advantage. Not that it is a big challenge to get better results than the traditional spoon-feeding approach. Spoon-feeding has not worked because young people on the verge of adulthood are unwilling to accept authority blindly. They may profess to do so in the classroom, but they are aware that real life is different and, when temptation looms, defences fall. It is true of them, as it is true of us, that “a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”.

There is no formula guaranteed to send our young out into the world as perfect models of Christian chastity and virtue. But it is possible to help many to understand for themselves and live out their understanding. If some of these then make mistakes, at least they have a solid background to which they can return.

The principle is straightforward. The school is rightly obliged to give the teaching of the Church. It is a Catholic school and that’s what it says on the tin. In doing so it must give the full reasons why it holds a doctrine. But it must also evaluate, with scrupulous fairness, the opposing arguments. It is only then that the pupils are truly free to accept and internalise the Church’s teaching.

What has been lost? Those who do not accept would not have accepted the spoonfeeding approach at any useful level. What has been gained? Those who accept are able to make a free, internalised commitment. All whose previous knowledge of the debate was scanty or misinformed are now fully briefed, and ready to defend their beliefs against all comers. Let me illustrate this approach with some examples.

The Church teaches that sexual congress is such an invaluable gift of oneself that it belongs only within the unconditional commitment of marriage. We all know the general arguments for this, and the competent teacher will be able to display the strong sociological evidence in support. Everyone will be aware of the powerful temptations which draw many into a betrayal of this gift. The only reward for pretending otherwise is loss of credibility. It would be more useful to ask pupils to compare Catholic teaching with the proposition that sex is appropriate in casual relationships, or as a form of entertainment. Do we really put such little trust in our ability to present the Church’s good or in our young’s ability to recognise it? And, if so, what have we been doing as parents?

Contraception involves the problem that if teachers, clerical or lay, follow the pattern of surveys then the majority will not, in practice, accept the Church’s blanket condemnation of artificial forms. But here the orthodox teaching must also be given, accompanied by the best evidence, both theological and sociological. The choice here is simple: either leave the children with their half-baked erroneous ideas or teach them the facts on contraception - from which methods are abortifacient to the level of safety they give against conception and disease. This is general knowledge, not advocacy of a way of life. But every parent must face the question: What would I do if I knew that my child was involved sexually, against my wishes, and I didn’t know whether they were protected? Bear in mind that the Church’s teaching on contraception applies only to marriage.

I hardly dare enter the subject of homosexuality for the thunder of red rags and bulls charging over the horizon. So I will confine myself to saying that bullying a gay person on the grounds of orientation or lifestyle is a sin against love far greater than any which might be imputed against homosexual acts.

For me, strength of feeling makes the question of abortion the test case. Unsurprisingly, our pupils are aware that abortions take place, and that we condemn this as the taking of innocent life. What the pupils need is a proper understanding of the wonderful work of God in how the baby grows and flowers from the foetus to their newborn brother or sister. The duty of balance requires that ultrasound scans should be used, since the emotional factor is normally inhibited by the invisibility of the baby. And full information on the practical provision available for the prospective mother is necessary information.

But pupils should also understand how fear, family pressure or plain ignorance leads some women to have abortions. We must be clear about the objective wrong of abortion but we are in no position to judge the mother. Rather, she should be the object of our prayers, and our practical help - particularly if she chooses abortion. Needless to say, our practical help does not include colluding with the abortion.

I am sure that some readers will think that I have sold the pass. I would say to them: take consolation from the fact that the credibility among the young towards the Church’s sexual teachings could scarcely be lower than it is today. There is nothing to lose. And bear in mind that secular schools must provide similar objective information about our views. I don’t think this is what the champions of the Bill had in mind - but, if they provided the noose, they too must be prepared to hang in it.

Quentin de la Bedoyere was a marriage counsellor under Catholic auspices for 20 years, working with schools, with engaged couples and in remedial counselling. His major work on counselling, Managing People and Problems, was published by Gower Press in 1988, later in paperback. It has appeared in several European languages. He has five children and 14 grandchildren

Rhetoric is properly regarded as a science but of the softer kind. That is, it is possible to make verifiable predictions about the effects of various rhetorical skills and techniques. But their accuracy is, like those in, say, psychology or economics, measured by significant statistical probability rather than with a ruler. And since we readily acknowledge the need for effective communication in the Church, it is right to look at this science from time to time.

Plato disapproved of rhetoric. Not only did he rank it as a skill on par with cooking, but he held that its only useful purpose was to mislead the listener or reader, and take him further from the truth. Nevertheless Plato (or Socrates speaking through him) used rhetoric continually while in the very act of insisting on plain speaking.

Aristotle approached the subject with particular care for detail. His Rhetoric is both comprehensive and hard going. But he understood clearly, as the ancients did, that to be effective and persuasive to an audience was a necessary attribute for a man of public affairs. Indeed, even a modern Jesuit school will title its senior class Rhetoric, reminding us that its mastery was the apogee of scholastic success.

I cannot here cover the breadth of rhetoric but we do have, through good fortune, two current and contrasting examples to examine. These are Tiger Woods’s statement about his womanising and the Vatican report following the Pope’s meeting with the Irish bishops. They have in common the need to make the best out of difficult situations, and will both have been the result of careful preparation and expert advice. I am not concerned here with the validity of either, but merely with the rhetoric used.

