I was very pleased to see the letter from Archbishops Nichols and Smith but please, don't be naive as to think this constitutes a clear teaching on Marriage.

What the Archbishops were actually doing was presenting one among many equally valid views. Catholics like me can accept that view if we wish or if not we can pick and choose a different view.

One such view can be found in this week's The Tablet where Fr Ceirion Gilbert is saddened and angry..

As a priest who deals daily with young people, teachers and catechists, I fear that yet again the Catholic Church is aligning herself with the wrong side, portraying herself as the "defender" of a position and an interpretation of society and humanity at odds with that of younger generations and almost incomprehensible to them in its rigidity and - to use an admittedly "loaded" term, bigotry.

I sense that once again, as so often on issues of sexual morality, that there is a gulf between the diktats of the institution and the "sensus fidelium", that concept that seems to have almost disappeared in recent years for some reason from the ecclesiastical vocabulary.

The comments of Cardinal Keith O'Brien last week left me saddened and angry; as a priest with among my friends more than one gay couple who still attend church (people with more courage and commitment than I might have in their position) I wondered how they are supposed to feel "welcomed and loved" by those unacceptable and absurd remarks; adjectives which, by the way, have been used by other (straight and not-so-young) Catholics when discussing the issue with me over recent days.

[link]

Note that there will be no rejection of this view by the Bishops. All over the country priests in well to do suburban parishes will express similar views and nothing will happen. This will be accepted as a perfectly valid alternative view for a Catholic priest to express in such a public forum.

We laity are presented with a choice, therefore we are not presented with a teaching at all. But still - the Bishops wrote a letter. As long as the Catholic view is presented alongside all the others... that's okay then.

h/t Laurence England

You choose.

If you want you can have Bishop Conference's Pastoral Letter on Marriage which says that "our present law does not discriminate unjustly when it requires both a man and a woman for marriage. It simply recognises and protects the distinctive nature of marriage".

Alternatively you can make a short journey down the road and hear the Fr Timothy Radcliffe alternative letter on Marriage. Fr Ray Blake has had "a few emails from people who say their priests refused to read it or make it available, one where the priest read it and then said he entirely disagreed with it".

Once again, a truth of the Catholic faith is reduced to a matter of personal preference.

Yesterday's Guardian didn't use the words "Pandoctrinal Catholicism" but it's pretty obvious what they are talking about...

It is all part of a careful balancing act between the demands of Catholic theology, and of conservative factions in the Vatican, and the reality of the English Roman Catholic Church, where several of the most prominent lay figures are either gay themselves, divorced, or married to divorced people.

The emergence of the Catholic church into the mainstream of national life has been accompanied by a change in character: the old working class Irish-based Catholicism has almost vanished, to be replaced by a much less traditional English middle class which largely rejects the Church's teachings on birth control and homosexuality, while still treasuring it for its spiritual value.

[link]

The problem will balancing acts is you tend to fall down.

h/t Cavalier (in the comments)

You will no doubt have seen it pointed out many times and by wiser men than me that many of the more popular heresies have consisted in taking some truth of the faith and playing it off against the others. Classic examples include Arianism in which the humanity of Jesus becomes a reason to deny his divinity, then there's Pelagianism where the obvious value and necessity of good works (e.g. James 2:24) is used to deny the necessity of grace. Not to mention more modern examples such as our friends the Protestants and the whole sola scriptura/sola fide thing...

It's not difficult to see why this should be the case. Truths of the faith are true!

This nugget of truth at the heart of the more famous heresies is what makes them so potent - and so hard to oppose. You see, the Arians are right to say that Jesus is fully human, the Pelagians are right to insist on the necessity of good works, the Protestants are right to insist on the importance/inerrancy of scripture and the necessity of faith.

Unfortunately, they are very wrong to claim that these particular truths trump their apparent opposites. Jesus is both human and divine. Faith and works are required for salvation. Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are both important.

Why do I mention all this?

Well, it is my view that a particularly dangerous heresy is widespread in the Church today and, like Arianism, can be found among many Bishops and even Cardinals. It is not a local problem, not a "one or two bad eggs need reporting to the Bishop problem" - it is a major crisis that affects the Church at every level.

The heresy is simply this: That unity is to be preferred to Truth.

We find at it's heart a truth that nobody can deny: That unity is important. That division is bad. That Jesus prayed to the Father "that they may be one, even as we are one". We are painfully aware of the effects of the division which ravaged Christianity in the latter half of the second millennium. We know that a lack of Christian unity undermines our efforts at Evangelisation and even leads to sectarian violence. Then there's the fact that truth itself can be expressed in different but equally valid ways as well as the fact that there is an (often misunderstood) "hircarchy of truths".

All of these things are true of themselves. None of them can be denied. Yet just as the Arians were wrong to think that Jesus' humanity trumped his divinity, so it is also wrong to think that these truths trump, well, truth. Those of us who oppose the triumph of unity over truth are thus characterised as nasty, divisive individuals who yearn for conflict and violence. We are too stupid to understand that differences within the Church are really just differences of opinion over the best way to express the truth... and so on.

