Archbishop Vincent Nichols has used his first pastoral letter to Westminster Diocese to encourage Catholics to pray daily. He says that "our relationship with Christ, expressed in prayer, is central to the stability and fruitfulness of our lives" and that "A sound practice of daily prayer is essential for our well-being". This is very good.

Archbishop Nichols goes on to give three examples of people who illustrate this truth. The first is St Thérèse of Lisieux, the second is Cardinal Newman and the third is St John Vianney. Independent Catholic news has the full text of the letter but unfortunately due to an editorial oversight (perhaps they didn't realise the letter continued on the other side of the page) they seem to have ommitted the second half in which Archbishop Nichols suggests three worthy intentions for our prayer...

At the conclusion of this letter, I would like to suggest three worthwile intentions for your prayers.

Firstly, please pray for all the children in our Catholic schools. Many of these have been visited by Connexions, the government agency welcomed in to school by the Catholic Education Service back when I was in charge of it, they will have been given trendy literature with a phone number and instructions to phone that number if they need the sort of confidential advice that you can't ask your parents for. Some of those children will have phoned that trusted number (given them in a Catholic school) and have been told how to attain free contraception. Sadly, it is quite likely that out of the many thousands if Catholic school children in England at least one of them called that number and attained an abortion without parental knowledge. Pray for the parents who sent their child to a Catholic school and ended up with a murdered grandchild. Pray also for all those children who have been subjected to the All That I Am sex education course that I approved when I was Archbishop of Birmingham, complete with it's computer generated gratuitous full frontal nudity.

Secondly, pray for all the Catholic couples who get their marriage preparation through Marriage Care. Mainly because the president of Marriage Care doesn't actually think it matters to children whether their parents are married and I don't think it's worth doing anything about it. Many of the couples who get their marriage preparation through Marriage Care will never hear the Church teaching on contraception and as Humanae Vitae says "a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires". It's not easy living out a vocation to marriage and family life in modern Britain but fortunately we think that home is a holy place absolutely independently of how people live so there's no point doing anything to help anyway.

Thirdly, pray for all those Catholics who out of reverence and devition to the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass find themselve frustrated and scandalised by the way the ordinary form of the Mass is celebrated in their parish. After a few complaints to their Bishop who will probably do nothing about it (we are busy people), many of these Catholics will find refuge in the extraordinary form of the Mass where the priest usually does things properly. Unfortunately, the sort of Catholic who is willing to drive for hours every week in order to go to Mass is inexorably distancing themself from the Church. Pray for all those Catholics who can't trave; very far and have to endure their local parish no matter how much liturgical abuse goes on. We at the Bishops conference would live to do something to help those Catholics but we would rather have a fancy meal with Tony Blair.

May these coming months bring blessings on our families and parishes. And from those sources of strength and encouragement, may we be renewed in our faith and in our generosity towards all in need.

Archbishop of Westminster

On September 17th it will have been two months since Terry Prendergast, head of "Marriage Care" (which receives funding from the Catholic Church and whose patron is Archbishop Vincent Nichols) stood up and said that Marriage makes no difference to children. So far, Archbishop Vincent Nichols has seen fit to do nothing.

I can see why Archbishop Nichols would be happy with Marriage Care, after all, they make such handy leaflets on Catholic Marriage....

This leaflet is great because it successfully tackles difficult questions such as the Church's view on birth control...

Q. What about the Church’s view on birth control?

A. The Church states positively that one purpose of the gift of sexuality is for a couple’s love-making to be open to having children. The Church also recognises that couples want to make responsible decisions. Some further information for making decisions on family planning is offered in Section Three of this guide under the heading, ‘Catholics and Sex’.

Hmmm... "The Church also recognises that couples want to make responsible decisions." Ambiguous. So are we allowed to use birth control or not?

It says there is "further information for making decisions on family planning" in Section Three. Let's see what it says there...

Christians not only believe that sexual enjoyment strengthens a couple’s relationship but also that it is a gift for sharing in God’s ability to create new life. In the wedding ceremony, you will be asked to be faithful to each other in love and also to be ready to accept children as a gift from God. Equally you have the freedom to make responsible decisions about when to have children so as to be able to give them the love, care and attention they deserve.

Ah yes. Positively brimming with clear information on birth control... The phrase "avoiding the question" comes to mind. In fact it looks awfully like a deliberate attempt to make sure that those who intend to use contraception are not made to feel uncomfortable.

This marvellous leaflet can be found on the front page of the Marriage Care website.

You can download the full leaflet in all it's tedious glory here.

The B52 Bomber is an enormous aeroplane that drops bombs...

B51 on the other hand is a module of PHSE (Personal, social and health education) produced by our friends at Marriage Care which bombs...

Marriage Care, being a Catholic organisation, are 100% behind the Church...