Tiger Woods’s remarks might be stylised as the apology direct. It is typified by his words: “I want to say to each of you, simply and directly: I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behaviour.” He asserts his recognition that he has let down his family and his friends, he takes full responsibility for his behaviour, and presents the steps he is taking to improve it for the future. His appearance is emotional; he conveys the impression of being near to tears.

This direct approach can be very effective. There is no attempt to hide behind other people. We may be cynical, believing that this verbal and physical vulnerability was a calculated means of appealing for sympathy. But I judge that a large proportion of his audience went away with at least a hope that he would prove his words good in the future.

The Holy Office was faced by a very different situation, and it called for very different, and rather more subtle, techniques. We might describe it as the explanation circumspect.

Perhaps the first thing we note is the use of the rhetoric of omission. The awkward fact that the Pope, when prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) had emphasised to all bishops in 2001 that the CDF had exclusive competence in this area, and that all cases were to be reported to it, was never mentioned. Exclusive competence means ultimate responsibility within the Church.

Strong, dramatic language - even if it adds no new information - can often be useful to mask more awkward questions, and the choice of “heinous crime” and “grave sin” was certainly powerful enough to throw into the background, for that moment at least, the ultimately much more serious accusation of organised and official cover-up which had allowed the abuse to spread. I was reminded of the distinguished psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, and his strictures about condemning the bad apples without reviewing the bad barrel.

Switching blame to a more general cause for which no one and everyone may be responsible is often used in rhetoric. In this case a contributor is apparently a weakening of faith which has led to a lack of respect for the human person. We are not told whose faith is weakened. Is it the corrupted teenager? Or the seducing priest? Or the Pontius Pilate bishop? Nor are we told how the one led to the other. But we do not need to know for the rhetoric to work.

Perhaps the one rhetorical move which was missing was the claim that everyone was doing it. Fortunately there was help on hand, and the Bishop of Down and Connor reminded us on Radio 4 last Sunday that abuse was widespread and went beyond “the frontiers of the Catholic Church itself”. This defence has the danger of suggesting that the Church, despite its claim to rigorous moral values, should be judged by the world’s standards and not its own. But it can have the effect of allowing the unwary to think that, if everyone’s doing it, it can’t be as bad as all that.

Naturally there were assurances about how much good work had been done, and was still being done, to ensure that such a situation could not occur again. While such assurances cannot be omitted, they have little effect rhetorically since they are announced every time some large public or private organisation has been caught in flagrante delicto.

I have not attempted to review the whole of the Irish meeting, but only the rhetoric employed. There will in due course be a pastoral letter in which all necessary matters will doubtless be dealt with directly. But together with the Tiger Woods’s apology, we have had an opportunity to look at samples of how rhetoric can serve.

If you believe that either party could have made better or stronger use of rhetoric to achieve the wanted effect, you may care to note down and give us the benefit of your ideas. You may also wish to comment on whether you think that either Tiger Woods or the drafter of the papal report crossed the boundary between rhetoric and “economy with the truth”.

(First published in The Catholic Herald on 12 February 2010)

So for the time being crisis is averted. It would seem that the combined efforts of the Lords Spiritual, our bishops, and the big gun of the Pope himself have led to the withdrawal of the offending clauses in the Equality Bill. Religions will retain the freedom to run their operations and appoint staff in line with the criteria of their respective beliefs, with a much reduced danger of legal challenge.

But only for the time being. I repeat this because we are a lazy lot. It gives me little pleasure (well, in truth, just a touch of schadenfreude) to mention that I have pointed out in this newspaper over several years that little by little our fundamental liberties were being eroded ­ and that one day the crunch would come. In each case the change has been small, always defended as a necessity of the time, and cumulative. Now that we have at last woken up ­ some of us perhaps still bleary-eyed ­ maybe we can take some action.

The first screech of the alarm clock loud enough to break the deepest slumber was the question of adoption agencies: the grotesque demand that Catholic agencies should be prepared to place the young with gay couples. I am not going to argue against the effectiveness of single-sex parents (the issue is not clear-cut) but against the fist of socialist totalitarianism thrust in the face of the Church’s deep and strongly held principles.

But some of us put the alarm clock on hold and returned to sleep ­ this time woken by the second screech of a further attempt to manhandle (or, given the involvement of Harriet Harman, perhaps I should say womanhandle) the rights of religion. Will that get us out of bed?

The Pope, in addressing our bishops on freedom, used the unhelpful phrase “natural law”. Natural law is a technical term; what he meant was the native ability of all decent people to recognise the ways in which we should naturally live our lives in order to flourish as human beings. For all the fashionable ills of our society, decent people do recognise that they are answerable, at least to themselves, for their behaviour, that we have a duty to each other ­ particularly the poor and the aged, ­ that we have a right to have religious beliefs or none, that we have rights to free association, that human life has a uniquely sacred status, that the misuse of sexuality brings tragedy, that stable marriage and family are the essential units of a good society. That list is by no means exhaustive, but note that in every case I am referring to values taught by the Church ­ often in the teeth of the ungodly.

We have carelessly allowed the Church to be associated with the negative images of prohibition. Our focus must move away from looking at all the things which we can get wrong, and be applied to the positive values. That way we speak to man’s aspirations rather than to his fears. What is historically certain is that our continued cataloguing of sin has not led to more orthodox behaviour. But it has led to our ill repute, and our rejection in the marketplace. I will settle for John XXIII’s remarks at the beginning of the Council: “Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations.”