Unfortunately these arguments form a convenient smokescreen to hide the fact that actually, important doctrinal truths often are denied. The laity often are mislead by what is not merely a different of expression of the same truth. You really can choose your teaching on major doctrinal issues simply by driving from one Catholic parish to the next. Orthodoxy is just one perfectly valid "expression" among many. I hear many accounts of a priest spreading falsehoods from the pulpit - so do you. Can any of us think of a single occasion when a Bishop has done anything about it?

Naturally there is a tension. The Bishops want to to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ, it is their job to preserve it. Yet if they teach too strongly then those who disagree with them may walk away. The scriptures are no stranger this - when Jesus said "my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed" (John 6:55)  we read that "many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him". Jesus doesn't offer them an inspirational listening day where there are no wrong answers... He let's them walk away.

Rather than disposing of truth in the name of unity, we need to understand that unity can be found only in Truth.

The unity willed by God can be attained only by the adherence of all to the content of revealed faith in its entirety. In matters of faith, compromise is in contradiction with God who is Truth. In the Body of Christ, "the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6), who could consider legitimate a reconciliation brought about at the expense of the truth?  [...]  A "being together" which betrayed the truth would thus be opposed both to the nature of God who offers his communion and to the need for truth found in the depths of every human heart.

[John Paul II - Ut Unum Sint]

My children have the right to hear the fullness of the Catholic faith proclaimed clearly, not several different versions of it depending on which priest is in school that day, not ambiguously worded in order to avoid offending the sensibilities of the latest political fashions.

Do I need to remind you what Jesus said about millstones?

Many of you will be familiar with the pantheon of ancient Rome. An incredible building constructed as a monument to all the gods worshipped in the city and also as a monument to the Roman's belief that one choice of god was just as valid as another. In fact, one of the things that made the early Christians stand out from all the other cults of the time was their refusal to join in with this arrangement.

For a quite few years now the Catholic Church in England and Wales (and beyond) has been developing a similar arrangement to the ancient Romans, only instead of a multitude of equally valid gods we have a multitude of equally "valid" doctrines. In the absence of any other handy term I have decided to call this arrangement pandoctrinal Catholicism.

A clear example of pandoctrinal Catholicism can be found in the Church's teaching on divorce and remarriage. Those of us who are interested, who wish to know what the Church teaches, we are free to find ourselves an orthodox priest or a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church where we can hear or read that "If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists." (CCC 1650) But.. let's say you don't like that teaching? Then simply pop along to the liberal parish found in a wealthy suburb of every major city where the parish priest doesn't ask too many questions. In fact, I know a priest who will actually bless your remarriage and then invite you to distribute communion. This is common knowledge but don't expect the Bishops to do anything about it - the Bishops seem to be content with the situation as it stands.

Remarriage is not the only example - other pandoctrinal issues include things like individual confession vs general services, whether the Eucharist is just a symbol, whether God is a 'he',  whether abortion is sometimes allowed, whether Sunday Mass attendance is required every week or just now and then and so on...generally these things are grouped together in very orthodox parishes and very liberal ones but there is a spectrum here and anybody living in a typical city can usually find a version of Catholicism to suit them.

It should be clear to anybody that if a teaching can be adjusted to fit one's personal preference by the simple act of driving north west for fifteen minutes then that teaching to be believed and more like a preference to be decided. It is certainly not a teaching that is in any way being upheld. Yet if anybody says that the Bishops are not upholding the Church's teaching on divorce and remarriage you can bet that somebody will produce a quotation as evidence that 'proves' that they are. This is where a lot of confusion comes in, people accuse the Bishops of being liberal (and sometimes they are) but it would often be more accurate to say they are adopting a policy of pandoctrinal Catholicism. They are failing to uphold teachings by providing the faithful with a platter of equally "valid" choices.

All of this does great harm to the work of evangelisation because it makes the Church appear muddled and uncertain of itself. It undermines those who teach the truth but worse than that, when beliefs are made a matter of choice those who stick to the harder teachings of the Church are seen as doing so for motives beyond mere faithfulness to the Church. A priest who refuses communion to a re-married Catholic must be harsh and judgmental because the nice man down the road has no problem. A blogger who complains about liturgical abuses must be hateful and ungenerous.

To be clear: This is not about denying freedom of religion as people are perfectly free to be Catholics or not to be Catholics, that is their choice. This is about saying that Catholicism is a particular set of teachings and teachings which are entirely different are not Catholic teachings at all.

Many of you will know all of this already but I think it's important to spell it out and give it a name because many otherwise decent, faithful, sound as a pound, orthodox Catholics simply have not seen the wood for the trees. They have opposed wooly liberal thinking by choosing not to believe it (and that is to be commended) but they have not noticed a problem in the policy that offers such thinking as a valid option in the first place. This is like discovering that a particular brand of food contains arsenic and wisely choosing to buy the other brand instead but not seeing a problem if the supermarket continues to sell poisoned food to those who choose it.

If you believe that the Catholic faith is true, true in a real life practical way like a street map or the instructions for assembling a radio controlled aeroplane, if you really believe that it is a truth that does people some measure of good both temporally and eternally then you must see how denying somebody these truths does them harm.

Yet our pandoctrinal Bishops do nothing.