In providing this information, it should not be assumed at all that Marriage Care is recommending the use of Contraception or Sexual Activity for young people. However, the organisation is concerned at current levels of teenage pregnancy in the UK and the relative lack of helpful and straightforward information available for young people in this area of their lives. Clearly, just telling young people not to engage in sexual activity is not something that is working, and might be ill-considered or naïve.

In other words... We don't want to get in to trouble for promoting contraception but we think young people should know about contraception.

What sort of things are they teaching about contraception? Here's a true or false question from the lesson plan...

THE BARRIER METHOD OF CONTRACEPTION STOPS THE SPERM GETTING THROUGH

True. One of the easiest and most effective ways of preventing pregnancy is to put a barrier in the way. In other words, physically stop the sperm from reaching the egg. There are several barrier methods available. Male and female condoms are probably the best known, however, the female diaphragm and cap are also available.

No promotion there at all. But can I afford it?

CONTRACEPTION IS DIFFICULT TO GET HOLD OF, AND IS EXPENSIVE

False. Contraception is not expensive or difficult to get hold of. Most forms of contraception are free on the NHS, GPs or local family planning clinics.

How handy.

You can download a copy of B51 (also known as Lesson Plan No. B.5.1) from the Marriage Care Website by clicking the link at the bottom right and filling in a stupid form or you can skip the form and download it here.

Don't bother writing to Archbishop Nichols. He will just ask Bishop Hine to write a letter to Marriage Care asking them to clarify their position on contraception and then give it a few months until everybody has forgotten about it so he can quietly let the matter drop.

Update: I didn't notice at first, but this lesson plan says it is for Key Stage 3. In Key Stage 3 pupils are aged beween eleven and fourteen!

From this weeks Catholic Herald...

Marriage Care has come under renewed criticism after it emerged that its sex education manual for Catholic schools and colleges contains "seriously inaccurate" information about natural family planning.

The Catholic charity was accused by NFP teachers of "misleading" young people into thinking that methods of regulating fertility approved by the Church were hazardous and ineffective.

The manual, called Foundations for a Good Life, is designed to help to teach pupils at Key Stage 3 and 4 - the last two years of secondary school - and college students about relationships, marriage, the family and sexuality.

The final two modules are aimed at young people over the age of 16 and deals with methods of contraception.

There is no discussion of the morality of the methods with the focus on function and effectiveness. The manual hails condoms as 98 per cent effective in avoiding pregnancy, and the Pill, the coil and hormonal injections as 99 per cent effective, but says that NFP methods are far less reliable.

...

The charity has an annual income in the region of £900,000, about 10 per cent of which comes from diocesan grants. Its president is Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

[link]

Are they inexorably distancing themselves from the Church yet?

...and the pounds will look after themselves.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has identified marriage as the “real vocation crisis” facing the Church in the United States.

“We have a vocation crisis to life-long, life-giving, loving, faithful marriage,” he said. “If we take care of that one, we’ll have all the priests and nuns we need for the Church.”

[link]

Alternatively, we could all wander around proclaiming that being married makes no difference and the Church could pay us to say it.

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Well you did ask...

There used to be an organisation called the "Catholic Marriage Advisory Service" but that name was a bit religious so they re-branded as "Marriage Care".

This week the chief executive of Marriage Care (Terry Prendergast) decided to announce that he doesn't care for marriage very much after all... in fact as far as he is concerned, being married is much the same as not being married.

Terry Prendergast, chief executive of Marriage Care, a diocesan-funded organisation, told Quest, a group for gay Catholics, that married heterosexuals were no better at raising children than anyone else.

"Statistically, children do best in a family where the adult relationship is steady, stable and loving," he was due to say in a speech this weekend. "Note that I stress adult, not married, since there is no evidence that suggests that children do best with heterosexual couples."

...

"It is ironic that the state appears to be much more pastoral and compassionate in its acceptance of what family is. The fact that there are all kinds of benefits available for different family forms, and legal imperatives to support families suggests that the state is even more concerned for families than Church."

He also criticised ideas of the Holy Family that have their roots in "evangelical, Right-wing religious thought".

He said that many families who pray together "then prey on other people through their self-righteousness", and said that abuse is "rampant" in the traditional family, citing the cases of Josef Friztl, who raped his prisoner daughter over a period of years, and Fred and Rosemary West, the serial killers.

Mr Prendergast last year presented Pope Benedict XVI with the English and Welsh bishops' document on marriage, Home is a Holy Place and Marriage Care has its own section in the Catholic Directory.

[link]

Marriage care feature in the Catholic Directory and are also listed on the Middlesbrough Diocese website. We even have a "Marriage Care centre" at the St Bede's Pastoral Centre in York (yeah, that St Bede's Pastoral Centre) and the John Paul Centre in Middlesbrough is also used for Marriage Care. Not to mention that Celebrating Family refer to Marriage Care as a 'Useful link for Family Ministry'.

Did I mention that Marriage Care are funded by the Catholic Dioceses of England and Wales? We are paying this guys wages!

So what happens now?

I suppose now we find out how much our Bishops care about Marriage. Do they care enough to actually do something?

Probably not.