Why is it that in any relevant matter I find a punchy comment from the British Humanist Association (who have brought prejudice, selective evidence and fallacious reasoning to new heights) and no equally forceful statement from us about how humans have to live in order to flourish, and what the Church is contributing to this? It may well be that the Catholic Union, so inspiringly discussed by James Bogle in the 5 February issue, will play an effective part here. But we in our daily lives and conversations have our responsibility of witness. So it may be useful to look briefly at some relevant issues.

Let’s clear out of the way one question which can be distracting. Catholic schools are, for the most part, publicly funded. No one with an eye for the evidence will deny that Catholic schools do a first-rate job educationally and in terms of social integration. But why should the taxpayer be funding religious organisations with which they may not agree? Surely, if Catholics want their own form of schooling, they should fund it for themselves.

Good thinking. I happen in my old fashioned way to object to the killing of around 200,000 babies a year. But the tax system works as a general pool from which the public costs are taken. As a result I am paying for the slaughter. We could make a bargain: I stop paying for killing babies, you stop paying for Catholic schools.

Another distraction to be exorcised is the idea that this is an issue about homosexuality, introducing a fashionable and emotional example is an old rhetorical trick. The issue is not homosexuality but whether a given lifestyle (and there are plenty of examples) is inconsistent with the strongly held principles of a religion, or, for that matter, those of any other organisation. I am not expecting an invitation to take up a post with the British Humanist Association any time soon, but I do not accuse them of unfair discrimination.

We also need to be quite clear about what we mean by a free society. The Equality Bill, despite its name, is aimed at neither equality nor freedom. It is an instrument to serve a belief shared by a section of the population who, with the highest ideals, think that they know what is good for us. Unsurprisingly it is usually to be found in the ranks of the civil authorities, for that is the best vantage point to put such an agenda into action. They are very dangerous because they are sincere. Rogues will eventually be outed; virtuous fools can hide in their whited sepulchres. Nor am I nosing out a conspiracy theory; Harriet Harman is in her own words “engaged in an opportunity not only to build a new economic order, but a new social order as well”.

We have been in the grip of virtuous fools ­– the totalitarian socialism to which I referred above – for many years. Regulation has been piled upon regulation ­ for each new regulation breeds its own progeny until the body politic is white with its maggots. From wearing a small cross at work to blowing your nose while halted in a traffic jam, every item of our lives is regulated. Pygmy bureaucracy is swollen, and nonentities who could not climb a dunghill can trammel our lives. Every word that we say is weighed: every word that we write must be measured against the latest doctrinaire fad.

And is it succeeding? Our class differences are greater than ever; child poverty has increased; paper qualifications have replaced education; we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe; the stable married family has been downgraded and disadvantaged; our jails… no, you don’t need me to answer the question.

How do you see a free society? You can take the route of the virtuous fool and attempt to engineer society through force majeure into equality. Your aim will be a society of flatline mediocrity with a universal ethos (to be updated or even reversed according to the latest fashion) by periodic referenda. Such a society has about as much chance of success as a Soviet collective farm and will cause as much distress in its attempts at formation.

Or you can have a society which rejoices in a multiplicity of opinions, rewards merit, supports real need, encourages freedom of association and promotes harmonious integration. Such a society would, of course, have its rules, and its checks and balances, but in every case there would be a heavy onus on the lawmaker to demonstrate how the laws do no more than serve the common good and ensure the maximum freedom consistent with the freedom of others. Of course that society will never come to fruition either ­ until we have abolished Original Sin. But at least we can work towards it. And here I am with the Pope when he says that no social system can ever work unless it is founded in the heart of man.

(Some you who know my style will be surprised by the use of the word “gay” in para 3. You will know that I never use the term since it is a value judgment , just as I never used the word “queer” for the same reason. The word crept in after the ms had left my hands.)

Last time I wrote about the “Hobbit”, the small hominid who descends from an ancient line but survived to be a contemporary of homo sapiens. Another contemporary of ours was the Neanderthal, also not thought to be a direct ancestor, but surviving - according to the most recent study - until 37,000 years ago. Homo sapiens has been around for 195,000 years. Neanderthals, and our probable ancestor homo erectus, show evidence of intelligent and imaginative life, together with a capacity for artistic expression and abstract symbolism.

This presents us with a modern-day version of the difficulty of reconciling the story of the six days of creation with science. While we solved that, we are still faced with the question of our descent from Adam, the generation of Eve and Original Sin. And in looking at these issues we are looking at matters so fundamental to our faith that the Magisterium has frequently put us on warning against attacking their historical reality. To take just one prominent theme, we teach that sin came into the world through one man, and so did redemption from sin. We must suppose that Paul, and indeed Jesus (in his human nature) assumed the biblical account to be factually true.

But a cat may look at a king, and I - who write with no authority and so can be safely ignored - can allow myself the luxury of a little speculation.

Just what are the essentials here? Man has a spiritual soul which is directly created by God; in some way which we do not understand that soul was infused into a hominid sufficiently evolved to receive it. We call this hominid man, and we distinguish him from the lower animals by his capacity for abstract thought, his free will and his moral sense.

Man, being a creature, has no innate right to be in relationship with God. And all our experience confirms his strong tendency to turn away from God and do evil. He inherits this tendency just as he inherits his humanity. In order to enter into relationship with God he must, directly or indirectly, accept redemption by Christ - which is always on offer.

If we limit ourselves to these essentials - and space obliges me to be brief in my listing - we can approach a number of questions which may trouble us.

There is no difficulty in maintaining that man was descended from one original couple, but it would seem that this couple lived nearly 200,000 years ago. And if we think that homo erectus may have had the essential qualities of a soul, it could be two million years before that.

The generation of Eve from Adam’s rib is of course possible to an omnipotent God, but, by human judgment, unlikely. Sexual reproduction, with its enormous evolutionary advantages, had been established for at least two billion years. So we might wonder why God found it necessary to make an exception. That wonder is increased by the thought that, since the distinguishing Y chromosome can be properly described as a de-natured version of the female X chromosome, it would be more likely that Adam would have been formed from Eve.

Original Sin, as a doctrine today, was formulated by St Augustine. It evolved from earlier Patristic ideas, and incorporated, somewhat unfortunately, a key mistranslation of St Paul. The story of the Fall has been deeply explored by the theologians and many fundamental understandings, as well as conundrums, have emerged. I am content to regard it as an inspired story full of spiritual truth: a mystery to be fruitfully mined.

What I can see is that the first man, given his moral sense and free will, immediately chose to sin. And this proneness to turn inwards to our selfish selves instead of outwards toward God and our neighbour is, with just two exceptions, a universal inheritance. It is rightly called “original” because it was with us from the first, and will be with us until we die. Even the personally innocent, such as the infant or the mentally handicapped, having human natures, inherit this tendency although they cannot express it.

It is part of human nature insofar as we share the essentially selfish nature of the non-human animal with the essentially spiritual aspect of our humanity. Indeed, it was Paul himself who most graphically wrote about the tension between these two warring aspects of our nature. Should we doubt the existence of Original Sin we only have to look momentarily into ourselves to find it.

So I would suggest that here we are talking about a story or a myth in the full sense of expressing deep truths within the conventions and the comprehensions of the time. It does not surprise me that the people of the New Testament were able to grasp the essential spiritual truths though the medium of what they understood to be literal history. We, who following Augustine’s own advice, aim not to cause scandal by using interpretations which others can see are plainly contradicted by the facts, must be ready to review our understanding when new knowledge becomes available. Provided that the new understanding does not derogate from the spiritual meaning of the old, and may indeed give us further insights, we have nothing to fear - at least in exploring it.

New interpretations have always been uncomfortable, as Galileo found out. But should they stand the test of theological examination and receive the blessing of the Church, they guide us towards the  deeper understanding of truth in which, we are promised, the Holy Spirit guides us. So this is an opportunity to explore this question, and to tell me I am talking bunkum if you wish.

Two weeks ago I speculated on some attitudes towards sexuality within the Church. And excellent and helpful comments ensued. But I was aware that I was confining myself to a relatively straightforward aspect: our recognition – with or without the Church’s help – of the ways in which sexuality could be used in an unloving fashion. Here I want to look at the knottier question of the intrinsic nature of human sexuality laid down by God.

Imagine for a moment that you are exploring the far corners of an attic in an old house, and that you come across a piece of machinery which you don’t recognise. It’s heavy, it has a handle to turn, and it has numbers that can be set and changed. By observation of how its parts work, and by experiment, you eventually discover that it is a mechanical calculator with which quite complex multiplication and division can be done. You now know what its maker designed it for. Of course, being an inanimate possession, you are free to use it as you wish – for its maker’s purpose perhaps, or as a curiosity to display, or an effective door stop.

Now transfer that example to sexuality. It doesn’t take a genius to work out in an analogous way the purpose of our sexual equipment. The biology shows clearly that it is structurally ordered toward the conception of new members of the species, and that the parts are fitted for congress between male and female. We may find further – with experience – that the sexual drive urges us towards congress, and so conception; and that it also has the tendency to bind the participants into a long term relationship which enables them to support each other in practical and psychological ways through the task of parenthood.

Here the analogy with the calculator breaks down. We are not objects which we possess and can dispose of as we wish. Our human nature is given to us by God, the divine maker. So we are obliged to use our sexuality according to the nature he gave us. And it pays us to do so because – as Aristotle said and Aquinas confirmed – in order for an entity to flourish it must work in accord with its nature.

This analysis of vice and virtue through physical nature has traditionally been given preeminence in moral theology. Thus, for example,  Aquinas says, “In every genus, worst of all is the corruption of the principle on which the rest depend. Now the principles of reason are those things that are according to nature, because reason presupposes things as determined by nature, before disposing of other things according as it is fitting…in matters of action it is most grave and shameful to act against things as determined by nature. Therefore, since by the unnatural vices man transgresses that which has been determined by nature with regard to the use of venereal actions, it follows that in this matter this sin is gravest of all.”

This does not refer merely to “venereal actions”, although this is where it is most frequently encountered. It applies for instance to physical mutilation, or to telling lies – where, if you take this approach, you are abusing the purpose of the God-given power of speech which no motivation, however compelling,  can excuse .

This deduction of intrinsic moral status from a primarily physical point of view still reflects the official position although its alleged shortcomings have made it increasingly unpopular. One reason is that its unconditionality leads to moral positions which are counterintuitive. For example, a strict application would forbid the donation of a kidney between living people; the Catechism makes it clear that not even the avoidance of grave injustice to a third party can justify a lie – although deceit can be used in other ways, and – the most topical example – the prohibition of condoms for a married couple who are serodiscordant.

A second reason for unpopularity is that the biological criterion of morality alone fails to do justice to the whole of human nature. This was more understandable in Aquinas’s day when we knew so little about the psychological aspects of the human being. So when we ask ourselves what course of action should we follow or avoid so that we can flourish in the way that God intended it is not surprising that the 21st century answer differs in some aspects from the 13th.

I certainly would not argue that physical biology is a useless guide. It will always be a strong indicator of the way in which we should behave. Thus the power of speech, needed for us to fulfil our natures as social beings, indicates that truth-telling is of the highest importance but not necessarily without the possibility of exceptions. The sexual organs still indicate that flourishing is best achieved through heterosexual behaviour linked to generation and the commitment of marriage.

Perhaps our focus should move away from looking at all the things which we get wrong, and be applied to the positive values. That way we speak to man’s aspirations rather than to his fears. What is historically certain is that our continued cataloguing of sexual sin has not led to more orthodox behaviour. But it has led to our ill repute, and our rejection in the market place. I will settle for John XXIII’s remarks at the beginning of the Council: “Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations…”

Were I to show you the skeleton of an adult humanoid creature, standing about 40 inches in height, and with the brain capacity of a chimpanzee, you might immediately think of “Lucy”, a member of the hominid family, Australopithecus, which lived some three million years ago. Were I to tell you that these remains are in fact dated to about 18,000 years ago and were recovered from a small Indonesian island called Flores, you might perhaps want to revise your guess. You would probably settle for a surviving descendant of homo erectus, who first emerged from Africa about two million years ago, and may have been a direct forebear of homo sapiens. Restricted to their small environment, their brain capacity may well have shrunk to half its original size, a phenomenon not unknown in isolated non-human populations. Alternatively, the lack of challenge in a very restricted and safe environment may not have provided the evolutionary need for the brain, and skull, to enlarge.

This would have been mystery enough. The discovery of homo floresiensis (to be swiftly nicknamed the “Hobbit”) in 2004 presented us with a creature who should have been extinct millions of years ago, but was in fact our contemporary throughout most of human history. Indeed, if local legends are true, it might have survived as late as the 16th century. While you could be right about homo erectus, for the theory has respectable champions, the latest information suggests otherwise.

The bones of the legs and the pelvis show Hobbit to be bipedal, a characteristic of the homo line. But the feet are disproportionately long and lack proper arches. These primitive traits suggest an awkward, high-stepping, gait. But the big toe is aligned and not splayed out as it would be in an Australopithecine. The trapezoid bone in the wrist is ape-like in shape, and so less suited to tool making and similar operations than the normal homo version.

The skull is simply a mixture. The brain it encased was about the size of a grapefruit, similar to a chimpanzee, yet it has the narrow nose, brow arches and small teeth which suggest the homo line. Interestingly, the brain would have had an enlarged area which is believed to be associated with complex cognitive skills. This might explain the Hobbit’s ability to manufacture relatively sophisticated stone tools for hunting, and indeed may have influenced our homo sapiens ancestors in this regard. And they also used fire for cooking.

So a theory is gaining ground that the Hobbit is a newly discovered branch on the homo line which emerged before, and perhaps well before, homo erectus. Until this point the oldest hominid who moved out from Africa was thought to be homo erectus, and its remains, dating from about 1.8 million years ago, have been found in Georgia. But the Hobbit suggests the possibility that the first members of the human family spread out from Africa, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years before that, and survived until relatively modern times.

Tracing the hominid tree from the last ancestor we shared with the apes has always been a complex task. The separation took place about six mya (million years ago). The evidence is restricted to chance finds which have survived because conditions happened to have been conducive. And all too often these finds are no more than clues from which inferences have to be made. Nevertheless, broad patterns appear.

Perhaps the most telling of these is the increase in brain size. We first find this at an average of 450cc about 3.5 mya. By 2.5 mya (homo habilis) it has grown to 750cc, and at 2.5 mya, with the arrival of homo erectus, it has become 1000cc. At around 195,000 years ago, homo sapiens appears, with a brain capacity of 1330 cc.

There is a parallel pattern of apparent brain functionality. The first, and crude, stone tools appear at 2.5 mya, and the skill gradually develops to sophisticated blades and grinding stones about 100,000 years before homo sapiens (who will graduate to bronze tools about 95,000 years later, shortly before the first evidence of writing).

The use of fire, shared childcare, purpose-built shelters and cooking all appear before homo sapiens. And a report in December 2009 described the relics of sophisticated settlements (near the Dead Sea) dated to 750,000 years ago - half a million years earlier than we previously thought.

If we throw into the mix painted Neanderthal jewellery, made some 10,000 years before homo sapiens entered Europe, and take into account somewhat less secure evidence of burial practices, it becomes increasingly difficult to square the scientific evidence with the concept of the first ensouled hominids being members of our own species. By “ensouled” I mean with intelligence, a sense of right and wrong and a recognition of the sacred.

I am aware of the difficulty this causes with the concept of sin coming into the world through one man - which led to Pius XII to say: “Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual…” I do not pretend to reconcile the scientific evidence with the theological. I rest in the confidence that, when both are properly understood, they will be reconcilable. But you may well have a solution to give us on www.secondsightblog.com. I may return to this question in a future column.

Postscript. My friend Edmund Adamus points out that the view of the Congregation for the Clergy, quoted in my last column, that the faithful had no business advising the hierarchy, was shortly to be reversed by the 1983 revision of Canon Law. So thank you to him for refining the point I was making.

Whether we agree or disagree with Advocatus Diaboli’s critique of the Church’s approach to sex, he has certainly given us something to think about. And I have been thinking. I do so speculatively – so I hope you will be ready to criticise or refine my tentative ideas. I want to make a start on this occasion by trying to clarify some aspects which I think often get entangled in our minds.

The sexual drive is more complex than the simple, though strong, sexual appetite. While few people nowadays would take Freud lock, stock and barrel I would certainly accept that sexual libido is a major trigger of the human psyche. Our sexual identities are fundamental and their expression is by no means limited to overt sexual activity or conscious thought. They are an inherent part of our self images, intrinsic to much of our motivation, and are expressed to a greater or lesser extent in our relationships and our interactions.

Thus I suspect that Catholics have no greater pre-occupation with sex than anyone else. It is only because we have, or attempt to have, common sexual values and prohibitions that we talk and argue about related matters so publicly and so frequently, and often so emotionally.

Perhaps we would all agree that the expression of sexuality, while potentially wonderful, is also potentially dangerous. In whole areas we really don’t need an ecclesiastical authority to tell us that the misuse of sex is a misuse of love. Starting a new life is just as momentous an action as bringing about the end of a life. The care and thought which needs to go into that conception so that this new life has the best chance of developing and growing into a mature and good human being is a responsibility which Catholics believe is only discharged by the presence of a loving and stable marriage. And, apart from any teaching, the sociological evidence is strongly in support.

By the same token we regard sex outside marriage as unloving in two ways. The first is that it creates an emotional bond (which may in fact be unequal between the two partners) without the corresponding permanent commitment. Or, in other words, someone is likely to get hurt – perhaps even badly damaged. The fact that we have potential control over conception through natural or artificial contraception does not alter the bonding reaction which has evolved in our brains. Secondly, to risk – as is often the case – an unwanted conception is to involve a third party. In addition of course, particularly where promiscuity is involved, there is the additional danger of disease.

Sex is frequently used as an exercise of power. I am not thinking just of the blatant examples but of any occasion when it is used to gain our selfish ends. This may range from the authority figure seducing the junior to the various ways in which men and women, within and outside marriage, can use or enforce their sexuality to gain their own psychological or concrete advantages.

I simply don’t need to attach the word “sin” to any of these misuses – which may vary from the great to the trivial – because they need no label. We can judge them for ourselves.

But there is a problem here. Because of the centrality of sexuality in all of us we are extraordinarily open to temptation. The passion generated by sex is altogether different from the passion generated by, say, hunger. We vary in the strength of our sex drive – from person to person and from circumstance to circumstance. But it is possible, and indeed common, for the drive to be so strong that under the influence of passion we can behave in ways which we should utterly repudiate in other circumstances. Indeed much of the thinking of theologians in the past has been based on the tendency of sexual passion to stifle our rational powers, and turn us into satyr or gorgon. Less than human, more like brute beast.

All of this reminds us that chastity is not a passive virtue – to be called into action when needed. It is a virtue which has to be continually cultivated: not in order to avoid sexuality but to use it – including its passion – at the service of love. I find this advice easier to take at 75 than I did at 25.

I have not on this occasion looked at aspects concerned with the Natural Law and sexuality. I will keep that for another time.

A decade ago John Paul II emphasised the error of treating the Church as though it were a multinational corporation and thus subject to a purely human form of authority. While the point is well taken, the human side of the Church remains vulnerable to our fallen human nature. We see a clear precedent in the strictures which Jesus reserved for the leaders of Judaism despite their guardianship of the divine covenant.

Most people will recall that Lord Acton’s claim that power tends to corrupt was written about the Renaissance popes. Fewer will know (if only because of its very recent publication) of a study which measures and confirms this tendency, under experimental conditions. In simple terms, the more powerful (and secure) you are, the higher the standards you are likely to enforce on the people you control, and the lower the standards you apply to yourself. In other words, power is a serious “occasion of sin”.

We learnt, at our mother’s knee, that if occasions of sin cannot be avoided, they must be minimised by prudent precautions. Thus all those who hold ecclesiastical authority, from pope to priest, must work actively against the corruption of power. We have seen in microcosm what happens in a national clergy whose power is so institutionalised that even independent civil authority defers. In macrocosm we must accept that the Church has been corrupted by power at least since it became the pet religion of the Roman Empire. We should not be surprised; it is only continual, active defence against the corruption of power which can mitigate even if it cannot entirely avoid.

While abuse of power is found in other religions, the Catholic Church’s case is particularly difficult because its unity depends on a firm basis of revealed doctrine and the lynchpin of the successor to St Peter. It cannot be otherwise, nor would we wish it, but the danger of this near-absolute power is exceedingly great. It may be useful to look at some examples at random.

Outstanding, of course, has been the refusal to allow freedom of conscience in choice of religion. Error was held to have no rights. The result was enforcement of Catholic teaching, including the extremes of torture and death. It led to the Catholic colonisation of territories, and so the use of civil force for preservation. There are few behaviours which we deplore in Islam which have not been enthusiastically pursued by the Church in its time. Even in later days when this was achieved through concordats, it continued. When Vatican II finally accepted the full rights of conscience, the tardiness in dismantling the shameful concordat with Franco’s Spain demonstrated the lingering desire to maintain power at the expense of the individual. When John Paul II announced in 2001 that the Holy See “has always been vigorous in defending freedom of conscience and religious liberty”, we are lost for comment.

Vatican II rightly emphasised that the bishops, although acting in communion with the Pope, hold their diocesan powers independently as successors to the Apostles. But it has become hard to distinguish in practice the difference between being in communion and simply being a delegate. And this is made all the more obscure by the relatively novel practice of the pope choosing the diocesan bishops. A new bishop should, of course, be chosen by the local Church, with full consultation at all levels, while the Pope retains a veto which would only be used with extreme rarity. This would be a charitable way of protecting a pope from the temptation to use placemen.

I have written before about the Church’s own principle of subsidiarity - that decisions should always be taken at the lowest practicable level. In general this is continually breached (perhaps the arrogation of the translation of the English translation of the liturgy by the Vatican is the outstanding current example).

And the attitude towards being a listening community is well summed up by the Congregation for the Clergy’s statement: “All believers have the right and duty to take an active part in the mission given to the Church… but they do not have either the right or duty to give advice to the hierarchy in their exercise of their pastoral task.” Can we imagine a modern business, hoping to be successful, informing its members that they have neither the right nor the duty to give advice to management?

We do in fact know a good deal about how secular cultures form, how they are preserved and how they change. This may give us some clues. Here, however, I will simply quote from two recent popes, both presumably guided by the same Spirit.

First: “The Church has always opposed errors. Frequently she has condemned them with the greatest severity. Nowadays, however, the spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity. She considers that she meets the needs of the present day by demonstrating the validity of her teaching rather than by condemnations…”

Second: “To protect the Catholic faith against errors arising from the part of some of the Christian faithful it appeared highly necessary to us, whose principal task is to confirm his brethren in faith, to add (new) norms to the text of the presently valid Code of Canon Law, in order to impose expressly the duty to preserve the truths proposed definitively by the Magisterium of the Church, and, concerning the same matter, to institute canonical sanctions (against the violators).”

You may see, as one senior theologian did, a marked contrast between the two approaches to the use of authority. Which one relates, do you think, most closely to the Gospel? How can the Church at all levels maintain its God given authority while minimising the abuse of power? The answers to those questions may define the course of what the Church will give the world over the long distant future.

Our old, if critical, friend, Advocatus Diaboli, has had some spare time between Christmas and the New Year. And if the Devil makes work for idle hands, we can expect his advocate take advantage of the opportunity. I have now received a further contribution from him – and I look forward to you putting him firmly, though I am sure courteously, in his place. Quentin.

O     O     O

Thank you once again for the hospitality of Secondsightblog. I am not going to comment on the discussion which followed my last contribution, you must decide for yourselves. Instead I turn to a different subject.

An outsider, like me, might well get the impression that the Catholic Church is primarily a movement designed to control, and preclude as far as possible, anything to do with sexual activity. That impression might be formed from the fact that it is the one subject which, in different manifestations, gets the greatest column inches. And, even on a blog to which mature people like yourselves contribute, anything related to sexuality seems to get the most comments. If I may take a single example, your Bishop O’Donoghue (whose work on Catholic doctrine has recently been commended by the Vatican) was able to claim that obedience to the Church’s condemnation of all contraception was the “litmus test” of Catholicism.

This remark may seem idiotic, but – taken against history – it is typical of how Christianity can be perverted with the best of intentions. I can see very little in the Gospels about sexual sin (and what is there is compassionate), and in St Paul what is condemned is not sexuality but sexual excess. Even his cautions on marriage can be explained by his belief (based foolishly on taking Jesus’ words literally) that the end of the world was about to come. If that is what a bishop in good standing thinks being a Catholic is primarily about, he is either a fool or my case is already proved.

Where did it all start? The major authority was Augustine who was a reformed Manichean. Like many converts his reaction was extreme, and the result was his doctrine that the only justification for sexual intercourse was procreation (Manicheans believed that procreation was sinful, and advocated alternative sexual practices). Augustine believed that sexual pleasure as such was sinful, even in marital intercourse; that the terrible inheritance of original sin was transmitted through this lust. Not a very good start for an attitude which was to last about 1500 years.

About 200 years later we find Pope St Gregory the Great making it clear that the libido  necessary for sexual intercourse was in itself sinful, and should preclude a man from entering a church for a time. Aquinas takes the same general view. And so on – until the great alarm caused by Pius X1th in 1930 suggesting that, under certain conditions, intercourse without intention to procreate could be lawful and good.

Being as generous as possible I calculate that for 77% of the history of Christianity it has been generally and explicitly taught that every form of genital expression, even in the most loving expression of the holiest of marriages, is inevitably sinful. Not bad for an infallible Church, is it?

And what about those who are picked as leaders of the Church? We might think of the bright-eyed seminarians, fully infused with call of the Spirit. The only figures I have are from the 1950s but a study at that time showed that their rate of self abuse was 99%. Interestingly it was somewhat higher than most other groups. Coming to much more modern history (2002) I find that less than half the priests under age 45 believe that to be a practising homosexual is inconsistent with being a priest. How many would you guess accept self abuse? And you do not need me to turn the knife in the wound of international paedophilia.

I am not commenting on the rights and wrong of any of these practices. I am merely saying that they are grossly at variance with what your Church teaches. Fundamentally I am accusing you of deep laid hypocrisy. The only indulgence I can offer is that long, indurated culture (and 1500 years is long) has put you into denial. You may be forgiven because you do not know what you do.

Do you believe that the celibacy of the clergy is a great and sacred thing – allowing a priest to devote himself to his mission? Nonsense and double nonsense. There are plenty of monastic orders for those who choose celibacy as a free act. The secular clergy (and take that right up to the bishops and cardinals, and all the other steps on the ladder of priestly ambition) rejoice in a celibacy which allows them to conceal their lack of experience and their fear of an intimate committed relationship with the opposite sex. Don’t bother to tell me that there are exceptions, I am concerned with the many who sustain a regime of sexual orthodoxy not through a mature understanding but through warped and wounded personalities. These are the people who have the sheer impertinence to pontificate on how you should lead your sexual lives.

When your Church has rid itself of such attitudes I will listen to what she has to say about sexuality. She may or may not have a good deal to contribute. In the meanwhile I’d as soon walk down Soho and buy a dirty film. At least no one there is pretending.

Your friend, Advocatus Diaboli

What is the most misused word in the debates which surround the Church’s actions and relationships? My prime candidate is the word “authority”. With menacing inevitability it is always reduced to command and obedience. In doing so we condemn ourselves to live in a mindframe which the better elements in the secular world began to abandon by the mid 20th century, and which carries all the penal overtones of medieval autocracy. But true authority is not like that at all.

We get a glimmer of true authority by recalling that God who sustains us in existence from moment to moment by his constant omnipotence did not bear down on us: he gave us free will. When we thoroughly messed that up he did not abandon us but gave himself in total sacrifice to redeem us from our arrogant misuse of his gift, and then provided us with every means to flourish as sons rather than servants.

If that is a flavour of authority at the divine scale how would it translate on the human scale of, say, an ordinary secular, commercial organisation?

This is certainly not a democracy. The owners may, within the constraints of the law, exercise full authority - from setting the objectives, the standards, the routines, the rewards and the sanctions. But that authority may be exercised in radically different ways.

Well into the 20th century it was accepted wisdom that workers were primarily responsive to rewards and punishments. They were not of the calibre to take responsibility or to think for themselves, and thus tasks had to be set out in detail, and timed to ensure the appropriate level of outcome. In a sense the worker was a machine who happened to be human. It was called “scientific management”.

From the middle of the century onwards it began to be understood that, generally speaking, an enterprise was far more successful if the workers were treated as intelligent human beings who reacted well to responsibility. Authority became primarily a leadership activity, inspiring and co-ordinating the willing and co-operative workers - who brought their minds as well as their bodies to the task.

This change was not a result of increased virtue on the part of management but partly because more and more jobs actually required active thought, and primarily because enterprises run in this way tended to be much more successful. If you do not immediately recognise names like Maslow, Herzberg, Likert and McGregor, it is because the battle between worker as machine, and worker as human being, was won far enough in the past for it to be taken largely for granted.

Certain characteristics of these new organisations are worth noting. The first is that the leadership was clear about the ethos and objectives of the business. It had its key success factors and values: for the most part they could be summarised on a sheet of paper. But they would be communicated and applied in a variety of different ways - by example, through the questions asked or in general formal or informal discussion. Rarely, if ever, were they issued as orders, there was no need. There was greater emphasis on encouraging successful behaviour than on fault-finding.

Second, communication - upwards, downwards and sideways - was encouraged. This enhanced the sense of participation, and the organisation benefited continually from the experience of staff at different levels.

Third, the organisation tended to be very open. Naturally there will always be some confidential information but the leadership instinct was to keep everybody as well informed as possible. (Keeping quiet only when you had to, as opposed to telling people only when you had to.)

Of course, for brevity, I have painted a bad guy/good guy picture. The reality was more complex. The application of worker responsibility would differ between an accountancy office and an advertising agency, for instance. And considerable ingenuity would be required when much of the work was mechanical by necessity. Many firms claimed to promote worker responsibility while disingenuously reducing it in other ways. Other firms had bad initial experiences - a residue of past habits - and abandoned change. There were organisations who took the new thinking as an excuse for eschewing active leadership; we see this particularly in organisations where the discipline of the market does not apply. And, naturally, there were, and remain, managements who feel that the workforce cannot be trusted, and so the business remains in a constant state of tension and high personnel turnover.

The question of authority in the Church is sensitive at the present time, in view of the reports on abuse in Ireland. There can be no doubt that the misuse of authority played a large part in the sorry history. Not only was it employed to protect the strong against the weak, but it was employed in the interests of secrecy rather than openness. Even the Holy See has been accused of a culpable blind eye.

We should start off of course by considering whether this was simply an aberration of time, circumstance and place. But then we must consider to what extent it might relate to the way that the Church exercises authority. Do we see the organisation communicating its core values in an effective and inspirational way - with an emphasis on what we get right rather than what we get wrong? Are the members of the community seen as responsible, trustworthy, and focused on the same objectives? Is the Church an example to the world of openness and good communication? Do outsiders still say of us, as Tertullian claimed, “Look how they love one another.”

I do not doubt that I will one day feel motivated to answer that question with more concrete detail. But I shall be grateful if you tell us what you think.